Certain times of the year are great for letting go and clearing. Now is one of those times. We can declutter and detox and do other letting go practices and activities. The key is to surrender the old, the grip on our potential, and allow ourselves the opportunity to create something new. Better yet, with the spaciousness and restructuring we allow for newness to automatically emerge… Let’s deconstruct to allow for a new reality…
We are focused this month on refreshing to allow for this newness, so far we covered:
Today we are focusing on Deconstructing… We want to shake up the belief systems, narratives and stories we hold about who we are, our relationship and our life…
We like to believe that we live in a solid and static reality, that what we see and measure is what Is… But scientists have proven this ideology wrong, and that the observer influences what is observed… We live in a fluid reality (actually, we live in a multiverse/reality, but that’s beyond this writing! LOL). Feel free to do your own research if this is a new concept for you…
Our reality is what we make of it as it is what we observe… Additionally, what we observe is influenced by who we are, or rather what lens we put on…
~We have a choice on how we look at things, what we choose to see and how we interpret them
~We have a choice on how we think about things, how we spin them and the meaning we give them
~We have a choice on how we proceed with what we think and how we allow it to dictate the rest
What is fascinating about this is that there is choice everywhere, even the lens we put on…
Everything is constructed… There is no real true reality!
What does this mean for us? It means freedom, that’s what it means. It means we don’t have to be beholding to the habit of being ourselves…
We don’t have to be stuck with the hand we believe we were dealt…
We don’t have to be who we think we are.
We don’t have to be in the relationship we think we are in.
We don’t have to have the partner we believe we have.
And so on, for all this is constructed!
Everything in our life is the repetition of the observation, the thought, the feeling and the behavior. These are all habits (patterns)!
You can decide to be a different person, and be it. You can decide to have a different partner, and have a different partner (without exchanging them for a new person). You can decide to have a different relationship, and have it. You can decide to have a different life, and so it is…
I’m sure this feels really farfetched if you are not used to this fluidity… and looking at things this way… But give it a try nonetheless.
It is extremely liberating to surrender the constraints of what we think Is…
A New Reality…
We can create whatever reality we want… Once you are open to this possibility, anything is possible (pun intended!).
Self – What character strengths would you like to have? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world?
Start cultivating these strengths, show up as the person you want to be… Keep course correcting when you go back to being your usual self. It takes a while to create a new habit…
Relationship – What kind of partner do you want to be? What kind of relationship do you want to create? How do you want to show up to your relationship?
Start showing up as this partner, responding as this partner and nurturing as this partner… Keep course correcting when you go back to interacting with your usual self (when your partner supposedly instigated something from you [purposeful sarcasm]). It takes a while to create a new habit…
Life – What kind of life do you want to have? How abundant is your life? What experiences do you want to have? How is your life meaningful?
Start noticing more all the awesomeness in your life, being more grateful for everything in it, setting intentions for experiencing your amazing life, and upgrading the meaning you give it… Keep course correcting when you go back to your usual witnessing self. It takes a while to create a new habit…
Pay attention to your belief systems, your narratives and your stories – all these can be dismantled and reassembled in any way you’d like… You can make any case you want… Make beautiful and empowering ones!
You can connect dots however you like to make up whatever picture you want…
You can interpret data however you like to make whatever case you want…
Your reality is just a construction… Construct what you want!
This is your starting point, deconstruct and reconstruct what you already have… See the freshness emerging already!?
APPLICATION: Select what area you want to focus on shifting immediately: Self, Relationship, Life
~ Set time aside to play with your reality
~ Review how you look at your selected area- what is your usual experience and how would you describe it
~ Then look for what other ways you can choose to experience your reality- what if you were to look at it from a 180 degree perspective, what if you were to make the opposite case of what you normally make, what if you were to make a case from your partner’s perspective (or someone else), what if you were to make a case from your therapist’s perspective, what if you were to make a case from your higher self’s perspective, what if- keep going…
Sit with the spaciousness and freshness created… From here anything is possible…
Embracing this concept liberates us from constraints, self-sabotage and self-imposed limitations. This creates a surge of energy that brings freshness and newness. And with them the possibility for new beginnings…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ Creating a Self-Love Practice – Designing and implementing your personalized practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
I say stay open-minded to the beauty of this month. I know most people don’t appreciate March for its length, lack of holidays, and as it makes winter linger around these parts. But what if we were to take full advantage of everything this month has to offer?
