Blog

Dozen of articles. Improve your lifestyle now!

Self-improvement July 2, 2015 By admin 0 Comments

How Your Thoughts are Coaching You

It dawned on me through my coaching practice that our mind chatter and inner thoughts are actually coaching each person. Sixteen hours a day most of us are awake and we are having our thoughts, our feelings, our reactions, our emotions, our responses, and our questions. We make internal decisions all the time, weather their right, wrong, fair, delusional, practical, insecure, or grandious. We listen to other people speak and inside we interpret what we think we hear. We tell ourselves from the moment we wake up what next to do, or not to do. As I have been coaching my clients once a week with some very powerful results, I realized that they still have 111 waking hours during the week that I am not coaching them, they are coaching themselves. This breakthrough realization for me profpted to create a realistic positive and powerful self talk awareness and skills to teach my clients, and to incorporate in my own life.

How it works is; first of all everyone needs to create a good and long enough 7-8 hours sleeping environment. As always known, good sleep is one of the best things you can do to yourself. Everyone needs to get good sleep. When you wake up in the morning you need to direct yourself to do the things that feel good for you. For some people that might be having coffee or tea in bed. For about fifteen or twenty minutes to wake up and gear themselves up for the upcoming day. Then, you need to figure out what makes sense to do in the morning to get ready for work or to create your whole day. Many people find exercise is a great thing to do in the morning, to start their day and get it off their to do list. But for some people, they choose to exercise later in the day or not at all. Here are some basic goals that your inner talk can direct you to handle for a optimum day.

Get good;

Sleep
Food nourishment (healthy meal preparation)
Exercise (even if its 15 minutes)
Good hygiene
Positive inner thoughts
Avoid unnecessary stressful conversations (a friend, neighbor, or relative who is dumping stress on you)
Pace and schedule your day comfortably (don’t over schedule, over commit, or make a too large daily to do list)
You need “me time”; time for meditation, relaxation, pleasure, and fun. Many people enjoy being with nature for their me time.
Create a doable to do list
Any admisntrative work (bill paying, preparing for work, projects, and other goal projects)
Home matenince

How does our inner thoughts and inner talk actually direct us? We have constant mind discussions, your brain is talking to you all the time, telling you what to do. Also, we are forcing what you think you feel. For example; if someone wakes up in the morning, and they know they should exercise but they dont really feel like it. Their brain is saying to them, “I don’t really feel like exercising im just going to blow it off”. What I am suggesting is instead of just letting your inner talk say “I am not in the mood to do it, I want to blow it off,” how about shifting your inner talk to say to yourself “even though im not in the mood to exercise, I know how good it is for me, and how much better I feel if I do even 20 minutes of something. Why don’t I just get up and do 20 minutes of something, the reward will be great and I feel really good about myself”.

Lisa Sawicki, July 2015

Confidence July 2, 2015 By admin 0 Comments

Excerpt from Dr. Kim Aikens Article

Excerpt from Dr. Kim Aikens article “Mindfulness Goes to Work” April 2015

As everyone knows, the workplace can be a distracted, highly paced, multitasking world in which we are rarely aware of how our minds actually work or the stories we tell ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis. Mindfulness is a form of focused mental training where we learn to pay attention to immediate experience rather than being distracted by what went on in the past or what we need to do in the future. It also encourages acceptance of that experience – a form of nonjudgmental awareness — that promotes openness and objectivity. This can result in
the development of resiliency and stress hardiness.

The fact is stress is often not so much about an event itself, but about what we are telling ourselves about that event. Research on stress clearly shows that too much pressure can adversely impact performance. Say for example, you walk into your office and see a stack of work that is so mountainous papers have cascaded off your desk and onto the floor. If your mental chatter goes something like “This is overwhelming. I’m never going to get home tonight. I have to get all this done today!” it is likely you will show a significant stress response, complete with increased heart
rate and abdominal butterflies. The upshot is likely to be poorer performance and decreased work efficiency. However, if your internalchatter is more along the lines of “This is really a lot of work. I probably can’t get this all done, but I’ll do what I can and that’s OK”, you are likely to stay focused, relaxed, and will perform better.
In reality, we are rarely aware of our mental chatter and what it does to us. If you are not convinced, try a simple exercise. Set a timer for the next five minutes and simply count to ten. When you get to ten, go back
to one and start again. Is it easy to stay on task or do you get distracted?

