For day 13 of the healthy habits challenge, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of emotional check ins for mental health and behavior change.

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Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.046)
Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 13 of the 30 Days Have Healthy Habits Challenge. Today we’re doing a quick emotional check-in. So this is something that I noticed that when I’m just, you know, in work mode and I’m kind of moving through my day and I’m just checking things off my to-do list, you often don’t take time to just kind of check in with yourself and see how you’re actually doing. So it can be useful just to make sure that you

know what’s going on. You can check in and see if you’re you notice you’re overly stressed overly anxious if you’re doing too much and it’s just a simple one-sentence thing that you’ll do for this emotional check-in and that is to say right now I feel blank and we’re also noticing if there is any feeling in the body that’s associated with this. So it’s just taking kind of an overview of both your physiological and emotional state at the same time.

Quite often when we experience certain emotions, whether it’s stress or anxiety or excitement, you know, they don’t always have to be negative emotions that we’re feeling, but you’ll notice that you feel it somewhere in your body. And so that can just be useful to notice where you’re holding extra tension. And again, it just gives you some bullet points or some things to notice that you can try to counteract them. So for example, yesterday’s habit was the movement stack. And if you take an emotional check-in and you notice that you

feel anxious in that moment. Well, it might be useful to do one of our breathing exercises that we’ve checked in as a habit or to do a little bit of movement to, you know, move some of that anxiety out of your body, but to first notice it, you have to notice it if you’re going to be able to do actually address it and do anything about it. So the cue is right now I feel blank and just notice where you feel it in your body. So the reason this matters is that labeling emotions can help

reduce anxiety and help you respond with more intention. And then it also reduces the intensity. So especially if it’s a negative emotion, this naming it and noticing it will help you calm down and actually respond instead of overreact or react in a way that is not helpful for you. It also strengthens just self-awareness and mindfulness. So this is also something that we do sometimes in a meditation practice that you are

Cheryl McColgan (02:19.957)
you know, people’s minds are going everywhere, but you’re just observing thoughts and noticing them in a meditation and not necessarily trying to change anything, but just getting this idea of self-awareness. So if you get stuck and you’re not like can’t name what you’re feeling, you can use this simple list. This is or some of the most common ones that people might experience in the moment is stressed, calm, anxious, excited, tired, hopeful, frustrated, happy, sad.

all there’s all kinds but those are kind of the typical ones that people might feel and then add one sense to this and say I feel this because so you might again it’s this idea of tuning in so that you can be more aware of actually what’s happening to you in the moment and an example might be I might feel this way because I’m frustrated with my boss or

I might feel this way because I’m excited to go on my trip tomorrow or something like that. And if you want to go even a little bit deeper, you can ask what do I need right now? So if you are feeling stressed or anxious again, that’s what do you need? Maybe it’s some of the tools that we’ve practiced so far that help reduce stress and anxiety. So if you can’t, again, if you don’t know,

what you feel exactly. And this is this is really challenging for a lot of people. Start with a sentence of say something and see if it resonates with you say like I feel tired. And then, you know, think about that for a second. Is that it or I feel overwhelmed? Just pick any one of those things that I named off earlier in the video and try it on and see if that works out for you. But if you have trouble, that’s probably a sign that you need to take this on as a more

more practice that’s every day and something that you might want to keep because if you’re having trouble naming it, then that just is kind of identifying that maybe you’re not present in the moment and you’re not in tune with your emotions or feelings. So of course, there’s the links for the studies associated with this in the challenge emails and in the tracker. They’re always in the tracker, which is a great tool. So you’re checking off these days.

Cheryl McColgan (04:37.151)
of habits that you’re trying and kind of creating little streaks. And that’s also a great way to keep your habits intact and going from day to day into the future. So if you’re not signed up yet, the link is heelnourishgrow.com slash habits. And for those of you that are doing the challenge right now, I will see you tomorrow.