For starters, for me it feels like I have more time! I just feel more abundance- warmer weather, more sunlight, more sunshine, more weeks, more weekends, more newness… To experience the newness, we also have to let go of the old… Detox to surrender the old and allow the new…
When we think of detoxing, we usually think of eating clean and giving up other substances to clean up our bodies. We might take it a step further and detox or give up some other things like: cursing, binging on Netflix, screen time, and social media. If this is you, high five!
I’d like to offer expanding your detox practice. Aside from detoxing and giving up the usual during this season, how about embracing a Refreshing Springtime Ritual that really gets rid of the old, and creates space for the new and new beginnings… This includes Decluttering as well, as we covered last week…
What does Detoxing beyond the usual look like? It means detoxing from the things we ingest, partake in, and habits in all areas of our life that don’t support our Best Self, Best Relationship and Best Life… It includes us stopping behaviors that don’t support us personally and our relationship…
Detoxing what doesn’t serve us personally, catapults us into shifting and generating newness in all areas of our life… But let’s take this a step further and let’s directly detox how we show up to our relationship if this is where we are looking to create change…
Detox Your Relationship
Unless we are mindful and stay intentional about how we show up to our relationship day-in-and-day-out, we tend to get a build-up of dullness, bad manners, cringy behaviors and might even revert to old habits.
In a past blog post, I had pointed out things that could be detoxed in our relationship to create space for new interactions and for creating the relationship we desire:
1 ~ Bad Habits – Poor hygiene or self-care, cutting the other off when speaking or finishing their sentences, endlessly speaking about oneself and showing no interest in the other’s world, allowing distractions during meals or talks, taking other people’s sides in stories, running late, not keeping promises, not making timely plans and keeping them.
Not cleaning up after oneself, not showing common courtesies (a call when running late, offering food when getting oneself something, saying thank you, not making noise when the other is sleeping, not leaving dishes in the sink, not leaving hair in the shower or wet towels on the bed, etc.)
2 ~ Chaos – Not having a consistent place for things and putting things away, not having a consistent agreed upon routine, calling insistently and leaving disgruntled messages, reacting to petty things and blowing things out of proportion, not finishing tasks or conversations, juggling a lot of things simultaneously and operating with constant stress.
Not saying no and allowing multiple demands to tug at you, not setting clear expectations and limits, not having support, now working as a team, undermining each other, operating from own agendas
3 ~ Enmeshment – Doing everything together, not having own interests or personal time, telling each other how to be, behave, think, feel and having a running commentary in one’s mind about this, not allowing for individuality and uniqueness.
Putting own needs aside consistently for the other, not identifying own needs and being overly caring of the other, worrying about what the other is or is not doing, not having own voice, pushing for “We” at expense of “I”
4 ~ Disconnect – Having a limited repertoire of joint activities, not eating meals together, going to bed at different times, having only personal pursuits, having too much alone or with own group time.
Not sharing inner world (feelings, thoughts, wishes, dreams, concerns), not sharing one’s activities / world, having more separate plans than joint, not having joint goals, not sharing a calendar, paying bills separately
5 ~ Neglect – Lack of TLC, having a limited repertoire of intimate moves or approach to intimacy, having “sex” less than one time per week, not showing appreciation or acknowledgment, not checking in throughout the day, not greeting each other hello or goodbye and having that include touching.
Not sharing affection, not being on each other’s priority list, not being thoughtful with little things (getting partner a drink when getting oneself one, using all the hot water, doing only one’s laundry, not picking up the cleaners, not putting in gas in the car, eating the last of a favorite dish or dessert, etc.)
6 ~ Toxic Interactions – Disrespect with yelling, cursing, interrupting, or digging at the other, not supporting activities, wishes, or the other’s uniqueness and needs, undermining by not keeping agreements, setting up interactions not conducive to the task at hand, controlling by “owning” the other, manipulation to get own way or not allow the other to get theirs, passive-aggressiveness in not showing up and being accountable.