Stay curious and watch where your mind takes you. It is likely you will be surprised at how difficult this simple exercise can be. Focused mindfulness training results in greater awareness of this constant internal dialogue
and provides concrete tools for the development of increased mental fitness, focus, and wellbeing.

Kim Aikens

Dr. Kim Aikens is an internist with a fellowship in Integrative Medicine from the University of Arizona. Inspired by the mind/body aspect of her studies, Dr. Aikens continued her education with certification training in
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Aikens founded The Aikens Approach in order to bring mindfulness, resiliency, and leadership training to corporations. She also
has an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan as well as training in executive and leadership coaching from the University of Miami.

Couples Therapy July 2, 2015 By admin 0 Comments

CNN Article About Relationships

Lisa Sawicki San Diego Certified Life / Dating / Romance Coach says “Most Healthy, strong relationships have disagreements. Stuff comes up all the time. You can be so in love one moment and then some little thing happens or is said and bang, you are both at each other’s throats. How did it happen, everything was going so well?”

But it does. A fight with someone you are attracted to or in love with can happen out of nowhere. One minute you are the most perfect harmonious couple then BANG, you both just fell into a Fighting Ditch.

The trick is not to avoid arguments at all cost because trust me, one of you or both of you will be mad at one another for a short or long period of time on various times in your romantic relationship.
The trick is to learn how to fight fair because disagreements are going to happen.

• Have the maturity and self-control to fight and have your disagreements in private. It is unhealthy for your children or anyone else to have to witness the two of you ‘going at it’ when you are angry. You need to be in PRIVATE.

• Stick to the number one issue at hand. Do not bring up past behavior examples or other issues. You need to stay only with this issue if it is important enough. Not just the current episode, but the underlying issue. “I always feel terrible when you …….”

• Know the REAL issue. State it clearly. Don’t beat around the bush. Try not to be mean, when you are saying it. Try to have some respect and ‘benefit -of-the-doubt ‘ sensitivity.

• No Name Calling. Let me repeat this; No Name Calling.

• Have a Solution Goal in mind for this disagreement. Something like “I want to go somewhere on vacation that we both want to go, not just one of us.” There has to be a solution goal for a more harmonious outcome other than for just one of you.

• Be generous enough if you made your point. When your Partner apologizes, make a joke to end the fight. In other words, if your Partner is hearing you and gets it, end the argument.

• Pick and choose your battles. Every little thing does not warrant you to be mad; even if you have the right to be mad, it just isn’t so earth-shattering.

• Every fight needs a time limit, when you both have said and screamed everything you needed to communicate, stop the discussion. You may even need to give each other some space. Go into the next room or take a walk to cool off. If you haven’t reached your solution goal, understanding, or compromise, just try to agree that the issue is not resolved yet but it makes sense for you both to get some immediate space from the conversation. Put the issue on hold for a moment. The pause might actually give one of you or both of you some more clarity for resolution.

If you don’t bring up issues when they arise in a safe and private environment and try to pretend that you have a conflict-free relationship, the issues will NOT Go Away. Soon, toxic resentment will build between you and your partner. When this begins to happen, over and over again , an issue that may have been easily resolved had it been brought up, talked about, agreed on, and dealt with, is now something that is poisoning your relationship and puncturing the feelings of love and care you have for your partner.

What your ultimate goal is finding the “Fair” in fighting. Dr. Phil said in Happenings “A primary requirement for any fight is to maintain control” Dr. Phil’s article can be seen here http://www.happenings9ja.com/happenings/posts/live-play/parenting/do-you-fight-fair

So don’t avoid disagreement or a necessary fight, just learn how to Fight Fair.