Woohoo, happy September! How are you doing? Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and frazzled with back2school and back2hectiness? Transitioning back into the hectic season is not easy sometimes. You might be experiencing vacation brain and are not ready to jump in.
You might be experiencing regret at not having had the summer you wanted and feeling like it went too fast. You might just be overwhelmed by the flipping of the switch and being back-on. And, add the pressures inherent to Q4 if this is on your radar. In any case, whether it’s these or other reasons that you are not feeling so hot, you are not alone.
I’ve already been providing suggestions on how to set up your Fall for success, and how to go into it with ease and grace. Here is a quick recap:
Have a last Fun Activity or Outing to say goodbye to Summer
Intentionally close the summer addressing summer locations, wardrobe, paraphernalia and such
Create a Fall routine that supports you, keep it simple and streamlined
Proactively select the habits that make up your routine to enrich your lifestyle and promote wellness
Review what you’ve committed yourself (and your family) to and reassess, take something out…
The idea is to minimize the hecticness, the overscheduling, the running and rushing around, the saturated bandwidth, and the like that create stress and breakdown in health, wellbeing and relationship(s) satisfaction. Which at the end of the day are what life is about. We tend to miss the boat on this!
Here are a few other suggestions that when implemented help create the ease, flow and joy we tend to undermine with the usual way we go about our life:
Have a Family Night (or Couple Night or Me Night depending on your current life stage)
Have two week-afternoons or -nights per week where there are no extra-curricular activities
Implement Reading and other types of Down Time
It does not make sense to have two sports activities back-to-back on the same day… Schedule differently or pick one!
Don’t double or triple book anything! Leave time for processing, regrouping, breathing, transitioning, and such…
Implement intentional transitions – from school/work to personal time, from day to night/sleep time, from weekdays to weekend, from weekend to weekdays
Create time for silence, to interact with others, to linger, to be bored…
Allow yourself and your family time to savor life…
When you start embracing this more minimalist kind of lifestyle, you actually get to Live your life more…
As you embrace minimizing the noise in your life, you’ll notice a significant improvement in your stress level, wellbeing and life and relationship(s) satisfaction… Your mood and health will be much better. Your efficiency and productivity will increase. Doing less is actually doing more!
But because we do have an overdoing-it ingrained approach, to embrace a more minimalist one is not so easy. Your train has already left the station and you are riding that ride… And, feeling the impact of it! So, as you try to slow down that train to get on a different track, you might need additional support to manage the damage already done.
To manage and address the negative feelings and state of being that might be kicking your butt. This translates into swapping Doing for Self-care… Add lots of self-care to your routine to help manage and reset your mood and feelings…
Here is a wonderful guided meditation, and energy clearing, to add to your repertoire for processing negative emotions… Nourishing activities like this one make all difference!
Focusing on feeling well, versus continuing to do more of the same and pushing through it, is the key to managing negative feelings. Removing noise and demands, nourishing your body and spirit, and Being in your life goes a long way in feeling well and living a life well lived.
Set yourself up for an amazing Fall. Remember, less is more. Take care of and be nice to yourself, and your loved ones!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Well-Feeling!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Take a close look at your current daily routine and lifestyle.
Lovingly, gently and intentionally revise it to support you and your loved ones better.
Streamline, simplify, systematize, delegate, and outsource.
Focus on keeping large chunks of time for just Being and enjoying… Safeguard these times as if your life depends on them. Because it does!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It is my sincerest wish that you have gotten everything you’ve wanted out of the Summer Season this year. If as you read that statement there is a little voice that says, I wish, or, Yeah right, it’s not too late! Regardless of which camp you are in, look at the next two weeks of August as a time to milk the last of the Summer Season.
Make it good! Now is the time to review your Summer Bucket List and squeeze in any activity or experience you would still like to have. Get in touch with what would make it a successful, satisfying summer at the end of the day and go for it!
As we are beginning to wrap up the Summer Season and setting up for a smooth, productive, and abundant Fall, I’m playing with the concept of success habits… When it comes to doing our everyday actions, we usually go about our day in autopilot and through habits.
This is great because it allows us to use our energy, focus and mental bandwidth for higher executive endeavors. The caveat with this is that our automatic habits were created by default, reactivity, and on the fly. This lack of intentionally sets us up to undermine ourselves as we go.
