SECRETS OF A SOCIAL WORKER

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Tag: relationships (Page 2 of 4)

Treat Yo’ Self

August 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

When is the last time you celebrated yourself?
Told yourself that you’re proud?
Gave yourself a compliment?
Told someone about a recent success of yours?

We are pretty incredible, yet we always find ways to downplay our accomplishments, or find our flaws rather than focus on all we bring to this world.
Why are we embarrassed to celebrate ourselves? We practically despise recognizing our successes, or God forbid, talk about any of our skills or positive attributes. It makes us uncomfortable to put ourselves first when we should be recognizing how bad*ss we are.
You are unique. Your contributions, in whatever form they are, matter. You are worth celebrating. Therefore, treat yo’ self! Do not let yourself fall into the trap of believing that it’s not okay to talk about, celebrate, or recognize yourself. I think one of the biggest mistakes we make and one of the deepest pains we feel is when we deny our own positive attributes and accomplishments because we believe it is for the benefit of everyone else’s comfort. And that is simply not true. We are worth celebrating, and we must take some time to treat ourselves for all that we are.

Here are some ways I try to celebrate myself…

Affirmations
I know, this first one is super ‘social workey’, but it is true and is a hugely underutilized self care technique.
What do you want in your life, what do you desire, how do you want to feel, what do you want to believe to be true, and what do you want to remind yourself of every day? The answers to these questions can be found through daily affirmations. Write down a few goals you have for your life, what you want to see happen, and be specific. Or tell yourself a few things each day that make you feel good, proud, happy, sexy, successful…whatever it is you want to believe and remind yourself. Affirmations can simply be an acknowledgement of all the good that you are, and visualizations for what you’d like to see happen.
If this is challenging for you, just Google ‘affirmations’. There are many websites to help you understand and incorporate this into your every day life.

Give Yourself Permission
To do whatever it is you want. Take a break, say no, put yourself first, skip the gym, change plans…It’s going to be OKAY. Can’t we all just make it socially acceptable to give ourselves permission, and everyone else be understanding of that?! Cut yourself some slack, take a breather, and give yourself permission to look after you. This can also be giving yourself permission to love your body, forgive your mistakes, trust yourself, and let go of anything that no longer serves you.
Recite this sentence right now and see what comes to mind; I give myself permission to _________.
Doesn’t that feel GOOD?!

Allow Yourself To Give AND Receive
Yes, I know, how dare the thought come into my mind to tell you it’s okay to receive. How dare I suggest that we deserve to be complimented, to be given gifts, to be offered help. *GASPS*
Reread this sentence a few times…You are not taking away from anyone else by receiving. We can give and receive equally, and you accepting the giving side of others does not mean you’re selfish. In fact, by being open to receiving you are bettering yourself and those around you because you are more balanced. You must have both in your life to be the best you that you can be. Life will eat you alive if all you do is give to others.
We have all experienced relationships where someone would just take from us. We also have all experienced relationships where someone would refuse to ask for or receive help. These relationships are draining, and frankly annoying. Do not be this person (yes, I am talking to you, KAREN!), and also do not accept relationships that simply take from you. This is an area where you can give yourself permission to remove toxic relationships from your life.
Accept compliments, accept gifts, accept help, accept love. And also give because you enjoy it and it makes you feel good.

Take Opportunities
Guess what? You are worthy of all the opportunities that come your way; take them. You deserve it. Opportunities fall in your lap because they are absolutely meant to. And if you missed one, do not fret, there will always be more if you believe that you deserve them and open yourself up to experiences. By utilizing affirmations and finding balance, I can assure you opportunities will seem to start falling out of the sky. You are worthy of all the good that comes your way.

Celebrate Yourself
Yes, it’s okay to celebrate YOU. Sometimes it can be as little as buying your favorite coffee after you kicked a** at work, or simply because you feel you deserve a little self love and enjoyment of the little things in life…What are things you can do to remind yourself of how awesome you are? How can you celebrate yourself and make it a part of your routine?
This is different for everyone. It can be that coffee treat now and again, it can be to share your awesomeness with someone close to you, it can be to write it down, or it can be to share it widely on social media. The sky is the limit to how you celebrate your life, but always, ALWAYS, make time for this. If you do not acknowledge why you are here, then what is the point of living? You are here for a reason, celebrate that! Shout it from the rooftops if ya want, hunny!

