1.
Based on your reflections, and on a scale of
1 to 10 (ten being optimal wellbeing), where do you rate your A-physical
wellbeing, B-spiritual well-being, C-psychological well-being? Why?
A-I rate my physical well-being
a 6, mostly due to existing health issues. I cannot completely overcome these
issues, but I am working to adapt and work around them. I am somewhat satisfied
with my diet and activity level, yet I still have a lot of room for physical
improvements.
B-My spiritual well-being
is improving due to all of the information from these courses I am learning and
processing. I would rate my spiritual well-being a 7 at this point in time. The
concepts in these wellness courses are clicking in my mind, and I find myself
mindfully incorporating practices in my everyday life.
C-My psychological
well-being needs the most development at this point in my life. I still find
myself battling with immediate negative emotions and reactions, and I struggle
with not expressing myself the way my mind wants to in a given moment. I almost
feel like I have to suppress my feelings, but I am very slowly learning I can
express myself in a less damaging way. This is a difficult transition, and I
would rate my psychological well-being a 4 as of the date of this entry.
2.
Develop a goal for yourself in each area
(physical, spiritual, psychological).
One physical personal goal
is to overcome my tendency to use not feeling well as an excuse to skip a
workout. Instead, I will compromise when I am not feeling well and participate
in a lower intensity workout. I also want to prevent myself from overdoing it
on days I feel well.
My spiritual goal is to
continue on my journey of minimalism, reducing attachment to physical objects,
and focus more on finding my own peace. The more calm and content I feel, the
better I seem to treat others.
My psychological goal is to
catch myself before I say something negative, then mindfully choose a more
positive way of relaying the same message. I hope this practice can become more
natural in the future, and lead to a more constant positive state of mind.
3.
What activities or exercise can you implement
in your life to assist in moving toward each goal?
I can reach my physical
goal by scheduling my workouts and writing them on a calendar for the purpose
of accountability. Since I use Sundays as my day to plan for my week, I will
just incorporate a workout schedule that I can stick to when I am planning our
other activities and meals for the week.
I can work toward my
spiritual goal in the same way. During my weekly planning, I believe it would
benefit me to plan quiet time for myself when I can shut off the rest of the
world and focus on completely relaxing to a state of peace.
My psychological goal is
going to take a lot more effort, and I will spend much more time practicing to
reach this goal. I will take a few ideas from the text and mentally ask myself
two questions before reacting: 1. Will this response cause me or someone else
suffering?, and 2. Does this response align with my goal of integral health?
4.
Complete the relaxation exercise The Crime of
the Century. Describe your experience. (What it beneficial? Frustrating? etc.)
I will be honest. I am
starting to feel irritated by these exercises, but I am not sure I can pinpoint
the reason. I feel like certain activities are very forced and do not come
naturally. I also feel like I have to put forth a lot of mental effort to
create the scenarios described. For example, creating specific colors and
imagining certain areas on the body are difficult, and my brain almost seems
like it is fighting me. I also found I associated colors with certain emotions, other than what was being described in the exercise. I wish I could understand why I am mentally resisting,
but I suspect it may have something to do with my mind wishing it would hurry
up and just be over instead of enjoying the experience and taking it for what
it is, an exercise to relax.
Hello Bree,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog! Your spiritual and psychological goals look to be very beneficial to me because I as well need to shut myself off from the world for a while so that I can focus on me, and I need to think about others feeling before I say something negative in return. Your strategy of planning things ahead of time and asking yourself a few questions from the text are really great ideas. I believe that if anyone can open themselves up to giving new things a chance anything can help. I really liked your honesty in your blog, especially at the end where you mentioned “your mind is wishing it would hurry up and just be over instead of enjoying the experience and taking it for what it is an exercise to relax”. That is exactly what I did, took it for what it was and I propped my feet up on the desk and closed my eyes, I even fell asleep and had to re-hear it again, but I really needed and enjoyed that nap and will probably use that exercise assignment later to put me to sleep as well ;).
Hi Bree, great job this week and I really enjoyed your post. It sounds like you have some really realistic and achievable goals. I tend to agree with you on the relaxation exercise, if I am not into it, my brain shifts into "when will this be over mode," "is the whole thing going to be like this," or "maybe it will get better if I just give it a few minutes" which then of course leads to did I let the dog out, whats for dinner, is it going to rain tomorrow, wait, what was I doing again?
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing and your honestly. I have felt irritated by these exercises as well, simply because I didn't want to take the time to do them. However, that is the very reason I needed to do them. After beginning this class I realized how truly stressful and unhealthy my life is. It sounds like you are pretty confident about your physical well being, that is great. I look forward to feeling good about my own physical well being. I have a lot of extra weight I'm dealing with after having my 5th child 6 months ago. That being said I've always been a little over weight, a little sedentary, a little depressed and unmotivated, which eventually lead to dieting and borderline eating disorders. Now I want to lose weight, but cannot bring myself to do another diet, so I am reading this book to help give me perspective on becoming an intuitive eater, and help get a healthy relationship with food. It starts with accepting self. It is amazing and I'm excited about it. Hopefully I'll lose weight overtime too. But I agree with you that things need to happen naturally, for me, if it is forced, such as when I try to force myself to be someone I am not, then anger, anxiety, and pressure sets in, and we are sure to fail. Wishing you a contued good wellness journey