Martina McGowan MD – Page 21 – life lived by the Book

Use your creativity to improve your life

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts

into your mind,

but how to get old ones out.

Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture.

Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

Have you given up on your creativity? Sadly, a lot of people share this way of thinking. They have probably never viewed creativity as a very useful tool to improve or improvise life in all its diversity. Any situation that requires a solution can be approached in a multitude of ways. There isn’t just one single way fix to a particular problem. Being creative opens up new horizons and can deliver many benefits.

Creativity can sometimes be mistakenly interpreted by people as an obstinate attitude. Some people feel that by insisting on doing things in a different way demonstrates stubbornness. Stop selling yourself short, let your ideas out!

Never hold back when you have a good idea

Everyone is free to interpret things in his or her own unique way. Any interpretation by itself is creativity at work. A person who enjoys creative thinking can easily come up with several innovative solutions for situations that require a quick fix.

There used to be a television series entitled “MacGyver.” The main character is an extremely creative and crafty guy. Whenever he found himself in a tight fix, he tried to find a way out of it with his quick fixes utilizing whatever materials were immediately available to him.

Creativity is a never-ending learning process.

From everything you experience, you learn, and you gain untold benefits, which you can use later on in real life situations. Being creative might require you to think outside of the proverbial box, allowing your mind to venture into uncommon territory. You can never be sure of your ideas until you flesh them out, and actually try a few of them. As long as there is no perceived danger involved, almost anything is worth a try.

Why be creative?

The purpose of any solution or adaptation is to improve or improvise on a current conditions. Or more simply stated, to make things better for everyone concerned. Upon analyzing honest applications of creativity, the ultimate intention is to achieve good for all. After all, this intention is what counts most.

The conditions for creativity are:

to be puzzled, to concentrate,

to accept conflict and tension,

to be born everyday,

and to feel a sense of self.

Erich Fromm

Thoughts?

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Musings + Affirmations: I know when and how to focus on what is important to me.

We can always choose to perceive things differently.

You can focus on what’s wrong in your life,

or you can focus on what’s right.

Marianne Williamson

Affirmation: I know when and how to focus on what is important to me.

I live a complete life. A great portion of my daily exploits focuses on the needs of others. I recognize that I am called to be a helping hand, but I also know when to step back and focus on what is important to me.

In my family life, I cater to the needs of my loved ones. They depend on me to help provide for them, guide them, and to be supportive of them. I take those roles very seriously and I know that I am loved for it.

I also recognize that time for myself is also essential.

I acknowledge the importance of satisfying my needs. When I feel like my life is out of balance, I know that it is time to pull away from current concerns, and to find and re-connect to my center.

When I feel a desire for renewal, I let my loved ones know that I need a time out. I am happy that I have family and friends who understand the need for balance and I am grateful that they are willing and able to let me take some time for myself.

Today, I commit to having a more balanced life, focusing equally on those I care about and on myself.

I make time to strengthen my own well-being and renewal, knowing that making the time to care for myself enables me to be all I can be – for myself and others.

Journal prompts/ Homework/ Self-Reflective Questions:

1. Do I ever allow myself to get burned out and exhausted?

2. Have I spent time teaching my family members or friends how to bring more balance into their lives?

3. How can I make more time for myself?

Thoughts?

Have an awesome week!!

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In order to fly…

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Nurturing your relationships

relationship

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Positive relationships can be a source of great joy in your life, while negative relationships can turn your life into a living disaster! Do you want to cultivate a more positive relationship with your significant other and help it grow stronger? Having a positive relationship takes work from both parties, but you can get it started. Your significant other will certainly enjoy the benefits of your increased attention and interest, and will likely follow your lead.

1. Give yourself away. First, if you want to build a relationship that is positive, passionate, and longstanding, you will need to give 100% of yourself. This is an important element of successful relationships. And, not only in your personal relationships, but life in general. There’s no “50/50” when it comes to giving in a relationship. You have got to give freely of yourself if it’s going to work. It is almost impossible to receive from your partner if you don’t give to them in return.

2. Focus on your significant other. In nurturing a positive and healthy relationship, your main focus should be on simply loving your partner. Be sure that you are showing your love in both the words that you use, and the action to back them up. There is an expression that says, “actions speak louder than words.” This is most assuredly true when it comes to a relationship building. But, your partner will still want to hear you say, “I love you.” Also, remember to be generous with compliments and mean what you say.

