Category: Health and Wellness

Posted on

Using Meditation and Mantras to reach Financial Stability

Setting goals can be easy to do but reaching them can be a challenge.  Unexpected emergencies can come up, or willpower can fail.  Doing daily meditation and using personalized mantras can help you find success.

First, be honest with yourself about what you are capable of.  Mediation can help put you in the right frame of mind for some hard talks with yourself about finances.  Sit in a comfortable room with either silence or music that isn’t distracting on in the background.  Once you are physically comfortable try to calm your mind with several deep steady breaths, focusing on making the exhale just as slow and long as the inhale.  Focus only on your breathing and keep doing this until you feel calm and at ease.  It doesn’t have to be long, as little as five minutes can help.

The important thing is for you to be in a calm frame of mind when you sit down to write out your goal.  Now have all your monthly bills together and write out the amounts, putting an honest average for any bills that change from month to month.  Then write down all your income that happens from month to month, don’t exaggerate, it is important.

Now think about what it is you want to achieve?  What does financial security mean to you?  Just being able to pay your bills? Or do you want to be able to pay your bills and save up a specific amount each month?  Don’t be extravagant because you will just end up disappointing yourself and becoming discouraged if you don’t set realistic goals for yourself.

So when you have all that decided, this is where the mantras can help.  Create a simple short mantra for whatever your goal is and say it to yourself each morning when you get up, and every night before bed.  For example, if your goal is to pay all your bills, save $100 a month and still have a little extra to have fun with, then create a mantra that goes something like this:

Financial stability will be mine.  I will have the income I need to pay all my bills, save $100 and also still get to have fun, each and every month.  I will do what it takes to make this happen because I work hard and I deserve it.”

It is important to always include a reason for this to happen, such as “you work hard,” but also something that helps positively reinforce this such as “I deserve it.”

This will help your subconscious understand what you are trying to accomplish and will send your intention out into the universe to help bring about your success.  The repetition of doing this morning and night will help you remember to control your impulses that might self-sabotage your goals. 

It is important to revisit your goals every couple of months.  Be kind and honest with yourself.  If you have succeeded, then set new goals, if you haven’t, don’t beat yourself up, just try to dial it back and set more realistic goals based on what has gone wrong so far.

Posted on

Digging Deep During Pandemic

Are you single and confused about moving forward with love during this Pandemic — with so much closed and restricted, and with social distancing and beyond? Instead of dwelling on frustrations and limitations, consider focusing on “out of the box,” positive solutions. Here are some ideas!   

  1. Start with YOU
    Now is a great time to pause, take a series of deep breaths, and do a super deep dive into taking care of you! Start by being very honest about how you feel. Let out the wide variety of emotions first through writing, taking a walk in nature, or whatever helps you find peace.Then, in a calm and mindful way, start thinking about what you want to focus on moving forward. Brainstorm and make a crazy idea sheet! Or perhaps you already know what you are working toward, and you can use this as a way of strengthening that resolve. Wherever you are at this point, now is the time to start taking steps to move forward. 

2) Plant Seeds for Meaningful Relationship
When you dream of a relationship that makes your heart overflow with enthusiasm, what are the key elements? Keep track of these items. Who do you really want to be in your relationship? What would you like to let go of (literally or emotionally)? What adventures or accomplishments would be really exciting and fulfilling to experience together? Plant seeds (emotionally) for all of this and more. We can accomplish so much more than just cleaning out our living spaces and getting better organized. We can create the life of our dreams. Start by day dreaming…

3) Drop the Details, and Focus on How You Feel Love

Get out of your head and into your heart, spirit and soul. Focus on what brings you joy and happiness — more than the details of height, hair color, eye color, profession or mode of transportation. Connect with the soul of your soon-to-be-loved-one. Isn’t that what all this is really about? 

Trust your inner knowing, and choose the advisor that calls out to you for confirmation and additional insights. 

Posted on

Financial Stability Through Mental Calm

Managing your finances during COVID-19 might seem like an extra challenge. Whether you took a pay cut, lost your job, or resorted to online retail therapy to fill the absence of routine activities, you might be wondering how you should take care of your finances during the pandemic.

Consider these tips and tools to help you determine how you should be budgeting and what you should avoid in order to maintain your budget.

