Self Care Bingo

The huge snow piles around me are beginning to melt. Surviving the cold is becoming less of an issue. I'm starting to believe there may be life after winter.

I'm remembering where I was – in many aspects of my life – in November and wanting to return to that optimistic energy.

Kerri Morrone Sparling, who writes about living with diabetes in her blog Six Until Nine, created an idea I found inspiring: "diabetes goal bingo."I don't understand enough about diabetes to know what her numbers mean, but I liked the idea of being playful and specific with health-related goals.

For my life, I needed to focus not on producing a result, but I'm taking an action. I did some reading about self-care basicsand found some lists. They range from Michael Courtney's four:

1. diet
2. sleep
3. exercise
4. breathing

to James S, Gordon's ten:

1. relax
2. move
3. be aware
4. accept
5. have patience
6. timeout
7. fear not
8. ask for help
9. trust your inner guide
10. celebrate everything

I thought about it in my more-Monkish-than-most way (if there are three columns, then I can split it into physical-mental-spiritual and have three goals in each of those areas…) and came up with this generic bingo card:

I personalized that table so it looked like this and became a "bingo card for the week: "

I will let you know next week what I decided to do about prizes. Meanwhile, if you would like to play along, here is the generic version in Microsoft Word format.