3. Act charitably. The things you do for your partner make a huge difference in your relationship. When you love someone, acts of kindness toward them should come naturally. No action should be done just because you feel obligated to do it. The things you do for your significant other should be done because you really want to do them.

4. Much respect! Always respect your partner in ways to build a lasting and positive relationship with them. Respect is an important building block of any relationship. Respect your partner not only in a physical sense, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

5. Be friends. Build a strong friendship. Your romantic relationship needs to have the stability and deep roots that come from a strong friendship. With a meaningful friendship as its foundation, your relationship will become stronger and more lasting. When you work hard at building up a strong friendship, you can be assured that your relationship is much more capable of weathering whatever life may throw at you in the future.

If your goal is to create a stronger bond with your significant other, take the time to think about what it is you would most like from your partner. And then, give those things to your partner, and you will almost always find the answers you seek about how to create a nurturing relationship.

These five tips can have a positive impact on any relationship. Once you begin to make the time to take care of your relationship and begin making a conscious effort to improve it/ them, you will be rewarded with more positive bonds.

Thoughts?

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Put your conflicts into their proper perspective

conflict perspective

Conflict is inevitable,

but combat is optional.

Max Lucado

Life often hands us misunderstandings and conflicts with other people. Not everyone will agree with what everything you do or say. Sometimes we are caught off-guard when we suddenly realize that there is some underlying conflict, especially when we thought that the lines of communication were still functioning well.

No matter the initial cause, or where you might like to assign the bulk of the blame, a troubling conflict will take time to untangle and can be disruptive to your life. You lose your balance and often operate on half-power, with the other half working overtime to figure out where to assign blame, and as is human nature, searching for ways to justify your own actions. If the incident is disturbing enough you begin to lose focus both at work and at home. You may have difficulty making even the most routine of decisions. Or you may find that you are spending sleepless nights rehashing and mulling over the best way to handle it. It is hard to do anything wholeheartedly until it is resolved one way or another.

Conflict can be hard on the body, the mind and the spirit, But there are a few strategies that you can use to help you keep the proper perspective and then hopefully move the conflict toward a positive resolution.

Breathe and seek balance

A conflict can make you feel unbalanced because of strong emotions, and may be accompanied by feelings of unworthiness, anger, sadness, or frustration. Don’t try to side step these emotions, but rather use them as guides. Appreciate and observe them as you might a play. There is a lot of power in your emotional energy, and as you breathe and watch it all unfold, you will find a way to use what you are experiencing in a way that is aligned with your best purpose.

Look at the long view

It is so darned easy to get caught in the turmoil of conflict that people seem to forget that there will be a tomorrow. Take some quiet moments to close your eyes and see yourself in the future with this current conflict resolved. Imagine how you will feel with the problem behind you. What would you like this relationship to look like a month from now? A year? Is this relationship important to you?

In the meantime, eat well, go to bed at your regular time, laugh and allow yourself to forget the problem occasionally. This may not be easy, depending on the nature of the conflict, but it is effective. Allow your inner wisdom to work in silence while you continue to engage in the normal activities of your everyday life.

Re-frame

Try to step outside of the conflict for a moment. Instead of resisting all of it, ask yourself if there is a gift or a lesson to be found here. Is this an invitation for you to look at a problem or issue differently? Is this an opportunity to try out a new behavior?

As much as you are able, always acknowledge the other person by stepping into their shoes. Why are they behaving in this manner? What do they really want? How would you feel if you were placed in their position?

Practice

Spend some time brainstorming all of your possible responses to this situation and try each of them on for size. If necessary, get a friend and role-play some alternatives that you think you would never choose because they are so unlike your usual persona. Have fun exercising your unexplored selves.

Count every blessing

Notice all of the good things in your life. Cultivate gratitude and your sense of wonder.

Conflict can cause you to lose sight of the bigger picture. You become so focused on the blame and the battle that you can forget what you truly want in life, why you are here, and what is really important.

Thomas Crum phrases it this way… “our quality of life depends not on what happens to us, but on what we do with what happens to us.”

Learning to manage yourself and working to improve your conflict resolution skills will help you regain your power.

Thoughts?

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Stop your time drains

down the drain

If you love life, don’t waste time,

for time is what life is made up of.

Bruce Lee

Do you ever find yourself falling into the trap of wasting time? Time is an extremely valuable commodity! When you waste your precious time, you are actually keeping yourself from achieving the things you desire.