Be Thankful
I know, this sounds obvious, but we overlook it often. If you find all the things going right each day, it brings about more abundance in your life. If you notice all the positivity that surrounds you, you’ll continually start to focus on all the good. Don’t you want to wake up and enjoy each day?
It is easy for us to point out and focus on the few setbacks we experience each day, and we always find something to complain about. If we focused half of that energy on seeing how 99% of our day is actually going well, we would be happier, plain and simple. It can be as little as finding a convenient parking spot, and taking a second to acknowledge how grateful we are. It can be to think about or write down 10 things we are thankful for today, and do this every morning or evening. It can be to smile at the thought of having your health, your family, a stable job, a lake home, an easy day at work, hitting all the green lights on your drive, receiving a compliment, eating a good meal, getting a good grade, receiving a gift…These are things that happen to us every day that we lose an opportunity to celebrate because we overlook. Amidst the chaos and tough times, there is so much to be thankful for!
(If you need some motivation and reminders, check out my Happy Things Thursday posts!)

Find Balance
Work is great because it provides us a sense of purpose and direction, but it is not the most important thing in our lives. If we have tunnel vision only looking towards the value of the dollar and our work ethic, we are missing out on what life is truly about. Our successes should just be a portion of life, as we are not here to work hard and die. It is upsetting to me to watch so many people going through life this way; wanting to work too hard now to play later in life. But what about the fact that we can have both, now and later on? We cannot give work all of our best effort if we do not stop to have fun and take a break once in a while. It is not good for our mental health as this is where we get bitter towards work. Do not let this happen…Not only do you start to burn out from your career, which you worked so hard to achieve, but you start losing interest in everything outside of work too. We start to hoard guilt over not working and being productive 24/7, and then feel anxious anytime we try to relax.
Repeat after me, it’s okay to waste time.
Say whaaa?! Yes, we can do nothing AND benefit from it. It restores us and gives us a brain break. We benefit from checking out from life, because it’s all about balance. Just like we need to give AND receive, we need to work AND play because this is when we can truly be our best selves. We cannot inhale without exhale; we need both to breathe. We cannot get to our destination if we don’t stop AND go; we need both to drive safely.

Life is incredible when we ease up, celebrate who we are, find purpose through our work, be grateful, accept kindness from others, and jump at new opportunities. Oh ya, and watch some Netflix and eat the damn donut…You know, treat yo’self.

When you celebrate yourself, you celebrate life~
-keep shining

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Think New Thoughts

December 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Where does fear come from?…
.
.
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…Past experiences, regret, hurting others, loneliness, trauma, not adhering to cultural and social norms…
The list is never ending. Fear can be the reason for staying in a stagnant relationship, not speaking up against something that isn’t right, or staying at a crumby job. The fear of going against what we know, going against people’s expectations of us, and being different is what keeps us stuck in fear-based thinking. Everything we do is decided with either love or fear.

Believe it or not, fear can dissipate when you think new thoughts you’ve never thought about before. And change comes from thinking those new thoughts and acting on them. I know this concept terrifies people because we want to hold onto what we know, what is easy, and what doesn’t rock the boat. But the downside to that mentality is our own desires, goals, dreams, and independence suffer because we are scared. What we forget to realize is that letting go of this fear is easier than holding on. It’s when we let go and think new thoughts that the new stuff will find us.

When we are so used to acting a certain way, having a certain job, being around certain people, etc. we get used to it. We get so used to having these things in our lives that we do not think about it much. We are fearful of letting go because we hoard fears of not being able to replace those things, or fear that its replacement is not any better than what we gave up. And it completely makes sense that this is a terrifying, debilitating thought. We put more value on avoiding a possibility of regret than we do on living life. But if we are not getting what we want out of life, if we are not happy…Why not make some changes? What is there to really even be fearful of? We cannot make room for new things, new perspectives, and new experiences until we clear out what is not serving us. This is where we gain clarity; when we get rid of thoughts that do not have a place anymore. This does not mean the things we get rid of are not special, important, or at one point exactly what we wanted or needed…It just means we are moving on, moving forward, and honoring our feelings and our truth.
(To read more about avoiding feelings, click here.)

