March thread: what are your non-negotiables?

How do you make space for the things that are truly important to you?

What are your non-negotiables? What are the things that you want to do most days in order to take care of yourself, in order to do the things that are important to you, in order to remind yourself that there’s more to life than work?

I’ve been adding more and more of these non-negotiables to my life over the past couple of years.

I started with novel-reading before work when I realised that even though reading is one of my very favourite things, I often wouldn’t do it until the end of the day.

I’d turned it into something that I needed to earn.

Now, I sit down with a novel after breakfast for 30 minutes of reading. My working days don’t start until 10:00 and spending the time before that reading feels luxurious.

It also feels really good, right, to build my days around the things that mean the most to me.

Other non-negotiables are resting—in the form of a daily nap—and movement. With the nap I don’t have a lot of choice, to be honest: I simply need it if I don’t want to spend my afternoon exhausted and with a headache. And while occasionally I resent this need, I try to reframe it as something I choose to do.

I used to squeeze movement into the end of my day. Oftentimes it felt more as something that I had to do, even though I did enjoy it. Since getting back into yoga and then Pilates three years ago I’ve changed when I do my movement. I no longer wait until the end of the workday, and instead tend to take 30 to 45 minutes in the middle of the afternoon.

This reminds me that as much as I love my work, there’s more than that to my life. I get to connect to myself and my body when I get down to the mat, a feeling that sticks with me even when I return to work afterwards.

Which non-negotiables do you already add to your days? And which would you like to add? What, if anything, is stopping you? Leave a comment to join the conversation.

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