Stop Self-Destructive Behavior

For some reason, stress doesn’t motivate us take better care of ourselves. In fact, it tends to do the opposite.

Instead of eating enriching foods, exercising, and getting support from friends, we backslide from our healthier habits.

Men reported that when stressed, they either drink more alcohol or watch more television. Women reported that their top two stress behaviors are exercising less and eating more junk food. No one needs to be reminded that none of the above behaviors is likely to make you feel better! In fact, these behaviors are destined to make you feel worse. Remember, being in a care giving role can make one feel overwhelmed by life’s events. Often, when faced with the stress of taking care of a very ill or aging family member, a caregiver may neglect his or her own health. Binging on junk food, smoking, lounging around are all means that the stressed-out caregiver may use to relax. Of course, the short term relief from these tactics is horribly outweighed by their long-term consequences.

Indulgences
It’s natural to be tempted to indulge when stressed and in fact, some indulging habits are probably good for you. The last thing a caregiver needs to hear is eat only good food, eliminate caffeine, no alcohol, and exercise seven times a week! Write lists with your patient’s needs, you should also build a list of your own needs.

• You need good quality rest.
• You want well-prepared, healthy food.
• Your body deserves some exercise.
• You are entitled to having fun.

Then follow through on your own needs just as carefully and diligently as you do for the patient.

What can you do about destructive habits that you seem unable to change? Take smoking for example. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances, harmful to the smoker and others. But it may also be one of the few things offering you comfort. How can you balance your need for comfort with the need for better health?

The answer is by reducing quantity. Smoking two packs a day is worse than a few cigarettes a day. Eating a box of cookies is worse for you than a couple of cookies. So if stopping the behavior cold turkey isn’t an option for you, work on decreasing the frequency of the behavior.

Know Your Triggers
Identify what triggers your unhealthy behavior by keeping a diary for a period of time. Every time you feel the need to light up a cigarette/grab the box of cookies/search for the bottle of gin, write down what’s going on in your life at the moment. Most likely, you eventually will see a pattern of behavior.

Counteract Your Triggers
Once you have discovered your triggers, decide how to counter them. Make a list of your coping skills, which might include calling a friend, reading some email jokes, logging onto an online support group, taking a walk. Also make a list of rewards- watching a favorite taped TV show, playing solitaire, calling a good friend long-distance.

Approach the issue with two solutions. When you experience your trigger, try instead to use one of your coping skills. If you succeed in not drinking/eating/smoking, you get your reward.

We all need comfort in our lives, especially under stress. Try to maintain a healthy balance that works for you, as you try your best to maintain quality care for your loved one.

Old conditioning can sometimes take a while to re-educate, so we must be loving and patient with ourselves during this transition, but it is important to recognize destructive behavior for what it is, so that it doesn’t perpetuate itself unnecessarily.

Live Passionately,

- - - - - - - - - -

Christine is a certified life coach for women. She is the founder of Girltime Coaching and also writes her blog, Live Passionately.

Celebrate Your Greatness

When we recognize our desire to matter, to make a difference, when we are in touch with the yearning in our hearts to be a contribution to life, we want to be worthy of that charge. We become aware of our talents, the possibilities that we have to make a difference in the lives around us whether in small daily actions or in large strokes. We feel a part of the world around us and want to do our part to make it a better place. We start to develop our gifts and remove the blocks to being the best person we can be…

Personal Power

What does it mean to stand in your own power? Personal power is an inner awareness that makes us feel in control of our lives. It is an inner knowing that we can achieve our goals, a calm conviction about who we are and our ability to get the things we want in life. When you are empowered you feel alive, strong and have clarity. You have a vibrant energy! We trust ourselves to make choices that are in our best interest.

To stand in our power we must be bold and confident and have the courage to stand up for ourselves. Standing in our power demands that we be vulnerable, listen to our inner voice, and take risks outside our comfort of what we know. Personal power gives you the inspiration to fulfill your desires in direct alignment with your vision.

