GOAL POST (3) – 3 Tips To Make It Through Step 1 (Choose Yourself)

• CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Goal 1 – Feel Better

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Step 1 – Choose Yourself (continued)

It’s al very nice and all, figuring out the first step to feeling better is to choose yourself, but how exactly do you do that? What if you didn’t have some sort of epiphany like me? Then where do you start?

You start by realising this: if you do not take good care of yourself, it is impossible to take care of others. Therefore, you owe it not only to yourself, but to everyone around you that you love, to take good care of yourself.

I’m sure almost everyone has heard the safety talk on a plane in which you’re told to, in case pressure in the cabin drops, put on your own oxygen mask first before helping your children (or others sitting next to you) with theirs. Why? Because if you pass out, you’ll not be able to help others. Result: more possible casualties. It’s logic 101.

I tell you this, because I know from own experiences, as well as stories of coachees, people find it difficult to put themselves first, fearing it will make them selfish. Being self-centred, however, takes years of practice. One logical decision will not magically transform you into an egoist, trust me.

Now that we’ve got that settled, here’s 3 tips to choose yourself:

1. Acknowledge You Are Not Feeling Okay
It’s such a cliché, but true: you cannot fix a problem if you deny it’s there. Sticking your head in the sand will surely work for a while, but the longer you wait facing reality, the harder it’s going to slap you in the face when you pull your head up for a breather.
One trick I picked up is to avoid the verb to accept. You don’t have to accept you’re feeling down. You don’t have to feel like you should be okay with it. But at the very least you should acknowledge it. You are not feeling like this for no reason: your body and mind are trying to tell you something. So sit down and listen.

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“You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”– Buddha

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2. Get Your Priorities Straight – Set Boundaries That Work For You
Now that you’ve acknowledged you’re not exactly as happy or as healthy as you’d like to be, it’s time to set some boundaries – for your own sake! You are now your own number 1 priority. That’s right. When making decisions, ask yourself: is this going to help me feel better? If the answer is no, reconsider.
Someone needs your help? Great! Only… If you don’t feel up to it, for whatever reason, don’t. If you’ve got 100% energy to spend on a daily basis, quit giving 80% away to others. You need it yourself! If the people asking for your help care about you, too, they’ll understand. Which brings me to tip 3:

3. Talk About It – Be Open And Stay True To Yourself
People cannot read your mind or smell what’s going on with you. If you want a little understanding, you’ve got to at least give them a little explanation.
When I opened up about not feeling well, some people got angry with me, others got upset and some were downright surprised. But at least now they all know why sometimes I am not going out with them or would rather hang out closer to my home than theirs.
You don’t have to be dramatic about it, but at least let people know, in general, what’s going on. It will make tip 2 a whole lot easier, too!
Talking also releases some of the burden you’ve been dragging along with you. Feeling miserable is bad enough, don’t add loneliness to the mix.

I hope these tips are useless for you, for that’d mean you’re doing fine already. If you do have a hard time putting yourself first, just imagine you’re in an airplane with oxygen masks dangling in front of you. Nobody would hold it against you if you helped yourself first in that scenario, so why should they do it now?

And even if they would, their opinion is not your priority. Your priority is yourself, so you can feel better and help others better, too.

Whatever it is that you do: be kind to yourself. You deserve it. Buddha said so, so it must be true 😉

Are these tips helpful to you? Do you have more tips that have helped you and might work wonders for someone else? Let me know ↓↓↓

GOAL POST (2) – Step 1: Choose Yourself

• Currently working on: Goal 1 – Feel Better

First, a quick recap of last week:

1. My father is doing much better – thank goodness! He’s got all sorts of tests planned and meetings with a new doctor, which gives me and my mother some relief and hope.

2. I am doing slightly better. My blood pressure went up, albeit a little. I’ve been boosting my iron by paying extra attention to my food and snack consumption and that seems to work. I feel better than I did a week ago as well.

3. This pains me to say but… Waldo didn’t make it 😦 He was too weak to try more medication, which was likely to not have helped him anyway, and he was only getting worse. So last Friday, together with the vet, I decided to let him go.

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Step 1 – Choose Yourself

It’s funny how seemingly small things sometimes harbour the most important life lessons.

As I started my 2020 Goals, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could come up with a list of things to do or steps to take to get better. You know, much like climbing a ladder.

I would use my own path to figure the steps out and then share them with anyone who might need them, too. But as I decided this was a fun adventure (and a great way to find a positive note in my current low state) a problem arose: where to start?

