Learning is a beautiful thing!

Dear blog readers,  I apologize for not posting a January 15 blog.  I haven’t in the least given up on this blog and continue to be excited about the future of it.  I had 5 severe sinus infections and kept thinking I’d post something in another day or two but I lost an incredible amount of energy and had severe headaches.  The good news is I am now feeling much better and am ready to get on with the future of this blog.  I may be making some changes to the format of this blog and the organization and approach, and I may wait till I switch to WordPress to do.  I have many thoughts and plans for this blog going on and I am glad to be back writing it again.

Today I would like to talk about how learning to manage money is learning a new skill and can be compared to learning in a school classroom or learning any new skill.  It is a common experience for people to experience guilt, shame and a lot of negative energy when they haven’t fine tuned their money management skills as far as they liked.  I certainly have.  It also is common for people to experience lower self esteem when they aren’t far enough along in their own eyes in their money management journey; however, having low self esteem or feeling guilty doesn’t help you manage money better.  Feeling bad about yourself could affect your immune system, physical health, mental health and spiritual health and will make it more difficult to learn a new skill, not easier.

Our culture sometimes tells up to criticize ourselves for our mistakes instead of celebrate the wonderful things we have learned from them and celebrate that we are now closer to success because of the valuable education we experienced from making a mistake.  

Money management is a skill and learning to manage money is something we learn, not that different from taking a class in a classroom.  There are literal classes in money management and books and articles on the topic, but if you aren’t in a literal class,  I challenge you to think of your informal learnings from books, articles and valuable experiences (the value from experiences is ofter overlooked) as being similar to a class.  As you put together what you learned from experience with what you have read in a book or online, it is not that different than putting together stuff for a paper or studying for an exam.

The difference lies in that we don’t think of our experiences being as valuable and educational as they are.  Also, if you didn’t get a concept right away in a class, you might not criticize yourself the way you do if you don’t learn from a life lesson right away.  Learning in life isn’t that different from learning in a class, and there is no need to criticize yourself, put guilt or shame on yourself, because your learning process took longer.  Learning is a beautiful thing no matter how long it takes.  Education is always valuable and good.

Let’s stay positive and upbeat about all our learnings in a class or in life because they are all good!

Copyright, Sandie Edwards, January 31, 2023.

New Year's Goals

 

Hi everyone!  I am sorry this post is about a day late!  I was so busy doing my own goal setting and goal program that I didn’t get around to writing this post on goal setting.  This year I did Learning Strategies: Clear Mind ~ Bright Future program. I thought it was an awesome program and very helpful in getting the new year off to a great start.

Anyway, New Years is a great time of year to evaluate where we are and where we want to be.  Some people know exactly what their goals are and want great strategies to achieve them.  Others may not have created goals.  If you are in the later category, it is a natural time of year to think about what you really want in your life, what would make you happier or your life easier or more fun or rewarding.  Out of the blue it may be hard to know what you want so I suggest you consider the below categories:

·        Career or volunteering

·        Relationships

o   Friendships

o   Significant other

o   Support team of support groups, therapists, coaches, doctors, ministers, nutritionist, mentor, mastermind group, etc.

·        Money, abundance, Prosperity, general finances, saving money for a goal

·        Education

o   Career advancement

o   Personal pleasure or a hobby or lessons or personal study

·        Spirituality

o   Do you want to be more kind or generous or develop another quality?

o   Do you want to develop or improve your prayer or meditation practice?

·        Health

o   Exercise

o   Weight loss

o   Financial health, spiritual health or emotional/mental health (there are a lot of different ways to look at health).

·        Home Decorating or remodeling

·        Self-improvement

These are just some general categories that come to mind.  You may have a goal or project in a category I didn’t list.

        Some questions to answer:

·        What would make me happier?

·        If I could change one thing in my life, what would it be?

·        What is one thing I could do for fun regularly that would improve the quality of my life?

·        What do I want from life?

If you come up with an answer to any of the above questions, set a goal around that idea. If you are not sure what to do or how to get started, email me at selfhelpwithsandie57@gmail.com.  I will email you back my ideas or if you would like to be featured in a future blog post, let me know that and I will do that.  The basic approach is to ask yourself what you want, then brainstorm and list as many ideas as you can, without judging or editing your ideas, just listing your ideas as to how you might get what you want or achieve it.  If you have difficulty coming up with ideas, come back another day or once a week and jot down ideas later or if the idea comes while you are at the grocery store, jot it down on a notepad on your phone.  Give yourself time to come up with ideas and ask a friend if she or he has any ideas.  Eventually you will come up with a goal and how to achieve it and be on your way to improving your life.

Copyright, Sandie Edwards, January 2, 2023.