Confidence

People with a highly developed sense of personal power have the self-confidence to engage in life with integrity, open perspectives, and with full awareness about themselves. Your beliefs, attitude, mindset and so on conspire to create your reality.

In order to become our very best from the inside out, we need to identify obstacles and the biggest hurdles we have as women – come from the inside.

The Most Common Internal Obstacle: We let fear take over

Women become paralyzed in their lives and let themselves go because of an underlying fear. A fear of rejection, a fear to accept how they really feel about themselves, a fear of facing the idea that they aren’t enough, a fear of accepting how others may feel about them. They let the fear take over and let other people determine their own self worth.

Give yourself permission not to be superwomen… As a way of honoring yourself, I encourage you to practice some of these self care strategies that have been helpful for me and my clients:

1. Give yourself permission to add self care to your life. It’s OK for it to be all about you sometimes. Think of self care as any act of nurturing, meaning anything that enhances your level of health, wellness and happiness. Look at all areas such as physical, mental, social, spiritual and financial. Paying an overdue bill can do just as much for your level of wellness sometimes as a warm bath.

2. Recognize and blast the barriers. Ask yourself: what is preventing you from making self care an everyday occurrence? Some of my clients’ barriers that we often work through are feelings of guilt, lack of time, finances, lack of support or the need for perfectionism. If any of this ring true for you, take some time to determine a plan as to how you can overcome them. As Dr. Phil says…”You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge”.

3. Ditch the Superwoman Syndrome. This syndrome is adding unnecessary stress and sickness to our lives. We place such unrealistic expectations on ourselves. The guilt we feel often fuels this Superwoman Syndrome. Start letting go of your mental chatter; practice saying No and remember no one’s life is perfect.

4. Remember that small acts of kindness and compassion can have big pay offs.

5. Allow yourself to dream. If you are craving something new in your life, ask yourself what are some of the dreams you have been putting off.

6. Having a healthy perception of life and a positive attitude is one of the best self care strategies you can practice. A daily reflection of gratitude and appreciation goes a long way toward improving yourself care, your self worth, and your whole life.

Honor yourself from a place of kindness and gentleness. We do what we know to be the best at the time. Forgive yourself when needed and celebrate yourself whether you think you need it or not. We all deserve to be celebrated.

Live passionately… what else have you got to do!

- - - - - - - - - -

Christine is a certified life coach for women. She is the founder of Girltime Coaching and also writes her blog, Live Passionately.

Make Every Serving Count with V8

While the financial crisis in the US is causing people to lose or be laid off from their jobs, stay at home more frequently due to gas prices, cut back on splurging and shopping more frugally and also causing people to cut back a bit on the upcoming holiday expenses, some people have been feeling a slight cut back to their financial futures and others have been far less fortunate, slipping into poverty and the already poverty-stricken continuing to be worse off than before. For more than 35 million Americans, the possibility of being without food and not knowing where their next meal is coming from is an unfortunate and constant reality. It is for that reason that V8 has recently partnered with Feeding America to donate over 30 million servings of fresh vegetables to local food banks throughout the country over the next six months.

V8 is committed to making the possibility of a meal a reality to someone in desperate need; just because someone is not able to buy vegetables themselves does not mean that they deserve a well-balanced, nutritious meal any less than someone who can. Growing up, I was told that a full belly stimulates the mind, but many Americans are not fortunate enough to know what a full belly feels like.

You can help V8 with their goal to donate over 30 million servings of fresh vegetables to local food banks throughout the country a few ways. By making V8 a part of your daily routine, you are not only helping yourself get the recommend daily dosage of fruit and vegetables with a variety of V8 juices and soups to choose from, but your purchase goes to help V8 spread the fruit and vegetable love and give to the people who need them most. You can also make a donation, which go directly to go to Feeding America, which is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) charity. A donation of just $25 goes to goes to provide 850 servings of vegetables or 98 meals for a family of four or 19 weeks of food per person. You can purchase V8 juices and soups and then donate them and even volunteer at a local food bank.

