Friday Favorites

Favorite Tiny Delight of the Week

This week one of my favorite "little delights" has been Christmas Baking. It started last weekend with a delicious creation of "candy cane" oatmeal ("recipe" coming soon!) and Heather's Peppermint Cookies, both of which I could eat continuously for weeks! YUM! I love cooking while Christmas music is playing in the background. While cooking can, at times, increase my stress, when it comes to "fun" Christmas cooking, I can feel my stress melting away. 

Favorite Quote of the Week

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt

Do you choose to be a "small mind" and simply discuss people (gossip), or do you choose to have a great mind, and challenge yourself? That choice is YOURS!

Favorite Post By Someone Else

Don't Put It Off by Tina at Best Body Fitness. This is an absolutely fantastic post from the first to the last word, and is a quick read. I would highly encourage you to check it out... after finishing this post, of course ;)

Favorite Past Post

10 Ways To Develop A Positive Body Image - Sometimes during the holiday season it is difficult to feel good about ourselves and our bodies. Check out my tips to develop and maintain a healthy body image! 

Favorite Search Term

• Acorn Squash Roasted with Sausage & Apples
• daily garnish quinoa
• reducing stress during the holidays (part 1 and 2 of this series was posted this week!)
• ecuador colors
• who I am today

Now it's your turn!

What's your favorite thing to cook or eat during the Christmas season? What are some of your "favorites" from the week?

Wellness Wednesday: {Sense of Worth}

Happy Wellness Wednesday! For myself personally, I love doing these Wednesday posts, as they are a good check and reminder for myself as well. If you've missed any of the posts, here are the previous posts for Wellness Wednesday:

Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction}
Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction pt. 2}
Wellness Wednesday: {The Wheel of Wellness Part 1}
Wellness Wednesday: {The Wheel of Wellness Part 2}
Wellness Wednesday: {Life Task 1: Spirituality}
Wellness Wednesday: {Life Task 2: Self Direction}

For those of you who have read some of the posts, you might recall that I'm using the idea of the Wheel of Wellness to visually represent wellness for the individual.

Source

Last week I introduced the second life task, which is Self Direction. Within the second life task there are 12 subtasks. Right now I'm planning to start at the top and work my way around the circle clock wise. 

Today, I'm discussing the first subtask: Sense of Worth.

Myers, Sweeney, and Witmer define this subtask the following way:

Satisfaction with self, acceptance of self with one’s imperfections, acceptance of one’s physical appearance, valuing oneself as a unique, worthwhile person.

The term sense of worth could also be interchanged here with "self esteem". 

When I think of self-esteem I naturally think "can you be ok with you and love yourself for who you are?" I believe that's what self esteem boils down to. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that chip away at our self-esteem: being bullied, harsh or abusive words and actions by a family member, or unrealistic expectations of self to name a few. We can easily become a mangled piece of who we originally were, and it can take a lot of energy and strength to remain strong in who we are in the hot fire of the world. 

I've been a lot of posts throughout this blog on various things that help to increase ones sense of worth in life. Here are some of the links:

Boundaries: Establishing healthy boundaries helps define what is me, and what is not me, what is my responsibility, and what things are the responsibility of others. A lack of boundaries can lead to a confusion of one's identity, so to have a strong sense of worth, healthy boundaries are important to implement. (Click here to find the boundaries category of posts)

Cognitive Distortions: When we distort ourselves, the world around us, or even others in our life, we can easily confuse things. These distortions can distort our identity and sense of self. To have a healthy sense of worth, it's important to try to decrease the cognitive distortions used in every day life. (Click here to find the cognitive distortions category of posts)

Perfectionism: As the definition above says, sense of worth involves acceptance of one's imperfections. If a person holds to perfectionistic standards, they will constantly be a failure to one's self, which obviously will decrease a sense of worth. (Click here to find the perfectionism category of posts)

Affirmations: Awhile back I wrote about using affirmations as a way to increase self esteem. I've seen this help a large number of clients, and believe that this is a very helpful component. You can click here to read about it!

Accepting Your Physical Appearance: I wrote a post on developing a healthy body image, which is part of having a healthy sense of worth. You can click to read it here.

