Be Nice To Yourself by laurageorge

What with the bath I finally allowed myself last week, I realized that the person that’s meanest to myself  is me. Not counting some Mean Girls at work. They suck big time. If I was as mean as them I’d have no friends. But I’m not counting them because they are so not my friends. OK, let’s rephrase: out of all of my friends, I’m the meanest to myself. So not cool of me. Do you feel the same? Like you’re your own worst enemy? Like if someone said to you what you think to yourself, you’d classify them as “a mentally ill asshole“, but since you say it to yourself it’s not only OK but valid?

Well, let’s take that Mentally Ill Asshole Vampire that lives in your head (is it comforting to know that we all have one in our own heads?) & kick him in the shins.

What aren’t you being nice to yourself about, & how you gonna start? (more…)

MICHELLE WORLD:

• I take the time blocks I’ve created for myself and rework them so there’s more free time/me time.
• I view my schedule as a guidepost and not a steel cage.
• I take responsibility for what needs to be accomplished & the structure I set for myself, but I give myself a freakin’ break and allow some flexibility for The Good/Important Stuff.
• I take time for myself & view that time as not a luxury but a necessity.
• I don’t put things (shoes, clothes, dishes, papers) down – I put them away.
• I have a lot of freakin’ fun!
• I let go of the tasks that aren’t really working for me now. I put them somewhere for a rainy day, or a different time. If I hesitate in doing so, I dig deep to see why and possibly how I can fit this into my life.
• I realize there’s no time for the bullshit and let it go, too.
• I only concern myself with pleasing the people who mean something to me.
• When I realize something is broke and I have the tools to fix it, I follow those steps for just a day. Then I can see what works for me and throw out what doesn’t. Rinse & repeat.
• I ask others for support.

As you can tell from my post yesterday, I was being a bit tough/down on myself about all the things I’ve been looking to change that I wasn’t following through on. I know I couldn’t live in Ideal World just like I couldn’t live in Realistic World. Neither one of them would work for me.

So, I decided to live in Michelle World – a place where I can grow and thrive, be comfortable and relax, face resposibility and achieve my dreams. I started to see what that place looked like for me and how I could get there. With a nudge from Merci Miglino, an ICA trainer who allowed me to be coached on structures during class last night, I saw how I can take all of these tools I’ve put in place and make them un-scary. I saw how I had fear around them being too rigid as well as thrusting me into Responsibility World a little sooner than I was ready. When I recognized that fear & shaped it in a more positive way (in coach speak it’s called “reframing”) I saw the possibilities.

The possibility of not feeling like a chicken with her head cut off. (more…)

IDEAL WORLD:

• Wake up an hour early twice a week to run on the treadmill. Do it again on the weekend.
• Clear 2 hours in your schedule to return all your phone calls.
• Take a yoga class for 90 minutes every Saturday.
• Have it take 15 minutes to clean up each room in your house. Clean one room/day & have 3 days to rest.
• Start & finish a research paper in a month.
• Wake up at 10a on a Saturday to do laundry.
• Do one big grocery shop every Monday night.

REALISTIC WORLD:

• The bed is warm. Outside is cold. The treadmill is in a windowless basement and it might be used by someone else. You didn’t get to sleep until midnight anyway. “I can run tomorrow.”
• In the 2 hours you scheduled to return calls & talk to 5 people, 1 of them picks up. And they have to be somewhere in 10 minutes.
• Realize that between changing for yoga class, walking to yoga class, being early to buy a class/get a good spot, taking the class & walking back, you’re looking at sacrificing 2+ hours of precious weekend time.
• Don’t make good on your commitment to not put paper down, or to hang up your clothes every day, or to put away your shoes. What should take 15 minutes if you were disciplined takes 45. You dread Living Room Clean-Up Day and it falls by the wayside.
• Ignore the time you scheduled for yourself to start the research paper. There’s a class to take! And TV to watch! And you’re sooooo tired anyway, your brain won’t even work.
• Saturday is the one day to sleep in! If you get up before 11a it’s impossible to get off the couch much before 12:30p. But Sat morning time is precious – coffee, bagels, The Soup, hubby time….
• “We have enough groceries. We just need some coffee, some turkey, chicken, soup, bread, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, apples…….I’ll order it online for delivery so it could be here tomorrow. The convenience is worth the marked-up prices. Oh wait, we’re not home tomorrow! OK, so the day after….I’ll just buy lunch instead of brown-bagging tomorrow…And we’ll order in dinner…..”

