Note to Beautiful Self

 

Remember when you we're a kid, and if a game wasn't turning out just the way you thought is should you could yell "Do Over"!   Now that the first month of this new decade has come and gone, how did you fare so far in your new year’s resolutions?

Did you join that gym, start that diet or clean out that closet you’ve been promising yourself you would do?

Well if your first month of the year ended up falling back into that old confort zone of routine that you resolved to change - fear not - just shout "DO OVER"  and  Intend - to Do it Over! 

Embracing a healthier lifestyle is much more than mere promises to do the things we think we should do, it is setting the intention do the things we know we should do to live each day better than the day before. 

As we approach the rest of the New Year let’s have a re-do!  Not by making the same old unrealistic New Year’s resolutions – many of which probably have already been broken before the end of January.   Why not try something different this year?  Committing yourselves to set the intention to make each day of the year better that the day before.  Set your intention to live a little bit healthier than you have been.  Intention to achieve a personal goal once a week.  When you do this you start to make a difference in yourself and your communities.

New Year’s intentions need not just be about replacing old habits with new ones or losing those few extra pounds, they can provide an opportunity to change your life and the lives of others. 

Here are a steps that you can take on purpose towards making this New Year a brand New You!

 Eat a salad.  Having a salad with every lunch and/or dinner serves two purposes – it provides the fresh servings of vegetables that you need and it helps fill you so that you’re not consuming as much of the other stuff. Eating salad almost every day may be one of the healthiest eating habits you can adopt -- and one of the simplest, experts say.

Eating salads is a super-convenient way to work in a couple of servings of vegetables and/or fruit. Green salads are on the menu of almost every restaurant. You can even buy a side salad (with Romaine lettuce, carrots and tomatoes, available with fat-free or reduced-calorie salad dressing) for a buck at many fast food chains these days. And you can make a green salad at home in 5 minutes, armed with a bag of pre-washed salad greens, a few carrots or other veggies, and a bottle of light salad dressing.

Not only that, but salads are cool, crunchy, and fun to eat (lots of textures, colors, and flavors). Most people enjoy eating salads--even kids! You can customize them to include the fruits and vegetables that appeal to you the most, and whichever ones you have on hand.

Talk a walk.  If you don’t already exercise regularly – start by taking a leisurely afternoon stroll on the weekend.  You’ll get some fresh air and get your heart pumping.  If a daily fitness walk could be put in a pill, it would be one of the most popular prescriptions in the world. It has so many health benefits. Walking can reduce the risk of many diseases — from heart attack and stroke to hip fracture and glaucoma. These may sound like claims on a bottle of snake oil, but they're backed by major research. Walking requires no prescription, the risk of side effects is very low, and some of the benefits  the benefits are simply amazing such as:    Managing your weight, Controlling your blood pressure, Decreasing your risk of heart attack, Boosting "good" cholesterol, Lowering your risk of stroke and Reducing your risk of breast cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Read a book.  Get your brain active and distress with a good book. 

Reading increases your vocabulary and improves your spelling, but did you know that reading increases your vocabulary more than talking or direct teaching? Reading forces us to look at words that we might not have recently seen or heard. In fact, languages in children’s books are likely to be more sophisticated than your average conversation.

Every day. You’ll be surprised at the words you start incorporating into your everyday life.  When reading a book, the mind shifts gears. Where you may have had a stressful day, a book can easily distract you and take you into a form of meditation. Fiction is fantastic for this. Reading an awesome fiction book is perfect right before bed time. Although sometimes it’s hard to put the book down if it’s really good. Still, you’ll be relaxed.  Reading can soothe like no other. Given that most of us are pretty high-energy out of necessity, reading forces you to sit still and quiet your mind. This daily act of making yourself be quiet and still will be nothing short of miraculous for anxiety

Meditate.  Embrace your inner silence with meditation or prayer.  It only takes 10 minutes of quieting the mind to calm your spirit and start your day off on a positive note. In our fast-paced, noisy world, silence is certainly at a premium. By embracing silence on a regular basis through prayer, meditation, etc., we create the opportunity to center ourselves and get in touch with that small, still voice within us that represents our deepest wisdom and truth. We all need to turn down the noise in our lives and tune into truth and wisdom on a regular basis to maintain our spiritual and emotional balance.   Regular meditation calms down the restlessness of the mind, and decreases the number of distracting thoughts, bringing a sense of inner peace and relaxation. As the sense of inner peace increases, the ability to concentrate and focus the mind improves.

