2012 - a year of Conscious Self Care

It seems a pattern of mine is that I tend to make life changes in huge gigantic leaps, not small bite size pieces that are easier and more manageable to handle.

For example when I got married, I didn’t JUST get married. Getting married alone is enough to warrant at least 12 months counseling  pre and post the BIG DAY.

No, I got married in Paris to the love of my life, a man whom I’d known a total of 9 months in a long distance relationship. I gave up my job, moved interstate to a place where I had no friends or family. We decided to go into partnership with our business yet I had no clue what my role was. Add to this the fact that I was now a step mother to 2 pre-teens and had an ex-wife in the picture and a whole in-law family who had met me once.

Now I’m not the type to make it easy on myself. So I developed a whole identity crisis in relation to what my purpose in life was then (only a little thing right!). I added to this the whole step-monster syndrome not to mention comparing myself to the very present ex wife.  And OMG, what was I thinking.

Now let’s jump forward six years. My marriage has survived, the business has grown. I got in good with the in-laws and I managed to navigate my way into teenage hood with ‘step kids’ without too much alcohol . The ex was actually one of those people that turned out to be my biggest teacher. Who would have guessed?

So now we are in a comfortable position, we think. Yeah! Let’s find our ideal property and move. OK, easy done. Nine months later, we have moved our home and business interstate, expanded the business to include a spa and retreat because we could, left family and friends once again and now have a complete start up business to build.  I don’t even know how to get to Office Works yet!

Breathe Karina.

So if your life can sometimes be a little similar and you need a few tips to help you through the day then I have a couple of tried and tested techniques to help you out.

1. No matter how busy you get, don’t give up your morning ritual. That’s if you have a morning ritual and if you don’t then I suggest you get one. But not just any ritual, it has to be one that grounds you and centres you.

Meditation is ideal and it doesn’t have to be long, just 10 minutes is enough to bring you back into your body and the NOW moment and out of your head and all the worry and stress that comes with that.

My ritual consists of a 15 minute meditation, followed by prayer and setting my intention for the day. I follow this with 5 minutes of writing in my journal which helps clear away the white noise and provides clarity.

2. Finish the day with an upper. No, I don’t mean a chemical upper; I’m talking about the natural kind. Gratitude is the best natural organic upper you could find. Finding the blessing in your day and being grateful for the little things as well as the big is one of the most life changing things you can do.

So even in the midst of what seems like the worst day ever and all you want to do is crawl into bed and hide away, I encourage you to find that one thing you can say, ‘Yep, I can be grateful for that’ and don’t just say it, feel it. The blessing is in the feeling.

3. Let go of the guilt and pat yourself on the back. When your ‘to do’ list is as long as a Bryce Courtney novel and you feel like you’re just not achieving anything then do yourself a favour and pick your top 5 best bets and back a sure thing.

Go through and prioritise your list and then concentrate on just those things. Turn the phone off, the email off and shut the door and work in 90 minute spurts with a break in between.  And by break I mean move around and get out of your office.

Once you have crossed your top 5 off, don’t go down the guilt track for not doing other things.  Pat yourself on the back and do something to celebrate.

Even the horse that wins the Melbourne cup gets a bag of chaff after they’ve been able to cross that race off their list.

So there are a couple of tips that hopefully will help get you through life’s big challenges a bit more balanced and in control.

Next time we will look at a few more ways of dealing with change so that you can come through with not too much damage

Filed under: Health and Wellbeing, Stress Management

  Email This Post

 Print This Post