Mid-Week Resets and Self-Care, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Mid-Week Resets and Self-Care series! If you missed Part 1, what are you doing?! Check it out here before you keep reading!

In the first part of the series, we talked about the WHY behind mid-week resets and how to start creating the routines. By now, you may have thought about your “needs” and what habits or activities you can implement to help you feel refreshed during the week.

Let’s dive deeper!

Tips for Brainstorming Your Needs

I think the hardest part for sure in this entire process is conceptualizing your needs. How can you put what you need into writing? Also, what happens when you actually need a new job and not just a list of mid-week routines?

This is the part where you pause, breathe, and take a step back.

Of course, a mid-week reset routine won’t solve all of your problems. However, what a mid-week reset routine can do is help you feel a little more relaxed and ready to tackle the upcoming work day and the rest of the work week.

Here are a few tips for helping you write down your needs during the week:

[1] Visualize your best “you”. Close your eyes and imagine your best self during the middle of the week. How does this version of you feel? What is this version of you wearing, listening to, eating, etc.? What do your surroundings look like? (Try answering the 5-W questions…who, what, when, where, and why!) The key here is visualization. You want to see the version of you that is not feeling burnt out in the middle of the work week.

[2] Consider ranking your needs. If we had all the time in the world, we would spend hours practicing mid-week reset routines. Personally, I’d wake up at 8:00AM and go to the gym. Then I would go home to take the hottest shower ever and head to the spa for a deep tissue massage. Then I would finally drag myself to work around 10:00AM (and leave at 3:00PM but that’s a different story)! But the reality is that sometimes, timing is tight so we won’t always have time to address ALL of our needs. That’s why it’s important to rank your needs so you know what you need to address.

Of course, our needs change. So what we need one week might differ from what we need during a different week. Here is when it’s important to know yourself. What do you find yourself needing most often? For me, it’s definitely a way to disconnect and relax. I can deal with a less-than-spotless living space for the work week. What I cannot deal with is carrying the stress from the prior day to the next work day and the remainder of the week.

[3] Don’t limit yourself. Seriously, don’t limit yourself. When you are brainstorming your needs, don’t limit yourself by thinking that your need is too great to meet or satisfy. You might have to get creative with a solution but just because a need feels “too large” doesn’t mean that you can’t find a habit or two to meet that need. As an attorney, I had a hard time when brainstorming my needs because I honestly thought that trying to “decompress” and relax is too hard to meet given how stressful the job is on a daily basis. If you can relate, I’ll tell you what I told myself: why place superficial limits on ourselves? Like I said earlier, it might take a habit or two to meet a need. It might even take weeks of practice. Just don’t set yourself up for failure by limiting yourself early on.

In case you missed it (I shared it on Instagram!), here's the result of my brainstorming session are below! On the left side of the planner insert, I wrote down a few needs that I have. On the right side, I wrote down a few activities that can help address that particular need.

How to Build the Routine

Now it’s time for the fun part. Let’s build your routine(s)! Here are some considerations for you as you build your routine

Brainstorming Habits/Activities

After you answer the questions from the visualization exercise, write down what you would need in order to bring that visualization to life. What habits is that version of you practicing? What do you need to do to bring that version of yourself to life? Are there some non-negotiable habits you want to practice, like journaling, a 10-minute morning stretch routine, etc., no matter how you are feeling?

Also if you just need self-care activities/ideas, Google is a great resource! Also, one of my favorite self-care websites is Silk & Sonder. I recommend checking them out too when you just need some inspiration!

Creating Multiple Versions

I’m screaming it from the mountaintop again: OUR NEEDS CHANGE ANY GIVEN WEEK! Sometimes I don’t need a mid-week reset (this is rare ha!) so during those weeks I won’t need an intense routine. I will still get up early on a Wednesday to do some light reading and to journal. But you won’t find me cleaning my room, shutting off my phone, or texting my therapist during the “light” weeks. Chances are, you can relate. Your job might be more stressful during certain times of the year than others.

Take some time to think about what an “easy-going” mid-week reset routine looks like for you versus an “intense” routine. Are there more activities in one version when compared to the other version? Are there habits that appear in both versions of those routines?

The number of versions you create is totally up to you but I definitely recommend at least two, an “easy-going” routine and an “intense” routine.

Timing

Of course, consider the day and the time you want to practice your mid-week reset routine. I’m an advocate for practicing your routine at the beginning of the day because how we start the middle of the work week is so important! Do you need to spread your activities out during the day? The week that I am writing this blog post, I woke up late on Wednesday so I couldn’t practice a full mid-week reset routine in the morning. Instead, I sprinkled a few habits during the day (journaling in the morning, a quick walk outside during the middle of the day, and practicing social self-care at night) to help feel refreshed in the middle of the work week. Do what works for you!

Mid-Week Resets = Professional Self-Care

At this point in the series, you might be thinking: how do mid-week reset routines relate to professional self-care?

Let’s talk about it! Yes, many of the activities I wrote down in my brainstorming session (and that you might even write down) might also relate to other areas of self-care. But the focus here is professional self-care. This form of self-care has different definitions but they all relate to showing up as your best self professionally. For purposes of this series, professional self-care means the habits we practice to cultivate a healthy work-life balance. A mid-week reset routine helps you cultivate that balance!

What Now?

This week, let’s test our mid-week reset routines! Try either version of your mid-week reset routine and take note of how you feel after the routine, during the work day, and after the work day. What worked well for you? What didn’t work well? Do you want to make any changes next week?

We’re all in this journey together, so feel free to add in the comments below how your mid-week reset routine went!