Whitney Cummings' Self-Care Rituals

Summary: Whitney Cummings shares her comprehensive self-care routine, emphasizing the importance of planning, mindful mornings, and setting boundaries to protect one's serenity and time. Her practices highlight the power of proactive scheduling and intentional daily habits to minimize decision fatigue and maximize well-being.

• 🧠 Mindful Mornings: Begins her day with grounding activities like sunlight exposure, visualization, and hydration, even before checking her phone. Uses blue-light glasses preemptively to protect her brain from screen-induced stimulation. Emphasizes setting intentions and envisioning a smooth day.
• 💊 Proactive Preparation: Pre-portions medication and supplements on Sundays to avoid daily scrambling and maintain consistency.
• 🙅‍♀️ Boundary Setting: Blocks out “pink days” each month for dedicated downtime and reviews her calendar for the next two months every morning to avoid overcommitting. Uses “no” as a complete sentence and avoids changing plans once set. Makes no decisions when hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or in traffic. This practice prevents impulsive commitments that can disrupt her carefully curated schedule.
• 💖 Self-Care as Superpower: Reframes conditions like misophonia and anxiety not as weaknesses but as superpowers or heightened senses that can be beneficial. She embraces her anxiety as a tool that helps her navigate situations and make protective decisions.
• 🗓️ Time Budgeting: Emphasizes the importance of scheduling and sticking to it to avoid decision fatigue. This allows her to preserve her energy and mental clarity for more important tasks.
• ✨ Holistic Approach: Integrates multiple elements into her routine: physical (sunlight, hydration), mental (visualization, intention-setting), and practical (medication preparation, calendar review).
• 🧘‍♀️ Prioritizing Serenity: All of her practices are ultimately geared towards maintaining her serenity and preventing it from being hijacked by external demands. This underscores the importance of prioritizing one's own well-being above the pressure to please others.

Key Takeaway: Proactive planning and mindful rituals are crucial for maintaining serenity and maximizing personal well-being. Self-care is not selfish but a necessary investment in oneself.

> "I look at the rest of the month before I start my day every morning. So I don't overcommit to something because that's really where at this point my serenity gets lost [...] So it's really um honoring my Self-imposed limitations."