Written by: Theresa Tirk, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression for many years. I also lost my identity after years of people-pleasing. I wrapped up who I was in being a mom, and I had no sense of self outside of that. I spent a lot of time allowing those things to control my life.
Until I decided that I was deserving of spending time focusing on myself, I was worthy of discovering who I was and honoring myself.
This took time, and that time became sacred to me. I started creating rituals to help me get back in touch with who I am, with my purpose, with my soul.
I created the Revive & Thrive Ritual to share with you because I believe 1,000% in the power of rituals and how they can bring you back to yourself. What if there was a way that you could not only survive your day but thrive through it? You would give it a try, right? What’s the worse thing that can happen from allowing yourself 15 - 30 minutes a day all to yourself?
This process can help you to start your day from a place of calmness, being thankful and energized. I will break down for you how to incorporate these 5 steps into your day and help you understand why it's important and the difference it can make in your life.
So what exactly is Revive & Thrive?
The five elements of the ritual are meditation, journaling, gratitude, movement, and hydration. All 5 work together to provide you a foundation of success on which to build your day.
Let's start with JOURNALING and a few ideas of why you should give it a try; a few ways it helped me.
Heal
Vent
Goals & Dreams
Find Your Inspiration
East Stress & Anxiety
Journaling doesn't need to be fancy, you don't need a special expensive book, and you do not need to be articulate or concern yourself with proper punctuation. It's all about you getting what you need out and down on paper. There is something powerful about putting words and thoughts to paper. It's a way for you to get out your feelings to allow you to heal from pain or trauma or hurt caused by others. It's a way to vent when you need to get something off your
chest but don't want any confrontation. When you want to explore your dreams, writing down your goals to help turn it more into a plan, journaling is the perfect medium to do this activity.
You can randomly write daily when you don't know what to say, and this is a perfect way to help find your inspiration. This idea comes from the book "The Artists Way" by Julie Cameron. Getting all your thoughts and feelings out and onto paper is a great method of reducing your stress and anxiety.
Doing some additional research on how journaling can benefit you provided some that surprised me. A few of those sharpened memory, improved immune function, solved problems efficiently, and resolved disagreements. A few others reduce stress, boost your mood, cope with depression, clarify your thoughts and feelings, and get to know yourself better. As you can see, the benefits of journaling go far beyond just putting thoughts to paper. When this is something you constantly do, it has amazing emotional, physical, spiritual, and possibly physical benefits. Something that you can do at zero cost that can improve your life? Yes please.
The next step on the ritual list is MEDITATION.
What even is meditation? It is a practice where you use techniques to train your attention, awareness and achieve mental clarity and an emotionally calm and stable state. Sounds heavenly, right? It's been reported that meditation can be dated to as early as 5,000 BCE, with written evidence of any form first seen in Vedas around 1500 BCE. There have been numerous studies on its effectiveness with anxiety, pain, depression, PTSD, sleep, heart disease, and so much more. It is believed it can positively impact mental and physical health.
I love this quote, but I can't tell you who said it.
"The quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.”
Here are a few ways that a daily meditation practice can help you as it's helped me.
Focus
Clarity
Serenity
Breathe Deep, Breath-work
Observe Feelings, Inward Connection
Of course, these are only a few of the benefits of meditation that helped me personally. A few more that I found listed on The Mayo Clinic are as follows: gaining a new perspective, manage stress, increase self-awareness, help focus on the present, reduce negative emotions, increase creativity, patience & tolerance.
I continued my research, and on Healthline.com, I found additional research that had been done that includes even more benefits. Those benefits include decreased blood pressure, pain control, improvement of sleep, fighting addiction, generating kindness, reducing age-related memory loss, lengthen your attention span, and promoting emotional health. The great thing about meditation is you can do it anywhere and for any amount of time. There is no right or wrong way to do it.
