meet gaby ulloa
How do you make your health a priority?
I’ve been meditating for the last three years. Meditating has so many different connotations. It doesn’t mean one thing. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and close my eyes and take 3 deep breaths before my feet touch the ground and sometimes I’ll be on Headspace listening to a guided meditation. It calms me and I feel this release. Meditating has a way of helping you pinpoint where your anxiety is because everything else becomes still around you. So you’re able to feel in your body what is going on.
“I also try and move my body as much as I can. I go through waves of exercise.”
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve given myself more grace and ease with that. But In terms of my mental health, right now, I’m learning that my needs and priorities are going to shift often. Especially at this age when I don’t have a lot of stability. So I check in with myself, being honest with how I’m feeling, and then adjusting accordingly.
How does your journaling practice impact your mental health?
The journal that I’m writing in is my 5-minute journal. I tend to do this type of journaling on the days where I don’t necessarily feel like thinking. It’s something that helps my mental health because it’s those moments that I’m feeling lazy, but I know that I need to take a moment for myself.
Journaling is a practice, that thinking back, I’ve done my whole life. As a writer, I’ve always been a very dramatic person and writing has been my outlet. I try and be as judgment-free as possible, which is really hard for me. I’m someone who has this weird fear that someone is going to steal my journal and read everything in it. So for the longest time, I wouldn’t put people’s names in my journal. That said, journaling has always been a practice that I’ve used intentionally and unintentionally to quiet my mind and help me hear my internal voice.
What are some objects or talismans that you carry with you or embrace daily?
My mom and my mom’s best friend are very into crystals, so I’ve always loved them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned more about them and purchased some of my own. Regardless of what people believe the abilities that they have, it’s a token that grounds me. Even if it’s a complete placebo effect, they make me feel safe and calm.
Also, affirmations are something that I have been using in my mental health practice for a long time. I went back to Miami to my mom and stepdad’s house during COVID in March. I was living in New York before, left my full-time job, and went freelance, so I was having a lot of doubt around my career and found myself writing these affirmations in my notebook. My boyfriend is very into vision boards and he has a corkboard where he writes on post-its. I find that really powerful because our words hold so much power and I believe that we can truly speak things into existence if we believe it. So that’s where the idea of the post-its came out of.
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