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?

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?