On my busiest days, I will add it in during a shower. I close my eyes while the water is running over my head, take a few deep breathes, then imagine whatever is blocking me, any negativity taking over, being washed away by the pure, clear water. Then I picture those negative feelings or blocks as a color and watch them go down the drain. Then I visualize the pure, clear water restoring me as it washes over my body.
You can find 3-5 minutes in your day to get quiet, breathe deeply and meditate.
Let's talk about GRATITUDE.
"Gratitude turns what we have into enough." - Melody Beattle
There have been scientifically proven benefits to maintaining a gratitude practice. Some of those benefits include opening the door to more relationships. Improve physical and psychological health. Help enhance empathy and reduce aggression. It's been shown to help you sleep better, improve your self-esteem and increase your mental strength. Numerous studies show that grateful people have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress or depression. Those sound like some amazing benefits for an easy practice that doesn't take much time. I started practicing gratitude by saying out loud what I was grateful for every morning. I started to do this before my feet even hit the floor. Then I'd follow up with more positive and thankful thoughts as I finished my morning hygiene routine. You can advance your practice by starting a gratitude journal. The point is to find what works for you.
The fourth element of the Thrive Ritual is MOVEMENT.
Now, this may not be a favorite of everyone. I know that this one has been a struggle for me. I'm pretty hot or cold when it comes to "exercise," so instead, I started looking at it as movement. My body is happy when I spend a few minutes moving it to start my day. This can be as simple as 5 minutes stretching. A yoga routine. A walk with your dog or by yourself. An actual workout. Whatever level of physical activity you prefer, and if it's something that you resist, start small with stretching or a light yoga routine. Let's go over some of the benefits I found when doing my research. Let's start with my personal favorite, Yoga. It improves strength, balance, and flexibility. It can help manage stress, increase energy and promote better sleep.
A general research of exercise benefits returned the following: improve memory, protect against chronic disease, control weight, boost energy, improve your mood, spark your sex life and promote better sleep.
While exercise may seem daunting and overwhelming to someone who doesn't have a usual fitness ritual, it can be started in small steps. Like I mentioned above, start with stretching or a 10-minute yoga routine, or a short walk around the neighborhood. Work your way up to exercise equipment or longer, more intense routines. YouTube is a great place to find videos to get you started for any of the above.
We have made it to number 5 in the ritual. This is Lemon Water.
Water, in general, is a necessity of life. Keeping yourself hydrated promotes cardiovascular health, supple skin, helps muscles and joints work better, keeps your body cool, and cleanses your body both inside & out. So drinking water throughout the day is very key to your overall health and wellbeing. But the benefits of beginning your day with lemon water (yes, before coffee) have been astonishing to me.
Here are a few that I have experienced.
Helps with digestion
Fresher breathe
Energy boost
Increased hydration throughout the day
Lower blood pressure
The additional research I found showed that drinking lemon water could supply you with vitamin C, give you a potassium boost, help prevent kidney stones, prevent oxidation, it's weight-loss friendly, help with inflammation, and can improve your skin quality. How should you make it? How much should you drink? The truth is, it doesn't matter. Any way you do, it will be a boost! Start with 1/2 lemon squeezed into a glass of water and adjust to your tastes.
That’s it. That is the 5 step ritual that you can incorporate into your day in as little as 15-30 minutes to make a massive impact in your life.
If you would like a printable PDF of the ritual along with some journaling prompts, click here.
Theresa Tirk, Executive Contributor, Brainz Magazine
Through her work as a Spiritual Life Coach and Certified Aromatherapist, Theresa Tirk empowers women everywhere to step out of overwhelm and into joy by awakening to their own validation and strength. Theresa creates massive impacts in her clients’ lives with dynamic daily rituals and simple yet powerful mindset shifts. Theresa was called to coaching through her own spiritual journey of self-discovery following a battle with depression and anxiety. Theresa is the host of The Ritual Queen Podcast and CEO of The Ritual Queen LLC.
