Tag: Self Care

How To Get Hacked on Social Media

On By Broken Walls Crushed SidewalksIn Belonging, Health living, Relationships, Responsibility, Self Care, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Do you ever wonder how to introduce a hacker to your friends?

  1. Friend people you don’t know or accept requests from people you don’t know.
    1. Don’t check out their profile/friends/pictures to see if this is a brand new account or if they have a lot of suspicious items on their account.
    2. Look for half-clad girls, agenda-type posts (possibly the same agenda as yours), and no real-life-type pictures
  2. When getting a friend request from someone you know, don’t check your friends list to see if you’re already friends with them.
  3. Try to find out about yourself by playing games that tell you who you are or what you think. These games are often from a company like ‘NameTests’.
    1. Often surprisingly accurate but also mining for your information.
  4. Click on fake accounts believing you’re the person who can spot the wolf in sheep’s clothing
    1. Typically, these accounts often show up with some sensational headline or at the very least an intriguing headline. For instance,
      1. “news articles” 
      2. “political stuff,” or 
      3. “celebrity articles.”   

Follow these tips and soon all your friends will be receiving new friend requests from you

The Struggle Continues -Week 2 Self-Care the Big 3

On By Broken Walls Crushed SidewalksIn Health living, Self-CareLeave a comment

canstockphoto3876862So, during this past week the battle has been to push through cravings and to be satisfied with the small changes I’m making.  I have not felt deprived through the week and have actually been somewhat surprised that I have not missed soda.  However, Friday & Saturday I was feeling a little deprived.  Part of me has been feeling like having a soda would be “no big deal” and “I deserve to be able to have a soda.”  I’ve identified a trigger of eating snacks/pastries.  Which seems a little strange since I’m really not a big pastries person.  However, I think in the past, when I have eaten pastries, I washed it down with a soda.  It just seemed a natural go together.

Since for the most part during the week, it hasn’t felt like a big sacrifice to forgo soda and add healthier foods, I’ve felt I wasn’t doing enough.  Is there a feeling that I need to punish myself to succeed?  or is it that I feel it needs to be more difficult?  Old patterns of all or nothing seem to be competing with establishing new patterns of moving slower.  As I stated above, this weekend the cravings have increased but so far, I have been able to resist.  I wonder, if I had let the old patterns take over, if I would have given into the cravings by being overwhelmed with the task.

The war this week has been about maintaining and keeping to the small achievable goals as opposed to setting larger goals.  It’s been more difficult this week to sit with the cravings.  It’s also been difficult to be satisfied with setting smaller goals.  I frequently find myself saying that I’m not doing enough to make a real difference.  I have to constantly remind myself that this is only the beginning.

Self Care War with the big 3

On By Broken Walls Crushed SidewalksIn Self Care, Uncategorized3 Comments

Picture provided by Jenn Tatro

When counseling people, I frequently remind them of the importance of nutrition, exercise, and sleep for emotional well-being.  However, I often excuse myself from following my own advice stating I’m just too busy, I’ll do it later, or  it’s not really all that important.  It is not unusual for me to put in 15 hour days and work through lunch grabbing a soda, candy out of the candy jar and sometimes, closing the day out with a bag of chips and another soda.  Exercise! Where is the time?  I try to take a walk during my lunch hour but rarely does it happen more than once a week. Sleep-well, it’s a great goal!!

It’s like there is a war raging inside of me- I know what I should be doing but I just can’t seem to do it.  I think that I’m probably not alone in my struggle.  Far too many of us take far too little time to care for ourselves.  Before a soldier goes off to war, he/she must prepare by having a clear understanding of the mission (the why) and potential barriers to accomplishing the mission. Following are a few suggestions for preparing for the self-care war.

  1.  Increase belief in the importance of practicing positive self-care.  Although, cognitively we recognize the need to take care of self by eating right, exercising, and getting adequate sleep most of us downplay the importance of these basic self-care tasks for ourselves. We are unlikely to invest our time and energy into things we don’t value; therefore, it is important that we educate and/or remind ourselves of the importance of self-care.  Here are some excellent articles for you to review: Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Circadian Rhythm and sleep.
  2. Value yourself enough to take care of yourself.  Sometimes we just get so busy that we don’t take time to care for ourselves  Some people believe that caring/valuing self is narcissistic or arrogant.  We are generally taught to take care of others, build careers, families, retirement, etc. We are NOT taught to care for ourselves.  We rarely realize that if we aren’t engaging in self-care we won’t be able to give others our best and will struggle to achieve our goals.
  3. Recognize barriers to self care.  When it comes to nutrition, exercise and sleep, we often feel defeated from past attempts.  Sometimes we feel that it is out of our control.  I wonder if part of the problem is that our focus is on the wrong goal.  Sometimes when working on these 3 basic self-care items, the goal is not self-care as much as it is about body image or some other goal.  Many times we are defeated because we try to scale the mountain before we’ve learned to scale the wall.  It is important to set realistic goals. Setting a smaller achievable goal such as walking for 30 minutes is more likely to meet success.then a larger goal such as hiking the Presidential Range.  Finding time to prepare healthy food, exercise and even sleep is another problem.  Finding the time may involve scheduling shopping, meal prep, and exercise along with establishing routine bed/awake times.  For some of us, failure to schedule these tasks means something else more pressing will fill in the time.  Finding time to engage in self-care may also mean saying no to non-essential tasks or delegating these tasks to others.
  4. Develop a battle plan.  It is difficult to reach any goal without having first developed a plan, even a loose plan. Waking up and telling yourself today is the day when I start to take care of myself, while a great way to wake up, is not likely to produce enough fortitude to sustain the war effort.  Each person is different.  For some focusing on all three at one time will work best.  For others, breaking it down and focusing on one lifestyle change at a time will work best.  Do what works for YOU not what worked for someone else.  Be prepared by purchasing healthy food ahead of time but be careful not to sabotage yourself by forcing yourself to eat food you don’t like.  Also, in developing an exercise plan remember less is often more.  Walking three days a week for 30 minutes is likely to produce more benefits than an hour of hard exercise that produces sore muscles that prevent you from exercising for the next several days.  Work to increase your sleep efficiency to above 85%.