Each of these posts that I've linked to includes steps that you can take to help with your journey. Remember that health is a never ending process, so give yourself time to work on changes! Self esteem doesn't happen overnight!

What is one thing that helps you have a strong sense of worth in life?

What makes you a unique, individual person?

Perfectionism & The Distortion of Identity

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

-Anna Quindlen

I've always been surprised at how tightly perfectionism and identity/self-esteem are tied together. When a Client says they struggle in one area, I automatically ask about the other area as well. Most of the time, I'm spot on (and they seem to be surprised at the quick connections I make) and they do, indeed, struggle with both. I get it because at one point I was there myself. In high school I had extremely rigid, perfectionistic standards for myself, yet I felt terrible about myself. It was as I began to challenge and loosen these standards and rules for my life that the distorted mirror I saw myself in began to become more and more clear. It was through this that I began to figure myself out, and feel good about the person I was (and am). 

Perfectionism isn't realistic, and it distorts the way we see the world (remember yesterday's post on black/white thinking about how we need shades of gray to see the entire picture). It distorts our needs & wants, our identity, our self-statements and beliefs, and our relationships. All of this combined leads to a distortion of how we live within the world, and how we feel about ourselves as we go about daily life. Perfectionism tends to say that I am a failure (unless I'm 100% perfect in everything then I'm a failure), and when we are constantly "failing" we will obviously feel really bad about ourselves. This type of thinking is detrimental to us, and quite honestly, not fair to ourselves either. 

I found a website that listed some reasons that perfectionism lowers self-esteem:

1. Fear of failure is among of the reasons for perfectionism. Often times, perfectionists blame their failures to lack of personal worth.
2. Another reason is being afraid to make mistakes. For perfectionists, mistakes and failure are the same. They miss opportunities to learn and grow by living their lives avoiding mistakes.
3. Fear of rejection is a one of the most common reasons. Perfectionists are often afraid that if other people see their flaws, they will be rejected.
4. Rigid Rules. Perfectionists live with rigid rules structured by a never-ending list of “should”.

If you do just one thing for yourself this week, give yourself a break and try to start identifying how perfection & your identity are tied together. Be fair to yourself and loosen the grip you have on perfectionism.

*you can find the rest of my series on perfectionism here.

What I'd like to know:

Did you do anything fun this weekend? Any steps to furthering your health and wellness? Have you seen perfectionism distort your self-esteem or identity?

10 Ways to Develop a Positive Body Image

The end of National Eating Disorder Awareness week is here, but that doesn't mean the conversations on body image should end! In my last post, I discussed some myths and misconceptions of eating disorders, and gave some general information. This is a good place to start. However, moving past this basic knowledge is crucial to changing (and hopefully decreasing) the rates of eating disorders and body image issues.

How many of you, when you were young, heard a parent, sibling, relative, or friend constantly tearing themselves down, commenting on their body imagine (negatively), or engaging in fat talk? As children, we develop patterns of thinking, speaking, and behaving by observing those around us. Because of this, adults have a great responsibility to model healthy behaviors for the next generation.
Although we cannot reduce the causes of eating disorders to self esteem and body image issues alone, these things certainly play a very strong part in the development and maintenance of eating disorders.

Here are 10 ways to Develop a Positive Body image and Increase Self-Esteem:

1.     Avoid labeling food as “good” or “bad”. When you do consume a food you’ve labeled as “bad”, this tends to feelings of being fat, or feelings of guilt. Yes, there are foods that are healthy, and yes, there are “junk foods”. However, the idea of “everything in moderation” tends to work a little better and produce less guilt.

2.     Understand how the media discusses & portrays body image. Comparing to those in the media is unrealistic, because the people themselves do not look like that in reality (or how they are appearing is incredibly unhealthy). Discuss with young child.

3.     Avoid “fat talk”. Instead of focusing on what’s negative about your body, focus on the positives, and what your body (or body parts) allows you to do.

4.     Move every day! It may be really tempting to spend your entire evening or weekend sitting in front of the TV, but this obviously leads to a sedentary lifestyle. Get up and move! This will help you both physically and emotionally.

5.     Remember that skinny is NOT healthy. HEALTHY is healthy! Obviously, there is a correlation with size and health (i.e. obesity is never healthy for an individual), but just because someone is small does not mean they are healthy.

