5 ways to keep your calm

Try this: Make two fists and press the base of your thumbs into your forehead for five relaxed breaths. Feel how this gesture relaxes your eyes, releases your jaw and slows your rate of breathing. You should then feel ready to face back into your day with calm and poise.

When you’re struggling with the to-do list

Rather than seeing your to-do list as something that must be achieved in its entirety, what feels more doable is seeing it as a pick and mix. Not everything will get done today and that’s okay. Highlight your non-negotiables and the things that can only be done by you. Identify what can wait, what can be delegated and where you can request a more collaborative approach. People are often grateful when you let them know how they can help more meaningfully.

Try this: If you’re finding it hard to focus, take a moment to look out the window at the canopy of moving trees in the distance or watch the moving cloudscape. A little panoramic gaze can help calm the nervous system and bring us back to clarity.

When your family is getting on your nerves

Remember that this period does have value and put your focus on what you want it to be about. It could be memory making, having some fun together or just replenishing. Connecting with what matters to you can help you dig deeper in the moment.

Try this: When it all gets a bit much, take yourself off to the bathroom and do five shoulder rolls – when you breathe better you feel better and this little sequence melts tension where it likes to accumulate in the shoulders. I like the ‘chicken wing’ shoulder roll: pop your fingertips on your shoulders to make your chicken wing. As you breathe in, lift your elbows up and, as you breathe out, slide them back and down. Imagine you’re letting the day’s stresses drop from your shoulders with every repetition.

When you’ve overdone things and just need a rest

Find it hard to rest? We’re often told ‘you snooze, you lose’ and so we can conflate our self-worth with productivity, but rest is also valuable, allowing us time to process, digest and replenish. Let your mantra be ‘I’m not doing nothing, I’m resting’. This is how we resource ourselves for what’s required of us. Rest needn’t be in stillness, on your own, doing nothing – it can be as stimulating and active as you wish. Snuggle in and listen to a podcast, enjoy a gentle stretch or take a walk with a friend, whatever restorative activity speaks to you.

Try this: If the energy bank is running low, opt for legs up the wall, and lie back and receive. Just five minutes of this can be deeply replenishing, returning blood flow from the legs to the vital organs.

When you’ve got ‘hangxiety’

You might be familiar with that mixed-up feeling the morning after, raking over everything you said and did, marinating in worry. But be gentle with yourself. It’s hard to think straight in the aftermath of booze and, chances are, your fellow revellers are having the same thought loops. Make sure you are well hydrated and get a dose of daylight and fresh air to help regulate your circadian rhythms and blow away the mental cobwebs.

Try this: Movement in nature has been shown to dial down rumination, so a winter walk could be just the tonic to bring you back to peace.

Keep making space for the things that help you feel alive. It’s more than okay to take time out for yourself whenever you need it and, remember, the peaceful hibernation mode of January is on its way.

Suzy is a mother of two, an author, chartered psychologist and coach. She specialises in self-care, helping people manage their stress, emotions and energetic bank balance. It was her life experience of motherhood colliding with the terminal illness of her father that sparked her passion for self-care, which she now teaches to her clients, young and old, to cope during periods of stress, loss and change, and to boost their resilience in the face of future challenges. Suzy is the psychology expert for wellbeing brand Neom Organics and is a founding member of the Nourish app. She figure-skated her way through her childhood, growing up on the northern beaches of Sydney, and now makes her home in the hills of Hertfordshire, UK. Her first book ‘The Self-Care Revolution’ published by Aster came out in 2017 and she’s had the opportunity to write extensively on how to nourish yourself, with titles including 'Stand Tall Like a Mountain: Mindfulness & Self-Care for Children and Parents', 'The Little Book of Self-Care’, ‘Self-Care for Tough Times’, her first children’s book ‘This Book Will (Help) Make You Happy’, her first journal And Breathe, her first deck of cards, “The Little Box of Self-Care’, followed by Sit to Get Fit and Rest to Reset. Her latest book Self-care for Winter is hot off the press.

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