(more…)

I can’t belive I’ve waited to post this one. It’s been sitting in my Google notebook just aching to be shared:

“To Ensure Misery Strive To Achieve Perfection In All That You Do” by London illustrator Jody Barton.

The other Motivation Monday installments can be found here.

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Sorry for missing Freakin’ (Great Links) Friday this week! I had to chillax (don’t you hate that word?) with my hubby’s fam (who is now my fam!) and just couldn’t drag myself to the computer. Look for a double-chocked entry this week!

When you’re an artist, you have a kajillion things on your plate. OK, maybe not a kajillion, but at least a bimillion. You have the time you’re spending to your art (whether it’s classes, rehearsals, auditions, or time to sit down and write/paint), the time you’re spending on your day job, the time you give to your family/friends/other artists (Fringe show, anyone?), the time you put away to work out, the time you spend running errands and keeping your life in order……And a lot of it is BS, am I right? I mean YES, you do need to work on your art to get better, and you do need a day job to save money, and you do need to exercise to be able to wash your clothes on your abs (very important way of saving money on laundry), but is it getting you crazy? Are you feeling SO overwhelmed? Do you just want someone to add an extra 5 hours onto every day so you can do everything you want to do?

Well, I hate to say it, but……..

YOU are the one creating all of this BS in your life.

[beat] (more…)

Yeah, we’re back at song titles, but it can’t be helped. There was no way I could talk about saying “no” without “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse running through my brain.*

Not saying “no” was a huge hurdle I had to jump a year or so ago, when I started training to be a life coach. I knew that I needed to carve out more time for myself in order to take my classes and study, as well as juggle my job and my social life. Before then, it was easy for me to be in denial about committing to people/projects I didn’t want to do. Sometimes, I would go through with a lunch with an “old friend” (aka I’ve- known-you-since-high-school-and-you’re-going-to-complain-about-your-career/ life/relationship-for-two-hours-but-I’ll-go-out-for-lunch-with-you-since-I- don’t-want-to-”hurt”-your-feelings) but sometimes I’d end up canceling “last minute” (aka I-knew-I-was-canceling-all-along-but-it-felt-better-to-make-it-seem- last-minute-even-though-I’d-have-to-keep-a-lot-of-lies-straight-in- my-head).

I hated the white lies, and I hated taking up my time with doing something that I didn’t feel was fulfilling. But I kept at it, for years and years. I don’t remember NOT doing it.

Putting myself first was the first thing I spoke about with my life coach Joanne. From my blog at the time: (more…)

In speaking with my client (let’s call her “CeCe”, because I love Beaches), we spoke at length about what I feel is a common obstacle for most women today: acknowledging our “bad” feelings. In 2008, we’re expected to be strong, independent, responsible, nurturing, & always smiling/chipper/positive/bouncy. We end up making sure that everyone around us is taken care of, usually at the expense of our own self-care. When we have a “bad” feeling come up (anger, fear, frustration, et al) we try to make it go away as fast as we can. Quick! Get rid of it before anyone sees!

But the outcome of pushing those feelings down – or of not even acknowledging them to begin with – is a permanent state of unease and falsity with a 0% chance of turning around the situation that has made you feel angry/frustrated/upset in the first place. At least if you acknowledge (I know I should find a synonym for “acknowledge”, but I just like that word so much!) that you’re in a “bad” feeling, give it a name (anger? frustration? out of control?), and discover why you’re feeling this feeling (”My boss didn’t acknowledge my hard work”/”I hate this stupid job”/ “I’ve had spinach stuck in my teeth all day and nobody told me”), you can then allow yourself to ride this ride until it comes to a complete stop. If it’s not the time or the place to ride the roller coaster (or if you don’t meet the height requirement), then at least allow yourself to focus on your breathing for 30 seconds so you can get past the feeling & reflect on it later. Either way, it’s going to allow you to discover what prompts these feelings so you can figure out how to circumvent it while also allowing you to be true to yourself & not bottle things up inside.

How do you handle “bad” feelings?

(OK, I’ll try to stop naming my posts after songs from my childhood. But no promises.)

Encouraging your client to celebrate every victory, no matter the size, is a huge part of coaching. As someone who can be described as having a rah-rah attitude, this enthusiasm comes naturally to me. But even I was taken aback when my first coach, Joanne, suggested we celebrate my saying “no” to a friend.

“So I’m going to physically celebrate saying “no” to that invitation? Really?”

Yes, really. (more…)