Criticism, banter and jokes at the other’s expense, constant complaining and whining, gossiping about others and leaking energy out of the relationship, lies, cover ups and secrets, resentment, anger and lack of resolution to concerns, not allowing each other to express feelings, not allowing each other to be their own person, being self-absorbed
Aren’t these powerful? We can certainly have a build-up of toxicity in our relationship if we are not mindful about how we show up on an ongoing basis. But additionally, it doesn’t hurt to take stock every so often and make sure we reset and catch anything that slip through…
Springtime is a perfect time for this assessment and to take a concerted approach about clearing all the gunk that has build-up.
Watch the video for on these relationship detoxing areas… Enjoy!
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
Happy new month. A new month brings a new beginning. This one is super special as it also brings Spring in these parts. A new season and the season of new beginnings to boot. Just lovely. I hope you are feeling the Spring and freshness in the air, and not just because of the season change, but as change is looming… We want to be ready for the change so we can ride the new wave… Declutter to create space for newness in your life and your relationship.
I know that for myself, when there is too much stuff around me or in my life that I don’t feel well. This might include things like piles of paper. How does that keep happening? I’m still working on cracking the code on not creating more piles, and fully converting to a paperless personal system. We are already paperless in the practice, but the personal just needs some more TLC… LOL
This might include a wake of supplies used for projects, or new purchases and gifts that still need a home. Or, new work processes that still need to be streamlined, too many projects, or a packed calendar.
I know I feel amazing where there is more flow in my life- more spaciousness in my days, in my routines, and in my workflow. This allows me to better tap into my creativity, to be more present, more patient and more pleasant and compassionate. Including to myself!
Does this resonate for you? That your life might be so packed, even with awesomeness, that then it is challenging to take a moment to smell the roses, to enjoy the creation. And most of the time, our lives are not even packed with awesomeness, they are packed with so much noise…
What does this mean? This means we must wade through the immediate clutter, to create space to tackle the rest of the clutter… It’s like taking everything off a table so you can then use the table to sort and organize your stuff.
To what end? Why is this important? Having spaciousness in our lives allows us to Be in our lives… When our lives are too packed, then we are just doing and not fully living…
Spaciousness and Decluttering
When there is spaciousness in our lives, we can more easily take the observer role, assess, get inspiration, course correct, manifest, transcend, witness the magic, enjoy and savor…
Spaciousness allows us to engage and play with different part of ourselves, to show up differently, to better nurture ourselves and others, to experiment with new experiences, to create what we desire…
Creating space in our life allows us to welcome newness in our life…
I love making space. I do this again and again as I’m constantly adding new things in my life, and I want to ensure I maintain the sense of spaciousness. We don’t want to just keep adding stuff. We want the additions to create Newness…
This means having an ongoing practice of assessing what needs to go. This also means embracing cleansing rituals at specific junctures during the year to support transitions and new chapters… Typically these are during the New Year, Springtime, and Back-to-School/Work…
So, let’s do some decluttering!
Decluttering can obviously be done a multitude of ways, to whatever degree we like, and on whatever catches our fancy.
I go through different phases where my decluttering means I might go all out and deconstruct everything… To where I just clear recent build ups and annoyances.
In a prior issue on decluttering I shared, that I have a Refreshing Springtime Ritual for clearing the old and creating space for the new…
Springtime is a time when I refresh how I do and show up to my life and relationship/s, and I make sure I’m on track with my yearly plan:
• I use this time to clean out junk, excess, accumulation, old things, expired things, no longer wanted things, and such.
• I use this time to clean out, tweak, streamline, retarget, refresh routines, habits, rituals, practices, approaches, and such.
• I use this time to clean out commitments, activities, goals, projects, tasks and such that are no longer in alignment with my values, current vision, and desires.
• I use this time to clean out my mind of any running scripts or limiting believes that might be currently creating havoc, sabotaging, or undermining my endeavors and wishes.
• I use this time to clean out any funky approach, defense mechanisms, or less-than desirable personal characteristics when relating with others especially my most loved ones.
This decluttering, cleaning, clearing, gets rid of anything stale or no longer fitting, and allows for the new to emerge… It’s a wonderful refreshing activity that makes a great addition to our Best Life tactics repertoire.
