self care | David M Masters

Caring for the Physical Body: A Holistic Guide to Well-Being

Your body is an extraordinary vessel designed with remarkable intelligence to support your every movement, thought, and breath. It silently coordinates millions of intricate processes each second, often without conscious direction. Yet, like any well-maintained system, it requires consistent care to function at its best. By proactively nurturing your physical health, you can build resilience, vitality, and a deeper connection to your overall well-being.

The Importance of Listening to Your Body

Your body has its own language, communicating its needs through subtle signals long before it resorts to pain or illness. Ignoring these messages often leads to imbalance or dis-ease. However, by tuning in to your body’s cues, you can identify and fulfill its essential needs.

- Rest when fatigue sets in.
- Hydrate when you feel parched.
- Move when your muscles crave activity.
- Nourish when your energy wanes.

Meeting these needs doesn’t just prevent discomfort; it optimizes your body’s ability to thrive.

Checklist for Physical Health

A simple checklist can serve as a daily guide to maintaining and enhancing your physical health. Each component is essential, working in tandem with the others to create a balanced and harmonious body.

1. Oxygen: Fresh Air and Proper Breathing

- Spend time outdoors in natural environments.
- Practice deep, diaphragmatic breathing to oxygenate your blood and calm your mind.
- Avoid stagnant indoor air by ventilating your living spaces.

2. Hydration: Drink Sufficient Water

- Aim for at least 8 glasses of water daily, adjusting for activity levels and climate.
- Monitor your body’s signals, such as dry skin or dark urine, as indicators of dehydration.
- Include hydrating foods like cucumbers, watermelon, and citrus fruits in your diet.

3. Nutrition: Eat Balanced, Whole Foods

- Focus on a colorful diet rich in vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, and healthy fats.
- Minimize processed foods, sugars, and artificial additives.
- Incorporate nutrient-dense superfoods like nuts, seeds, and greens to fuel your body.

4. Movement: Exercise Regularly for Vitality

- Include a mix of cardio, strength training, and flexibility exercises in your routine.
- Walk, stretch, or dance daily to keep your body active and energized.
- Find activities you enjoy to ensure consistency and joy in movement.

5. Rest: Prioritize Sleep and Relaxation

- Establish a regular sleep schedule, aiming for 7-9 hours nightly.
- Create a calming bedtime routine to signal your body it’s time to unwind.
- Include restorative practices like meditation, yoga, or quiet reflection during the day.

6. Care: Treat Your Body with Love and Respect

- Be mindful of posture to prevent strain.
- Pamper your body occasionally with massages, baths, or spa treatments.
- Show gratitude for your body’s capabilities and strengths, celebrating its uniqueness.

Aligning Mind and Body for Harmony

Optimal health isn’t solely about physical maintenance; it’s about achieving balance between mind and body. Emotional well-being plays a pivotal role in how your physical body functions. Stress, unresolved emotions, and negative thought patterns can manifest as physical ailments, just as poor physical health can impact your mood and mental clarity.

Tools for Emotional and Physical Alignment

- Byron Katie’s Method: Helps release burdensome thoughts and reframe perspectives.
- Kinesiology: Uncovers and resolves subconscious patterns impacting your health.
- Psychotherapy: Provides a safe space to heal emotional wounds and foster resilience.

When combined with consistent physical care, these practices form a comprehensive approach to health and happiness.

A Path to Health, Happiness, and Fulfillment

Living consciously means caring for both your emotional and physical needs. By integrating tools for emotional release with mindful attention to your body, you create a harmonious balance that supports every aspect of your life.

Your body, when treated with care and respect, becomes a resilient vessel for your well-being. By nurturing it with oxygen, hydration, nutrition, movement, rest, and love, you foster a foundation for health, happiness, and fulfillment.

Start small, listen to your body, and cultivate practices that honor its remarkable intelligence. In doing so, you’ll unlock your full potential for a vibrant and harmonious life.

When You’re Too Nice People Take Advantage of You

Ever feel like when you’re too nice people take advantage of you? You want to help others and you’re willing to put the needs of others above your own needs but then you discover that your intentions to do good are overridden by ungrateful recipients who then expect you to give even more.

At some point, when you’re feeling like you’re at the end of your rope and you have nothing left to give, you can regret trying to help anyone at all, like you’ve done it wrong, or didn’t do it right.

You know something’s wrong because you don’t feel good anymore. You used to feel good when you could reach out and help someone in need, but now, you feel bad, that when you’re too nice people take advantage of you.

As nice as you’re trying to be in your helping others, there will be times when people will try to exploit your good intentions by taking advantage of your willingness to help others and put their needs ahead of your own.

As soon as you start to notice this, you need to step back and evaluate the situation. Ask yourself,

Am I being too nice?

Is my kindness actually counterproductive?

Is my helping someone doing more harm than good?

If you’re feeling like when you’re too nice, people take advantage of you, you might be making things worse than better. Some people will intentionally take advantage or your willingness to help as a way to further their own needs with little or no respect for your self-sacrifice when your resources are low.

Helping others is a two-way street.

When you help others, there is a proper response: To show gratitude and to take action. To help others or to offer something in return. A healthy relationship is to graciously receive and to give something back in return.

To just take and take is selfish and considered toxic. This is when you start to feel bad about being such a good person. You may find yourself enabling someone’s poor behavior by being too helpful.

Why are you helping others? Because you’re trying to help people to help themselves. When they refuse to help themselves, the equation is out of balance. This is when your assistance is doing more harm than good.

It’s time to communicate your concerns to those who are taking advantage of you and your generous nature. Chances are, you are not an unlimited supply of help to others. You must receive something in return, or you will begin to deteriorate.

Now is the time to set clear boundaries about what help you are willing to offer in exchange for seeing some fruit from your willingness to help someone in need. Setting clear expectations and requiring others to in a sense, so their part, is healthy helping.

You can tell others how it is without being judgmental or mean. You can still be respectful of others without being mean or disrespectful. Life is not always easy, and the best things in life come from stretching one’s self to accept the challenge of self-care.

Taking care of yourself is just as important as those who you are helping other to learn how to better care for themselves, also.

Don’t apologize for over-extending yourself or for placing the people you are helping in a difficult situation, for you know things are far better than they would have been without the assistance you’ve provided up ‘til this point.

If you are empathetic, you can feel what it’s like to be in need, and may even be able to think,

What if it was me in need?

How would I feel?

More importantly, you need to think,

How would I react if someone else was helping me?

Would you take advantage, and not offer something in return? Probably not, because you know that someone’s sacrificing for your benefit should some with gratitude or some kind of reward. Maybe the best you could do was to show the person that helped you that their assistance enabled you to get back on your own feet, and gave you the nudge necessary to take charge of your own life and help others in need.

Saying, “No,” to someone you care about can be difficult, but you know it’s necessary to preserve your own cache of resources. What good would you be if all your resources were depleted by someone’s taking advantage of your good nature?

If this relationship has become toxic, then the time has come to put an end to it. To let it continue would be nothing less than abusive. Abusive to yourself as well as the people who you are trying to help if they are not stepping up to the plate.

Only you can take care of yourself, and this is critical to maintaining self-care if you are going to be able to help others. Also, others need to learn to face life head-on and to see them tending to their own needs.

Help them, yes. But not so much as to make them dependent on you, or to have the expectation that you will help them without expecting them to carry their own weight. You will be doing them a favor by having them step up their game or letting them go it alone.

Thank you for being one of the “good ones.” It inspires us all to be better people and to do good unto others.

There is much love for you here.

Continue to be true to you.

Hospital Inside You

While you have been programmed to seek health care from outside yourself there exists hidden within yourself the most powerful health maintenance and healing hospital inside you.

In the sense of physiological health, there is the work that is executed on the body from external sources, such as topical applications, substances which are ingested including natural and pharmacological, and forces such as exercise in its many forms.

There is an underground holistic approach to health care which is gaining momentum, making its way into mainstream medical practice as its effects on the health of the human body are staggering.

Just as these methods affect the body’s ability to heal, cope, and sustain life here on planet Earth, there are many hospitals and health centers hidden inside your body which are proving to be far more effective in promoting physical health, wellness, increased quality of life, and longevity.

There are many ways to tap into these inner health and healing resources, such as Reiki, meditation, neurological feedback methodologies, relaxation, deep breathing exercises, subliminal programming, aromatherapy, and many other ways to center yourself and access these powerful hidden treasures.

Your body is an amazing machine, fully equipped for healthy perseverance and healing itself with the unlimited power of love and life.

In order for your body to conduct all this natural innate work, it must have the raw materials it needs to apply to whatever ails you.

Deep mind/spirit states help to empower your inner hospital to conduct its work throughout your body, and just like the Emergency Department at your hospital on the street has a Charge Nurse, so does the hospital inside you.

God, your higher power, is your inner Charge Nurse and knows you and your body more intimately than any physician on Earth. This is the ultimate source of healing which can diagnose and treat any disease, even incurable or life-threatening diseases as they are known to man or the medical community.

Nothing is impossible with the hospital inside you.

Even though your internal health center does much of the work of keeping you healthy when you are unaware of it’s doing so, it’s up to you to keep the body working with your inner hospital in good communication and working order.

You can consciously take an active part in your healthcare management by maintaining a positive connection between you, your outer world, and your healthcare center within for optimum health, wellness, youth maintenance, and longevity.

There are those well-versed in the practice of meditation who are able to regulate all of their body functions without third-party intervention. According to the experts, this mindful body regulation is the key to the greatest health potential of the human body, enabling it to fully heal and maintain itself, while increasing human potential and evolution.

Anyone of us (all of us come equipped to do so) can take full charge of our own body’s maintenance, self-healing, and health care.

If you are overwhelmed with stress, it will be difficult for you to maintain a strong bond between your external life and your internal health care system. The first order of business for you, if you are overcome by stress, is to find ways to minimize the stress and/or its effects on you, so that you have the bandwidth available to connect to your inner healing center.

Then you can utilize meditation or other “spiritual” practices to center yourself and take control of your life, as is your divine birthright.

As you embark upon this journey of self-awareness, health maintenance, and healing, you will find yourself more aware of your position in life, your community, and the world at large. You will be able to find more relaxation and peace in maintaining a positive mind/body/spirit balance in life.

You will be less likely to be stressed out often, as you learn to relax your mind, allow “what is” to simply be, and let your inner health care system do the heavy lifting in raising your expectations for good health and living a better high-quality lifestyle that comes from peace of mind that passes all understanding.

Of course, you have other natural options that can assist you in healing your inner wounds. This includes doing the deep work of healing your inner self. When the hospital inside you is empowered, it can assist you with curing your mind and your body without having any negative side effects at all.

Having no negative side effects from your health maintenance and your self-healing managed by the hospital inside you is of enormous benefit. Unlike prescription medications which come with all types of negative side effects, when God is your primary healing physician, there are no harmful side effects. None.

While there may be side effects, they are healthful, positive, necessary, and life-charging as being a part of your ultimate healing and health maintenance strategies.

When you feel yourself reacting to circumstances or situations negatively, feeling increased levels of stress, or feel like you’re leaning toward blaming others for things not going the way you might like, this is the emotional frequency which is the breeding ground for unwellness and/or disease.

Whenever you’re feeling off-balance seek out methods to center you with yourself holistically. You can meditate, pray, practice Reiki, use biofeedback, self-hypnosis, aromatherapy, wiggle your toes in beach sand, treat yourself to a massage, or spa treatment, whatever works for you.

In essence, find ways to consciously break away from the things of this world and find peaceful methods of centering yourself, increasing the connection between you and your higher self, which works best for you.

You and Your Puppets

There is you. Then, there is the “you” which you present to others. No one knows the real you, except for you, and you create a disguise which you operate, like a puppet, to present to the world. After one realizes the efficacy of puppeteering, you create an army of puppets to represent yourself in any situation and circumstance.

You expend a great deal of effort adorning your puppet(s) to present to particular audiences. You clothe and accessorize and present each puppet in such a way to have a particular impact on others, or to get what you want or need from others to make you feel good about yourself.

Masquerading is an effective way to interact with the world, but it doesn’t work that well with you, because you know the real you who dresses up your puppet(s), surrounds him/her with supporting evidence. You adorn your puppet’s environment to validate his/her personality by decorating his/her home, earning certificates and take taking photos to hang on the wall, driving a particular kind of vehicle, and a myriad of other supporting evidence to in essence prove to the world that your puppet is the real deal.

You’re constantly looking for new ways to support the identity of your puppet. Every time you think this is the one thing that will finally cement your puppet’s identity, it satisfies for a moment, then you discover it just didn’t quite accomplish you intended purpose, like you thought it would. So, you seek out another piece of supporting evidence.

You surround your persona with collections of supporting evidence which could be anything from material items to acts of service to others, or even vices or debilitating disease. All in an effort to convince the world to accept the identity you’ve designed for yourself. But no matter how hard you try, you know this is all an act. Regardless of how much time, effort, and finances you’ve dedicated for supporting your persona, as pretty or magnificent it is, you know it is all a worthless façade.

Then there is the most valuable and precious activity of life, and that is the real and authentic personal work performed by and on the behalf of the puppeteer. Unlike the things you do to support the identity of your puppet(s), the effort you put forth to support your true self which stays hidden from the external world, it is the best and most intimate thing you can do for yourself. This is your deep inner work.

There is great contrast between your deep inner work which cannot be seen by others, and the external representation of yourself which can be acknowledged and revered by others. The support and admiration you received from others creates an addiction to the maintenance of your façade, which clouds your judgment, preventing you from seeing the value in expending efforts to conduct your intimately private deep inner work.

Once you start to look deeply inside yourself, if you dare, you can start adorning your inner self, the real you, with mindfulness, self-care, support, therapy, forgiveness, and unconditional love. Just as you adorn your public persona(s), you beautify your inner self, connecting to that greater part of you which is a higher energetic vibration than could ever be represented by any material possession.

Nothing gives you such lasting satisfaction as doing your deep inner work. And as you conduct this deeply personal and intimate work on yourself, you can influence your persona(s) in ways that can offer glimpses of the changes taking place inside the puppeteer.

These subtle nuances cannot be hidden, as they can be seen by the trained eye, every time you pull a string, redecorate the surroundings, or operate your puppet.

Empowered by the energy emitted from your heart of hearts, your deep inner work begins to affect the world around you in even the smallest of ways like a pebble creating a ripple effect which radiates throughout the otherwise still pond of life.

You are love. Embracing your love life, loving yourself, all the deeply intimate and harrowing parts of yourself as all being in divine order, is the greatest love-work of all.

You are doing it. As you do, you create hope and inspire others to shift the focus of their lives from keeping up appearances to focusing within, and life by life, heart by heart, the world evolves and becomes a better place.

God bless you for all that you do.

Suppressed Emotions Kill

When you bottle up your emotions, push them down, cover them up, and insist on just going on through life ignoring your feelings and living a life of emotional denial, you are committing murder. You are committing suicide because suppressed emotions kill you.

It’s a socially acceptable manner of suicide, not as blatant or open as hanging yourself, taking a bottle of pills, or as dramatic as throwing yourself off a bridge or blowing your brains out, but your suppressed emotions are killing you.

In his groundbreaking work, Bernie Siegel in Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients, implicitly defines the number one cause of disease and premature death from medical maladies is pent-up emotions.

If caught early enough to reverse the effects of a lifetime of suppressed emotions, the patient who finds healthy ways to express himself or herself, live a better life, and find happiness, become the most exceptional patients, experiencing full reversal or remission of their condition and fatal prognosis.

Most people on Mother Nature’s death row have put themselves there by not wanting to rock the boat, express their feelings, or being proactive in looking after themselves. They accept their lot in life as being in service to others, selflessly, without any regard for looking after themselves.

If you don’t look after yourself, who will?

I pray you are ready to receive this. If you are not, there is no judgment here. After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have. If your heart and mind are open, consider this:

If you are living a life with health challenges, consider who you are putting first in your life. If you are not putting your own health, wellness, and happiness first, and not expressing all the emotions you keep hidden away, the things that make you sad, angry, hurt, disrespected, or unworthy, your illness(es) is of your own making.

\This includes all disease (which could be redefined as “dis-ease”). If you’re not happy, your body is not happy, and your immune system disregards your body just as much as you do. If you will not stand up and fight for you, neither will your body, and you will fall victim to disease and premature death. But you will die a hero.

Friends, family, and society will put you on a pedestal after you’ve died and tell stories about how you selflessly served others, even as your own body was suffering in decay. (Even though you may have silently wished for death to come knocking, just so you could get some peace.)

Or, you could become an exceptional patient. You could find the keys to the life you’ve always wanted and deserved, even though you may have denied yourself access to it in the past. You could uncover your unique, purpose, message, passion, and/or mission and start living a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

You can enjoy all the good things this life has been holding for you, just waiting for you to reach out for it, including all the love and happiness you’ve ever dreamed of.

But don’t believe me. Don’t believe Bernie Siegel, or anyone else. If you decide to change your life, while there is still time, and live the life that is your birthright, only you can do this thing. Only you can make the transformation from sickness to massively thriving by choosing to become an exceptional patient.