If you want to climb a ladder, you have to be careful where to plant your feet as every step counts. As for trying to get better, it’s no use starting halfway. You need to start right at the bottom and work your way up, one step at a time. You need to be patient, sometimes maybe even lower yourself down a sport, but never skip a step.

That, I knew. Begin at the beginning.

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“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”– Rabindranath Tagore

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But what is the first step to take then?

The seemingly small thing that happened last week was a simple text message I received. It was short. It was curt. It was rude. It was even a little disrespectful in my opinion, if not completely disdainful.

What happened then was new to me: nothing. I didn’t bite back. I didn’t up my defences. I didn’t even feel attacked! Nothing. The message might as well have never been sent, because I literally couldn’t care less about it.

That night, as I was in bed, falling asleep, I realised that in the past, a silly thing such as this message would have kept me up for nights on end. So what had changed? Had I suddenly stopped caring?

No. What changed is what I choose to care about. And somewhere in the past four months, I chose myself.

I want to get better. And for that, I need myself. My own full attention. My own devotion. Knowing I’ll have my own back.

Right before I dozed off and had the best night of sleep in months, I knew. The first step is always to choose yourself. Before you can climb that ladder, you have to know what you’re climbing it for. And if you’re not doing it for you, there’s no use in trying.

What steps are you taking to become a healthier, happier person? Let me know in the comments and let’s help each other get on the way 🙂

GOAL POST (1) – Don’t You Just Love A Good Pun

• Currently working on: Goal 1 – Feel Better

Goal post… Get it? I thought it was funny. Funniest thing that happened this week anyway.

Seems like every day something stressful happened and I am not sure this worked well on my goal to feel better. On the other hand: it did put some things in perspective.

• Sunday – My stamina escaped to lordknowswhere (I reckon it’s taking a break from all the hard work it’s been put through this month), leaving me exhausted. Spent most of the day asleep on the sofa and watching TV, hoping Monday would be better…
• Monday – Just as the F, the L and the U made their entrance into my train of thoughts (“Now THAT would make sense!”) I got home to find my father sick. Sick as in “his-friends-from-his-wood-chopping-class-called-the-paramedics-because-they-thought-he-had-a-heart-attack” sick. He didn’t have a heart attack, don’t worry. His organ of balance got, well, out of balance.
  I am 33 years old. In all those years, I have never seen my father ill! NEVER! So at this point, my stress levels picked up pace while ascending to their peak.
• Tuesday -Nothing too exciting happened. My dad did a little better and I remained exhausted.

“Be brave enough to heal yourself, even when it hurts” – Bianca Sparacino

• Wednesday – When visiting an old client of mine I was negatively impressed by her state of health. Pneumonia, a severely bruised hip and loss of speech… All things she had been checked for (and is constantly being checked for), but it got to me.
  That evening, weeks after my last one, I got another one of my infamous attacks. Just as I started thinking I’d passed that stage, it came back… But it was different, somehow. No stomach lock-down and it didn’t last as long as its predecessors did. I am starting to think maybe the stress is a bigger incentive for these attacks than I care to admit.
• Thursday – My pet gerbil Waldo has an inner ear infection for which he is being treated. But because I cant explain this to him, he keeps scratching his right ear in an attempt to make the itching and hurting stop on his own. All this scratching made him look like he escaped a gerbil horror movie, as right now it looks like half his face is gone! I found him, all bloodied up, in his cage and my stress meters immediately went berserk! I’ve now taped his hind leg so he can’t scratch (he still tries it!) and have added painkillers, cleaning sessions and honey creme to his list of medicine. How I am going to fix this, I am not sure… Worry Fest 2020 was now in full swing.
• Friday – Today I learned my blood pressure is low. Which is kind of funny, because with all the stress you’d think it was so high you could climb it to pluck a few stars from the sky. But no, it’s low. It explains the exhaustion and the headaches and maybe even the attack, so for a strange reason I am happy about this.

I have set upon doing breathing exercises (at least) twice a day to help let go. I drink more in general, and licorice tea (yuck) in particular, and eat more salted snacks to up my blood pressure. When I feel worried, I visualise a beautiful colour or happy thought into the worries, to make them more bearable. I keep feeding my father tea and check up on Waldo every chance I get, knowing that even if he doesn’t like what I do to him, it will help him more than if I’d do nothing.

And I’ve stopped telling myself I don’t do enough to feel better.

