If you already have a meditation practice, implement it briefly at intervals throughout the day. If meditation is new to you, simply sit quietly with your feet flat on the floor and your arms uncrossed. Focus on your breathing. When thoughts arise, as they inevitably will, just let them go and return your focus to your breathing. It takes only a few minutes of meditation to feel calm and refreshed.
Raise your hands high above your head and then bend over as if to touch your toes. Do a couple of side-bends to each side. Rotate your waist. If you need privacy to do this, head to the handicapped stall in the rest-room. This is a great way to regroup!
As the New Year quickly approaches, we all prepare to make life changes in the new year in order to better ourselves. In the next several posts we will talk about ways you add some re-creation to your life on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. Positive life balance provides stress management as few other things can.
Jennifer loves her job. But when work demands threatened to wreck her marriage and her health she came to me for coaching.
Ambitious and hard working, she prided herself on arriving at work early, leaving late and working through lunch. Her husband had enough when a get-away weekend had to be cancelled for the second time due to a last minute crisis at work. The stress of her job was taking a toll on her health, too. Jennifer’s doctor suggested she go on blood pressure medication, which she wanted to avoid if possible.
People like Jennifer are high achievers. They get things done. When busy becomes busier, however, life balance can suffer. As pressure builds up to accomplish ever more it becomes harder and harder to find time for self-care. Something has to give or burnout will result.
Does this sound familiar to you? If so, to avoid physical or relationship problems add some re-creation to your life on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. Positive life balance provides stress management as few other things can.
To create appropriate life balance you need to give yourself small breaks a few times a day, create larger re-creation times each week, and make sure to take a vacation at least once a year to thoroughly recharge your life.
Here’s the paradox: the more you need to create healthy life balance, the harder it is to do. This means you have to make self-care a top priority.
Block out time in your schedule to make sure you give yourself re-creation breaks, as you would with any top priority activity. Vigorously defend against threats to your self-care when they come up, as they inevitably will. When you commit to regular self-care, you’ll feel better, your relationships will improve and you’ll work more productively.
Check back in as we will be going through different ways you can commit to self-care!
Ambitious and hard working, she prided herself on arriving at work early, leaving late and working through lunch. Her husband had enough when a get-away weekend had to be cancelled for the second time due to a last minute crisis at work. The stress of her job was taking a toll on her health, too. Jennifer’s doctor suggested she go on blood pressure medication, which she wanted to avoid if possible.
People like Jennifer are high achievers. They get things done. When busy becomes busier, however, life balance can suffer. As pressure builds up to accomplish ever more it becomes harder and harder to find time for self-care. Something has to give or burnout will result.
Does this sound familiar to you? If so, to avoid physical or relationship problems add some re-creation to your life on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. Positive life balance provides stress management as few other things can.
To create appropriate life balance you need to give yourself small breaks a few times a day, create larger re-creation times each week, and make sure to take a vacation at least once a year to thoroughly recharge your life.
Here’s the paradox: the more you need to create healthy life balance, the harder it is to do. This means you have to make self-care a top priority.
Block out time in your schedule to make sure you give yourself re-creation breaks, as you would with any top priority activity. Vigorously defend against threats to your self-care when they come up, as they inevitably will. When you commit to regular self-care, you’ll feel better, your relationships will improve and you’ll work more productively.
Understanding the process of change will help you achieve your goals and make your good life better! If you would like to learn more about the six stages of change, I heartily recommend Prochaska’s book, Changing for Good.
If you’re like most people, you live with a tottering tower of ‘to do’. If you are on top of what needs to be done, chances are, you keep a ‘To Do’ List.
To Do Lists are terrific for managing your ‘to do’s’. You don’t need to worry about forgetting what it is you need to do. You don’t need to keep track in your head of the multitude of items once they are written down. When you’ve accomplished a task you can check it off your list, providing a momentary sense of triumph.
Here’s the problem with To Do lists: they are like the hydra, the many headed monster of Greek mythology. When any one of the hydra’s heads was cut off, two grew in its place.
