Guided Meditation

Stress is a common part of modern life. Perhaps it’s one topic or several but when we’re overwhelmed we’re not our best selves. And that’s ok, one great way to ground ourselves and get calm is through a guided meditation. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to do everything on your own. As Ina Garten reminds us, “Store bought is fine.”

We start by not holding ourselves to an impossible standard. Instead let someone else guide you toward the calm or frame of mind you wish to embody. Relinquish control and the self-imposed responsibility to be perfect. Spoiler – none of us are perfect. So on days when things are feeling particularly chaotic or you’re feeling overwhelmed with emotions or demands let go. Give yourself a break and choose a guided meditation to to not only soothe your nerves but also to remind you of the path you have chosen for yourself. 

One of the really lovely things about paying attention to our bodies and our mental state is that we notice when something is awry. Rather than behaving in ways that are not true to ourselves we’re able to stop and refocus. We are able to prevent ourselves from acting out. Whenever I feel as if I am getting carried away with emotion or stress that is my body’s signal, I need to meditate. And, whenever possible, take the easy route and let someone else guide your focus. When we’re already worked up it’s hard to get into a calm frame of mind. It’s ok to look elsewhere for coaching – it’s how we level up our self-care. Guided meditations are an easy way to get out of a negative mindset and escape the pressure to be perfect.

How do you level up your self-care?

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Prioritization: Wisdom from Successful Women

Some days chaos will find you wherever you go. Today is one of those hectic days where the phone rings, the emails pour in, and even though it is a shorter holiday week, all of the work of a full week needs to get done. Despite all of these responsibilities calling for my attention I am making a point to put my goals first. Often we get rushed into decisions and with so many competing agendas I can get distracted into making someone else’s goal list my own. It’s not my favorite reality but it does happen. To get back in my own lane I take the following steps.

Make a List – The first step I take is to create of list of the items I would like to accomplish in a day. I actually took this idea from Ariana Huffington. Ariana, if you’re reading, thank you for your wisdom, I appreciate you. At the end of the day Ms. Huffington takes half an hour or less to go through her list of items that she wants to accomplish the next day. This stems from having larger goals that we have first broken into smaller steps – check out this blog post on breaking your goals up into manageable steps here. Once that work is done you then have smaller bites, little steps that you can accomplish to attain your larger goals. 

Take Two Small Steps – This wisdom comes from the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. Garten believes in taking two steps every week towards accomplishing your goal. This works like a dream because two steps in a week is manageable and every inch forward is still moving ahead!

Now, that we’ve got two steps toward goal accomplishment and our goals broken down into digestible steps – how do we keep those priorities when it seems like everyone we talk to has an agenda and a plan for how we should spend our time? 

Pick your Ball – That’s when I call in Nora Ephron. She believes that to balance priorities we have balls that we are all juggling to keep in the air at all times. Now, some of those balls are glass and some of them are plastic, it’s up to you to determine their value. Family, friendships, etc. these are your glass balls that you don’t ever want to drop and break. But you can drop some balls some of the time and you have to, unless you have figured out time travel and shape-shifting. If you have yet to accomplish this, please consider that you cannot be in all places at all times and sometimes when you are one place it means you’re missing something that is fairly important somewhere else. You must discern which tasks, opportunities, moments, are made of glass and which ones are made of plastic – and doing that will give you the opportunity to be there for the events and people that are most important to you. 

The goal is to use your intuition and to discern what is most important to you. How do you do that? Well, I often find for big decisions that flipping a coin helps. Usually, while the coin is in mid-air, there’s one side I’m hoping for and that is my gut telling me what I truly want. 

Practice – Another way to be sure we don’t get distracted by competing desires is to practice listening to ourselves. The best way to practice discernment is to begin listening to the small voice inside of you. The key is to start small. Don’t ignore your voice for decades and then expect it to be strong and bold when it’s time to make a major decision. You have to listen to your inner voice all the time so that it knows that if it does speak up it will be heard.

