Tag Archives: Self-improvement

Live one day at a time

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A while back I bought a little poster to hang in my cube with Zen principles/sayings called “Live one day at a time and make it a masterpiece: A – ZEN of Life.” I thought this week I would review the first 6 principles for my daily mission, reflect on them, and think about how to incorporate them into my life.

  1. Avoid negative sources, people, places and habits
  2. Believe in yourself
  3. Consider things from every angle
  4. Don’t give up and don’t give in
  5. Everything you’re looking for lies behind the mask you wear
  6. Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their riches

Weekly mission:

1. Avoid negative sources, people, places, and habits

A tough first one to look at. For some time over the past couple years, I have been the most negative thing in my life. I was run down by all the challenges I’d be trying to overcome or find ways to deal with. It was hard to see positive through the negative. I caught glimpses. Then was knocked back down. Being tired of that way of living is part of what brought me to this journey of self-improvement. So now I face each day trying to recognize opportunity, reminding myself of the ways in which I am doing well, and trying so hard to see positive before negative.

Negative habits. Boy do I have some. Ignoring compliments or turning them into something negative is one I’ve been working on. Simply saying “thank you” instead of arguing with those who compliment me. Sounds simple. But it was hard when I first started trying. I had to pause before responding. But its getting easier.

The other negative habit I choose to focus on improving now is being defensive. Be open to what others say. Give it appropriate thought. Hear what they are saying before reacting. Assume the positive intention. The key will be to be really honest with myself. Get rid of excuses. And work to fix those negative things I discover instead of being upset about them.

2. Believe in yourself

Step 1: know yourself. Step 2: Believe that you can be the person you want to be. Step 3: Love the person I am each step of the way. Easy peasy 😉 Right? Easier than I thought actually. And it feels really good. Taking time to really get to know who I am, consider who I want to be, and recognize the value in who I am has been a really good experience. So far. I have a long way to go. Forever, probably. But like the title says, “Live one day at a time”

My mantra “You’re doing better than you think you are”, from week one should help me along this journey.

Thanks for reading!

~Teresa

This Thing They Call Vacation

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Kelsey McNatt - Polyvore.com

Kelsey McNatt – Polyvore.com

This week will be a little different as I am off to the East Coast for a few days of exploring museums, photographing NYC, and my first trip to the Jersey Shore! But this doesn’t mean I’m taking a vacation from my self-improvement and my blog. But this week’s missions will have a little different flavor. I love New York. I had the privilege of taking a photography class at Parson’s School of Design one summer. Spending that summer living in New Jersey and exploring the city every day was something I’ll never forget. I love architectural photography. NYC provides me continuous inspiration. I can’t wait to get back there and do some shooting! The food, the people, the museums, the shows, I love it all! Hoping to soak it all up while were there. We’ll also be taking two days to head down to Atlantic City and Sea Isle City. Roger spent his childhood summers there with his family. I’m looking forward to seeing some of his childhood hangouts and maybe get a little beach time with a book 🙂

So with travel in mind, my daily missions for this week are:

Monday: Investigate things to do in NYC. Identify one must do activity.

  • My must do activity is take a tour. I found several free-tours (well, tip for tour kind of things) that explore some of the behind the scenes history and life of NYC. I love tours. Hearing someone tell you stories about the place you’re standing. So much fun! Ones I’m considering:

Tuesday: “Treat Yo Self” to something to make my travel experience better (I’m not a good flier and airports make me super anxious).

Wednesday – Saturday (since I don’t know what this trip will bring, I will likely accomplish these missions as possible throughout my trip)

  • Post a photo I took that I’m particularly proud of
  • Buy a one of a kind something special for myself
  • Visit a museum I’m never been to
  • Ask a local what their favorite thing about NYC is and try to experience that thing

Sunday Weekly mission: Start a photobook of our trip (finish by June 30th because I have a coupon!)

Clean and Shiny

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Something awesome happened today. I woke up feeling happy and light. I grabbed a skirt out of my closet that I’d been feeling too ugly to wear and rocked it! I did my make-up and looked beautiful. I left the house feeling happy, pretty, and confident and looking forward to all my day was going to bring. I felt so good that I was afraid I had gone over the edge and become one of those obnoxiously happy people. There was a bounce in my step and a smile on my face that could not be hidden. No, nothing special happened to make me feel this way. It was just me. It felt amazing.

Today, I didn’t dread going to see people. Usually seeing people, even close friends and family is hard for me. I dread the “how are you doing”  or the “are things going better for you” questions that are inevitable. I usually either have to lie and smile, gently change the topic, or share how things really are and risk another person’s pity or uncomfortable silence. I know no one intends to be rude or insensitive. But chronic pain, mystery medical conditions, and stressful work are not topics anyone wants to talk about or hear about. When that’s all I could see about my life, it was hard to face people.

Hoping more of these days are coming my way!

Now, on to business. Here’s a brief update on my remaining daily missions and this week’s weekly mission.