With a peaceful mind we make fewer mistakes, make better decisions and become more patient and tolerant. This of course improves one's relationships with family, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

Regular meditation enhances our sense of happiness and contentment. As the mind becomes more and more peaceful, the number of worries, anxieties, fears and negative thoughts decreases, and in their absence, happiness rises unobstructed from within as the solutions to our problem flow much more easily in a calm mind.

Stress and tension normally experienced in our daily lives comes from our mind, and our inner search of how to deal with them. These stresses, including illness, are brought about or aggravated by stress and tension. This distress can be dramatically reduced by regular meditation. When the mind is at peace, many daily problems simply disappear, and others are more dealt with ease.

Treat yourself.  Once a month treat yourself to some “Me Time” do something you like although nothing hard or overly competitive.  Do something fun, see a funny movie, go to a museum, a spa, go to the beach… anything that you would consider fun and stress free.  Now that you have the time and the place, what should you do with your” Power Hour”? Anything you want!  To nurture yourself, identify what you enjoy doing on your own, and make that a priority no matter what  Once you start taking time for yourself, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.  The ''ME” time is important because it balances “ME”!  If you can't find any time to schedule for yourself, you may need to take a look at your activities and priorities.  When you start taking time for yourself, remember that you are doing this gradually. If you can't take an hour every day, start with an hour each week or 10 minutes each day. You may enjoy it so much that you'll find a way to devote more time to yourself.  This time enables you to be a better person to those who are important to you.

After you've built short periods of intentional wellness activity into your day, think about times when you could lengthen each one by a few minutes or add an extra day a week. The key is to start small and grow gradually. You are creating a better, healthier lifestyle not demanding to resolve a harmful habit.  Next time you look for an excuse to skip a salad, a short walk, some quiet time or a reason to just laugh; remind yourself of the benefits. You're helping yourself feel good, look better and live longer. Who wouldn't want that?  It’s a new year, a new decade, and it’s time for a New You!

Treat yourself as if you were already who you'd like to become.

We are all "works in progress!" Respect and honor your progress of "becoming" and your destination will seem nearer.

 Positive Thoughts

January 16, 2010 by Note to Beautiful Self

The thoughts we think and the words we speak are constantly shaping our world and our experiences.  Many of us are in an old habit of negative thinking and do not realize the damage we have inflicted upon ourselves.  However, we are never stuck because we can always change our thinking. 

As we learn to consistently choose positive thoughts, the old negative ones dissolve away.  So as you read the daily affirmations let the words of affirmations and ideas wash over your consciousness.  Your subconscious mind will pick up the ones will pick up what is important to you at the moment.  These concepts are like fertilizer to the soil of your mind.  As you absorb them by repetition you are slowly enriching the very basis of your garden of life.  Anything you plant will grow abundantly. 

I see you vibrant and healthy, surrounded by exquisite beauty, living a life of love and prosperity, filled with joy and laughter.  You are on a wonderful pathway of change and growth. 

 Enjoy…

 ”Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.”~ George Bernard Shaw in “Pygmalion”

It is called the Pygmalion Effect and it’s a fact:  You get what you expect!  If you expect the worst, you get it.  Thoughts are not just insignificant bits of information that enter our minds and fade away into the nothingness; thoughts are concrete things.  Our words, thoughts, beliefs and actions shape our daily lives.  Now is the time to get out of victim mode. You are worthy! Your dreams are within your reach.  When you imagine positive situations with happy outcomes that is indeed what will manifest in your life.

Try asking yourself better questions.  Instead of asking yourself, “Well, what’s the worst thing that can happen?” Ask yourself, “What’s the best thing that can happen?” Then - EXPECT the best!

 ”There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” ~ Thomas Krause

 Remember playing as a child and when you were playing a game and something didn’t go exactly your way and in order to get back to a place where you had the advantage – you would say, “Do over – do over – do over?”  Well, great news!  As a grown-up, you can yell “do over” too.