We all know on a deep level what it is we want and what’s missing, but we feel safe when we hoard fearful thoughts. We don’t even know what we want because we are too scared to even think about it. Those fearful thoughts (or avoidance of those thoughts) give us excuses to stay in our comfort zone and be bored. Often times that feels better than uprooting pieces of our lives or hurting people. But harboring fear and accepting boredom prevents us from all of the new things that await for us to arrive. There is so much we can learn and experience in this life when we remove fear. And do you want to know the best part? All of those things are possible. Everything we want is on the other side of fear. Fear is just a state of mind. Our fears create barriers because most of the time facing our fears is actually bigger than the fears themselves. We just get in our own heads. We are our own biggest roadblock to the love and happiness we want to experience.

We create our own prison. We fear so much that we build walls for protection, but ultimately those walls are a huge detriment to our sole purpose here on earth; to experience it. It’s when we remove those walls, start being honest with ourselves, and get through the fearful stuff that we end up on the other side. It’s on the other side that we find ourselves, we speak our truth, we are complete, and we are happy. On the other side of fear is where we find everything we ever wanted. Do not let fear create your future.

We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are ~

-keep shining
Other related blogs : A Letter To Yourself, Guilt, Honoring Your Uniqueness

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Connection vs. Attachment

December 18, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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Throughout our lifetimes we have numerous relationships that come and go. With each relationship we encounter, we development ourselves further. We learn more about who we are through others. We discover what it is we want in a friend and in a life partner through connection and attachment, and we further develop our own values and morals based on our interactions with those we surround ourselves with.
It’s no secret that relationships are both tough and life changing. They offer so much to us; relationships are the basis of human life. We are completely motivated by our desire for human interaction. Everything we think revolves around the impact it’ll have on our relationships. It’s the interactions with those around us that create a feeling of wholeness; our desire for human connection makes up the entirety of our lives.

As I previously stated, relationships come and go. It’s the ‘go’ part that gets tough, but it’s also the ‘go’ that creates resiliency within ourselves. It changes us, makes us stronger, and gets us one step closer to solidifying what kinds of relationships we want to surround ourselves with. The ‘go’ is typically the break up, or the decision to end a friendship. These are the rough patches that cause pain, and take a lot of time to heal and move on from. It’s not easy. It’s hard to let go of people we feel attached to, partly because we devote a lot of our time to the attachments we have with people. But to be attached isn’t necessarily what we want in a relationship…

Connection gives you power, attachment sucks the life out of you.

Let me further explain….

I was recently educating high school students on healthy relationships. We were discussing what makes a relationship unhealthy, and one student mentioned being “attached at the hip”.  This made me think about the meaning behind the phrase “attached at the hip” and where it came from.  After giving it some thought, it dawned on me that there is a huge difference between connection and attachment, but often times we combine them to be one in the same.

We all witness or personally experience those relationships that just go through the motions, or settling, as some would say. It’s being too comfortable, being too content and not knowing how to leave because you’ve formed an attachment to their presence… Like we do not know how to move on because we have developed an attachment to having that person around, and we fear what people will think if we stray from the ‘norm’ or what they were expecting from us.  This is attachment.  We attach to people and do not know how to function without them, regardless of whether or not it is healthy or what we really want.
To attach means to join together or fasten to something. For example, we attach to our phones because we have developed a habit; a feeling of not being able to get by each day without it in our presence and constantly in reach. A habit of just having it around and knowing it will be there. We always know where our phones are at any minute….Now how unhealthy does that sound when we say that about relationships?

What we really mean to be seeking when we form an attachment to someone is a connection. Connection is unconditional love. It’s an unexplainable bond to someone, sometimes unexpected. Ever hear or use the phrase, ‘we just clicked’ or, ‘we just connected’?
It’s an understanding of someone that supersedes the other relationships in our lives. Sometimes it is the feeling of knowing someone despite not spending a lot of time with them. It can be finishing each others sentences, or being able to feel what the other person feels; being able to read the other person. It is a feeling of knowing….You just get each other, and sometimes it’s hard to put that into words. It’s sharing our true selves, our deepest secrets, without fear of the other person judging. It’s feeling complete, understood, and allowing each other to make mistakes. It’s being away from each other and having trust that your connection is strong enough to endure turmoil, and confident enough to overcome differences. Finding connection is powerful; it gives us confidence.
Connection is having common interests.
Our minds are wired to connect to people, we need it…We crave it. There is nothing more satisfying than finding connections with people and exploring them. To expand ourselves by interacting with others on a deeper, more meaningful and whole level. We are happy when we are connected.

