Workdays can be taxing, and hours sat at your desk can fly by before you realize. While you are expected to give you work life adequate attention, maintaining a good work/life balance is important for your mental well-being, and often easily forgotten.
Taking time out to recenter and do something for yourself is vital for your mental health, stress levels, and more; an act of service for yourself. However, when the only person you can hold accountable is yourself, it can be hard to stay in check.
To come up with a solution to keep herself in check and ensuring she was making time for herself, 28-year-old Trina Merz, a holistic healing practitioner from Hawaii, and her friend Marouane decided to take matters into their own hands and begin holding each other accountable.
To spread the word of her wellness tip, Merz shared a video to TikTok by @breatheintransformation, where it amassed more than 2.5 million views.
In the video, Merz said: "My friend and I came up with this thing we call 'saving the day'. If we spent the whole day working, we do one thing that reclaims the day as our own."
Giving examples as to what she counts as a 'save the day' activity, she said, "we would reach out to each other and say like, 'Hey, how did you save the day?' I made it out for a surf, or I called my mom and went for a walk, or I made a really delicious meal.
"There's honestly so many ways you can save the day, and it doesn't have to be a huge time commitment. It could even be just making a cup of tea and cozying up with one of your favorite books; anything that makes the day feel like you had some space in it again."
Merz told Newsweek how the daily task came to be. She said that, "We'd both been doing this for a long time, but calling it 'saving the day' came when my good friend Marouane and I were saving the day together. I was still transitioning out of corporate life and into facilitating breathwork full-time and he was navigating his software engineering career.
"When I was working as a designer, my days needed saving often. I love to walk, and I was living in NYC at the time, so lots of walks by the Hudson [River] were saves. Yogamaya saved a ton of my days, too. On days I didn't have much time, having a cup of tea and sitting in my reading nook was my save."
Merz's daily habit has inspired many to be more conscious about taking time for themselves, as she said that "It's been so inspiring seeing all the comments flood in; I've even had managers say they're implementing this as a check-in in morning meetings."
For those wondering how this approach and outlook can help their mental health, Merz said: "Making an intention to find the good, and find the joy in your life is like strengthening a muscle. You start with a 5-pound weight and then you're ready for a 10-pound and you just keep getting stronger. Our minds work like that, too.
"Our brains have a negativity bias that leaves us remembering things we didn't enjoy with 10 times the impression. We have to make a conscious effort to correct that, and the more we do, the stronger the muscle of seeing the good in our lives gets."
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Lollie is Newsweek's Beauty and Self Care Reporter based in London, U.K. In her role, she covers a range of ... Read more
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