Clean out my work email

So Friday I had a tooth impolitely yanked out of my mouth in preparation for an implant. They ended up not being able to do the implant because I didn’t have enough bone. So they crammed some bone graft in there and sent me away with a hole in my mouth. Ouch. This put a kink in my evening plans. I spent much of the rest of the night sleeping or high on Vicodin. That didn’t lend itself well to cleaning out my work email. So I did that on Saturday instead. But I didn’t get nearly far enough on that massive project. I have something like 10k emails in my inbox and 17k emails in my sent email. This was definitely not a 5 minute task. Maybe 5 minutes, 2x day, for the next two months. Anyone out there with tips on how to manage one’s email inbox? I started reading the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. Apparently, there a bunch of tips on how to more efficiently manage email. Here’s hoping I find one that works for me.

Clean off dresser and nightstand

This feels like a task that I do every other week. Again, a result of the flat surface problem. Take off clothes, pile on dresser, repeat. Employing the one minute rule here will be very important moving forward. I also identified some additional things to help me maintain a clean dresser. Make sure I have a hamper to put dirty clothes in. Sounds obvious, right? But we have a laundry shoot. And the practice has been to throw clothes down the laundry shoot instead of have a hamper in the bedroom. The other is to use a rack to hang clothes that I plan to wear again as opposed to piling them on the dresser. I like to wear things more than once. I change out of my work clothes when I get home from work and it seems silly to me to just throw those clothes down to be washed after only one wearing. Unless of course I’ve spilled on myself (which happens more often than I’d like). So, clothes that are to be worn again are hung on the rack on my door. Clothes that have run their course are put in the hamper or thrown down the shoot. And use the one minute rule to pick up the strays around the room each day. Send your positive energy my way. This simple plan is one I know I will struggle with. But here’s to maintaining a clean bedroom space!

Weekly

  • Complete my first “Power Hour”

I chose four things of my power list to tackle today.

  • Replace burnt out light bulbs in the garage, dining room, and living
  • Run the cords for my computer properly
  • Clean off end table next to couch
  • Clean off and remove little table next to the china cabinet

Ok, it was more like a power 45 minutes, but all tasks were successfully completed. With one tiny little exception. I ran out of light bulbs so there is still one missing bulb in the dining room. So that task will remain on the list. And we’ll need to add buy light bulbs too 🙂

This was a good week. I love my house even more when its clean. And it looks so much better these days. With the exception of the office (adding to the power hour). The office is downright scary.

Clutter Be Gone + Power Hour

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This week’s missions are proving to be invigorating. And not scary at all. Unlike last week’s journey of self exploration and affirmation. Monday and Tuesday’s missions were to:

  1. Go through the house and take two things from each room to donate or give to a friend.
  2. Create the “Power Hour” list and post it on the fridge

I grew up in a house that was stuffed floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with stuff. I rebel against this philosophy of home “decorating”. I am sentimental and there are things I just won’t part with. But in general, I just don’t like “stuff”. Watching the Hoarders TV show makes my skin crawl and immediately want to get rid of half of my stuff. So I was really looking forward to this mission.

I successfully dug into each room of the house, including bathrooms and the basement. Although, I skipped my husband, Roger’s, bathroom. The only thing I have in there is extra toilet paper and allergy pills. Not giving up either of those! We recently did a whole house evacuation of stuff (thanks to a little house fire) so it was a little tougher to find things to get rid of in some places. We’re still in replacement mode in the kitchen. And I got rid of about 50% of my clothes. But still, I managed to create this pile of give-aways. Not pictured are the empty shampoo bottles taking up space in my bathroom (a bad habit I vow to resolve).

20150526_213959Items slotted for donation include:

  • art I no longer feel a need to display,
  • candle holder thingys,
  • Partylite candles I paid way too much for and have never used,
  • chair cushions for chairs I do not own,
  • LOTS OF BOOKS,
  • an extra hair dryer,
  • leggings (because really, they’re just not for me),
  • some college text books I told myself I might use one day

See anything you want? Let me know. It goes to the charity on Saturday.

Tuesday’s Mission – to make a Power Hour list was inspired by the podcast Happier, by Gretchen Rubin. If you keep following my bloggy journey, you’re likely to encounter several references and inspirations related to Ms. Rubin. I bought her book, The Happiness Project some time ago. Then proceeded to not read it until recently. My cousin turned me on to her podcast, and a 12 hour drive to Tulsa gave me just the opportunity to do something good for myself and listen to it. I scribbled down several helpful tips and things I can’t wait to try.

Now that that unpaid advertisement is over. I’ll explain the Power Hour. The idea of the Power Hour is to create a list of to dos that are NOT time sensitive. Things you just never seem to get around to doing because you never have to. Then, set aside time once per week to tackle the things on your Power Hour list. If you get through one or 10, that’s ok. Just start ticking things off the list. And add to it as things come to mind. I love this part, because if I don’t write something down, it rattles around in my head screaming at me to be remembered. Its quite rude. So writing things down helps me shut up that little voice in my head gently reminding me to do something. To be honest, I doubt the power hour will happen every week for me. Maybe once a month. But that’s better than nothing. I’ll share my list with you to give you the idea. I’d love to hear if you try it!

