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Having a set of non-negotiable items and tasks helps you stay focused and centered in life and recovery. Making a personal list is essential to finding personal and professional success. When you do not plan accordingly, the person that stands to suffer most is you. Expending more time than you should on smaller tasks can interfere with the quality of your rest, nutrition, sleep, and self-care.
Creating non-negotiable tasks that you will devote the appropriate time and energy to each day helps keep balance and momentum between your physical and mental health. After making a list, you can then hold yourself accountable for creating good habits that keep you focused, balanced, and emotionally and physically nourished.
WHAT ARE NON-NEGOTIABLES?
Non-negotiable elements in your day follow values and principles and define the most important aspects of yourself and your expectations and what you expect and deserve from others. They can also be deal-breakers to help you resist temptations. These promises help strengthen your accountability and hold yourself to your standards. For example, you might hate the smell of cigarette smoke and say that you will never date a person that smokes. Saying this helps establish this non-negotiable and makes it much easier not to date a person who smokes.
Daily non-negotiables are also unique to you. Therefore everyone's list will be different. They help guide you through your day and during times of tough decision-making. However, to reap the benefits, your non-negotiables should have one common theme; they should bring you happiness and make you feel positive.
SEEKING POSITIVE PEOPLE
Negative energy creates an environment of negative thoughts and behaviors. You can control how you react to the people and events in your life; therefore, surrounding yourself with positive people ensures you maintain optimism. Be wary of people who constantly put a negative spin on everything. Negativity also takes more work than thinking about how to put a positive spin on things.
Try to evaluate the people in your life. Do they encourage you to be your best self? Do they support you, and can you be your true self around them? If not, you can create a non-negotiable: no negative people in your life. You deserve it, and your recovery deserves it, too. Don't be afraid to cut out friends, family, or co-workers that are holding you back.
GETTING ADEQUATE REST
Sleep is essential in any successful endeavor. It helps you feel better, more focused, and more productive throughout your day. It also promotes excellent mental and physical health. Incorporating a good sleep regimen and making it non-negotiable ensures that you will take the time needed to walk away from what you're doing and focus on relaxation and self-care before nodding off to sleep. You can develop a pre-sleep routine like reading or meditating that helps bring you to a relaxed state of mind.
You should also consider not using television or cell phones as a way to unwind. Not only can these devices lead you into a stressful environment, but their blue light actually confuses your brain into thinking it is day and therefore throws off the hormones needed to enter and sustain a solid sleep state. When you make sleep a non-negotiable, you will soon discover how much better and more productive you feel throughout your day.
TALK TO A LOVED ONE EVERYDAY
A deep-rooted primal need that humans must incorporate is a connection with other humans. These are the friends and family that we trust and love. Relationships built on quality over quantity ensure that your conversations will always have meaning and support.
Making it non-negotiable that you will reach out to a loved one, even if only to text a joke or a simple "hi," not only keeps you feeling connected but reminds you how lucky you are to have each other in your lives. Each friend and family member shares a different relationship with you and can help teach you something at different points in your life. It also allows you to help a loved one in need, and it all promotes a feeling of connection and support.
SAY “NO” TO STRESS
While this might seem near impossible, saying “no” to stress creates an idea that you will not become your stress. Part of making saying “no” to stress a non-negotiable is learning to prioritize your time. Doing that might consist of making a list of a set amount of things you want to get done in a given day. Such tasks could be professional and personal; they can also vary from three to eight different tasks.
Having a to-do list keeps you focused during the day and also helps you from feeling overwhelmed. The stress that accompanies trying to do too much can turn into anxiety, depression and soon interfere with the things you enjoy most. It also helps you keep things reasonable and within perspective.
The idea of creating non-negotiables is about helping bring balance to your life. The best part is that what you deem as non-negotiable is entirely up to you. At START UP RECOVERY, our primary goal is to help you discover the self-confidence needed to sustain lasting recovery. Such self-transformation should motivate you to lead each day without ever feeling overwhelmed but rather well-paced. When you put balance in life first, you begin to stop focusing on a given task for too long and move on to minding other essential facets of your life. Although it takes practice, you will be amazed at how much you can achieve when you are reasonable and persistent. If you find yourself out of sync with your recovery, then the time to seek help is now. With a sunny SoCal location and 24/7 admissions, there is always an opportunity to reach out for help and put your success and recovery first. To find out more, call START UP RECOVERY today at 310-773-3809.