Help V8 Make Every Serving Count for those who need it most.

The Sisterhood is Traveling to New Orleans

As part of a marketing campaign for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the cast is helping out Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans.

If you’re thinking, what on Earth does a movie about four friends and a magic pair of jeans have to do with Habitat for Humanity you will surely be surprised. Alexis Bledel stated in an interview, “They are recycling jeans and making these tubes for insulation that will help insulate the houses they are building down there.” See, get it? Magic jeans, using jeans for insulation. Yeah!

The sisterhood aren’t the only ones helping out with this amazing project; Cotton Inc., GUESS, and Warner Bros. Pictures are spreading the word about the Habitat project to people who are purchasing GUESS products and if you’re one of those people, you should also be aware of the fact that you also have the opportunity to help with the efforts in New Orleans simply by turning in old pairs of jeans you may have laying in back of your closet gathering dust. Not only that, but if you do turn in a pair (or multiple pairs) of your old jeans, you will receive a discount on your new purchases for every pair of jeans you turn in. Your old jeans will be reclaimed into cotton and turned into energy efficient insulation.

So get out there, buy some new pairs of fabulous jeans, bring in the old jeans you never wear anyway and get a discount on said fabulous jeans. It’s as simple as that!

Oh, and if your Gilmore Girls antennae goes up at the mention of Alexis Bledel and you’re like me and so many other Gilmore Girls fans, Alexis was also asked in the interview about a Gilmore Girls movie coming out to which she replied with she didn’t know and hadn’t heard anything. Come on Gilmore Girls cast, crew and writers, we want a real ending! Give us a movie and shut us up, please.

The Hopeful Haven Project

When you think of homeless shelters, most people’s first thoughts leap to movies and what they’ve seen showcased on their television screens–Bland, cold, run down. Sadly, what people have seen for so many years on movies and television shows aren’t far from the truth in the least.

Terry Grahl visited a homeless shelter for women dealing with drug addictions and domestic violence, Grace Centers of Hope in Pontiac, MI. The women who live at Grace Centers of Hope have already had some very traumatic and life-shattering experiences and this shelter provides these women with shelter for them and their children for up to one year. Because of the experiences these women have already had, shelters such as Grace Centers of Hope and so many others across the country are there to lend these women a hand, to assure these women that their lives are not over and to relieve these women of their pasts and teach them to look forward towards a hopeful and promising future. While the mission of these shelters is amazing, the interior most often resembles the emotional deterioration of the women themselves; which is exactly what Terry Grahl thought when she visited Grace Centers of Hope.

As soon as Terry had seen the prison-like beds that these women slept in, the walls and carpets that looked as if they were part of an abandoned building that fell prey to a handful of high school kids wanting a place to party, she knew she had found a project to dedicate her time and talent to. Terry believed that these women deserved so much more, especially considering that Grace Centers of Hope is the “in between” place for these women to start to get on their own two feet and start to make sense of their lives. How were they to make sense of their lives while living in a space that lacked to inspire.

Luckily, not only Terry felt this way, but so did the women who ran this shelter as well as the people who had donated money to be used to revamp the center as well as those who had donated various items such as ceiling fans, air conditioners, washers and dryers, baby cribs, curtains, beauty products, homemade art and so much more. The community surrounding Grace Centers of Hope came together with Terry, the women who run this shelter and the women who find themselves in a shelter that once reminded them of how lost they were, but can now remind them to always have hope, to not look upon themselves as victims and to provide the best life they possibly can to their own children. The women of Grace Centers of Hope can now feel inspired, motivated and hopeful and their surroundings can now uplift them and hopefully, they will never feel the sorrow, loneliness, or feel victimized in any way for the rest of their lives.

To see what Terry and the women of Grace Centers of Hope and the people of Pontiac, MI did to transform this space for the women who live there, click the images below and you can also visit Terry’s website, Terry’s Enchanted Cottage, where she has dedicated a page to The Hopeful Haven Project.

Before Pictures:

After Pictures: