Unit 3 Psychological, Spiritual, and Physical Well-Being

I think I would give myself a 9 for well being, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.  I believe that I am at a 9 because I have always been pretty in tune with all aspects of my well being, I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses and I strive to evolve, I am deeply connected with my personal spirituality, I have always lead a healthy life and continue to further that, but I give myself a 9 because there is always room for improvement.  No one is perfect and nothing is completely perfect.  I am always learning more information, seeking more knowledge, absorbing more insight, my perceptions are always adapting each day as I experience more.  I know that I constantly am working at bringing things into balance in my life and paying attention to when things are out of balance, which is a constant daily task.  It is not something you can just do once and be fine, you have to work at it everyday.   I eat healthy, I exercise and am active, I stay away from chemicals such as MSG, high fructose corn syrup, and non nutritive sweeteners, I actively meditate while exercising, I enjoy sitting in silence and having alone time, I only partake in a select few "junk" foods a couple of times a year (literally), I make and take time for myself, I got rid of smoking cigarettes, I partake in aromatherapy daily, I use crystal therapy, I do things to feel in harmony with the universe, and many other positive well being activities.  Hmmm.... Some goals for each area...  I would say one of my goals physically is to do Pilates for lower back function, much of my stress is carried in my back and I have also had a lot of back injuries for being young and Pilates is one of the best exercises for back function.  My mom has a whole DVD set of Pilates, she just can't remember where she put them, and I am pretty sure she forgot about looking for them for me and I have not reminded her because I have been so busy with work and I just recently got a gym membership since I was not having enough daylight to go hiking outdoors with my schedule.  I'd also like to get into yoga and belly dancing is for sure on my bucket list.  Another goal is to exclusively meditate by silencing everything out and quieting myself.  I am fantastic at actively meditating while exercising, but I do not take much time to actually sit down and exclusively meditate.  I do enjoy the silence frequently but I do not think it is the same as exclusively meditating.  Psychologically, I am still working on my stress levels, I have come a long ways in just the last 4 months of taking back charge of my life, but I am far from my goal because many things have continued for many years and it takes a while to change things that have been around for years and years and years.  One of the major things that I have been working on is my tendency to be a codependent stress prone personality type, although I am also the survivor stress resistant personality type sometimes the scale is not balanced.  Therefore, I have to consciously make an effort to not let things in life overwhelm me, consume me, or bring me down, and stress me out.  For instance, I ended up getting scheduled to work for a week straight, which left me no time for school work.  I was so stressed out I started to cry, instead I stopped myself and decided I need to do some serious time management, so I wrote out a schedule from Saturday to Saturday hour by hour each day and highlighted in work hours, getting ready and drive times, sleep hours based on sleep cycles (90 mins), what time I had to do school work each day, and lastly a little tiny bit of me time.   I also make a list of school work for each week and I marked on my list days for each assignment and task.  So far everything has gone according to planned, this blog ended up being spread out over a few days because every time I would work on it I would only get a little bit done at a time due to being so exhausted from work.  Tonight I will be up till 6 am writing 3 papers because I have to work all day tomorrow through till the time everything is due.  My ex husband asked why I am staying up till 6 am?  I know myself, I have already been jacked up on caffeine, I am a night owl, and I know that I will sleep instead of getting up early to work on school work so it is better to just stay up till I get it all done.  I guess the answer for psychological stress would be to be proactive, constructive, positive, and turn debilitating stress into facilitating stress.  As for the relaxation exercise, I will admit that I was multitasking while listening to it.  I have already heard this one in my previous class, Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention.  Right now though it is extremely difficult to get in tune with the exercise mainly because  I do not want to be relaxed right now, I just want to get my papers written so I can go to sleep so I can go to work for 9 hours...  After I get off work tomorrow is when I can relax, but right now there is no time to relax...  When I listened to this video the first time I did feel very relaxed, I altered a few things such as the grounding root chakra is brown not red.  I do like this guided relaxation because I do believe in chakras, chakras being focal points of energy for specific things, chakras being out of alignment or blocked, and chakra healing.  I have done chakra healing with crystals placed on each chakra as well as listening to meditative music with different frequencies each specific to each chakra.  

Unit 2 Guided Meditation

My first attempt to listen to the guided meditation failed horribly because there was a loud movie playing in the background, I was exhausted after only getting 3 hours of sleep and being up for 17 hours, and I could not focus at all.  I decided I would give the guided meditation a try while I was exercising the next day so I emailed the link to myself so I could listen to it on my phone at the gym since I use it to listen to music while I work out.  Kind of try combining exclusive meditation with active meditation since I am great at active meditation but terrible at exclusive meditation.  Unfortunately that project failed as well, the email did not go through, so I logged onto class from my phone, which was successful except for some reason I couldn't scroll so I could reach the link.  Attempt #2 failed.  Attempt #3 I am a wee bit under the weather from celebrating my ex husband's birthday last night but I just woke up a half hour ago and it is said that it is easier to meditate upon waking up because your mind is more receptive.  I've done guided meditations such as this one before, a therapist I used to see always guided me through a meditation that started with relaxing the entire body from top to bottom, very relaxing.  My hands and fingers did feel warmer during the meditation and my arms felt heavier and relaxed.  Letting the blood flow back to my stomach didn't make me feel very well due to celebrating last night.  One thing that always happens to me is I feel so relaxed I am tired, then they say you don't feel tired you feel energized.  I feel like I am lying to myself, "no, I am tired but okay I will tell myself I am not!"  ha ha!

My How Time Can Get Away From You

Wow!  It has been so long since I have logged onto my blog and even looked at it.  I feel like I stepped back into a moment in time of my past.  So much has changed since I created this blog for a previous class here at Kaplan.  A quick run down of all the events:  My husband and I moved back to Washington from California once his 4 year term was finished in the Marine Corps, unfortunately everything started to unravel once we got home...  The year and a half was a struggle of PTSD, separation, many moves, trying to work on things and buying a house, the divorce becoming finalized, and reworking on things at the present moment.  During all of the chaos, there was much depression, apathy, meltdowns, breakdowns, letting an abusive ex boyfriend control and mentally, emotional, and verbally abuse me, losing my job, not being able to find a job, not being able to receive assistance, etc...  All while, school and my determination for 4.0 terms and my animals were the only things that kept me hanging on.  Finally, I was able to get into the class Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention and a week straight of a major breaking point of stress in my life, I realized that I gave away all of the control in my life, and decided that I had had enough.  I took back control of my life, I quit smoking cigarettes, I got back into hiking, which is one of my healthy addictions, I reclaimed my confidence and got a job, I got back into taking my supplements everyday, I made a rule that I was only allowed to post something positive on Facebook, and so forth.  For the last month and a half my ex husband and I have been working on things, though there was much stress due to a female roommate that caused many problems, who is thankfully gone.  Lately my gut instincts have been super sensitive and I have much success actually listening to them!  However, much of the stress was caused by no one listening to me about my gut instincts going off like crazy that this female roommate was bad news until she bailed out with out paying the other half of the rent due.  As of recent stress levels have started to increase especially working a retail job at one of the top busiest stores at the mall, which has been setting off my panic and anxiety attacks with the increase in volume of people and a month long bout of bad luck.  One of the things that I learned from last term is that I may have the codependency personality type that is stress prone but I am also the survivor personality type that is stress resistant, so everyday that things go wrong or things become stressful I remind myself  that I am a survivor and that I have grand big places to go and be in life.  Here's to the start of another term that offers great information and resources that will benefit my life and those that are a part of my life.