The top of the Self-Care pyramid holds Investment self-care. This is more targeted activities meant to “invest” in your future. Where maintenance is daily and frequent, restoration is for filling your cup when it feels empty, investment is meant to be bigger and more impactful. Investment is education, taking a class, going on a retreat, hiring a coach, reading a personal development book and doing all of those things that will ultimately change your life.

I have saved my favorite ones for last. I chose these two techniques alternatively depending upon how distracted my mind is in the moment. Because my thoughts are always in planning mode, I find that having words to focus on really helps me to be in the moment. My mind wanders less when I have something concrete competing with my thoughts.

Meditation can feel a bit intimidating when you first start. It feels weird. Unnatural. Uncomfortable. You might feel silly. And all of those thoughts are floating through your mind at a rapid pace, interrupting what you intend to be peaceful moments. I get it. I’ve been there countless times. If you’re like me, you want to do it “right,” and everything about it feels wrong.

We’ve all heard the advice, “try deep breathing” or “take a breath.” Maybe you’ve tried and “failed” at it, claiming it doesn’t help you. Maybe, if you give it some thought, it didn’t work because you half-heartedly tried to breathe deeply while simultaneously focusings on whatever was making you angry, anxious, etc. The idea behind practicing mindful breathing is “practice.” If you carve out even just a few minutes of every day to being present in the moment and concentratin

The Art of Being Present

Feeling Overwhelmed by the Future?

I read a book a few months back that really stuck with me. Essentialism  by Greg McKeown has really formed the way I try to shape my day. Admittedly, and full self-disclosure, it’s much easier said than done. I often find myself quickly switching between tasks, never quite finishing something. I have multiple tabs open, and when something gets difficult, I switch. I feel busy, but I’m not always getting things finished. Throughout the next 6 weeks, I challenge you to embrace

This week concludes our study of Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Four Tendencies. We are closing out with a closer look at both the Questioner and the Rebel.

This week we are diving into The Obliger. The Obliger readily meets external expectations, but resists and struggles with internal expectations. They easily will get things accomplished for other people - their boss, coach, personal trainer, friends, etc.

Hopefully you have taken the Four Tendencies Quiz, but if you haven’t done it yet, here  it is again for your convenience. As we dive deeper into our discussion about expectations, let’s first talk about what internal versus external means. Inner expectations are those that we impose upon ourselves. This would be setting a fitness goal to run a 5K or to make sure you go to bed by 11pm and wake up before 7am. Outer expectations are those that others impose upon us. It might be

OK. We are on our last week of our discussion of Self-Care. The biggest thing I want you to take away from this month is to find a way to set boundaries around the time you can control. Make yourself a priorty. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself. Little moments in your day can really add up to a wealth of calm and peace. I hope you have learned some new ideas to add to your arsenal, because as I said, it’s so much more than massages and bubble baths. Self-care means di

This week we will dive into two more of the 5 Love Languages to explore Receiving Gifts and Quality Time.

Last week I introduced the Self Care Pyramid developed by Elizabeth Tollis (earlier edition). We discussed the base of the pyramid - maintenance. These are the things that should be part of your regular, daily habits and routines that maintain our sanity. As a reminder, these were the basics — good sleep, nutrition, proactive life management, exercise, boundaries, etc. These are the tenets of basic care for ourselves that help us run effectively. If you don’t already have tho

I don’t know about you all, but I know I feel a certain energy in the Spring. The world around us is literally sprouting anew! I want to be outside more (luckily I am not an allergy sufferer), I want to move more, I want to do all the things. While December/January planning for the new year is important, I feel like this time of year, when we are all emerging from our cozy winter cocoons, is an even better time to create new habits that align with our vision and goals.

This week we are focusing on putting it all together to live a coherent life. What does that mean. When you can take your life view and your work view and put it together to live a life on purpose. According to Burnett and Evans in Designing Your Life , there a lot of powerful voices in the world telling us how we should live and what we should be doing. We also have competing, but equally as powerful voices in our own heads telling us what to do and who to be. The voices fro

I hope you took the time to write out your Life View last week. If not, go ahead and do that (I’ll wait). This week we will focus on your Work View. This is NOT a job description. Your assignment is NOT to write out what you want to do in your work. We aren’t focusing on daily tasks and activities.

Last week I asked you to revisit the values activity. That was a precursor to our work this week on building your Life View. Knowing what you value in life will help guide you in making setting goals and making choices that are aligned with those values. According to Burnett and Evans in Designing Your Life,  your Life View is your ideas about the world and how it works. What is your place in the world and how do you want to contribute? What makes life worthwhile?

In our habit forming sequence of

The next step in the four-step process of habit formation is Craving. James Clear in Atomic Habits continues by saying that habits are fed by a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Highly addictive behaviors, like drugs, social media, smoking, junk food, etc. are associated with high levels of dopamine. Oddly enough, researchers have shown that you not only get a dopamine hit when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate (crave) it. This anticipation, or craving, of pl

As we progress through our work this month on creating habits, systems and routines, make sure you have done the vision work (if you need to do this, visit resources and choose Wish List Vision Exercise ). You want to make sure that the habits you are creating for yourself align with WHO you want to become. Remember when I talked last week about the 3 layers of habits - outcomes, processes, and identity? Well, that wish list vision exercise is the start to figuring it all out