As you develop self-care habits, you may feel like you are at war with yourself.  Remember every war that has been won included a few lost battles along the way.  Pushing through the lost battles by being gentle with yourself and reminding yourself of the battles you have won will bring you closer to winning the war.  I invite you to join me as I take the next several weeks/months to develop better self-care practices.  I’d love to hear about your struggles and successes.

The CARE Model of Decision Making

On By Broken Walls Crushed SidewalksIn Decision Making, Forgiveness, Prayer2 Comments

I didn’t decide to start a blog because there aren’t already enough good blogs out there. There are. In fact, I almost decided not to start a blog because there are already so many good ones out there. I didn’t decide to become a blogger because I don’t have enough already going on in my life. I most certainly do. Again, I almost decided not to start this blog because I am too busy already.

No, I decided to become a blogger because as a woman I find it very difficult to balance life with “life.” I suspect there are others out there feeling many of the same stressors as they strive to balance their lives as well. As a Christian, wife, mother, grandmother (with 2 special needs grandchildren), sister, aunt, friend, Pastor’s Wife, therapist, etc. I sometimes feel pulled in so many directions that my balance gets off-center. Now some may choose to stop right there and say ‘as a Christian, God should always be the center that balances it all.’ In my reasoning mind, I would agree with these people 100%. In my practical lived out life because God is 100% in all areas of life and can’t be separated from it all there is tension between all the roles that I live. There are times that I must choose between attending the funeral of a close friend’s father with taking time off from work which would mean fewer vacation days to visit with my adult children/grandchildren who live a thousand miles away. Add to this is trying to balance spending time with adult children who have left the faith and announce that they are coming to visit the week before Vacation Bible School and, oh yeah, they’d like you to participate in a special needs walk 5 hours from your home on the last Sunday before VBS?     Recognizing that no matter what you decide to do someone is not going to understand and there is likely to be ‘drama’ surrounding any decision that you make.

Decision making is about caring-caring for yourself and others. I recognize that most decisions do not reach the crisis level.  However, the first rule of dealing with a crisis to care for yourself first and others second can be generalized to decision making. I know that putting yourself first goes against what many think is the ‘Christian way.’ But as a friend recently pointed out, ‘Jesus said to “Love your neighbors as yourself” implies that we have to first love ourselves. There is a difference between caring for yourself and being selfish.  I’m advocating for self-care not selfishness.

The CARE Model of Decision Making

  1. Learn to be Content in the decisions you make. Second guessing is human nature and generally comes after the fact. You act out your decision and then think “What if I’d done . . .” or perhaps new information comes out after the fact.  Information that had you known before hand would have caused you to have made a different decision. Being content is understanding that you made the best decision you could at the time.
  2. Accept that you can’t be all things to all people. At best, you can be something to someone. Let go of the idea that you are ever going to please everyone or in many cases even the majority. Learn to be okay that someone thinks differently and may even be upset with you. Choose not to dwell on the idea that Aunt Junifred is upset that you didn’t take time off from work to take her to get groceries.
  3. Recognize that the very nature of having to make a decision means having to make choices. Not everyone will make the same choices that you make but you wouldn’t make the same choices that they make. And it’s okay. Don’t make your choices based on trying to live up to some idealized standard.
  4. Experiences Your experiences and accomplishments are first and foremost part of your journey. As you travel your journey, others will benefit from your experiences but they will also have experiences of their own that lead them on their own journey; a journey separate from yours. As Christians, I wonder if we don’t sometimes err in love by making decisions somewhat based on someone else’s response and thereby creating a hindrance to their growth. Just because someone makes changes in their life due to a decision you made doesn’t mean  your decision was bad, no matter how upset they become. Don’t let the joy of what you’ve experienced be diminished by feeling guilty due to inability to meet unrealistic standards.

Now I know it’s one thing to agree with these principles and quite another to live them out. Living them out means retraining your mind (Romans 12:2) and takes time and practice. Be gentle with yourself as you develop new principles for decision making.

Next blog:  The best choices are made when you recognize life experiences that have brought you to this place and values you want to build your life around. (more about this in the next blog)