Tuesday, October 23, 2012

unit 9 post

my unit 9 PROJECT


Being psychological, spiritual, and physically developed begins with where I want to be. Where I am in life as of now doesn’t mean I am happy, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have the power to change that. As a person who has always been physically active all my life, I never developed the spiritual and psychological aspect of my life. I am a thinker, I think as much as I can about every subject and I often get lost in my thoughts, thus separating from myself. I also do not believe in any higher power, I dance to the sound of my own drum so I often find myself not too spiritual. The goals I have for myself include becoming one with myself. Really learning to love myself with no regrets. I want to end this fight and begin a new relationship where I am able to solve problems with ease and handle the stresses in life with an open mind.

            Health wise I know I have a long way to go. I scored myself originally in unit 3 as a 5 psychologically, I know that my own thoughts can bring toxicity to my body. People learn to live off their thoughts as the truth. Thinking negative thoughts about myself brings my self esteem down. It brings my self confidence down as well as my positive outlook on things more important. I begin to doubt my capabilities and forget to remember that none of my thoughts make a difference in my life unless I change it myself. I never would have figured that the way I think psychologically could have such an impact on my health. I began to have massive headaches in the back of my head one day, my shoulders always hurt and my back pain surfaced. I went to the doctors once because I thought there was something wrong with me but it turned out it was just stress. I wasn’t handling the stress correctly, instead I was letting it stay inside and getting worse. I remember my doctor saying, “You need to learn how to manage your stress, try relaxing your shoulders more, you seem to be too tense.” My first thought was, “so there’s nothing wrong, wrong with me? It’s just stress?” I could not understand how something simple as stress was affecting my body so much. I was out of practice, psychologically, how to handle stress. What thoughts I should have been thinking and how to turn negatives into positives. Instead I reacted to the pain in my body and the thoughts in my head into negative, negative, negative. “You’re fat, you always be alone, you will never succeed” those were thoughts inside my head I could not shake.

             In unit 3 I scored myself for spirituality as a 5 as well. I have never been much into spiritual sense. I am more concerned about waking up to do the things on my to-do list then worrying about being spiritually connected to myself. This is probably why I am not succeeding in loving myself. I am not a very religious person. I never have been because it always felt like I had to fake like I enjoyed going to church. I have always been the type of person to do things when I wanted to and not when I was told. So when my mother put me into catechism classes I was reluctant to go because I did not enjoy it and it bored me. For me, if a class I had bored me, I did not pass or barley passed during school. Being close to prayer like others are will probably never be a part of me. I need to learn to be more spiritual with myself.

            I scored myself for physical wellbeing at a 7. Looking back at unit 3 and where I am now with this class has made me change my mind with my physical wellbeing. I would like to change it to a 4-5. This is partly because I began working out with a fitness group and I am realizing now that I have never taken proper care of my eating habits. This affects my workouts because my body isn’t working off of the proper nutrition and energy. Once I master how to make better choices in food, eating at the right times and the proper portions is when I could raise the score on my physical wellbeing.

            My goals for becoming more spiritual is listening more to my intuition and sixth sense. If something doesn’t feel right when making a decision, then I should listen to my inner self and then make my decision from then. I do not want to create any doubt at all in my final decisions. My goals for being more psychologically healthy, is to keep away the negative thoughts and not worry about what others think of me. I need to stay as true to myself as much as I can in order to be happy. The last goal in being physically healthy is maintaining my eating choices and continuing to exercise. Not only do I want to look good, but I want to live as long as I can with as less complications with health as long as possible.

