The Things We Say to Ourselves #OneBeautifulThought

Today, I saw an advert by Dove that really hit me. Before I share my thoughts, though, I thought you might want to watch the vid yourself. Even if you're a guy. It's worth thinking about so bear with me.

All done? Good. So obviously, Dove is all about making it's target audience (women) feel beautiful. But really, this message can be drawn much further than that.

It's something that crosses all boundaries of age, gender, personality, race... name it.

We talk ourselves down. I'm just a fake, pretending I can do this. I'm not a strong person. I've got so many issues that I don't know how to even start listing them. 

I'm never ever going to make it. 

The women in the video had to hear these insulting things they said to themselves just so they could realize how much they've been insulting themselves. Unfortunately, I don't have two actresses on hand to make my point, so I want you to try imagining what you'd do if you heard people tossing the insults you give yourselves at each other.

And then, if at all possible, I want you to stop.

Because when it comes to having a fulfilled, rich life, the only person who can truly stop you is:

You. 

And this, insulting yourself by telling yourself that you're weak, stupid, and powerless to do anything about yourself is precisely the way that you use to do it.

So now I'm going to say this:

You are an amazing person.
You can set out to do what you're meant to do.
You can find out what that is.
You are stronger than you imagine.
You are strong enough to overcome your obstacles. 

Now, YOU try telling yourself some nice things. 

I'd love to see them in the comments. 

Now is your time to ask.

I was going to write about my impending trip to Europe, but now it's not all that impending any more.

So... now I'm sort of at a loss as to write about today. I considered showing you some of the charcoal drawings I've done, but I still want to try do at least one more before making a post of it.

But what I will do is this. If you ask me any questions, I will answer in the comments AND give a more detailed answers in blog posts over the next few weeks?

Interested?

Shoot with the questions. Can't wait. :-)

Two easy changes that help you deal with stress

So... as I mentioned last week, I had blood tests done a week ago to see what the heck was draining me so much.

I did a blood sugar test, a hormone test and a blood level test.... and.... I got put back on my hormone medication that I'd stopped about a year ago.

But here's the kicker. The hormones that are out of whack have nothing to do with energy levels. Which basically means that this severe exhaustion that I've been suffering from for most of last week was in my mind.

If I think about this, it makes sense. The work I'm doing goes from no stress to pressure-cooker pressure in five minutes and back again. The people are demanding. The amounts of money involved is HUGE. And the product can rot in transit. No one in the industry respects the concept of office hours or even lunch time. So on bad days, the pressure starts at 7 a.m. and doesn't let up until I sleep.

Last week was the first calm one after a full week of pressure and I think what I suffered from wasn't exhaustion. It was lethargy. I was tired of doing thing non-stop. So my subconscious made up my mind for me and told my body I wouldn't do anything.

Amazingly, when I dragged myself to church last night, we had a wonderful guest speaker, Peter van Jaarsveld who's a world authority on emotional intelligence and stress management. Basically he discussed things that made intuitive sense to me.

But because I never realized the importance of these things, I never paid a lot of attention to putting them into practice.

Things like positive thoughts. Or breathing deeply and thinking happy thoughts.

I used to think that it's just something people used to say, but when he had us practicing in church, it really made a big difference.

So I decided to put what I learnt into practice this week and see how it goes, since it pretty much involves taking charge of my stress and through that, my life.

So....

First portion of dealing with my stress is to release positive hormones that come from positive thoughts. I do that by picking 10 positive statements in my life. They don't have to be true right now. All I have to do is mean what I say.

My ten statements are:

1) I am a great person.
2) I am in control of how I think and what I say.
3) I am in control of my life and can achieve anything I set out to do.
4) I will look after my physical, emotional and spiritual health.
5) I am talented.
6) I am going to lose the weight I've been trying to shake.
7) I am going to publish my books.
8) I am going to perform and sing.
9) I am happy.
10) I have a great sense of humor.

Now I have to read them to myself every day.

The second portion is breathing. Yep. I'm going to take seven one-minute sessions to just focus on being calm and happy. Three steps to this one:

1) Sit still (and straight) and just focus on your heart to calm your mind.
2) Breathe deeply with your diaphragm. Six counts to inhale. Two counts to hold. Six counts to exhale.
3) After a few of these breaths, think of something that happened in the past week that made you happy, every time that you exhale.

Easy right? The best thing for me is that there's a sound scientific reasoning (and research) behind these two solutions to stress. Just not going into it right not because Dr. van Jaarsveld took most of two hours to explain it all.

Now I just want to see how well it works. Are you going to join me? What are your ten positive statements?

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More about you.

I like to know about the people who read my blog. It's just one of my quirks. I find people really interesting. So, every now and then, instead of being all me-me-me, I post about you. Since I find that bloggers are always in a hurry, I'll limit it to three questions today. You can answer all, some or none of them. Your choice. I'd just like to learn more about who you are. 

Today's questions: 

Credit

1) What did you do today?

2) What did you do recently that stood out as being interesting? 

3) What would you like to do in the near future? 

Got Input?

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As I mentioned on Friday, I'm working at finding the purpose of TCoML again and already have this week's posts planned out.

This is sort of the first one I'm pre-writing, since I started it this morning. Unfortunately I had to leave and got back too late, so.... I'll be finishing the post after the time I wanted to schedule it for. What can I say? It's an imperfect science.

Anyway, this is sort of an invitation for you to get involved.

While I was doing the A to Z Challenge, I realized that TCoML always was about more than just me writing about my daily frustrations or whatever. It had meaning, since it was about me, taking charge of my life.

So yes, while writing about my life does cover a lot of ground, there was another aspect to it.

I intended for TCoML to show how I'm working on taking charge. It was about showing what it's about and what's involved. To share the lessons I have learnt and am learning every day.

I want to do a post about an aspect of that every week. So... I want to hear from you:

Is there anything about taking charge of one's life that you'd like for me to write about? Or... even better... do you have experiences that you want to share? If you do, we could arrange that you do a guest post...

Enough about me already!

Since I haven't really done in the past few days except for editing (not blogging about it here), read (blogged about it at MFB) and critting (again, a post for MFB), I'm kind of stuck without a topic for today. I mean, I could do another pep-talk, but that would be a bit too sanctimonious for me. 

So... today is another More About You day. Tell me more about yourself. 

1) What is your favorite story ever? It doesn't have to be a book. 

2) If you could invite anyone in the world to dinner, who would it be? Where would you have it and what would you serve? 

3) What is the one experience that you think a people should try at least once?

Because I always get comments saying that I ask too many questions, I'm going to cut it short. Can't wait to hear what you think. 

So what about you?

I've started fixing my unbalanced life issues. Today is day one, so while I am feeling a little better, I still need to decide if there's an improvement.

In the mean time, I found that I don't have all that much to say today.

So, today's about you:

1) What is your favorite color(s)?
2) Favorite movie/book quote(s)?
3) What do you hate to eat?
4) What do you dream about doing one day?

See you on Friday!