In­tro­vert Friendly Saint Self Care Guide: Sum­mon­ing Seren­ity  

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tional Li­brary of Med­i­cine, “Seren­ity is viewed as a learned, pos­i­tive emo­tion of in­ner peace that can be sus­tained. It is a spir­i­tual con­cept that de­creases per­ceived stress and im­proves phys­i­cal and emo­tional health.” As I’ve got­ten older, I have come to re­al­ize that I will al­ways find some­thing to stress about. I’m a nat­u­rally anx­ious, over­think­ing per­son, and un­for­tu­nately, I have wasted a lot of time in my head. How­ever, I have been work­ing hard at be­ing con­scious with my men­tal en­ergy. It’s not re­al­is­tic to as­sume that I can let every­thing roll off my shoul­der, I’m a “feeler”. In­stead of mop­ing in the anx­ious wor­ry­ing, I’m prac­tic­ing the com­part­men­tal­iza­tion of the feel­ing and sum­mon­ing seren­ity to help me cope. 

I’m the biggest fan of be­ing re­al­is­tic. As some­one with se­vere ADHD, it can be hard to rely on my­self for long-term, ex­ten­sive habits. For ex­am­ple, I can’t get my­self to sit down and tra­di­tion­ally med­i­tate. For now, I med­i­tate by tak­ing a dou­ble-in­hale, sin­gle-ex­hale deep breath, and lis­ten­ing to clas­si­cal/​in­stru­men­tal mu­sic while I do home­work, drive, sleep, etc. An­other way I like to bring my­self back to equi­lib­rium is my en­vi­ron­ment, specif­i­cally my room. If my room is a mess, it messes with my men­tal health even more. I have been work­ing on mak­ing my bed more be­cause it truly makes me happy to look at, as well as mak­ing sure the light­ing is aligned with my pref­er­ences. Small fac­tors like that re­ally af­fect my men­tal en­ergy, and I’m do­ing my best to pre­serve it!  

How do other peo­ple sum­mon seren­ity into their life? Aisha Alvi has her own fa­vorite ways to de­stress. “When­ever I have a stress­ful day ahead of me, or home­work, I usu­ally spend time do­ing self-care like play­ing video games. When I’m play­ing, I feel my stress de­com­press­ing and I’m able to put every­thing to the side in the mo­ment. I also love to do face masks, I’m al­ways try­ing dif­fer­ent ones that tar­get what I’m try­ing to im­prove, and I love do­ing my nails. If I’m on break where I have an ex­tended amount of free time, I love to paint and cook”.  When in­ter­view­ing Aisha, I loved the ad­vice she gave, as well as her out­look mind­set on stress. “I’ve al­ways been a “every­thing hap­pens at the right time, at the right place, for the right rea­son­ings” kind of per­son ever since high school. Some ad­vice that I would give to some­one who has a hard time bal­anc­ing time and stress is to in­ten­tion­ally take time to take breaks. When I have 20 as­sign­ments, I know that if I keep stress­ing, I won’t get it done. Most of the time, I as­sess if the stress is worth ru­in­ing my hap­pi­ness and I take care of my­self be­fore I dive into stress.” 

I love forms of me­dia that help my men­tal health at the same time. Aisha rec­om­mends Raven El­yse for in­spi­ra­tion. “I look up to her as in­spi­ra­tion be­cause she dri­ves my cre­ativ­ity and mo­ti­vates me to work on things even in my free time that ben­e­fits my hap­pi­ness and makes my time more wor­thy”. It’s so in­ter­est­ing that when I am want­ing seren­ity, I lis­ten to in­stru­men­tal mu­sic only be­cause it does­n’t dis­tract me. Aisha uses mu­sic to find peace as well! A few of my fa­vorite artists that re­ally help ease any anx­i­ety or stress are Drake and Frank Ocean. Shuf­fle and de­stress with her Night Vibes Playlist! 

If you take any­thing away from this, it’s that I hope you in­vest in your­self. Make the small lit­tle changes that make you happy. Find a new artist or playlist that helps you get through the week. Take a deep breath (or five) and re­set your­self. Pre­serve your men­tal en­ergy. Re­design your space to help you sim­ply ex­ist bet­ter. Take the stress and sum­mon seren­ity.