Watch the video for details on these important decluttering areas… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: Select a decluttering area that resonates the most for you to focus on decluttering in the coming weeks. You can continue onto the others as you need.
Set time aside to:
~ Review what you’d like to accomplish with this project
~ Break the project down into smaller focus areas/tasks
~ List your smaller areas/tasks by priority in the order that they’d give you the most respite with the least amount of effort…
~ Schedule your top three items into your calendar- Give each enough time so you can complete them. If it seems that they might not get completed in the amount you allotted, then the task either needs to be split into different time segments or is too large and needs to be broken down further.
Be realistic on how you plan and schedule this as it’ll set the tone for how you make progress…
Enjoy the clearing and witness the new emerge…
When we clear and create spaciousness, we can be more in tune with our intuition, gifts, creativity, compassion, and all the other yumminess that might otherwise elude us when we are on the go. We can feel the rhythms, experience the flow, and ride the new wave…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
🌷 If you missed this month’s Masterclass, or any previous ones, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ Creating a Self-Love Practice – Designing and implementing your personalized practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
🌷 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
As we are wrapping up January and turn towards the month of Love, things begin to look up… The mad pressure to hit the ground running in January and kicking off the year with a bang, is now behind us.
We can now truly embrace more self-compassion and set the right tone for the upcoming year… As we’ve been trying to be gentler with ourselves despite the New Year pressure, today’s Self-Love aspect drives this point home- let’s Embrace Self-Connection and Radiance.
Self-Connection is one of the 4 Aspects of Self-Love we are working on to help us start the New Year right…
Self-Connection is about having a strong relationship with ourselves- with fully knowing and accepting all our parts, with having our own back, with being more present, with keeping our own company, with nurturing ourselves.
When we are connected with our Self, we are never alone… When we are connected with our Self, we are knowing… When we are connected with our Self, we are purposeful… When we are connected with our Self, we are inspired… When we are connected with our Self, we are radiant…
When we are connected with our Self, we are steady, powerful, unstoppable, brilliant…
This is the state we want to cultivate, as this is the Sparkle in our life. This is how our Journey is more than a grind…
Self-Connection and Radiance
Being in Connection with our Highest Self is our Soul’s directive if you may… When we are not in connection with our Self, we are banging around grinding through our life in our meat suit, aimlessly and exhaustingly, till we are six feet under. This is not the way to live!
When we are in Connection with our Highest Self, we embody our full Being, pursue our calling, embrace a full Human Experience that includes intentionally evolving… This is how we Radiate our Brilliance…
This is what makes us unique, special, magnificent, extraordinary, and exceptional. This is who we really are… Let’s embrace ourselves once and for all, shall we?
I. Fully knowing and accepting all our parts
We are complex human beings that have many parts that make up who we are. Not only do we have different aspects to our conscious self that make up our personality, but we have all sorts of parts that are subconscious that we are not aware of. These parts make up the bulk of who we are, and are the puppeteers behind the scenes… It behooves us to learn ourselves better in all regards to become more whole and who we truly are…
II. Having our own back
Nobody cares more about ourselves than ourselves… When we don’t love ourselves well enough, or take care of ourselves, that’s what we put out and that’s the kind of relationship/s and life we create… When we are not in touch with our Self and our needs, we don’t have our own back and therefore we feel alone and ravished…
It behooves us to own our needs and take care of them to ensure we are OK and have the opportunity to play full out…
III. Being more present
We are so used to all the noise in our lives that the mere thought of silence freaks us out. And, this is for the external world. The same goes for our internal world. We are SO noisy inside our heads.
