October has arrived, and with it comes a full calendar of observance days—each one a chance to push back against the noise of hustle, diet culture, and burnout. This isn’t just another fall with crisp air and performative gratitude. This is your unofficial season of softness.
For high-achievers living in overdrive—managing families, careers, expectations, and maybe a side dish of internalized shame—October offers a quiet rebellion. Each calendar event below isn’t just a cute theme day. It’s a prompt for realignment. For slowness. For living in your body instead of managing it. For redefining success as “felt peace” instead of “constant output.”
Instead of doubling down on overwork and self-criticism, you can use the month as practice for slowing down, feeding yourself well, and making peace with your body and mind. Each observance day this month is a reminder that self-compassion is not indulgence. It’s maintenance.
National Black Dog Day
October 1 is National Black Dog Day encourages the adoption of shelter dogs who are often overlooked. It also makes a fitting metaphor: what parts of you do you ignore because they feel too heavy, too dark, or too unlovable? This day is your invitation to bring compassion to those hidden parts—your anxiety, your body, your exhaustion. Every dog—and every part of you—deserves care.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a BIG ♥️🖤 thing for black dogs. I cannot remember when I first heard that black dogs were adopted the least often, but ever since then, all of my dogs have been black and adopted, even in the rest of our family. I wish I could take them all home, but, alas, that is not a reasonable boundary.
They remind me daily that quirks, neediness, and complexity are not problems to fix—they’re parts of being alive. What would happen if you treated yourself like you treat your dog? What kind of place the world would be if we all did that?
Practical steps:
- Notice what parts of you get pushed aside. Anxiety, exhaustion, body shame.
- Treat yourself like you treat your dog. Feed, walk, rest, repeat. No criticism required.
- Read about Poodle Science, a simple framework that shows why comparing bodies makes no sense. You don’t blame a Great Dane for being big and drooly, or your Jack Russell Terrier for being yappy and hyper? So why do you get angry at yourself for looking like exactly what you are? Stop blaming yourself for being what you are.
- I asked AI, and this is what I would look like if I were a doggo (just random fun):
- Related reading: Silencing Your Inner Body Critic: The Self-Compassion Revolution.
Tacos & Teachers
National Taco Day is October 4. It sounds light, but it’s actually a brilliant anti-diet, pro-pleasure ritual. Tacos are customizable, comforting, and unapologetically satisfying. Make this day your declaration of food freedom. Build your ideal taco. Eat it slowly. Enjoy.
Things to Try:
- DIY Taco Night: Get creative. Let it be messy.
- Mindful Eating Challenge: Eat without multitasking or guilt.
- Invite people who don’t make you shrink. Share a table. Share yourself.
- Related reading: Finding Balance: Intuitive vs Productivity-Driven Health
October 5 is World Teachers’ Day is a prompt to honor teachers—but also to examine what you’ve been teaching others about how to treat you. We all remember teachers who shaped us. But what have you been teaching the people around you about how to treat you? If you’ve been modeling silence, over-functioning, and “I’m fine,” that’s a lesson too. What if you started modeling rest, boundaries, and truth instead?
Ways to reset the lesson plan:
- Write a note to a teacher who mattered to you or who shaped you into the amazing person you are today.
- Ask yourself: what am I unconsciously teaching through my exhaustion or boundary-crossing?
- Start showing rest, honesty, and “no” as valid lessons.
- Offer yourself the grace and credit you’ve long given others.
- Related reading: Reclaim Your Time: The Importance of Saying No.
Slow Down & Challenge Your Awareness
October 10 is World Mental Health Day is about global mental health—but make it personal. According to the World Health Organization, one in eight people worldwide lives with a mental disorder. That number spikes during times of stress and transition. Global awareness matters, but so does personal check-in.
Ask yourself:
- Where am I numbing?
- Where am I performing?
- What needs to be felt?
Take time to:
- Journal something unfiltered
- Book therapy or keep your existing session.
- Walk without earbuds.
- Say “no” without explanation or apology.
- Related reading: May Your Mental Health Thrive
World Sloth Day (October 20) is a day dedicated to celebrating the world’s slowest-moving mammal. Sloths move at their own pace. They’re not lazy; they’re efficient for their biology. Slowing down isn’t failure. It’s survival. Hustle culture wants you to treat exhaustion as normal. Don’t.
It’s tempting to see slowness as laziness. But sloths do not rush, and still everything they are is enough. Let this day be an act of protest against hustle culture.
Self-Compassion Moves:
- Do less than you think you need to. Stay in your pajamas past “morning.” Let the to-do list wait.
- Breathe. Pause for five minutes—no planning, no phone, no judgment. Feel the internal resistance; let it soften.
- Reflect: what part of me needs slowness right now? What narrative do I hold that says if I slow I will fail?
- Related reading: Midyear Gut Check: Are You Burnt Out or Bitter?.