Developing a healthy, loving relationship with yourself

 

        Having a strong, healthy relationship with yourself is critical to your own happiness.  It is also essential to having good relationships with others.  When you have a strong relationship with yourself, you will be self-confident and love yourself in a healthy way.

        When I first started teaching computer skills at a community college, I was unsure of myself as a teacher as I had never taught in a community college setting before.  I was working with a life coach at the time, and she suggested I write things I love about myself as a teacher every day.  I don’t remember whether we had a certain number of characteristics about myself as a teacher to write each day.  When looking back at my journal, it looks like I wrote about 4 things I liked about myself as a teacher daily.  Sometimes more and sometimes only 3 things. 

I wrote in detail why I liked this characteristic of myself and gave specific examples of this characteristic. Doing this daily for the rest of my first semester teaching really changed my view of myself as a teacher.  I saw all I had to offer.  I saw how not having as much knowledge and experience as a teacher who taught for 20 years already had positives too.  I got to know myself better through in-depth journaling about all I had to offer.  I had to brainstorm and study myself and observe myself to find all I have to offer when I didn’t see it at first. It improved my relationship with myself and how I felt about myself. It was a creative writing task as well as a task that made me more self-aware.

Anyone can do this task.  It just takes willingness, commitment and reflection.  You don’t need to do this about your job.  You can write about yourself in general. After writing about what I loved about myself as a teacher for about 2 weeks, I got a second journal and wrote in it what I loved about myself as a person in general.  I kept writing about myself as a teacher and also daily wrote about myself as a person.  I am not sure exactly how long I did this before I compiled a big list of what I liked about myself, but probably about a year later.  I read through my daily entries and created a list a list of 134 things I love about myself. 

Just knowing you have that many things you love about yourself will boost your self-confidence even if you can’t keep the details of the list in mind off the top of your head.

Let me share a few tips of how I did this:

1.    Each day I did this I simply reflected on that day and what was positive about myself that day.

·        What did I like about myself?

·        What did I do well that day?

·        What positives does this say about me as a person?

You don’t have to accomplish something major.  Any minor thing about your attitude while you did your dishes or your commitment to exercise.  You might like several things about yourself related to one activity (this is how you come up with 134 things).  You might like that you exercise regularly.  You might like that you keep to your exercise goals and don’t give up when you get tired.  You might like your positive attitude towards exercise even if you get tired.

2.   You might list a general characteristic like courage, strength or determination.  You might list this same characteristic on multiple days but each day you list different specific examples of this characteristic in action in your life. All the different examples will help you become more self-aware and understand the depth of this characteristic in your life.  As you write different examples, you may find new specifics you will love about yourself. It is really a fun process, a revealing process, and a powerful process.

3.   Choose a special journal to write in that is decorated nicely and a picture you identify with.  My what I love about myself as a teacher journal said on the front cover: “Shoot for the Moon.  Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.”  My what I love about myself in general journal cover shows a picture of a woman on a side view with a rainbow of colors coming from her, butterflies, feathers, etc. Harder to describe, but it reminded me of my beauty within in so many ways and areas.  You don’t have to use a special journal, but I recommend it.  At least keep all your entries each day in the same notebook whether it be a spiral notebook or a special journal.  Keeping all entries together will help you later compose the big list of all the things you love about yourself.

Good luck with composing your daily lists and big list eventually!  I’d love to hear about your experience with this.  Unfortunately, with google blogger (the blog software I am currently using) only other google blog owners can post comments.  But feel free to email me your thoughts and if you’d like me to share your comments with the bigger community that reads this blog, let me know and I will post your comments.  I plan to change blog software in the spring so you can easily post comments.

Copyright, Sandie Edwards, December 14, 2022.

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

    What would I do if I knew I could not fail?  How could I know such a thing anyway?  Failure can be defined as a condition of not reaching the desired result as if that was the end of the story.  But isn't that condition temporary?  The experience that took you to that condition of supposably not reaching the desired result is actually a part of the sequence of your journey towards success.  At this place of not momentarily reaching the desired result, you have gained valuable knowledge to lead you one step closer towards reaching the desired result.

    Failure is usually seen as something to be avoided, but is learning something to be avoided? And when you fall down, isn't learning the main thing that takes place when you get up and realize what caused the tumble in the first place? So are mistakes really things to be avoided when afterwards you reflect on better ways to reach your goals?

    Are mistakes part of the process of failure or part of the process of success?  A process is a series of actions and changes that lead to a desired result. What if you knew any worthwhile goal involved a process of awkwardly stumbling, managing to rise up, falling down again, getting up once more and just stumbling around some more until you attain the outcome finally with poise?

    What if since individual actions and temporary results are marks of progress along the way, should they be defined by a one-time declaration such as "failure" or "success"? What if you knew life was just a process that tends towards progress?  Since this process is positive and marked by progress, it is more than possible to visualize and wholeheartedly believe in a successful outcome.