            Strategies to keep me focused on my goals, is having support. I believe it is always best to have support from your loved ones in everything you do in life. Sometimes life gets you down and you do not know who to turn to. You go to your mother and father and all they have to do is say a few words of encouragement and your back on your path to success. That is the power of support. For me, each subject (spiritual, physical, and psychological) just needs support. When you are struggling or fighting with yourself and how to be happy, that support is there to remind you not to give in to negative thoughts. To always look for a positive for every negative. When you get sick because you haven’t taken care of your health having the support of loved ones can increase the want to get better physically. You have more of discipline and focus. When you’re constantly fighting your negative thoughts and depression sometimes a night out with a loved one could bring it all back into perspective and help you realize, that there are bigger problems out there than your life alone. To always be thankful and appreciate the things in life and what life brings you since the day you arrived until the day you leave this world.

            I will make sure I am pin pointing each domain in my spiritual life, physical and psychological wellbeing. Staying true to me and what I stand for in life is only the beginning of an adventure waiting for me. I want to live past my 80’s and I can’t do that alone without making sure my mind is as sharp as it is being 22 years old now. I need to remember to listen to my body and my heart when I am hurting and understand why bad things happen sometimes. I will learn to channel that hurt and anger to loving kindness. Forgive my enemies and people that have hurt me because I can’t take my grudges with me when I leave, so why have them now? Knowing that my grandparents have lived as long as they have they figured out the secret to a happy marriage and a domestic life. Yes they argue like cats and dogs, but I know they don’t have any regrets in life and are comfortable that they raised their children with the right morals, responsibilities and hearts to keep the family going. Taking care of my health will be the most important aspect because without me around, my son wouldn’t be taken care of. I have so much to live for in this short amount of time I am here, so I must make the best of it by taking care of my health in every way possible. I play softball and I plan on playing it as long as I can. Softball is my escape from reality to do something I was made for. It keeps me sane and relaxes me and even takes stress away from life. I am only 22 years young. I have so much more stress and life to go through to realize in the end, if I took care of myself properly with mental fitness. I guess we will never know until we get there right? Until then, all I have is the knowledge from this class. I will pass as much information as I can to others to spread the word of proper health maintenance.

Monday, October 15, 2012

unit 8 blog post

The first practice would be loving kind-ness. I truley feel that when I learned this exercise I was able to look at things with a whole new perspective. Lately I have been feeling down in the dumps because I have been learning new things about myself. I am getting more in touch with how I think and act and what works best. I also have been learning from others how they see me. I feel like I don't even know myself anymore. This does make me sad. I think I just need to find myself and move forward. When i learn to forgive my enemies and learn to love them as well as myself I will be able to love life.

Im not sure if meditation is for me right now, but reading about it lately has gotten me curious as how it could help me with my problems. I think if I can get in touch with my inner self I could learn how to love myself and accept myself and how I am. Society teaches people to depend on a lit up screen and people dont even talk to one another any more since email and text messaging has been around. Its harder to develope a trust and relationship with anyone. This brings me to want to try meditation more and more so I can get in touch with myself first. Then I can work  on how I can talk to others.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Unit 6 post

The exercise for this week was pretty touching to me. As I repeated each sentence while remaining calm and quiet, I kept replaying the faces of my loved ones, the faces of the girls I teach softball too, as well as the people who are not my favorite. It was hard to wish something so nice to the ones I do not like, especially since I have been wronged from so many, but this exercise helped me realize that its not about how they hurt me, its how I take it and use it to make me stronger. I should penalize what the other person did because they might be going through something of their own.

For the second exercise, I focused more on my interpersonal health. Right now I feel like I am at war with myself. I catch myself in deep thought and my thoughts are all from my son being in school now, to how I am going to pay the bills or if I am going to be single forever. These thoughts are putting a damper on how I have been feeling. I want to aim for not thinking so much. My friends Grace is a counselor and she is always saying let life come to you, because life happens when your busy. I should just let go, and let things happen how they are ment to.

I know I am a strong, beautiful and great mother and person. I can get through anything as long as I allow myself to keep going, I know I will get through my life journey.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

unit 5 post:

The subtle mind practice and the loving kindness practice were the same yet different. Using different sounds like the waves crashing against the ocean can relax many people. I have come to think that the reason why the sounds of waves crashing against the sand reminds adults how it sounded when we were in our mothers wombs. It relaxes us and until this day we comfort babies as if they are still inside their mothers so they fall asleep or feel safe.

