How Northstar Employee Assistance Program can help reset new Healthy Habits in a New Year

New Year, New Habits and Starting Simple.

Cleanse, diet, self-care, living clean and green. These are all terms we hear and they creep in as we hit reset at the start of a new year.

As much as we encourage resolutions and new plans for better health, we are always cautious about creating realistic objectives. 

In fact, we at Northstar, took a break from our routine and skipped our January 2023 blog post. We are back with regularly scheduled programming here in February. It's early enough in the new year to hit reset and try to better ourselves in little or big ways if you're up for it!

The type of detox or 'diet' we want to encourage is less to do with eating and drinking and more so with lifestyle.

Even a little bit, one day, one weekend, one week, can truly improve your mental health and outlook.

Here is a quick list of a few tasks to try, and, no pressure, do what you can, when you can. We do however promise that even small steps can truly improve your mental health and outlook.

1. Turn off the news. Limit to one show an evening. Limit to radio only in the morning. Limit to checking once during the day OR only local outlets versus national. Try waiting until weekends only or at the start of the week. Reducing your intake of information that can cause cortisol spikes, will help.

2. Take a break from social media. We know, we know, this is advised all the time. Again, start simple. Remove one app from your phone. Remove one app for one week. Set your phone in a spot so that you don't check it directly before bed and especially not during the night. Try it for one night!

Check with our friend at THERAPY MILK -Gaby, gives a great tip about following people or being followed and choosing to mute. Check it out on her insta-stories.

3. Speaking of sleep. Get enough sleep. The most important chunk of sleep 'they say' is prior to midnight. Sleep is when your brain recharges, your body heals, and you get ready for the next day. The two listed above if limited, can help you with the third.
4. Start simple. Simple and small changes can help us foundationally improve. Sleeping, eating better and exercising is on every list though! So that's it for number four. Start small and simple. Little bit by little bit.
5. Be present. At work, think about work. At home think about home. Use mindfulness and intention.

Conversely, as much as above we encourage reducing certain activities, below is a short list of activities we do encourage!

How often do you feel thankful for the good things in your life?

Studies suggest that making a habit of noticing what's going well in your life could have health benefits.

Create positive emotions by being thankful every day:

• Take a moment. Think about the positive things that happened during the day.
• Journal. Make a habit of writing down things you're grateful for. Try listing several things.
• Savor your experiences. Try to notice positive moments as they are happening.
• Relive the good times. Relive positive moments later by thinking about them or sharing them with others.
• Write to someone. Write a letter to someone you feel thankful toward. You don't have to send it.
• Make a visit. Tell someone you're grateful for them in person.

We will pause here since we really want all these lists to be short, manageable and achievable.

We will now insert and use this opportunity to remind everyone on what EAP is and what EAP isn't. We encourage you to visit our FAQ portion of our website

Gentle reminders regarding what Employee Assistance Programs are used for and what they are not used for:

• EAP is short-term, solution based mental health assistance.
• EAP is not crises care.
• EAP is to help the employees, their spouse or designated partner and dependents when they encounter bumps and challenges. Examples are: Struggling with Grief, Relationship struggles, Parenting Challenges, Substance Abuse, Stress at Work, and much more.
• EAP is a resource for you to access, use, and expand your network for care.
• In addition to EAP Counselors, Northstar offers texting with Tess, and access to the Northstar Resource Portal for employees and their family members.