And, as often as we discuss time management, many people cannot figure out where the time goes, or how it slips through their fingers. Or, perhaps they don’t want to know. Either way, the management of your time will only be successful, freeing you up to those things you’d rather be doing if you cut off some of the things that drain it and you.

Here is a short list of some of the top time wasters. If you find yourself spending too much time on any of these activities, you might consider trying to change some of your habits so that your time can be more productive and rewarding.

1. Worrying. Many people will waste their time worrying doomsday about things they have no influence to change. This is simply unproductive and bad for your health, mind, and spirit. If you have something troublesome or worrisome coming up, devise a plan of positive action on paper, then let it go. After all, worrying will not accomplish anything positive.

2. Television. We live in a couch potato society! People schedule their lives around their favorite television shows and then spend less time doing more important activities like attending social events that could strengthen their relationships. If all else fails, record your favorite TV shows and watch them during your leisure time. Or better yet, put a finite limit on your TV intake to just a few hours a week.

3. Video and Computer Games. This is becoming such a time waster that gamers are actually developing what is called “gamers thumb,” a repetitive stress injury. Again, the best approach to this malady is to set time limits for yourself and your children. Also take the time to help your children understand why this is important.

4. The internet. Are you constantly checking your email or browsing Facebook or Twitter? Are your putting off your family and friends too often when they ask that you spend time with them? Keep your time on social media sites short, of course unless you are getting paid for it, and get involved in life. Instead of chatting with your online friends, spend more time with your real-life friends and family!

5. Telephone. Certainly, we like to call old friends and chat them up. But do you chat on the phone all day long? If you do, you may find that you getting very little else done all day. Keep phone calls to a minimum or set a timer for yourself. This way you won’t feel deprived of a good conversation, but it won’t take over your whole day.

6. Commuting. Many of us spend a tremendous amount of time traveling to and from work. You can turn your commuting time into productive time.

You can try carpooling or taking the bus, subway or train to work. You can then use this time to read, plan your day, complete paperwork, or even relax your mind before a productive day.?
If you drive, you can listen to inspiring and informative CDs or tapes to will help sharpen your mind. You can also use it to catch up on your favorite novel. Much of this can be downloaded to your iPod or other device for playback en route to work.

7. Hobbies. Yes, some people can become so obsessed with their hobbies that they don’t, or won’t make time to do anything else. They rush home from work so that they can get to work on their hobby. If this is you, try scheduling your hobby time so that you are not not skipping meals, missing family time, or cutting into other productive time.

8. Daydreaming. It is often fun and quite healthy to dream about career ambitions or future aspirations. But when those dreams keep you from taking the appropriate actions in your life, then you are wasting time. Avoid getting bogged down with too much dreaming. Make a list of your goals or dreams, then take action to make those dreams come true.

9. Meetings. Although necessary, and often mandatory, meetings are one of the biggest time wasters of our workday.

If you’re in charge of meetings, set definitive time-frames for them and stick to your stated time.
Limit the length of your meetings by keeping needless chatter and side-agendas out of the meeting.

10. Planning. If you do not make the time to plan out your day, the important things you need to accomplish may never get done, or may be rush jobs. Write down your daily goals and tasks. Schedule your day in the order of your top priorities.

There are many ways people waste time in their everyday lives. But with a little effort, and planning, you can avoid many of the time-wasting activities and turn that time into a productive advantage.

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Time Management and Stress

time management

Stress is like spice –

in the right proportion it enhances the flavor of a dish.

Too little produces a bland, dull meal;

too much may choke you.

Donald Tubesing

Stress that is work-related is often the result of improper use of time or a lack of time management skills. With so many things going on, there is seemingly never quite enough time to attend to work responsibilities within the alloted time. And this leads to a stressful working environment. This applies to both small and complex projects alike. So careful planning with regard to your schedule is crucial.

But, before we press on, let’s be realistic. There will always be those factors in life and at work over which you have no or minimal control. All of this can add up to a higher level of stress than what like to have to deal with. But, deal with it, you must. So, stress management and time management often need to be addressed in a side by side fashion because they are often interrelated.

Skip the time wasters

When you talk about stress and proper time management of your activities, it is usually pointed toward the goal of increased your productivity. Although stress may serve as a good occasional stimulus to help drive you toward achieving more, you need to also look at managing your time properly for higher productivity, and having less stress overall.

Listed below are a few of the things you need to look at avoiding to help make the best use of your valuable time, while simultaneously reducing your stress levels.