The lack of intention on how we set up our days, the routines we follow, the vices we allow, the thoughts we entertain, and just how we show up in our life creates a mediocre, or downright horrible experience. I too often witness people bumping along in life… They have no ownership, no clarity, no direction. They go through the motions, they aspire for little, they sell themselves short, they get in their own way…
These same people don’t have much life satisfaction and meaning, experience poor health and relationships, their life is riddled with drama and excuses. They move slow and don’t make much happen. They are not really living to their full potential, to their greatness, nor experiencing life the way they were meant to. They are not fully Living their human experience…
We want to systematize and automate as much as possible, so our bandwidth is available for more meaningful activities and not just the management of life… The key is to own our system and our automation, for us to program, instruct, and set up how the program is to run…
They key is also to set it up efficiently, streamlined, and on target. We all have ways we do things, but how much thought went into creating that way. Does the way actually support, serve and honor us at the end of the day?
This is where Intentional Habits™ come in. Intentional habits flow from our values and are meant to automate the building blocks of our daily life, allowing us to experience an amazing Journey. When the basic of life is intentionally set up, we create a strong foundation from which to build the Life we want. What is important to us in our life?
Loving and nurturing Relationships, health and longevity, financial and other abundance? When we identify what is important to us and what we value, the rest of our decisions flow from there… These decisions include how we do our days.
We don’t want to overthink every decision to make sure it lines up with our values, or to overthink every behavior or action we take. That’s way too much work. This is why we set up routines as we identify and implement Intentional Habits™.
We want to get rid of any habits that undermine our wellbeing and our desires in life, what we value…
We want to create habits that support our wellbeing and our desires in life, what we value…
We want to build routines (systematization, automation) around these for ease of implementation and sustainability.
Clean-up, set-up, line-up and move on!
Every action, every behavior, every thought, everything we do every day is what creates the fabric of our Life. It behooves us to own we do, to intentionally choose it all, so we create what we desire. It behooves us to get out of our own way, to stop sabotaging ourselves, to stop holding ourselves back. Embracing Intentional Habits™ makes this possible, makes our life well Lived possible. Don’t choose to just survive, choose to thrive!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Thriving!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Start out by identifying immediate, blatant habits that undermine you. Tackle these with a vengeance. Eradicate them! Start with one or two at a time, be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you go.
Replace undermining with supportive habits, implement Intentional Habits™. You choose the habit (mediating, exercising, juicing, giving hugs, sending Hello texts, date night, family night, reading, cutting expenses, adding to savings, etc.) and add it to a thought out simple yet powerful daily/weekly/monthly routine…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
I hope you are having a magnificent week! A lot of folks are away enjoying the last of the Summer Season while others are already in the throes of preparation for back-2-school. At this end, we are milking the sunshine, warmth and leisure pace while gearing up for the Fall. It is such pleasure to be putting finishing touches on this year’s Summer Personal Projects™.
Of course, some Personal Projects are ongoing. We usually know these as Personal Development. One of mine that falls in this category is that of embracing More Being, Less Doing™… What I lovingly call, “Moving Slow”, and more recently coined the experience as ZenBrain™. I play with this concept as an angle in my quest for ongoing and sustained Well-Being.
Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy exploring self-care practices that promote wellbeing. A great “hobby” indeed! This brings me to sharing about a delightfully wonderful meditation I have the pleasure of having in my Meditation Library: Guided Meditation for Taking Care of Yourself and Cultivating Self-Love, by Sara Raymond of the Mindful Movement. This meditation precisely captures the essence of the Self-care Practice I’ve been writing about.
Self-care is not just about a day at the spa and pampering oneself. Self-care has to do with establishing healthy boundaries, allowing and receiving, pacing ourselves, honoring ourselves, nourishing ourselves, connecting with our Self, enriching our Soul.
A self-care practice involves taking time for ourselves. It involves doing what is good for us. It involves being kind and compassionate toward ourselves. It involves believing and investing in ourselves. It involves expecting to be treated properly, to be treated with respect, kindness and care.
It involves standing up for ourselves. It involves saying No to something if taking it on will overwhelm us. It involves implementing a healthy lifestyle routine. It involves taking good care of all aspects of our personal life.
When we take care of ourselves, when we are nice, kind and compassionate toward ourselves, we are showing ourselves Love. When we experience self-love, then we are capable of being in Loving Relationships. Too often though, we judge ourselves for falling short of some standard. We have limiting believes about who we are and our abilities.
We question our worthiness, or at least walk around feeling unworthy. Sometimes we have over inflated egos as protection against this pain. We might not even be aware of this underlying driver. When we nurture the relationship with ourselves, we are showing ourselves Worthiness.
A Self-Care Practice is the cornerstone for cultivating self-love and worthiness, ingredients necessary for creating a successful relationship(s) and meaningful life… If instead we were to walk around on fumes, depleted, on alert, triggered, with protections, disconnected from our Core, Authentic, Higher Self, how could we possibly have good interactions with others and create the life we want?