6.     Stand in front of the mirror every day and give yourself 3-5 compliments

7.     Practice reading affirmations on a daily basis to focus on what’s positive instead of degrading yourself daily

8.     Start talking to children when they are very young about a healthy lifestyle., and model what it looks like to live in a healthy manner.

9.     Develop emotional awareness: help yourself or a young child to identify emotions and deal with them (and cope) in a healthy manner. (for example-deal with sadness or frustration in a healthy way, and not turn to food to “make it better”)

10. Identify & Challenge any Cognitive Distortions you might have

So, there are 10 things you can do to increase your own body image & self-esteem, and be a good role model to those younger then you. I'd like to know What do you do to increase your self-esteem or body image? What do you do to decrease your positive body image?

Loving Myself, Loving Others

“You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.”

“If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.” ~Barbara De Angelis

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features” ~Viktor Frankl

Well, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and twitter, Facebook, the TV, and stores are abuzz with conversations of love. Some love the day, some hate the day, and some people just don't care. But, if we look past the day, there's still this little thing called love. Whether it's love for ourselves, our pets, job, friends, family, or significant other, we all need and desire love, and we also give love to others.


I often witness others (and have been guilty of this myself) giving so much of themselves (in the name of serving or loving others), that they have nothing left to give to themselves. Does this sound familiar to any of you? 
Here's the truth: There will ALWAYS be people who are in need, people that you can give to. If you don't set a boundary there will never be a point to your giving, because people will always take. Many of us were raised with the message that the most selfless thing we can do is to give unconditionally. I feel like I'm continuously fighting against this idea with my clients. 


Let me explain: I think that we all need to be serving others and giving to others. Being selfish is not healthy. But being a little selfish is. If we don't take care of ourselves, we won't be able to take care of others effectively. Let me say that again: If you don't take care of and love yourself, you will NOT be able to take care of others for very long. Sure, you will be able to for awhile. But fairly quickly, you will burn out. And, if you are at a point of burn out, you will have absolutely nothing to give to others. It's through being a little selfish (actually, healthy!) and loving ourselves FIRST, that we then have something to give to others. It is through loving ourselves that we can really love another person.


To Love ourselves we need to respect ourselves, and have good self-esteem and confidence. We need to be in healthy relationships, accepting love from others. We need to set healthy boundaries, decrease cognitive distortions, and increase overall health and wellness in our lives. This is an active and intentional process. 


So, my question to you is this: What do you love about yourself? How do you love (take care of) yourself? 

A Little Trick To Increase Self-Esteem & Identity (Affirmations!)

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.  ~Henry David Thoreau

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

I was a very awkward middle schooler. Although I am no longer that awkward middle school girl, I inwardly cringe when I look at pictures or remember those 3 years of my life. Once we make it out of the "awkward years", we start to figure life out a little bit. However, due to experiences from that time period, or from other experiences (abuse, negative messages from friends or family, illness, etc...) in life, we often walk away feeling damaged.

I tell my clients we have this inner soundtrack to our lives, and if we really stopped and thought about it, we'd realize how many negative words and lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis. If you had a friend that said 20 or 30 negative things to you every day, would you allow them to stay in your life? Yet we can't get away from ourselves, so we continue to drag ourselves down day after day. Not only can we feel bad about ourselves, but we make life far more difficult for ourselves then it needs to be.

There is a simple little trick I have many clients do (yes-I have done this for myself in the past as well) to help them increase their self esteem or to help them "figure out who they are." The idea of this is that the more you say something to yourself, the more you will feel it, and the more you will behave as if that statement is true. What we say to ourselves is tied very tightly to our mood and to our behaviors. To change our feelings and behaviors, we begin by changing our thoughts (self-talk).

I start by having people write a list of the negative things they say on a frequent basis to themself. An example:

Once this is done, I have people write a list statements that are the opposite of the negative list, or other positive affirmations. An example:

Notice that the positive affirmations are always written in present tense, and always start with "I am ____". Read these to yourself a few times a day while looking at yourself in the mirror.

Even if you don't have low self-esteem, and you feel like you know who you are as a person, this little technique can be quite healthy and uplifting. Why not try it out this week? (This could even count as one of your little 5 minute activities-see here for idea for using time wisely)