That voice is easy to ignore when you’re around other people. Simply because everyone else’s voice is just so loud – they’re talking at you! Your inner voice will whisper and so it’s important to listen closely. A great way to begin is to take yourself out for ice cream. Don’t bring anyone else because then you’ll be tempted to “have what she’s having.” And don’t ask the server to pick for you because that’s cheating. 

As a former ice cream server I can tell you that people spend more time selecting a flavor than they do a new car. It’s because there’s so many options and unless you have an old standby from which you never waiver, there are a lot of tempting flavors to try. That’s the beauty of ice cream, even if you make the wrong choice, in the end you still have ice cream, which is always good and relatively inexpensive. If you get it wrong, come back another day. Try something else and find what you like. Once you have ice cream down experiment and listen to yourself on progressively larger and larger choices. This will help you train and practice for those bigger decisions, when you really want to hear your own voice above the din, when it matters and you need to listen to your own gut above all of the chaos and competing demands.

How do you stay in your own lane and make yourself your main priority? 

New Year, New Approach to Progress

It’s halfway through January and I am already sensing a transition or shift in this new year. Time is moving as quickly as it ever has but I am not rushing with it. I have noticed that I am taking smaller, more practical steps toward my own goals and progress. I am also celebrating where I am and feeling contented, rather than displeased or eager for the next step. I am where I am supposed to be in this moment and I am grateful that where I am is so wonderful and that I have the good fortune to be here, breathing air and living life, to enjoy it. 

Let’s begin with the practical steps, as those of you who have been following know and for those of you who have not, we moved last summer. After nine years in our starter home it was time for more elbow room. Covid helped us along in this decision, but it was getting to be time. That said we have a new home and since we do not live on HGTV, the progress from new home to our home is a slow and steady process. We believe in living in a home for a while to determine what we like, don’t like, and how we are going to make the space more our own. We also do not have a limitless budget and so our choices are practical and timed out – we have not simply gutted the place. 

We have however made some small but deliberate changes and updates. I’m really noticing that this year, unlike years past that I am being more patient with progress. I am enjoying the process more and being more intentional with my choices. I know what I like and I know what works for us. I also know that Rome was not built in a day. As I consider these truisms I’m grateful. I’m grateful that instead of feeling like I have not done anything or beating myself up because my progress has been slow I am savoring the moment. 

Growth and change are never easy. The shift from one home to another is a big one and all of the solutions we hoped for in this home will not simply appear overnight. As we learn more about how we live in this space and we recognize our own needs in this house I am taking practical steps. 

We have larger visions and dreams – much like I have larger visions and dreams for this year as a whole – but instead of looking at my larger picture goals and thinking, “Whelp, I haven’t accomplished them yet, I might as well quit, or pick a new goal.” Instead, I am thinking, “How can I make these goals smaller?” I don’t eat an entire candy bar in one bite, I break it into pieces (because I’m a lady). Also, because it is impractical to do so, and a mess. So rather than penalizing myself for not stuffing everything I want to do into the first three weeks of a new year, I am congratulating myself for taking smaller bites. For not feeling as if I have failed because in such a short time my large goals are incomplete. 

Yearly goals, are just that, goals for the entire year. If they were easy enough to be solved within a week, they would not be on my annual list. They would be on my much shorter daily agenda. That said, I can make progress. Ina Garten recommends two steps every week to accomplish a goal and I have found that wisdom to be timeless and useful. I may not get something new completed in our new house every day – I’m still trying to remember where I put away the cleaning rags thank you very much. But I can order new light fixtures for the front hall. I can organize my Pinterest page and whittle down my options for rugs. These are not the re-design of the entire house but with these small steps I can make progress toward that goal. It will not be done in a day but with a couple steps forward every week, by the end of the year that’s 104 steps further than I was on new years, and already 52 steps ahead of when we moved in last summer. I’m already ahead and with continued progress this house will be a totally different place when we’re done with it – it will be our place and that makes it home. 

How do you stay motivated to accomplish larger tasks? What keeps you moving forward rather than giving up?