I’ve come across a fantastic analogy for this: Imagine observing a person through a window who is vacuuming. They move up and down the rug, leaving streaks as they go. They seem on a mission. They look as if they are really into the task and doing a good job of it. Until you glance over and see the power cord is not plugged in…
This is how most go through life, doing, doing, doing, without being plugged in… They don’t make a dent in their life. They just exert energy without getting any results… Ugh!!
So, enough with the Doing. It’s time to really embrace Being through a robust Self-Care Practice that includes a rich selection of Mindfulness Practices. When we are plugged-in, resourced, we have leverage and are empowered to rock our world!
So, will you join in? What Self-Care Practice activities, routines, experiences, resources, mindset can you implement / embrace more fully? Don’t go at this as if you are on a mission… Be gentle, caring, loving, and easy about it. Enjoy the process, learn and experiment, savor what you choose, milk it…
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Practicing!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Take stock of how loved your feel in your life. What is the status of your relationship?
Take stock of how worthy you feel in your life. How deserving do you feel?
Now, take stock of how kind, nice and compassionate you are towards yourself. How do you treat yourself?
Take stock of your limiting beliefs in terms of expectations, shoulds, perfectionism, and such… How much do you ride yourself?
From the above inquiry and insights, pick an area you need to ease up on and a way to give yourself a break and Love…
Allow it, take it in…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Happy August! Hope you are having fun and enjoying everything summer has to offer. I’m delightfully balancing work-play and play-play. Isn’t it awesome when you work but feels like you are not working…? I’ve been having this feeling more and more, where I have to check to see “how much work” I did. LOL A world-class problem for sure!
As usual, I’m playing with my themes, projects, and Transcendental Mindset™. I so enjoy this part of my life as it totally influences everything else. One of the latest kicks is “Purpose”. I’ve realized my Purpose, have owned it, and have been playing with it for a very long time now. But, I’m having an interesting experience with, not so much as to what it is for me and what to do with it, but as a concept.
In my ongoing quest for creating well-being for myself and assisting those around me and my clients, the concept of Purpose keeps showing up no matter what angle I take in my research. Very interesting. I’ve been writing that value-based pleasures (related to purpose!) are the key to well-being… I find this to be so true as I observe loved ones, those in my different networks, clients and humanity at large.
I find that those just doing the daily grind and who can barely get their head above water are the ones that are the least satisfied and well. Those that seek fun and pleasure but are thrill seekers and superficially entertained are second. And, those that have Purpose and embrace it well are healthy, happy, peaceful, abundant – Well.
In my pursuit to be a good mother and promote Wellness in my family, I’m always searching what to role model, and how to teach, guide, inspire and such. I know me being me and doing my own life well is a great role model in and of itself.
But parenting is a full contact sport, and I want to proactively parent our daughter. What I’ve come across is so rewarding! It takes parenting to the next level intoxicatingly connecting my themes, interests, pursuits and the like. Bam!
So, let’s take a look at one of the books I’m currently reading:
This book is written for adolescents and those supporting adolescents. It identifies the Essence of adolescence and how the adolescent mind’s focus is on novelty-seeking, social engagement, increased emotional intensity and creative exploration. It encourages engaging these aspects proactively to prevent the usual teenage approach to these to their detriment.
Seigel further makes the marvelous correlation that if adults were to embrace these qualities ongoingly themselves that they would experience a more satisfying life… The Essence and wonderful opportunities this state of being brings get lost as adults get sucked into the responsibilities of life.
When we are not properly stimulated or engaged, whether we are adolescents or mature adults, we create a dissatisfying life. This is why Purpose is so important!
Additional play with the concept of Purpose let me to this delicious exercise – The Purpose Challenge… Whether you know your Purpose or are still wondering, this exercise is so fun and helps you focus your attention in your life…
Sort the statements below into these three categories, using the exact number of statements noted for each category:
“Exactly Like Me” (3 statements)
“Not At All Like Me” (3 statements)
“Neither Like Me or Not Like Me” (remaining 7 statements)
Promoting my political beliefs is very important to me.
Volunteering is very important to me.
Finding a career that is consistent with my values and beliefs is very important to me.
Being there for my friends is very important to me.
Pursuing a calling, rather than just a job is very important to me.
Serving my country is very important to me.
Helping others is very important to me.
Serving my family is very important to me.
Supporting social issues is very important to me.
Expressing myself through my artwork (ex. music, painting, etc.) is very important to me.
Living life according to my religious beliefs is very important to me.
Being a spiritual person is very important to me.
