3 Simple (and Free!) Ways to Refresh Your Mind, Body, and Spirit this Summer

Posted May 24, 2017 by Terri Sjodin in Scrappy

Ahhh… summer is just around the corner. Long, sunny days, warm nights, and hopefully a little time to refresh your mind, body, and spirit. Here are three simple suggestions that will help you enjoy your summer break (whether you’re on a vacation or stay-cation) and help you to stimulate some scrappy ideas or get you recharged and ready to take on new challenges:

Visit your local library and explore the incredible choices available to you – all for free! Books, movies, CDs, audio books, magazines, newspapers… you name it. Fiction, nonfiction, short story, poetry, etc. Let your mind wander and utilize this incredible resource. Take a few options on vacation with you. Don’t like something? No big deal, it was free! Just return it and find something else. Need a suggestion? When in doubt, ask a librarian – they can be an amazing resource to help you quickly find exactly what you’re looking for, or maybe something you never knew you always wanted. (My millennial assistant, Katelyn, says you can even use #AskALibrarian on Twitter to swap tweets on good books and readalikes with librarians.)
Get outdoors and go for a long walk outside – on the beach, along the river, through the woods, at a park – wherever—just get outside. It doesn’t have to be a power walk, just a nice healthy way to get your body moving, to change your perspective, enjoy the fresh air, and connect with nature. An article on HuffingtonPost.com says, “Getting your daily steps in could lead to better cardiovascular health, reduced stress, improved mood and self-esteem, healthy weight, strengthened bones, and boosts in creative thinking.”
Listen to audio books and books on CD. I loooove audio books! Especially when they’re read by the author. It gives you a chance to really hear the words as they had intended in their own voice, which allows the material to land in your mind in a different way. It’s like having a private conversation with the author that can really touch your heart and enliven your spirit. Here’s my confession… I actually listen to audio CDs on my old-school Sony CD Walkman. It’s true – check out the picture below that Katelyn made me take as evidence. She asked me why I don’t just download audio books onto my smart phone – sometimes I do, but I prefer to literally check out audio CDs from the library so I can figuratively check out from the world and leave my cell phone behind. My friend Sally Hogshead says I’m “geek chic” lol!

And then of course you can blend all three: A walk on the beach while listening to an audio book that you just checked out from a local library! That’s my idea of a great way to start or end a beautiful day and help refresh my mind, body, and spirit all at the same time.

In case you were curious: Yes! Both Scrappy and Small Message, Big Impact are available in audio book formats – as a download and on CD.

Enjoy!