If your ‘To Do’ list is kept electronically, the completed items disappear as soon as you delete them to be replaced immediately with the next tasks which arise, or those you’ve been postponing. If you maintain your To Do List with paper and pencil, you cross off the completed items and add new ones. When the list becomes too much of a mess, or you turn the page to begin a new week, you copy over the not yet completed tasks and start all over again.
Either way, no matter how many items you accomplish, there’s a never-ending phalanx of new items ready to immediately take their place. The focus always remains on all of the things you have yet to do, while your accomplishments disappear out of your consciousness and into the ether (or your waste basket).
This can become daunting and, ultimately, discouraging. You may feel like a hamster scurrying furiously on its wheel, never making headway against the constant torrent of To Do. The sense of never being able to accomplish enough undermines your confidence and self-esteem.
To get legitimate satisfaction from all that you’ve accomplished, and build your confidence and self-esteem, create a companion for your ‘To Do’ List: an ‘I’ve Done It!’ List.
It’s easy to lose track of or minimize your real accomplishments. Keeping a record of what you have achieved provides you with concrete evidence you can use to provide encouragement and build your confidence.
When you complete a task, rather than simply deleting it from your electronic To Do List or crossing it off your paper and pencil one, transfer it to your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List. Make a habit of referring regularly to your list of accomplishments to remind you of the progress you are making on important projects in your life and boost your self-esteem. Any time you feel overwhelmed or discouraged, get out your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List, and enhance your confidence by reminding yourself of how far you really have come.
By focusing on your accomplishments, you will build confidence that energizes and empowers you to tackle your ‘To Do’ List with renewed vigor. The increased self-esteem you experience will lead to further success, helping you to make your good life better.
Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon. Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine. Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.
Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s real hard.
Are you procrastinating, overwhelmed by the size of an important task you need to complete? When faced with a big job, think small.
It’s easy to become paralyzed when the job you need to do seems too big to handle. In those situations it’s helpful to remember the salami image. There’s no way in the world you can stuff an entire salami in your mouth, but you can polish it off easily one slice at a time. The thinner the slices, the easier it is to do.
It’s crucial to break any big job into doable steps. When faced with a daunting task, first identify the steps necessary to reach your goal. The smaller the steps, the easier they are to accomplish. Once you get moving by taking baby steps, you develop momentum. That momentum will help you move forward, enjoying the task as you go.
The operative word here is “doable.” Most people stymie themselves with unrealistic demands. Unwilling to be satisfied with small steps, they end up doing nothing. It is important to delight in any progress you make while working toward a goal, no matter how small that progress may seem.
A client came to me recently seeking help to finish his doctoral dissertation. He needed a Ph.D. in order to get the job he wanted and he couldn’t get his Ph.D. until his dissertation was complete. He had been working on the dissertation for over a year. By the time he came to see me he had done no work on it at all for several months and was completely stuck.
My client and I identified fifteen small steps that would enable him move forward. We determined that he could reasonably expect to complete the first two of those steps by our next session.
“I couldn’t be happy with that,” he protested. “I’d feel like I hadn’t done enough if THAT were all I accomplished! I’d need to get at least eight of those steps done to feel satisfied.” Of course, even five of the steps we had identified would have been too much to realistically accomplish in one week. Overwhelmed with so much, my client would have fallen back into his old pattern of doing nothing.
How often are you like my client? Unable to live up to unrealistic expectations, do you end up doing nothing at all?
If there is an important project that you are stuck on, ask yourself, “Am I insisting on too much from myself?” If your expectations are unrealistic, you may thwart your own progress.
Examine whatever daunting task you are facing. Break it down into the smallest possible steps. Set realistic goals related to accomplishing those steps. By giving yourself permission to take baby steps, you will begin moving in the right direction. The progress you make will encourage you to keep going. In this way you will eventually achieve your goal.
In fact, my client felt great after completing the two small steps he set out to do that first week. Getting at least something done was a definite improvement over the inactivity of the preceding months. The following week he accomplished the next small segment. Before long he was rolling ahead toward completing his dissertation.
When you allow yourself to be satisfied with baby steps, you, too, will achieve your goals and make your good life better.