Research Benefits 

One way you can instill a small amount of financial security amidst the pandemic is by doing your research on unemployment benefits and services. If you received a pay cut, you might actually be eligible for a certain percentage of unemployment benefits. If you still have your job and pay, research your state’s unemployment benefits anyway. You’ll feel empowered by taking the initiative, and you can create a plan if you need to use your state’s unemployment services in the future.

Prioritize Food and Home Expenses

To create a detailed budget that cuts away excess expenses, focus on what you absolutely need to get by, like food, housing, and utilities. Install a budgeting app on your phone to help you find out how much you spend on essentials every month. Once you have divided your paycheck among these three areas, you can place the remaining amount in your savings.

Reduce Clutter in Your Home

Retail therapy not only reduces the amount of money that can go toward essentials, but it also clutters your home. Use this time when you cannot see friends or family to reduce clutter from your life. Clean out your closet and junk drawers, and donate items that are no longer of use to you. Find a financial abundance mantra that will help you instill values of wealth in immaterial things, which will help you clear your mind and focus on what really matters during this time.

Posted on

Strengthen Your Connections

Do you crave more consistency and connection in your life? You can create the life you want by connecting with daily empowering activities and tasks that are powerful and life changing. If you find some that really get your juices flowing, then do them consistently. Or, keep trying new choices for variety. 

Consider these tools: 

Movement: walking in nature, yoga, riding a bike, running, walking the dog

Affirmations: “By taking care of me first, I can handle anything”

“I am connecting to the energy that empowers me”

“Calm, compassion and patience lead the way in my life” 

“Dial down the fear, and replace it with peace, love & hope”

Intentions: I inhale love, and I exhale stress

Breath in peace, breath out anxiety

I surround myself with beauty, health and happiness

Meditations: search YouTube for something new to connect with that calls to you 

Creativity: draw, paint, sing, dance, bake, cook — create

Journal: free writing in a journal helps you process your thoughts & reduce anxiety

Disconnect: remove yourself from 24-7 news, constant screen time

Gain Clarity: When doing mundane tasks like folding laundry, unloading dishwasher, or taking a shower your body is busy, so your mind can open up and flow creative abundance to you. What kinds of questions have you been asking?

Connect: Talk with family and friends by phone, video chat or anyway to bridge that gap. This can be random, or you can schedule regular bonding time. 

The body heals with play, 

the mind heals with laugher 

and the spirit heals with joy

What are you feeding your Mind, Body and Spirit? Pay attention and make adjustments as needed.  Connect with one of our advisors to get answers, clarity or neutral insights. 

Posted on

Stay Hopeful

Stay Hopeful

There is a lot going on in the world, and in your own life. Now is a great time to focus on taking care of yourself — from the inside-out. It is essential to connect with what is most important for you. But right now, with all the uncertainties, do you even know what that is? Let’s focus on the basics.

Hope

Now is the time for deep and connected hope. Hope is the core foundation to build on. Let’s start with powerful self-care ideas. Creating ‘me’ time is essential, find what works best for you.

  • Carve out a private space of solitude (inside or out)
  • Slow Deep Breaths — this simple practice can do wonders
  • Close your eyes and imagine a place of comfort and beauty
  • Actually see it and feel it in your soul. Imagine how it smells, sounds, feels etc
  • Connect with a trusted power beyond yourself (God, Spirit, Universe, Higher Self…)

When you are grounded into nature or your personal power source, you can work together to translate fear, worry and anxiety into faith, trust and hope. This is not silly hope, this is the deep knowing that together, we can all get through our challenges — one step at a time, one day at a time.

Do this again and again, because it should not be a once and done activity. Make this a regular part of your daily life, like eating or brushing your teeth. We are being invited to quietly go within to find the answers we have been searching for all over the place. Guess what? The best place to find those answers is within you. You just need to slow down and ask the really primal questions that you may have been afraid to ask. This is not a scary dark place to fear, that will re-open all the pain from your past. This is like opening yourself to your own super-powers. You need to take the dedicated time over and over to peel through the many layers of the ‘onion’ of your life, to discover the gourmet variety of choices and flavors that you can choose from. All you need to do is believe in yourself and take the first step.