    What if you knew in all of life that falling down is a natural and essential part of the journey as leaping up is also sometimes a part of it? So if you are on a journey, how could you fail? A journey (a pilgrimage from one place to another) is obviously not a one-time event, but just goes onto continued growth in spite of how long it takes to reach another place.

    Where would you go if you knew you could not fail?  Where would your journey take you? What positive processes would you let become notes of progress on your journey?Where would you go?

 

    What freedom would you know when you let go of fear of "failure" and changed the way you looked at it all together? What strength would fill your days as you saw yourself on a journey where you could not fail? What strength would fill you when you stop spending energy entangled in fear of failure and worried about temporary outcomes? What would happen when you became free to direct all your energy to successful outcomes?  

    What would happen in your life if you saw yourself on a journey towards discovering, revealing, unpeeling more and more light to help you clearly see how to reach your goal?  What if instead of seeing yourself as moving three steps forward, two steps back, you realized every step was a step forward because you were learning and such education about life and yourself would enable you to reach your goals? 

    What would happen? What would you create in your life if you knew you could not fail?

Copyright, Sandie Edwards, November 30, 2022.

A Prayer to help you become more authentic and real

Below is a prayer I wrote back in 2011 on my journey to become more real.  I prayed it every day for over a year at least.  While it includes ideas about a healthy relationship with yourself and ideas about moving away from people pleasing, it highlights my belief that we are all unique and therefore have a special role to play during our lifetime and the world misses out big time if we don't become real so we can play that role.  Feel free to use this prayer for your own journey. If you do not believe in God or are not the praying type, hopefully some of ideas about your relationship with yourself can help you with your own relationship with yourself and help you move away from people pleasing.  Everyone, please feel free to comment.  I have become aware that not everyone can comment due to way google blog is set up so if you'd like to comment and can't, please email me your comments and I can post them.  I am planning to move to a better blog software in the spring that will allow everyone to comment.

Dear God,

 

Grant me the courage I need today to be my real & authentic self so I can live freely and fully.  Instead of focusing on how I might come across, free me to live in present moment so my real self might soar.  While continuing to soar above any judgments or criticisms from others, give me the strength of an eagle and the grace of a dove. 

 

Strong in my relationship with myself, thriving on complete security & breathing in the assurance that I am OK right here right now.  Please delicately hold my tender heart as I ask you to increase my self-love so I can be completely authentic and fully alive.  Redirect my focus from a futile search for outer security if others tell me if I am OK to a constant inner knowing, embracing and valuing of myself so I can feel my self-worth in a deeper, more reliable way. 

 

Help me love & accept myself right here right now, not at some vague point in the future when I am supposeably better, more together, stronger, or making fewer mistakes.  Grant me the security that only comes from knowing my self-love is constant and unconditional, regardless of successes or failures, mistakes or victories.  Help me rely and depend on my incredible self-love and not desperately seek out love from others, but know with complete assurance I have more than enough love right here right now within myself. 

 

God, grant me more than enough courage to be myself without thought as to how others might respond.  When others do respond, help me to continue to look within as to what to do or say next & help me continue to be spontaneous, knowing & valuing my self-worth as coming from being, not a certain type of doing.  As others respond to me throughout the day, help me value my relationship with myself more than the relationship with anyone I might encounter.  In a deep and profound way, help me experience my love for myself as constant & more than enough.

 

God, in any and every situation I encounter today, free me to be able to allow my real self to dance and be carefree, loving myself and staying the moment, being led by you to freely let my authentic self unfold in whatever shape or form I take, detached from others responses and in tune with my inner beauty. 

 

God, help me today be the person you created me to be because if I don't the world loses a precious gift that they only could have received from me.  While I owe it to you God, I owe it more importantly to every person I might encounter today and I owe it to myself for my own peace and happiness.  God, strengthen and solidify the belief that even if someone does not appreciate the gift they have received from me being my authentic self, they will be blessed by it none the less, even if they don't ever see it. 

 

God, help me let go of fear.  Fear that I am not strong enough to be the person you created me to be.  Fear of what others think.  Fear of being hurt & rejected.  Help me also let go of the fear that I am not strong enough to live the carefree, spontaneous life you created me to live.  Fill me with your strength, your courage, your faith.  Do all of this through me, bringing glory and honor to you so I can be forever grateful to you.  Amen.

Copyright, November 14, 2022, Sandie Edwards.

  

Authenticity: Being real...