We are even noisy in our bodies… How we set up our experience and environments, the information we consume, the thoughts we choose to have, and even the food and other substances we choose to consume all generate different levels of noise… This distracts us from our Self…
It behooves us to quiet down and become more present to authentically show up and be available for our life…
IV. Keeping our own company
Most people can’t stand it to be alone or to do things alone. And, if we are alone, we are super engaged with busyness and the noise we create in our lives… We don’t know how to keep our own company and savor being with ourselves. We miss out on the opportunity of enjoying our own company and experiencing our Beingness. We squander the opportunity for connecting more deeply with ourselves and truly knowing ourselves…
It behooves us to have experiences by ourselves to fully take them in, savor them and enrich more who we are…
V. Nurturing ourselves
Nurturing ourselves is how we show ourselves we know we are special. It’s a form of personal validation. When we neglect, or even mistreat ourselves, we sabotage our Human Experience and create a much more challenging life than is necessary…
If we don’t resource ourselves, but are constantly depleting ourselves instead, how are we to have a life full of energy, vitality, health, wellness, and longevity? Most don’t take care of the basic needs, never mind going the extra mile to make the Journey more exquisite…
It behooves us to sprinkle in the luxuries and the treats for a fuller Human Experience…
Self-Connection is the most neglected aspect of our Self-Love Practice and such a detriment to our wellbeing, our ability to create our Best Life and have our Best Human Experience…
Watch the video for more on these 5 Tactics to help you more easily embrace Self-Connection… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: If Self-Love was a cake, it’d be made of the first 3 Aspects (Self-Honoring, Self-Management, and Self-Care), and it would have Self-Connection as the icing. This is what makes the whole thing. 😋
We all need to have our cake to live a delicious life, a life well lived!
Review which Tactic in this Aspect resonates the most for you and complete the related process below…
I. Fully knowing and accepting all our parts – In your Journal, on a clean page, draw a circle. Divide the circle into 8 equal slices using horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, for a pizza effect.
In each slice capture different Parts of yourself, not roles you have but personality-like parts. Try to capture as many sides of yourself as possible, negative and positive, that you can see. Group characteristics as you see fit.
Then, identify what Parts you would like to have that you don’t already have or don’t recognize in yourself and add them to any available slices.
Finally, create two new Habits: One to counter a negative characteristic you’d like to eliminate, and another to cultivate a positive characteristic you’d like to embrace… This is how we own and evolve ourselves…
II. Having our own back – In your Journal, capture a stream of consciousness about your state- how you are feeling, what’s working, what’s not working, what pleases you, what annoys you and the like… Write for a couple of pages until you feel you have captured your current state (+/- a couple of days…). Go back to what you wrote and identify any themes.
Now, select the theme that is torturing you the most and address it with a conversation, new habit, environment tweak, additional support, etc. Make sure you address whatever need is screaming for attention.
III. Being more present – In your Journal, capture a day in the life (your life obviously). Then review it for your level of presence throughout the day…
-Do you have any mindfulness practices -Do you take intentional breaks? -Do you protect your focus from distractions? -Do you make time to connect and attune with loved ones? -Do you check-in with yourself about how you are doing and what you might need? -Do you consume inspiring and positive content? -Do you consume clean and nutritious food? -Do you minimize the noise in your life?
Rate yourself from 1-10 for how present you are daily, with 10 being super present (quite…).
Commit to increasing your score by a certain amount by a certain time, and identify a change you’ll make to achieve it: Routine tweak, new habit, better boundaries, more support, etc.
IV. Keeping our own company – Unless you are a complete introvert, you most likely have a hard time being alone… And this is true if you are an introvert as well where even if you are alone you are otherwise engaged… You are not keeping your own company…
When we are in constant interaction, with others and otherwise engaged, we don’t get to know, see and honor our Self… We don’t get to Connect with our Self…
Take stock of how often you keep your own company… Where you are engaging with your Self… I bet it’s almost never…
Let’s change that!
-Select a time in your weekly routine where you have Me Time… -Block off this time, create a recurring event for it, and protect it going forward… -Make a list of activities, you’d like to do by yourself keeping your own company… -Ahead of time, pull from this list to do during your Me Time. Complete any planning if your activities requires any scheduling, setting up, etc. This can be part of your Reset for the upcoming week.
Make sure nothing gets in the way of having an amazing time with You!
V. Nurturing ourselves – And this is the Sparklers on our cake! From the first Tactic in the first Aspect to this point, the focus has primarily been on making sure we honor and take care of ourselves well and to the fullest extent to ensure we can do famously in our Journey…
This Tactic is about adding more joy, fun, experiences and indulgences to make the journey more worthwhile!
-Make a list of the little things that give you joy.
Here are a few of mine that I grabbed from just my morning routine…
-Then, make a list of experiences you want to have, Bucket List like.
