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Add rituals and hard stops to your life to restore balance and combat stress.
Why is a sanctuary important? Now more than ever, it is increasingly difficult to step away and shut out the noise. They haven’t established a space where there is quiet, where they retreat, such as a sanctuary, to restore balance to their life. Social media, notifications of texts, phone calls, work emails, all these things press on your mind and add stress. To multi-task is a skill that is bragged about, even if it is not practical and technically non-existent. Even a glance at your phone adds up throughout the day, robbing precious seconds from the sparse 24 hours we have each day, as noted by the Times in this article.
“Americans collectively check their smartphones upwards of 8 billion times per day.”
How do you combat this relentless intrusion into your life?
Here at Homespun Oasis, we believe the best way to combat it is by finding or creating a Sanctuary.
What is a Sanctuary?
A sanctuary is anything you want it to be, as long as you feel refreshed after visiting. If you live in a house with nine children (no, seriously, I have an aunt with nine wonderful children), your sanctuary may be a quiet corner of the den where you sit and read books, armed with your favorite mug of tea.
Maybe you spend all day on your feet tending to patients, being asked a million questions a day, you may crave alone time with a glass of wine and your favorite soundtrack playing in the background.
If you’re anything like me, solving problems all day while I’m trying to focus on deep work, the end of the day comes and I’m exhausted. The only way I feel refreshed after is usually by cooking a good meal with my husband, or escaping into a novel that’s I’ve been dying to get to all day.
Deeper than just a few minutes of relaxing, a sanctuary is a life that you cultivate to bring you contentment.
The Importance of Having a Retreat
When you’ve depleted your mental, emotional, and often physical resources, taking care of yourself is difficult. Taking care of a family is even harder. Getting up the next day and doing it all over again without any relief is a sure way to fall into a rut that becomes harder to get out of every day. Willpower won’t save you, grit won’t save you. Being kind to and caring for yourself will, slowly, help to restore that balance.
Cultivating Calm
Take 10 minutes and think of all the things that relax you. A nice, long list of everything that refreshes you or gives you a sense of calm.
Here’s a few things from my list to get you going:
- A hot cup of tea
- Buying beautiful flowers and enjoying them throughout the week
- A clean house (something my husband just can’t fathom!)
- Breakfast on a clean table, with coffee in a cup and saucer (very proper) and a good article to read
- A calm lunch hour away from the computer
- A nice evening dinner without tv or phones.
I want to hear what your ideas are! What’s on your list?
Interested in a good book to get started? The Light of Paris by New York Times Bestselling author, Eleanor Brown, is an excellent read.
Complete the ambiance with a warm, cozy blanket and a lovely cup for your hot tea.
Millie Copper (Homespun Oasis) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking amazon.com.