In loving kindness its about thinking of your life and how you can change your attutude to things that make you angry to letting go of the anger. Where as this practice wants you to focus on your breathing and then how still your body is. It also wants you to focus on keeping the focus of the stillness in your body without mind wondering. If you mind wander it asks you to bring it back to focus.

I think this exercise can help me with keeping that kind of peace in my life. I am contantly moving and I always tend to mind wander. I think of so many things at once. Without this practice I wouldnt have realized that.

My personal life is built around my son and two jobs, as well as school and looking for a third part time job. Calming my mind from time to time should help me to release my mind and help with stress. I can see things in more perspective and be more aware of things.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

unit 4 exercise

For starters the exercise was kind of hard for me because I had my eyes closed and the sound of the waves on the beach was soothing, except my son was playing angry birds right next to me so it was kind of hard to focus. Besides that, this exercise really made me pay attention to how I feel about many aspects in life, bith pleasant and unpleasant things. I didnt realize how horrible somethings could be but yet the exercise tought me how to forgive and understand them. How the meaning of my life is to this world. It made me think of how I see my son, I created him from my own body, I have created life! It dawned on me that, hello, I was created as well by my mother.

I enjoyed that feeling, it made me feel like I am one in a million. The one thing that touched me was the breathing for our family or friends that are suffering, it made me think of my aunt. I do wish the best to her even though we have had out differences, and this exercise made it feel good and calming.

The concept of a mental workout is to open our mind up to further development. Without trying to calm our mind some way, it can be working out, releiving stress in our own way, these things help clear the mind. Without that than I suggest these exercises because it really feels good to let go and really "relax."
Thank you and hope you have a good week.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

unit 3 blog

1. I rate my physical wellbeing at a 7 because I think my physical state right now is fine. I am contantly on the move during my day and I have been an athlete my whole life. I do train athletes now so I like to think that I am physically active. I rate my spitual well-being at a 5 because I do not think I am connected to my spiritual sense much. I think to much about what people think about me and I do not know how to look to the brighter things in life, I take a lot of negative in. I rate my psycholgical well-being at a 5 as well for the same reasons, I do not think that I am strong enough in my mind that I can be succesful. I feel a lot of people think I can not make it in life. 2. My goal for physical wellbeing is to be more active, try to really focus on making better decisions when being active and eating good. The goal I choose for spiritual wellbeing is to try to connect to myself. Try to relax myself and remember that as long as I have me, I am ok. My last goal for my psychological wellbeing is to beleive in myself. Once I do that I am capable of anything. 3. I think I will have to use this blog as a way to help me towards my goals. Another thing that helps me is when I have someone to do it with. I have a friend who wants to change her life style and her active status as well so she can help push me to stick to it and vice versa. 4. The relaxation exercise is very calming, the only thing that makes it too calming is that at this moment I am very tired as it is, doing a relaxation exercise almost put me to sleep. But I guess that is a good thing in a way because it really shows how much I relaxed. I have been very stressed latley and I could use more time to myself to relax. 0 Thank you for reading my post. Until next time =) Nicole

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Unit 2 blog/reflection

Hello professor and class, Welcome to my blog, I have had this blog when I first started school but it has been a while since I have posted. I hope I am able to find some kind of calm with writing since writing can ease the soul. We shall see. The relaxation exercise that I listened to was pretty cool. I did not realize how powerful it was until it told me to take a deep breath and tell myself in my mind to relax. My body felt completly as ease and I could feel my body let go of any tension it had for this brief segment. I think I will be using this technique of relaxation when ever I feel the stress of life is getting to me. I have so much things to do day to day and it would just be an awesome way to use this to help me cope with it. Thank you for reading my post, I look forward to reading all of yours as well. Nicole