When it comes to beige flags, ask anyone who knows me and they’ll probably say my toxic character trait is the fact that I’m ‘always on’.

Whether it’s work, social plans or unavoidable heavy life stuff, I possess a chronic inability to allow myself to just ‘be’ – but, now in my mid-20s, I’m realising that rest is actually productive. 

The first technique I turned to in my week of wellness is something called a ‘grounding technique’.

Widely used in mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), grounding methods are activities you can do to help isolate your senses – all with the aim of recalibrating your mind to focus on the present. 

I decided to adapt the popular 5-4-3-2-1 technique, which involves choosing to focus on five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste. 

I forced myself to hop (read: crawl) out of bed for a pre-work walk every morning, taking note of everything I could see ahead of me. 

Day one felt like a waste of time – I couldn’t calm my racing mind, and any attempt to focus on the present was fruitless. 

But by the end of the week, I learned to trust myself on these solo walks, allowing thoughts to flow in and out while taking time to develop a greater appreciation of my surroundings. 

I spotted things I’d never noticed before (such as a post box moments from my flat I’d clearly bypassed for months) and started work each day feeling a whole lot less like a WFH robot and more like a human being. What a win. 

A healthy menstrual cycle is a pretty critical marker of your wellbeing, with everything from diet, sleep and stress levels impacting periods.

I was slightly sceptical whether menstrual tracking would aid me on my wellness journey or if it would just feel like yet another item to add to life’s ever-growing to-do list – but in my quest to be open-minded, I thought I’d give it a go.

I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 as a standard fitness tracker to measure my step count and workout routines – but there are a bunch of wellness features included in the gadget, one being advanced cycle tracking* for your periods.

To set this up, all I needed were the dates of my last period. I popped them in the Samsung Health app and was presented with an incredibly satisfying breakdown of all things menstruation, including predictions of when my next period would be, when my next fertile window might hit and an estimated ovulation date**.

If you wear the watch when you go to bed, the Watch5’s temperature sensor measures something called your ‘basal body temperature’ (a temp that varies at different stages of your cycle), so you can get further advanced insights into your period. 

While, of course, all of this is a guide rather than a prescribed reality, I did find it useful to plan my workouts around my period – because, let’s face it, none of us fancy pounding the treadmill with cramps.

There’s also a handy daily log in the Samsung Health app where you can track your symptoms and the powerful algorithm even offers clever tips to help you manage them, which I found super-useful. 

If this is wellness, I can totally get on board.

I might be just be starting out on my wellness journey, but if there’s one thing I know it’s that having clear goals helps keep my wellbeing in check.

However, if I have a lot on, my usual laser focus can turn to paralysing anxiety when I’m tackling my to-do list. 

A new approach was clearly needed. So, instead of facing an overwhelming list of tasks each day, I decided to spend the week planning my days with a simple visualisation technique. 

Each day, I made sure to carve out a few minutes in which to free-write in a journal where I see myself a week from now, a month on and six months into the future. This has helped me identify the clear steps I need to take to achieve my personal aims – while keeping my wellbeing intact. 

There’s a lot about the wellness industry I don’t think I’ll ever understand (you won’t catch me in an ice bath, cheers, Wim), but one area that does pique my interest is sleep – because I really notice the difference when I don’t get my eight hours. 

A hangover from Covid lockdowns, I’ve developed the inability to regularly fall sound asleep before midnight – so I currently exist in a perma-state of tiredness most days (which is as delightful as it sounds).

I decided to give the in-built sleep tracking a go on my Samsung Galaxy Watch5 in order to see if I could start getting my sleep routine back on track.

For the first seven nights, you don’t need to do anything apart from wearing the Galaxy Watch5 to bed. The device then gets to work tracking everything from how long you’ve slept to how much vital REM (dream-stage) sleep you’ve been getting***.

Data is collected to build a full picture of your sleeping habits, and you’ll be assigned an ‘animal’ on the Samsung Health app to decode what kind of sleeper you currently are****. 

For full disclosure, I’m apparently a ‘sensitive hedgehog’ – which is a nicer way of stating I am ‘restless’ and ‘stress-sensitive’ when it comes to my slumber. 

Intense psychoanalysis aside, the Galaxy Watch5 quite honestly promises to transform your relationship with your sleep. 

After a week of sleep tracking, you receive a personalised four-week coaching schedule with a special programme of ‘missions’ (step-by-step easy tasks) all with the aim of getting you a better night’s sleep. Dreamy.

When life gets in the way (which is more often than not, let’s be honest), I find it way too easy to forgo exercise completely. 

We’re led to believe that workouts are only effective if we’re pushing ourselves to the max – but that attitude can be entirely detrimental to our wellbeing.

With wellness in mind, I spent the week trying to view exercise holistically, realising that even a little goes a long way. 

With a greater understanding of my sleep patterns (hello, sensitive hedgehog) I slotted some yoga sessions into my evenings and calmed my mind while also making time for exercise a few hours before bed. 

After a week of putting my overall wellbeing first, there was a noticeable uptick in my energy levels and mood, and I’m excited to see the benefits long-term. Call me a wellness convert already.