-Finally, make a list of indulgences, little and big luxuries, you want to add to your life.
Depending on your lifestyle and Practice, choose a good place to start for you:
-Adding little touches to your daily routine and life -Scheduling monthly experiences during your monthly resets -Planning the integration of more little and big luxuries into your life
Use these Tactics to keep things fresh and recharged in your life!
Voila! This brings us to the conclusion of our Self-Love Practice. We have covered a lot of ground in the past few weeks. You now have 20 Targeted Tactics to help you embrace a Self-Love Practice and help you upgrade your life!
A Self-Love Practice allows us to have better relationships with others…. More about creating amazing relationships next month!
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: WEBINAR MASTERCLASS!
A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life-
Stop Self-Sabotage, Increase Resilience, and Generate More Joy
Includes Recording and gorgeous Workbook of transformational processes!
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
This is about the toughest week of the year… This is when we have Blue Monday, supposedly the saddest day of the year. Bills come in from the holidays, attempts at new habits start falling to the wayside, hibernation is knocking on our door, and things just feel heavy. It’s rough to get going on creating our Best Year Yet… What’s needed is an influx of energy to set us on the right path. The best way to do that is by Embracing Self-Care and Resilience…
Self-Care is one of the 4 Aspects of Self-Love we are working on to help us start the New Year right…
Self-Care is about taking good care of ourselves- with having a wholistic self-care practice that generates vitality, health and wellbeing.
There are a lot of definitions and information out there about how to do a Self-Care Practice. My Self-Care Practice is on steroids and became the Self-Love Practice we’ve been working on… LOL
I like to look at Self-Care as solely the activities that nourish and take care of our body and wellbeing: Sleep, exercise, nutrition/supplementation/hydration, grooming/hygiene and relaxation/mindfulness.
When we give these activities the proper attention, we are taking care of our “meat suit”, our human vehicle, so that it allows us to have a beautiful, full and long human experience…
When we take proper care of ourselves, we slowdown the aging process, we increase our health, vitality, longevity and ability to truly enjoy our life. Who wants to get to an advanced age and be decrepit? Or, worse be decrepit now or have a short-lived life?
Having a rich Self-Care Practice allows us to have boundless energy and larger bandwidth, be healthy and fit, look and feel amazing, have more focus and stamina, and the ability for higher performance in all areas of our life.
A rich Self-Care Practice gives us the ability to feel happy and joyous more consistently, to better self-regulate and to be less triggerable… It helps with our wellbeing and resilience…
Watch the video for Tactics to uplevel the 5 Pillars of your Self-Care Practice… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: Some see self-care as a mysterious concept and have the mindset that only privileged or lazy people can afford it. They might consider it a luxury or a waste of time to do things to take care of themselves… Or, they truly believe they don’t have the resources for it… If this is you, I challenge you to consider that you can’t afford not to invest in taking care of yourself…
You don’t have to invest a tremendous amount of resources doing self-care tactics, you just need to make targeted investments to get the results you want.
STEP 1 – Decide what is it you want in terms of your fitness, health, and wellness. How are you doing in these areas and how would you like them to be, how would you like to feel?
Take stock of your energy level, mood, health, fitness, and appearance. What can use some upleveling?
STEP 2 – Review the Pillars below and choose one to focus on that will address the area you want to target and that will give you the most immediate results.
Depending on your current state and lifestyle, you might need to start with the basics, or you might want more advanced and nuanced strategies.
I provide a range of ideas here to get you going, feel free to do additional research to take charge of the Pillar you identify as your current focus.
Pillar 1 – Sleep: Research shows that most people are sleep deprived. When sleep is the thing that detoxes and cleans, repairs and heals, and recharges us. We tend to short-change ourselves when it comes to sleep.
At the end of the day, it’s not really about the amount of sleep but the quality of sleep you get that allows you to go through all the sleep cycles several times a night to get the most benefit from your sleep.
The key is to have good Sleep Hygiene:
💤 Reverse engineer what time you want to get up in the morning, and back up to what time you’d need to go to bed to get up at that time while giving you an average of 7 hours of sleep.