Take some time to dissect your relationships. Be honest with yourself; there is nothing to fear. Ask yourself the tough questions. Yes, we will have superficial relationships in our lives, most relationships we have  are superficial…or ‘surface-level’. Sometimes we just attach to people based on outer circumstances. But you have choice in the matter, you have the ability to come and go in people’s lives. You decide why you want to move on or stick around. You choose what it is you’re seeking in your relationships, and what you ultimately want for your life. Go after it.

~Maybe it’s not about the length of time you’ve known someone, maybe it’s about instant recognition on an unconscious level…Connection doesn’t care what society tells us, your Soul will be pulled to the place it belongs.

-keep shining

Yes People

August 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Why is it that we want to please others more than ourselves? That we cancel our own plans to take on the extra work shift we are too mentally exhausted to handle. That we agree to help a friend instead of going to that movie we were looking forward to…..I’ll tell you why, it’s because we live in a world full of Yes People, and I can almost guarantee you’re one of them.

Yes People put others before themselves; they live for second place. Yes People believe that in order to have a fulfilled life, they must sacrifice for others and be in a constant state of giving back.
So what if I told you I think this way of life is total b.s.?

Riddle me this: How are we supposed to be helpful to others, sacrifice our own wellbeing, and be in a constant state of giving if we aren’t mentally sound, or emotionally and physically healthy? How are we supposed to live a happy life if we forget to put ourselves first rather than let ourselves go for the betterment of others?
The answer? We can’t. But the unfortunate thing is we do it constantly. We live in a society that puts more meaning and emphasis on always giving to others rather than to ourselves. We live in a time where we feel guilty if we say no, we feel guilty if we take a break, and we feel guilty if we do something nice for ourselves for once. And you know what else? We judge and get upset with those who say no to us rather than being understanding of their busy world and respecting their decision.

Over the past couple months I have made a point to say no every now and again, and after a few practice rounds I can tell you it has been amazing. Not only do I feel happier and more relaxed, but when I do say yes to others I actually mean it. My yes’s have become more genuine, and I have more energy to engage myself in whatever ‘yes’ it is that I am focusing on. I no longer feel guilty when I say no because I know that by saying no to others, I am saying yes to myself, and I value my own self worth. I listen to my body when it tells me to take a break, and by doing so it has made me a better person to those around me. Therefore, by saying no I truly am working on being a better person for those times that I agree and say yes.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still a constant people pleaser whether in regards to my work life or my friends. It is something I continue to work on, and I know a few coworkers who would argue that I still give way too much! But it is all about baby steps, so I would challenge you to start somewhere too. Here is an example….
A few weeks ago I started to play the piano again. It has been years since I have played piano but often times I told myself I wanted to. However, I let work and other obligations that I constantly said yes to to get in the way of doing what I wanted to do, literally for the past few years. So in order to practice saying no, I took time one day to sit down at my keyboard and start playing. I told myself to just give it 20 minutes of my day and take a break from other obligations I prioritized. I ended up spending hours playing the piano that day, and I haven’t stopped since. It was then that I realized that other obligations were not as important as me enjoying myself that day.
Before  that day I would have said I was too busy, that I didn’t have enough time. But now, I miraculously have found time for music again, and it’s because I make the time. I prioritize the time. I value the time…My time. And you know what else? It has made me so happy! Music is a great release for me, it’s a great distraction, and it’s something I am passionate about. I had completely forgotten how it made me feel to play and sing.
We should never give up the things we love. Make time for them by saying no, you Yes Person you!

Last question: How many times have you taken on an extra shift at work, or spent time helping a friend move that it didn’t negatively affect you in some way? Now, I am not saying to never do those things because we all enjoy being good people and helping out now and again. But it is important to remember that by taking on too many of these things, we are not the only one who suffers. Those around us suffer too…..
Typically, we become too exhausted at work to give clients, customers, and patients our upmost respect and attention. Typically, we become so burnt out that spending time doing the things we love fall to the side which affects our mental health and happiness. How can we be providing the best service to those we work with and  be good friends if we are always tired and suffering? We take on extra things trying to be helpful, but with time it actually is a disservice to everybody around us because we are not our best, genuine selves.

So again, I challenge you to take baby steps…. Say no to that extra shift, and say yes to spending that time spoiling yourself.  Even if it’s ten minutes a day, start somewhere. Devote this time to an old hobby, or something new you want to learn or try. Those ten minutes can even be ten minutes of quiet time by yourself. You name it, you can do it when you practice saying no. You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no!

~ No is a complete sentence, it does not require justification or explanation. 

-keeping shining

 

 

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