  • Replace burnt out light bulbs in the garage, dining room, and living
  • Run the cords for my computer properly (lessen the crazy tripping hazard)
  • Frame and hang art/photos on the wall
  • Clean off end table next to couch
  • Clean off and remove little table next to the china cabinet (it serves no purpose but to collect junk)
  • Assemble the breakfast nook chair
  • Go through post-fire paperwork in the basement
  • Get rid of old college reading materials I will NEVER read again

To the fridge the list shall go! Stay tuned for this weeks Weekly Mission where I start tackling the Power Hour list.

This week is going to be so liberating! I can’t wait to clean out and clear my head 🙂

Thanks for reading

~Teresa

Pride Isn’t a Bad Thing + Choosing to See Opportunity

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Two for the price of one today. I wrote a post yesterday, but before I saved it, my computer crashed. Technology and I don’t always get along so well. You’ll just have to trust me that it was beautiful and funny 🙂 So today you get twice the amount of stuff floating around in my head.

Yesterday’s mission was to

   2. Tell someone something I did this past week that I’m proud of

Image from: https://ydandp.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/xii/

Surprisingly, it was this blog. I tried something new and I’m proud of it. Its exciting, scary, and pretty fun. 48 people viewed my 1st blog post. That felt HUGE to me. The response from my friends and family was so supportive and encouraging. I have no intention of walking around feeling like “I’m the shit”, but I do feel proud that I not only created and chose to start this journey for myself, but that I shared it with others.

I’m pretty great at celebrating others, but terrible at celebrating myself. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told others to recognize their strengths and take time to celebrate their accomplishments no matter how small. But I can’t remember the last time I did that for myself. For as long as I can remember I’ve downplayed any successes or accomplishments. “Oh it’s no big deal”, “That’s nothing special”, “Everybody can do that”. Sound familiar?

I know its important to know yourself. And there is nothing wrong with recognizing your strengths and being proud of what you do (or maybe its that we should do things we’re proud of).

Moving right along… (pushing save draft now)

Today’s mission was to

3. Choose a positive word that describes me and meditate on it.

My word – Opportunity

Image from: http://www.quoteswave.com/picture-quotes/363209

I was slapped in the face with opportunity today. I can’t share much about it yet, but change is on the horizon for me that could bring great opportunities. Thinking about this word for minute, really, there is opportunity every day. Lots of things get in my way of seeing it. Fear. Negative thoughts. My busy life. Feeling tired. I think sometimes I only see the big opportunities. But, each day brings small opportunities to take advantage of.  Its fun to think of what a day might look like if I choose to the the opportunities it brings with a different attitude.

Whenever I run a meeting, I try to have an agenda to keep us focused, take notes to help us remember what we decided, and a list of action steps so we all walk out knowing what we are supposed to do to accomplish what is needed. Today, my agenda item was to meditate on a word. This blog is serving as my meeting minutes (which is really good for me, if I don’t write it down, I don’t remember). And my action step is to try to see opportunities large and small and take advantage of them in the best way I can.

Bonus Material: Something else interesting has surfaced as a result of this project. It has a secondary benefit of giving me something to focus on when things start to feel negative or overwhelming. I can pop over to my daily mission and take a moment to think about what I said I was going to do today. It pulls me out of whatever funk or negative thinking I’m experiencing and reminds me focus. Kind of like pinching yourself to remember to be in the present. So yay! Double win!

Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend!

~Teresa

The Right Attitude

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Today was not an easy day. Nothing awful. But I did NOT feel I embodied the “I Like Me” attitude. I felt like I was behind at work. I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to be better than I was. But I kept reminding myself to pull out of it and focus. Check my attitude and remember that even when I’m not my best, I’m still doing pretty great.

So my daily mission for today was to

  1. Say out loud: 3 things I like about myself

So, in the quiet of my office I say

  1. I like my eyes. Plain and simple, they are pretty.
  2. I keep trying. I fail a lot. But I keep trying. I might want to throw in the towel on a regular basis. But then I get over it and try again.
  3. I am a genuinely caring person. I give a lot to people and really care about what happens to them. I want to leave this earth knowing that I cared for people. Shared my heart with them. And knowing that my caring presence was meaningful in their lives. I try to practice this every day. And I think I do a pretty good job.

One other thing to note about this blog. It will not be beautiful writing. Its just coming out raw. Punctuation and proper grammar be damned. If I’m going to do this, I need to not worry about how good it is. So welcome to my brain, my thoughts, and my life.

Good luck on your first daily mission if you’re joining me on this adventure.

~Teresa

I Like Myself

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This week’s theme is “I Like Myself”. Seemed a logical place to start. Now comes the hard part. Thinking about myself 5 minutes a day and sharing my adventure with you all (ok, probably it’s just my husband who is reading this, but maybe someone else will later).

Dailies

  1. Say out loud: 3 things I like about myself
  2. Tell someone something I did this past week that I’m proud of
  3. Choose a positive word that describes me and meditate on it.
  4. Write down 3 concrete things I’m good at
  5. Ask a friend what they like most about me
  6. Find an image that expresses who I am

Weekly

  • Write a mantra and post it on my mirror

Stay tuned to see how the week turns out! Feel free to play along and do your own daily and weekly missions.

~Teresa