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Tuesday

Happy 2's Day! Today, we're diving into:

• Counting breaths for meditation and mindfulness

• Digital journaling

• A newsletter for intellectually curious readers

• If it's bad to sleep in on the weekends

Learn About Counting Breaths for Meditation and Mindfulness

With so many external factors impacting us throughout the day, we may sometimes feel out of control of our emotions. Luckily, we don't have to let everything around us drive our feelings.

Mindfulness and meditation are powerful tools — and a great way to tap into that is by counting your breaths.

Breath counting is less about taking a certain number of breaths and more about clearing your mind to achieve a higher state of mindfulness.

When practicing mindfulness or meditating, some people find their minds wandering. You may find yourself wondering if you switched your laundry over or have everything you need to make dinner instead of sitting in that calm state.

However, when you focus on the number of breaths you take, it’s harder for your mind to wander. It gives you something to focus on without thinking about your day or other external factors around you.

Counting breaths is an amazing way to tune out the noise.

To count your breaths with mindfulness and meditation, focus on breathing from your abdomen rather than higher up. From there, it’s as simple as counting each time you complete a cycle of breathing in and out!

Discover Digital Journaling

Journaling is a form of mindfulness that helps us in a number of ways. For some, it’s a way to process difficult emotions. For others, it's simply a way to relax and collect our thoughts.

Like other forms of mindfulness, you can tailor journaling to fit your individual needs.

Many people have found digital journaling to be an accessible, easy practice. In this kind of journaling, rather than jotting down your thoughts on paper, you do it on a digital device.

It's widely loved and can be done right from our phones, laptops, and other devices!

Here are some popular forms of digital journaling you can try:

• Gratitude journal: Write down the things you're grateful for.

• Creative journal: Tap into your creativity and emotions through digital drawing, collages, and other mediums.

• One second a day/One photo a day: Just like the name suggests, take a photo that shows a snapshot of your day.

• Dream diary: Write down your dreams from the night before.

• Poetry: Express your thoughts and emotions through poetry.

• Bullet journal: Rather than full sentences, use a bullet list to organize your thoughts.

Digital journaling also gives you the ability to download templates if you aren’t sure where to start, which can be super helpful in guiding the practice.

Whether you carve out time for your journaling or do it on a whim, digital journaling makes it accessible, easy, and fun!

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Thank you to 1440 for sponsoring Note To Self. 

Is It Bad To Sleep in on the Weekends?

While a consistent sleep schedule sounds ideal, many of us don't get enough rest throughout the week. When the weekend rolls around, we might want to take advantage of some extra sleep time.

If we don't get enough sleep throughout the week, we can accumulate "sleep debt" — the difference between how much sleep our bodies need and how much we actually rest.

The good news is sleeping in on the weekends isn’t actually bad for you if you do it right.

Sleeping an extra one or two hours can help you feel more balanced after missing out on sleep during the week.

However, this benefit has its limits.

Sleeping in too much on the weekend can mess with your circadian rhythm and make you feel even worse when you have to get up on Monday morning. While an extra couple of hours of sleep on the weekend can help, getting more than that won’t cancel out your sleep debt.

If you are accumulating a lot of sleep debt, oversleeping a lot on the weekend likely won’t help. It may create an endless cycle of not getting enough rest and trying to play catch-up.

It’s important to still get quality sleep on a regular basis, but if you fall short every once in a while, sleeping in an extra hour or two on the weekend can help.

Parting Thoughts

• ✅ Did You Know: Worldwide, there is an estimated 12 billion working days lost per year due to depression and anxiety.

• 🙋🏼‍♀️ Snapshot Of The Day: We'd love to see moments from our readers lives that they are proud of! If you recently accomplished an achievement, experienced a joyful moment, or are proud of a picture you have taken, be sure to capture it on camera and send it to us for a chance to be featured next week! 

• 💭 Final Self-Care Thoughts for Today: Our mental health can impact so many different areas of our lives. Challenge yourself to find small yet mindful ways to care for yourself.

Enjoying Note to Self?

Know of a great self-care tip or article you'd love to share with the community? Want to send us pictures of you completing one of your self-care rituals? Email us at [email protected]!