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New Year, New Home Gyms
Late last year, I published a post on some of the basics of starting a home gym: Start a Home Gym with These Equipment Options. That is a great place to start if you are starting your own home gym. Moving forward, here we are at the start of a New Year with new bigger goals for our mental and physical health… And we are still in a pandemic right now so visiting the gym may not be the best option for many people. Thus I decided to add more to the topic of home gyms. My family has a home gym in our game room — an elliptical machine,…
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Turning Your New Years’ Resolutions Into Goals
It is that time of year when people decide what they want to get done and call them resolutions. While New Years’ Resolutions can be fun to choose, they don’t often stick. But the reason they fail isn’t because you can’t achieve them, but because they are often not thought out and don’t have a plan. When you treat resolutions more like goals, you have a much higher chance of success. Use the SMART Method Treat your resolutions like goals by using the popular SMART method for creating goals you will stick to. This includes: Specific – You should be able to be specific and write details about the goal…
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6 Ways to Have a Healthy New Year
The new year is the perfect opportunity to develop healthy habits and add things to your routine for your physical and emotional health. Here are some easy ways to have the healthiest new year ever. 1. Take a Different Approach to New Years’ Resolutions Before you do anything else, make sure you are approaching your new years’ resolutions in a healthy and realistic way. Instead of making the mistake of having these grand resolutions you feel like you couldn’t accomplish, set smaller and more attainable goals related to your health. 2. Consider What Went Wrong the Last Few Years You have probably set other healthy new years’ resolutions or lifestyle…
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How to Reset Your Mindset
We are creatures of habit, and that includes our mindset and thought patterns. You have probably noticed this when something stressful or upsetting happens; your mind tends to go the same place it always does. While this can be frustrating, it is also very possible to change how you react by changing your entire mindset. Flip the Script Flipping the script is about taking your normal thought processes, and flipping them. All those negative thoughts and the negative self-talk can be turned around into something positive. Remember the point is not to put pressure on yourself and force yourself to be positive all the time. That just isn’t realistic. Let…
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Is Fear Keeping You from the Life of Your Dreams?
Sasha was raised in a religious cult. As an adult, she dealt with constant anxiety that stemmed from a fear of doing the wrong thing. She was afraid that if she made one mistake or one bad choice, then something terrible would happen to her or those she loved. Like many people, Sasha had a story about fear. We all have these stories around our fears. They are the stories that keep us miserable and mired in situations we hate. For example, Donna’s story was that if she left her cheating husband, she’d be lonely for the rest of her life. But when she challenged the fear, she actually found…
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Day 21. Ode to the Bountiful Harvest
Here’s something to be grateful for at the end of another year – the bountiful harvest. If you always have food on your plate, plenty of choices in the fridge, and a full, satiated belly, don’t take it for granted. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016. It’s higher now with the pandemic! Hunger must surely have been a grave concern and possible fact of life for many of the early American settlers who expressed gratitude for their celebratory meal held with their Indian friends…
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Day 20. Challenge Yourself to Live in the Present
Today for our gratitude rumination, we will expand our mind to living in the present moment. It’s easier to feel thankful for the simple gifts of life when we are mentally able to remain in the present. Most of us have a lot of trouble living mindfully, or staying present. While our children talk to us, we look down at our phones or scroll through messages. While we cook dinner for our families, we think about how we’ll soon have to run out the door for our next planned activity. During activities that we signed up to participate in, our minds forward us to even more activities that we might…
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Day 19. Honoring Your Mother and Father
On day 19 of the 30 Days Blessed Challenge, we’ll talk about honoring our parents. This can be a touchy subject for some. You may be spending your holiday without Mom or Dad, or both. If so, please feel free to skip this exercise if it’s too painful for you. Some people grew up without a mom or a dad. For them, maybe it’s a Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, or another stand-in parental figure who took on the job of raising them. In this rumination, you can spend time formulating good thoughts for the person or people who helped shape you. We’ll just call them Mom or Dad in this exercise,…
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Day 18. Grateful for Creature Comforts
For today’s 30 Days Blessed Exercise, we’ll be ruminating on creature comforts. That is, those things in life that we almost take for granted but yet they enhance our enjoyment greatly. If you’re too comfortable right now to participate in this activity, that’s okay. Come back to it when you’re in the mood. As stated before, gratitude cannot be faked. It’s your right and privilege to express yourself in your own way and in your own time. If you’re reading this, you probably live in a developed country. So, home heating and cooling, clean drinking water, indoor plumbing and cars that get us where we want to go are things…
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Day 17. People with Special Needs Remind of What’s Really Important
Do you know someone who is differently abled or has special needs? If there’s anyone whom we can take a life lesson in appreciation from, it’s special needs folks. Some people might look at people whose brains function a bit differently than the majority of individuals, and be apt to judge them or dismiss them due to their slower approach to living. The truth is that families who have been touched by special needs in such a way have discovered that these folks have much to teach us about celebrating life and living in the moment. I have a daughter with special needs so I can attest to this! Your…