More Dogs + Color
October 22 is both Make a Dog’s Day + National Color Day: Joy, sensory pleasure, softness. That’s the vibe. This one’s about joy. Play. Sensory pleasure. Dogs and color both shift mood and regulate stress. Research shows color affects psychological states, including anxiety and calm (Elliot & Maier, 2014). Pets are also linked to reduced depression and loneliness.
For you and your pet:
- Visit a shelter or spend extra time with your pet.
- Paint something—literally or figuratively.
- Wear something bold. Let color impact your mood on purpose. Dress your dog up, too (if they like that sort of thing).
- Take the Color Joy Quiz to find your Color Personality.
Brain Food
October 25 is World Pasta Day is here to remind you: you don’t need a reason to enjoy what you eat. Pasta is fuel, comfort, culture—and none of it requires punishment. Pasta is another food culture loves to demonize. But carbohydrates are the body’s primary energy source – especially your brain. The National Institutes of Health has found they are vital for brain function and mood regulation.
Pasta Ideas
- Cook the messiest pasta you love.
- Eat without distraction.
- Let “enough” be felt, not measured.
- Eat like someone who deserves joy.
- Feed yourself without apologies.
- Let the mess be part of the ritual.
National Pumpkin Day, Chocolate Day & Halloween
October 26 is National Pumpkin Day can be fun and silly—or it can be sacred. Let it be the day you carve away the people-pleasing, the dieting, the constant reshaping. There is a ritual in a novel I read – I am not sure where it comes from, but it has stuck with me (FYI it is from Kristen Ashley’s Girl In the Mist ( p 159) and that book has some good mystery/spooky/PNW vibes and I am in for all of that). The main character, Daphne, would carve pumpkins with her daughters (now grown) every year like this:
- Carve off the top, like normal
- Scoop out the seeds and think (to yourself) of all the things you want in your life in the coming year (the good things, things you want to keep or want to find)
- When you start carving, think about the things from this year that you want to cut out of your life or want to change about yourself
- Clean up the seeds, bake and salt them
- While the seeds are roasting
- Gather up all the bad things and dig a hole in the yard
- Bury them in the ground (they planted a memorial tree in the book) to turn those things positive
- You could say a few words if you wanted to
- Nourish the earth and change the negative things to something else
- Consume all the good things (the baked seeds) to nourish yourself
(other) Pumpkin-Themed Self-Care:
- Carve Mindfully: Focus on the sensations and shapes as you carve.
- Bake Something Pumpkin: Hello, pumpkin muffins.
- Carve a pumpkin with a weird face. Let it be imperfect.
- Decorate for Fun: Paint, glitter, or even dress up your pumpkin.
- Ask yourself: What part of me am I done editing?
October 28 is National Chocolate Day is a simple dare: can you let pleasure in without negotiating for it? Chocolate is pleasure. The end. No workout to earn it. No diet rule to justify it. Research even shows dark chocolate has stress-reducing benefits through polyphenols and flavonoids. But you don’t need science to grant yourself permission.
Eat the chocolate. Slowly. No redemption workout. No “earning it.” Just… receive.
Halloween is the one day you can dress like whoever you want. But what if this year, you stripped off the costume you’ve been wearing all year—the one that says you’re fine, you’re capable, you’re always in control? Retire it.
Self-Compassion Moves:
- Create Your Dream Costume: Who would you be if there were no rules?
- Host a Fun Night: Scary movies, pumpkin treats, and zero expectations.
- Reflect on Authenticity: What “masks” are you ready to let go of?
- Dress in a way that feels like a reveal, not a disguise.
- Related reading: Fine Is a Lie.
This month isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about witnessing yourself. Try one act of self-compassion this week. Let it be weird, imperfect, honest. Let it be yours. Healing doesn’t happen overnight—but alignment does start with one choice.
And remember: you don’t need to be more. You just need to be you.
Throughout October: Ongoing Practices
- Label your inner critic: That’s diet culture. That’s productivity panic. That’s not truth.
- Daily compassion check-in: You don’t have to earn rest. You are already enough.
- Reject comparison: Instagram isn’t a mirror. Your life isn’t a brand.
Resources / Links
- Body Perceptions and Psychological Well-Being: A Review
- Feel Good, Eat Better: The Role of Self-Compassion and Intuitive Eating
- Self-Compassion Interventions & Body Image
- Project HEAL
- Women’sHealth.gov – Body Image
Quotes + Affirmations
- “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Buddha
- “Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Teddy Roosevelt
- “Self-compassion turns out to be something much more formidable than mere kindness.” — Kristin Neff
- “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” — Brené Brown
- “Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow rather than emptiness.” — Eleanor Brown
Affirmations:
- I release the idea that my worth depends on my output.
- My body is not a project to be fixed; it is my home to be honored.
- I permit myself rest without shame.
- My emotions are valid, even if they don’t serve productivity.
- Compassion toward myself is the foundation of my strength.
October is the perfect month to balance advocacy and awareness with fun, creativity, and tacos. Remember: self-care doesn’t have to be spooky or complicated—it can be as simple as savoring a moment of stillness or carving a silly pumpkin face. Happy October! 🎃