 

I’d like to share some thoughts I had early on in my recovery journey as I was just beginning to create my relationship with myself in a healthier way.   I had always wanted to be able to just be myself, having always been a people pleaser and a person who tried to put on the correct mask for whatever the occasion.  In December 1995, I never got around to writing a Christmas letter so in January 1996, I wrote the New Years letter below and sent it out to all my family and friends:

 

I am celebrating the experience of starting to know unconditional self-worth, of discovering a new relationship with myself, living in the moment and being more alive and thereby being on the way to a great future in 1996.

I feel I have a right to be for the sake of being. Where does this sentence come from?  I have always felt I was alive to prove my worth and thereby find it in some activity, status, achievement, award, etc. Unconditional worth was a theory I gave lip service to but could not comprehend.

I want to smell the pine needles and feel the wind blow. As leaves brush against each other, I will run down the hill while my hair blows into my face. I want to feel what it is like to have my hair in my face as opposed to lying on the side of my head. I also want to notice what it is like to see through strands of hair instead of straight though my glasses.  It is so easy to live without noticing you are alive.  Small things are often more important than big things.

Life is too short to worry about what people think.  It is too brief to be concerned with how my life should be. If I let my life unfold, let my spirit dance, and give myself freedom to be myself, then I will become who I am supposed to be.

Being myself is not looking for the right way to look. It is just looking, thinking and wondering. It is not trying to make my eyes a different color.  It is taking the eyes I have and seeing.  This means seeing the world with my opinions and my idiosyncrasies and my dreams.  And if I am color blind I can know it is not a defect but a gift.  No one else in the whole world can see like me. Some people could choose to label color blindness as a negative trait because they don’t know the positive things about it because they are not color blind.

Part of what it means to be alive is to hear with a confidence that doesn’t ask for approval. In the past I have thought, “What am I supposed to hear?”  I was therefore distracted from hearing, living and discovering.  The self dies when she thinks her natural way of hearing is flawed, and when she believes she must hear in a way she is uncapable of hearing.  My self is being reborn; my relationship with myself is starting anew.

I used to define myself by the classes I took, the grades I made, the major I was in, any awards or accomplishments etc.  I think defining myself is limiting thing because I may stop not realizing I can grow beyond those words.  If I was an art therapist, I could say, “I am an art therapist.” But what does that really mean?  Each art therapist is a unique individual like any other person in any other profession.  I am not what I do; I am a human being, not a human doing.  I have tremendous power by believing in myself more and more, in more creative ways and in stronger ways.  That is the key to my future.

This is my first year to send a letter and not list every activity I was doing, each class I took in school, etc.  I did not do that because, for me, that would have been a way to prove my worth.  The news I value the most this year is what is going on inside of me.

Happy New Year! Let’s reach for the stars! Won’t you come and celebrate with me?

Copyright, October 31, 2022, Sandie Edwards 

 

Introduction to my blog....

 

 

Hello there!

I am Sandie and have been on this journey called life for 50+ years.  I have valued self-improvement for as long as I can remember.  I have worked hard to find answers to my personal problems. Some of these problems include overcoming blocks to my happiness and peace of mind, such as depression and OCD, graduating from a university with a reading disability, and discovering my true and authentic self-“becoming real.”  I have found over 130+ reasons to love and celebrate myself. The solutions to my problems I discovered through trial and error and will be useful in helping you overcome any problems you may have.

Each day I continue to strive to grow and improve. I hope to share with you some of the lessons, techniques for problem solving, and gratitude and joy I have experienced over the last 50+ years in this blog.

In Practice Good Mental Health, I will address the following:

·        Becoming real

·        Having an awesome relationship with yourself

·        Developing and achieving exciting goals

·        Creating and maintaining an affirmation practice

·        Visualization

·        Bringing joy to your life through a gratitude practice

·        Creating a good support team or improving the one you have

·        Finding more ways to support yourself

·        Creating balance and making time for rest and breaks

·        Having good overall health, including physical health, financial health, spiritual health and emotional health

·        Overcoming Fear of failure and fear of success

·        How to brainstorm your way through any problem

·        How the curious mind is a part of brainstorming and creative problem solving

·        Finding the answer to your problems within

·        Art therapy and Mandalas

·        And so much more

Together we will discover solutions and new approaches that will help you improve your own life. I will encourage you to post your thoughts in the comment section.  

I hope to share my experiences to make your life happier and easier, to develop a self-help community where we can share and learn and support each other, and to make a difference in the world using skills I haven’t had an audience to share with before.

I hope you will let me know what helps and what topics might be helpful in the future.

This blog is for anyone who wants to improve their life and would like some fresh ideas and innovative approaches to self-help.  If you want to improve your mental health, learn new coping skills, discover new approaches to navigating life’s dilemmas and find new ways to maneuver through tough times or just bring more joy and ease into your life, read on! Post comments! Keep coming back! I will write a new entry twice a month! See you on the 1^st and 15^th of each month!

Copyright, October 14, 2022, Sandie Edwards