Being able to support a family of my own in the future is very important to me.
Now, list them in this order:
Not At All Like Me
Neither Like Me or Not Like Me
Exactly Like Me
The last three is where you’d want to place your focus and resources. This is your Purpose, you might want to name it. All the other items sound pretty wonderful also, but if we tackle a lot of them without focusing on what is really important to us our efforts get diluted, our impact is minimized, and our satisfaction and well-being quotient take a hit…
This is the way to live a meaningful, satisfying, and rewarding life – a successful life, an exceptional life, a well lived life, a Well-Being life… Play along and see what you find out. Play along and keep streamlining your life. Play along and focus on being stimulated and engaged in ways that are in Alignment with your Purpose… Now we are talking, embrace this and enjoy!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Purposing!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Look at how you use your time and determine how rewarding and enriching those experiences are. Be brutally honest, that’s the only way we can create the change we desire…
Run your activities through your Purpose lens to see if they are in alignment:
If they are not, dump them or work towards dumping them…
If they are, but somehow they are still not rewarding determine what is getting in the way and take action to remedy it.
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Happy Friday! Feeling frisky yet? Fridays are powerful, they are the gateway to another dimension. They invite us to leave behind the realm of responsibility, to-dos, and commitments, and to enter the realm of Play.
I love it when people share about their 4-day-work-weeks, dress-down-Fridays, team-Friday-happy-hours, weekend trips, and such. And, what better time to fully embrace the concept of Frisky-Friday™ than during the summer months when the sunshine just beckons us to play!
Even though most people have their version of Frisky-Friday and how they enjoy their weekends, I notice that they don’t fully enter this other dimension. They linger somewhere in limbo, a world of carried-over chores, noise in their head, and spending time engaged in “commitments” or “making fun happen”… All of this is a lot of doing, which actually ends up eluding the benefit of Frisky-Friday’s Dimension…
Frisky Friday Meaning
To continue with our current ongoing theme of “getting the most of summer”, of having a Meaningful Summer™, it is important to take full advantage of our weekends. Weekends are not to be squandered. Weekends are to be milked for their inherent benefit, that of transcending the usual, Being… The meaning of Frisky-Friday is about embracing the seduction of pleasure and fun to engender well-being.
Our brain is hardwired to seek out pleasure, it is a network of “pleasure pathways” and “pleasure centers”. When these are stimulated by activities we consider pleasurable (soothing scents, enticing aromas, wonderful touch, gorgeous sites), they release brain chemicals that are associated with feeling good.
What is really amazing about this concept is that aside from the obvious benefit of feeling good, when these centers are activated they are an antidote to stress and its harmful impact.
The stress and pleasure centers of the brain are mutually exclusive, they cannot be triggered simultaneously. When in a pleasure state, we cannot also be in a stressful state therefore foregoing any harmful effects. This is the benefit of properly participating in our weekends, bypassing the impact of stress for pleasure – this is the formula for well-being!
But, does this mean we are slaves to pleasure-seeking, and potentially risky or what some might even call immoral behavior, with the host of related negative consequences? No, because pleasure is not just associated with the senses or what we traditionally think of when we consider pleasure and fun… There are all sorts of pleasure and fun to be had!
Which brings me to Values-Based Pleasure… This is pleasure associated with a sense of higher purpose that is the Key to Well-Being… The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley focuses on research to this end, and provides a wealth of information and resources for the pursuit of well-being and making the world a better place.
They have identified 10 related building blocks, virtues, that when embraced rewire our brain, marinate our mind with positive cocktails, and change our life experience…
So, if you haven’t come up with your Summer Personal Project™ yet, you can use these Virtues as inspiration… Which virtue do you want to explore, expand and embrace more? Pick one and create a project for it, for example:
Develop a community service project on a cause dear to your heart
Indulge in a literary, conceptual or industry body of work
Expand your emotional range, language, expression
Research ethnic, other minority, or needs groups and how to support them
Clean your thinking, focus on the positive, share appreciations
Implement a gratefulness and mindfulness practice
Join a new group that shares a common interest
There are five weeks left to the summer season, and if your children go back to school early then you have even less weeks. If you’re still scratching your head asking yourself the meaning of Frisky Friday, it means to make the most of your time off and (currently) what’s left of summer, for the best summer yet!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Pleasuring!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Let the concept of Values-Based Pleasures seduce you this summer.
Maybe you want to indulge in exploring Virtues – their meaning, application, implementation, impact. Maybe you want to play at incorporating them into different aspects of your life – incorporating them into your mission, relationship, parenting, service, team building, book, any way you want!
Copyright (c) 2018 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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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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