Posted on

Tapping Into Your Imagination To Get Through The Pandemic

Stress and exhaustion can wear on the strongest and most mentally healthy of us.  Especially now when all of our normal routines and ways of dealing with stress are not readily available to us while we are cooped up in our homes.

Things that people normally do to fight off the blues such as going to the gym, meeting up with friends for coffee, and going out on a date night may seem impossible now. 

The old ways of doing things might not be available, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do all the things you need to do from the safety of your own home.  It just takes a little bit of imagination and creativity.  As a kid, you could go anywhere from your bedroom by reading, coloring, and imagining for hours and hours. 

Tap into what you were capable of when you were younger.  For example, if going to the gym was your stress relief, set up a workout regimen in your home.  No equipment, no problem.  Use body weight exercises to get you through this tough time.  There are loads of videos online about how to use your body weight and small areas of your home to get a really good workout in. 

Miss meeting up with your friends for coffee?  Have a virtual coffee catchup online.  There are apps and programs like Facebook Messenger and Facetime that allow virtual chats from anywhere, and group programs like Zoom that allow for multiple people to chat with each other.  Brew a cup of joe, your favorite tea or chill a glass of wine and sit down with a group of your friends online and catch up.  It will do wonders for your mental health.

Missing date night with your loved one? There are loads of options available to spend time together virtually.  Many museums and parks are now offering virtual tours that the two of you could take together, even if you aren’t in the same house. You can go online while talking on the phone or video chatting and take the tours together.  Or do something fun together like playing a video game or starting a movie at the same time and discussing it while you play or watch.  You can even set up virtual dates in some games like Animal Crossing online where you invite your beloved to your in-game museum or watch the sunset together at the beach in the game while you talk or video chat at the same time.  Bonding together in these ways can be surprisingly romantic and will give you memories you can look back on after all this crisis is over.

The important thing is looking out for your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing and being kind to yourself and those you love while we all work on protecting each by staying safe at home.

Posted on

Mindfulness At Home

Mindfulness is important every day of your life.  But it has never been more true than it is now during this time of isolation and world change. There is no doubt that this is a very challenging time for everyone.  But it is very important to keep your mental, emotional, and physical health at the forefront and do whatever it takes to stay healthy at home. 

Isolation can eat away at your wellbeing.  It is insidious and can catch you by surprise.  That is why mindfulness is extremely necessary.

What does mindfulness mean? It is basically bringing your awareness to this moment in time and paying attention to what your mind, body and emotions are telling you. 

For people who are alone right now, it is important for you to reach out to others.  Video chat with friends or family members, or call someone on the phone, even if you don’t feel like it, because you need it and so do they. 

Sometimes you think you are fine but what you are really doing is just distracting yourself from what you are really experiencing.  This is especially true for people who are caregivers to others.  Whether you are a parent or someone who takes care of their parents or other family members, you think about what the people you are responsible for are needing at any given moment.  Always jumping from one situation to the next keeping yourself busy.  But how often do you check in with yourself to see what you need?

This doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, it just needs you to be brutally honest about what it is you find.  Take a moment, even if it is just when you go to the bathroom.  Sit and think about what your body is feeling.  Are your shoulders drawn up and tight?  Do you have pain anywhere?  Those can be just physical issues, but they can also be signs that you are holding on to stress and trauma that you need to deal with.

Do you have trouble getting your mind to calm enough for you to even take stock of what is going on in your body?  That might mean you are not handling your stress well and your mind is trying to distract you from facing the fact that you need to take some time for yourself.

One would think that during this time where stores and theaters are closed, and many people are either out of a job or working from home that it would be easy to take time to take care of yourself.  But if you are a parent whose children are at home, or someone who is looking out for the welfare of others, you are just as busy as ever, just in new and different ways.  So be kind to yourself.  Make sure you check in with yourself every day and do something that makes you smile, even if it is only for a few minutes.  Watch a show that makes you laugh, read a chapter in your favorite book, or listen to music that releases the tension in your shoulders.

You can’t take care of those you love if you aren’t taking care of yourself first.

Do whatever you need to do to stay safe and healthy at home.