• Interruptions. No matter what your job entails, there will always be some source of interruption. It is important that you learn how to deal with those interruptions in an effective and efficient manner to save yourself some time and to be able to get back to your work as quickly as possible.

• Plan. You have heard the old adage that goes along with this: “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” Make sure that you carefully plan out what you need to get done and how you plan to do it. This will make it much easier for you to visualize later when it comes time to actually execute your plans.

• Communicate and Delegate. If you are working with other people on a project, having proper lines of communication and good delegation skills are vital to teamwork. This involves your ability to share the workload with people. But more than just sharing workload, it also involves your ability to determine which people are best suited to perform specific tasks for higher efficiency.

Symptoms

Effective time management can definitely be a great help in bringing some of your stressors under control while boosting your level of productivity. In order to get started on a more efficient time management technique, you must search out a strategy that you can easily implement. Not all systems work well for everyone. Eventually, all of the training and new ways that you will find yourself thinking about how you use your time will become second nature once you get used to your new schedule.

But an equally, if not more important step toward making those changes is recognizing whether or not you have poor time management skills that are causing you to be stressed out. It is obviously a pointless exercise to work at fixing an issue, expecting it to cure all of your ills and get you back on track, only to find out or figure out that you are working on the wrong issue.

Signs

There are a few tell-tale signs that you need to look out for and consider revising if they are part of your current life.

You increasingly easily irritable while doing your task. At first it was little things that bothered you. Suddenly, its everything!
Constant state of fatigue.
Losing your ability to concentrate well, and remain focused.
Difficulty concentrating on what you need to do.
Inability to track your activities. You can’t figure out where your time leaks are, or how the whole day has slipped past you.
Inability to sleep well at night due to anxiety or unexplained worries.

How do I improve?

Proper management of your time can very often directly translate into increased productivity. Therefore, this should be one of your top priorities if you want to reduce the level of stress you have to deal with on a regular basis. Try out a couple of strategies below and see if what fits you best.

• Plan your daily activities. We talked about this a bit above. When you sit down and write out your list of the activities you need to get done for a given day, the next thing you need to do is rank them according to importance and urgency to avoid rushing through the things that you need to take care with.

• Learn to say, “No” more often. Stop agreeing to do other people’s stuff when you already have a full plate of your own to manage.

• Delegate, delegate, delegate. Work on your ability to delegate tasks appropriately so that the tasks get done efficiently by people who are trained and/ or have time to do them well. You cannot do it all or be it all.

• Step back and evaluate. In between your tasks, make the time to evaluate whether you are spending your own time efficiently and effectively. If you feel that you are not, then switch over to another more effective plan…and quickly!

• If possible, avoid any form of distraction.

• Remember to take a break. This step alone will reduce stress and increase your productivity.

Time management and stress management are often linked. If we can sort out the stressors and manage your time, you will magically find that eventually yuo will be less stressed and have more time to do more of what you love.

Thoughts?

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Memorial Day

memorial day

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Musings + Affirmations: I have the power to change myself.

You must welcome change as the rule

but not as your ruler.

Denis Waitley

Affirmation: I have the power to change myself.

I am confident in my ability to bring about change in my world. When I want or need something, I am fully capable of producing it in my life. Of course, this means that I have the power to change myself.

The way in which I choose to operate in the world suit me just fine. But, sometimes I find a better means of accomplishing the things I want to happen in my life. When this happens, I move to make the appropriate changes.

Whether my progress comes slowly or quickly, I notice change taking place and congratulate myself for my diligent work.

To support myself in altering my habits, I nourish all areas of my life. I get plenty of rest, exercise, try to remain positive, and choose foods that invigorate me. Also, I set aside a specific time just for myself each week. All of these practices give me the strength to make the changes that I desire.

Each day, I am thankful for my belief in myself.

This self-confidence supports my ability to make changes. Whether these changes are small, like choosing a more efficient route to work, or large, like working to maintain a more positive perspective, I know I always have the capability to reshape myself as I like.

Today, I am thankful for my self-confidence and ability to make changes in my life.

I seek out opportunities to continue to change myself to more closely resemble my highest vision of me.

Homework/ Self-Reflective Questions/ Journal Prompts:

1. What are some of the positive changes I have made in myself within the past year?

2. What are some things I have become good at by practicing?

3. How can I cultivate my self-confidence and ability to effect change in my life?

Thoughts?

Have an awesome week!

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