💤 Start shifting gears for sleep two hours before your bedtime – no food, drinks, blue light
💤 Start your night routine at least 30 min before you want to be asleep – account for all the things you want to do before you fall asleep…
Like: Prepping for the next day, doing your skin care routine, activating your soothing bedroom environment, gratitude journaling, connecting with your partner, reading
💤 Commit to lights out and shutting down by your sleep time
💤 Set your alarm to wake you up at the time your chose and turn off snooze, get up when your alarm goes off
Pillar 2 – Exercise: You might be doing everything right, but if you are not exercising you won’t achieve your fitness, health and wellness goals… Which are needed to support the rest of the goals in our life and to truly live a well-lived life…
There are tons of myths about exercise, and exercising as we used to understand exercising is more harmful than good. For example, spending hours doing cardio to lose weight has proven to be an ineffective tactic (you lose muscle mass which slows down your metabolism)…
What seems to be better supported is a combination of:
🏃♀️ High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) 🏋️♀️ Resistance Training 🧘♀️ Flexibility Training
You can create a basic workout routine that incorporates all 3 per workout session or on rotation that makes sense for your life and that is enjoyable for you.
And you can choose what types of activities to do for each. You can put in as much or a little into this as you wish as long as you cover your basics.
*Consult your doctor if you have any medical conditions.
Pillar 3 – Nutrition, Supplementation and Hydration: The key here is to understand your goal and to feed yourself accordingly in a nutritious and healthy manner… There are so many ways of eating and so many different diet protocols and they all contradict each other- your head can explode trying to figure out how to eat…
My suggestion is that if you are just now beginning to take charge of your consumption that you start small and with the basics:
🤩Reduce your caloric intake- consume calories in relation to how you spend calories, reduce to a reasonable intake that still provides you with enough energy and nutrition (for women an average of 1500 cal/day does the trick but do your own research to match your situation)
🥙Eat cleaner- just stop eating all the processed foods and junk, and greatly reduce your alcohol consumption!
🥗Step it up to even cleaner eating- reduce any inflammatory foods you recognize your body doesn’t like (bloat, pimples, constipation, foggy brain, etc.)- like gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, peanuts/other nuts, corn, cruciferous vegetables, beans, nightshade vegetables, sweeteners, onion/garlic, caffeine (increases cortisol levels!).
📞Consult a nutritionist or functional doctor– get specific guidance if you are lost, confused or need additional support for creating a plan that works for you and your body… And for proper supplementation.
💧Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate- Shoot for 32 to 64 onz (1 to 2 liters) of water per day and you can step it up as you desire… I’ve been using this bottle to give me a visual of how I’m doing…
*Consult your doctor if you have any medical conditions.
Pillar 4 – Grooming and Hygiene: This is totally a personal choice of course. But I have it here as part of taking care of our body. A groomed body looks better, is more youthful and lasts longer…
👁Taking care of our skin, hair, teeth, eyes (hydrating with eyedrops helps maintain good vision!), etc. goes a long way.
💄Minding our products is super important as we try to become radiant from the inside out and minimize the toxins we put in our bodies…
🧹Adding a detoxing routine is a great practice – like body rolling, face rolling and skin brushing.
Pillar 5 – Relaxation and Mindfulness: Can you believe that we forget to breathe? LOL
We might shallow-breath to get air in for survival, but in general we don’t breathe well. We don’t get enough clean air circulating through our body.
Additionally, we don’t stop to smell the roses. We are always on go mode or mindlessly taking a break or so called relaxing.
We don’t properly restore, recharge and rejuvenate.
Our daily routine needs to include practices for being present and grounded, intentional breaks, and restorative activities like:
• Meditation • Visualization • Breath Work • Taking a break from our computer and other devices • Stretching • Connection calls • Pursuing an interest or hobby
Regardless of where you are with your Self-Care Practice, it’s always nice to shake things up, spruce them up and uplevel them. Focus on the Pillar that makes the most sense for you to address first, then tackle the rest as you make progress.
Don’t take all this on at once. It can be very overwhelming to make so many changes at once, and you won’t be able to fully integrate them into your life if you start slipping up (which you will if you do too much at once).
Once you selected your Pillar, do the research, set up the routines, set up the supportive environments, put all the things in place to help you work your Pillar.
Have fun with this. This is a lifelong pursuit. Enjoy the process!
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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