Because I do ❤

How have you all been doing on your goals? Let me know in the comments! 🙂

HEART TO POST – How Fear Can Help You To Focus

“The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Sometimes I fear I have a parasite, while in fact I know I don’t.

Do you recognise this? Maybe not the parasite part (at least I hope you don’t!), but what about that panicky feeling that rises when your health might be in danger?

I know I overthink. I know I over-worry. I know I get crazy at times and let that craze carry me away a little too far.

I know ALL this, yet I can’t stop it from happening occasionally.

It’s the struggle between thinking and feeling. How do you know if your mind is right? And how do you know it isn’t?

As far as parasites go, there are empiric ways to verify if your mind is pulling one on you or not. And I am happy to say my gut feeling’s always been right about this one so far (“You got nada”).

But what about the more important matters in life?

For instance, I was excited when I decided to simmer my business-building activities and focus on boiling out my health issues first. But even if I currently put in minimal work regarding my coaching escapades they still eat away at me by telling my head what I do is not enough.

I know I made the right decision – you cannot take care of others if you don’t function properly yourself – but sometimes it feels as if I didn’t.

I guess the trick is to find a certain balance between your head and your heart in everything you do.

And when that doesn’t stop your inner critic from complaining, tell it you’ve possibly got a parasite. See how quickly that shuts the little sucker up 😉

I’m kidding! Parasites are not funny. But the fear of having one swiftly put my mind back into priority-mode.

First things first. Always.

My health comes first. Always.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR – January Is The Best Time To Get Your Priorities Straight

Happy 2020, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful 2019 and are ready to take on the new year with excitement, renewed energy and enthusiasm!

As for me: I have been doing a little better physically, but I am far from where I want to be. Still, an improvement is an improvement, no matter how small, and I take every teeny tiny flicker of victory as exactly that: a victory 🙂

As 2019 was rounding up, something magical happened: my youngest niece J. was born! As many of you probably know, we lost her sister I. in 2017. The impact of this loss caught up to me in a thousandfold as I held the newest member of our family in my arms for the first time. J. will probably never know how grateful I am for her presence, her heartbeat, her perfect existence in this less than perfect World ❤

I can honestly say I have never enjoyed holding babies much (something with them being so fragile and their head needing support), but this baby I’ve already held more times than I did the others combined. I keep finding myself in strategic positions so that her parents will pass her on to my arms, which they always do, heheh.

Something else happened: my *attacks* have lessened. That is to say, I still get sick and it still happens on a weekly basis. But it’s no longer always on a Wednesday and the force of the attacks has decreased. Seems like my homeopathic diet is working 🙂 I’ve also picked up working out, albeit on a very low level of intensity. I’ve had my first run since four months a little while ago and even did half a Body Pump workout a week ago. I am still exhausted after every exercise, but at least doing something is better than nothing.

And then there was the final realisation of 2019 that turned my whole world upside-down: I’ve been investing so much energy into this one particular someone, it’s literally been keeping me up at night.

When all went wrong again and my worries peaked again and I saw that person again and they pretended their life was A-okay again, it finally hit me: that person will never learn to take responsibility for their own actions, problems and happiness if I keep rushing to the rescue. I am wasting my energy on them. Energy that I very much need myself.

So I stopped worrying. I stopped wasting this much of myself on them, and decided it was time to choose for myself. To invest all that extra energy I now have into myself! 😀

And that realisation is the driving force behind my new goals:

I figured the dating is optional, but if I feel good and my business is making a profit, why not consider finding a partner? Who knows, in the worst case I’ll end up alone, like I am now, but I’ll surely feel fine about it because I’ll already have reached goals 1 and 2.

And just because making my business as a life coach a success is number two on the list, doesn’t mean I’ll not spend time on it now. My list of goals are actually my current priorities. Feeling healthy and content should always be everyone’s top priority.

It’s never been mine, though. I was always busy taking care of others…

In that light, me feeling terrible is a good thing. Because it showed me right where my flaws were: never was I really focused on me.

My goals (or priorities) have given me a renewed drive to work on myself and something to write about. For a while I was struggling where to take this blog to. I tried several things that weren’t really me. But now I’ve found something to occupy myself with that I can use as a topic for my writings as well.

I say that’s a happy start of 2020!

It’s just a bit sad I have to drive back to the restaurant at the other side of the country tomorrow, because that’s where I lost my credit card today… Well, at least they’ve found it and kept it secure, and the journey gives me (plenty of) time to rehearse Mika’s new songs before his concert in February.

How have you all been doing? Any resolutions or goals for 2020? Let me know! 🙂