Our personal definitions of failure has conditioned us to think of our “failings” as a bad grade in school an “F,” resulting in some type of  punishment.  However, failure is just a word and the definition we give to it that sets off a reaction in us that generates emotion.  That emotion can generate either motivation or stagnation.  Let’s take failure, change our reaction to this “F” word, and reframe it.

Okay, so things didn’t turn out the way you wanted, or turn out the way you planned.  Step back and take a look at the situation, without judging yourself.   Ask yourself,  “What really happened here?  What can I learn from this experience?  What can I do differently next time?”  No judgment, just learning.  No failures, just experience.

 There is no such thing as will power; only want power. ~ Our Lady of Weight Loss

It’s not about having the ”will power,” to change your thought processes it’s about your “want power” to change your outcome.  Using your “want power” means that you want something enough to make the necessary changes to get it.   In order to make those changes you have all the necessary tools to support them.  The first and most important tool is your thought process.   It’s the preparation that guarantees success.  Want Power means that you are willing to do whatever it takes to get whatever you want.  Now get ready, put on your Haines, eat your Wheaties, and lace up your Nikes, because you are about to go that extra mile!

The Mahhvelous Ms. M

"It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself." ~ Muhammad Ali

Bouncing back is not always an option depending on where ‘back’ was. Looking back on here you came to this point from.  Take a look at what was in your life that you want to bring forward and what you would like to leave behind as lesson learned.When I was told I would “Bounce Back” from my job loss and/or my divorce – I was actually repulsed by the thought of it.  I thought ‘I don’t want to go back and I don’t want those things back!” The choices I made lead to some incredible challenges in my life – Life changing challenges that made me so much stronger spiritually and mentally.  I’m not saying my past was bad, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad.  It was made up of choices I made that created a life that I no longer could afford to live.  The cost was too great, it cost my health, my emotional wellbeing, and my stress levels were immeasurable even though I was well compensated to preach living a stress-free life.  

The life that l led – was a compilation of the choices l made good and bad – right and wrong.  All the choices l made were all my choices after all.  Like it or not everything I achieved or anything I did not was a simple matter of the thoughts I allowed to occupy my mind at a vibration that manifested those thoughts. Some of those lessons were hard, some were painful others were euphoric and some left me numb and dumbfounded.  I am grateful for them all for each and every experience is a lesson.  A lesson of what to do and what not to do, what to think and what to get out of my mind ASAP.  

I learned that choices and action lead to results. If you find yourself encountering a change or challenge, I want to encourage you to know that it will ultimately have a positive result, even if they don’t always feel positive.  Change is a natural part of life.  From birth, to school, from job to career, to falling in and out of love, change has been from the beginning and will remain until we can change no more. Who we are now, in this present moment is the culmination of all those changes –the great ones and the challenging ones.  Moving  forward, change will be exciting; we have unlimited access to wisdom and education from those who have been there, done that and sell the t-shirts.   

Change is going to happen, it happens every day, to everyone; it’s the one thing in life that is constant, the thing that connects us all. And whether life has thrown a change at you or you’ve sought one out, it’s natural reaction to find it difficult and stressful.

But I believe change is a positive thing, and there are always ways to make change easier, to even get excited about it. It’s time to learn one of life’s most important skills: how to Drive Your Change!  Your positive attitude and self talk will be your internal GPS for your every tomorrow.  I wont tell you not to fear. 

 As humans we fear. We fear the loss of our jobs, our material items, our homes, our loved ones, etc.  But it’s what we do with a loss in our lives that defines who we are. And to turn any loss (good or bad) that comes your way into a stepping stone towards a better life.  To do that, you need to know a few things.   You are the creator of your own lifes experience, you are creating by the thoughts that you offer which flow into action.  Any thought that you offer, is vibrating a frequency are powerful enough to attract a real life situation.  You need to directly and deliberately think to create new experiences for your life.  Next time we’ll discuss how to start.

 I am just here to remind you of the things you already know about your wonderful self and tell you it’s ok to experience the thoughts and feelings you feel when change happens – for a minute anyway.  But then, after that initial moment of fear or panic  (and in time those moments wont be an issue at all) – it’s time to put on our big girl panties, clean up that runny mascara and keep moving forward.

Maureen

Excepts from Maureen’s upcoming book ‘Bouncing Forward’