Posted on

Practicing Mindfulness at Home

Home is your sanctuary, the place you are excited to come back to after a vacation or time away for any other reason. It’s where you lay your head and where you gather for family meals. Although we appreciate what our homes give us, we can still take it for granted. Here are three ways to help you learn how to practice mindfulness in your own house, even when you’re home all the time.

Give Yourself a Break

We all have the tendency to fill every moment of the day, whether that be with organizing a closet or finishing a long-forgotten project. But what if we took a moment to just be? Practicing mindfulness is all about appreciating the moment for what it is, but you may find that hard to do if you’re constantly in motion.

Find a quiet space in your home, allow yourself to relax, and experience a rush of thankfulness for your health and the roof over your head. You can even meditate as part of your mindfulness practice.

Experience Your Thoughts

Mindfulness is being aware of your feelings and thoughts, and there is no need to shy away from them. Give yourself permission to welcome your thoughts as they enter your mind, and give them a farewell as they exit, all without judgment and without forcing emotion. A thought can be just a thought.

Become Aware of Your Movements

While staying at home, you may walk the neighborhood more. As part of your mindfulness practice, and to make walking more fun, become aware of the experience. Absorb how the sun hits your skin, how the ground feels beneath you, and how the wind breezes through your hair. You can practice this same thing with eating, taking a shower, washing the dishes, or anything else you do in a day.

As you work on your mindfulness, know that you may not be an expert at it right away. It takes time to ease into it. Allow yourself that, too.

Posted on

A Self-Care Schedule

Self care is as important as anything else in your life and may even be what everything else stems from. When you have a self care schedule in place, you’re showing your body and mind some love, finding it easier to forgive your faults and build healthy relationships with others. Here is an example of a self care routine that you may find useful.

Morning

Many people find a guided or active meditation highly beneficial as a jump-start to the day. If you’re new to meditation, start with just three minutes when you first wake up, adjusting as needed to find the time of day and length of meditation that works best for you.

The morning is also the time to make yourself a filling, fulfilling, and healthy breakfast. After all, food is part of self care too. 

Afternoon

Throughout the day, remember to take small breaks from your work. Some ideas for self care may include: stretching, going for a walk, having an afternoon tea, reading a chapter of your book, or enjoying a cuddle session with your pet. Although you may need to get eight hours of your workday in, short 10-minute breaks can give your body the respite it needs to recharge for the rest of your shift.

Remember, too, that lunch and some healthy snacks like nuts, seeds, fruit, and raw vegetables, are important to keeping your body fueled into the evening.

Evening

The evening is your time to decompress from your day. Consider incorporating a skincare routine or luxurious bath. If you’re still feeling lively, include dancing to your favorite music while you prepare dinner into your self care schedule. 

It’s important to do what feels best to you and find time throughout the day to execute your self care plan, even if it’s only 15 minutes. Help yourself to know that you’re worthy of care and attention.

Posted on

At-Home Self Care Techniques

Self care, for many, is a foreign concept because we can get so caught up in our everyday responsibilities that we forget to take the time to care for our needs. To establish your own self care routine, here are three techniques you can start implementing today.

Go Screen-Free

If you’re like most of the world, you may aimlessly check through your phone more often than you’d like. One easy self care technique you can implement is to consciously step away from your screen. Try leaving your phone in another room when you’re sleeping so you aren’t tempted to scroll if you wake up in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. 

Establish a Good Sleep Schedule

A good sleep schedule can improve your mood, reduce stress, empower your immune system by reducing inflammation, and even boost your memory. Aim for a consistent seven to nine hours per night. Try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day so your body can more easily fall into a normal sleep-wake schedule. While you sleep, manifest abundance. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be amazed at the energy you have and how ready you’ll feel to conquer the day each morning.

Eat Whole Foods

For many, food is medicine. What we eat daily can have a strong impact on our health, mood, and more. To make your meals part of your self care plan, try to eat a healthy balance of nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats. It’s also important to drink the recommended eight cups of water throughout the day.

Ultimately, learning how to take care of yourself can heal your soul because it’s rooted in what your body and mind tell you. Maybe self care looks like a bubble bath while reading your favorite book, or a meditation session in a dark room. Your body and mind are telling you what they want — all you have to do is listen.