Every day, someone who stood at death’s door awakens and starts to live life with openness, honesty, self-love with ebullient vitality and energy, staving off any self-imposed death sentence, achieving their highest and best.

Let it be you.

You can live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Today, let it be you.

Unacceptable Behavior Loss of Love

I’m Falling Out of Love with You

Relationships are not for the weak. At times you can get to that critical point in a relationship when you’ve lost respect and admiration for your partner due to something that has bubbled up to the surface. In the beginning, it may not have been a problem, but as time has gone on, it could have grown to the place where you might find yourself saying, “I’m falling out of love with you,” due to this situation or behavior.

What can you do if unacceptable behavior or something your partner is doing is causing your love and affection to deteriorate?

Maybe your partner is displaying behavior that is damaging to you or him or herself, such as being too stressed out, overeating, drinking, declining health, short-tempered, etc… and his or her continuing to engage in this kind of behavior is causing you to fall out of love with him or her.

Ask yourself, “Can I take another ten years of living life like this?” If not, it’s time to do something about it before it gets even worse.

You need to create a safe space to have a critical conversation. This is far beyond the frightening, “Honey, we need to talk,” but you need to try to make it as unfrightening as possible, and ask for a block of time that is about three times longer than you might need for this conversation, because you need to allow your partner space to reply and react.

Abandon ancient ideals about, “not going to bed angry,” or trying to communicate without putting your partner on the defensive.

Once you ask for a block of attention, your partner may want a head’s up about what the talk is about. Don’t give it up, stay true to having the physical and emotional space to follow this topic through to have the best possible outcome, especially if now is not a good time, and energy levels may be running low or are exhausted. Make sure you’re both as well equipped as possible mentally and emotionally (late at night, not a good idea).

Remember to support your partner as much as possible through this process. Recall all the things that are endearing about your partner, how wonderful he or she is, remember all the reasons you fell in love with him or her in the first place, and think about the things you would miss if he or she was not in your life at all any longer.

And preface any conversation with appreciation and gratitude before getting to the heavy portion of your subject.

Your partner is going to be defensive because no one does a thing unless they receive some benefit from it. At the outset, it makes perfect sense to him or her, and so he or she will feel justified in being defensive and fighting for something that provides some form of satisfaction or self-worth.

Remember that this person probably loves you and wants you to have the best relationship possible, so cut him or her a little slack by remembering this is who you fell in love with, while staying true to your position, and trying not to take it personally if your partner reacts emotionally in a negative manner. Don’t change your position or give in.

Besides fighting for the right to engage in the activity which has you falling out of love with him or her, they are likely going to counter-attack you with something about you which is disappointing to them, and the delivery could be harsh. This is a common self-defense tactic, so be aware and prepared for it, if it arises.

If you’re accused of something, don’t fall into defensiveness yourself, and resist the temptation to escalate the abrasion. Instead, respect and hold onto the accusation because it can be invaluable in negotiating an amazing breakthrough in your relationship.

When you’ve reached critical mass at this stage of your relationship and you can’t see yourself going on under these conditions, be honest and open with your partner and say what you’re feeling,

“I feel like I am falling out of love with you, and this is why…”

Then tell him or her. You might even add,

“If I’d have known this is how things were going to be, I wouldn’t have married you in the first place.”

This is about as grown-up a talk as you could possibly have, so don’t be afraid to say it like you mean it, and be committed to arriving at an outcome. Do not walk away from this issue until you get an acceptable answer.

This is a critical turning point in your relationship. Remember, this is the person you love, even though the love is waning at the moment, and he or she is not doing this as an assault on you. It is his or her issue, and you want to be as supportive and loving as possible throughout the process if you’re to have any hope of successfully moving forward in your relationship.

Seek to understand and arrive at a win/win conclusion, if at all possible. This is where the accusation which you filed away can come in handy. More valuable than a bargaining chip, this might be the key to arriving at win/win. Maybe you both can get what you want.

If things get too hot and heavy, and emotions are running high, take a break. Be compassionate with yourself and your partner. Try to avoid saying something you might regret. Allow time to cool down, re-center, remember all the good things, and re-engage when you are ready.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.

Losing Your Energy Take It Back

You’re growing and changing, making radical progress, but you feel like you’re losing your edge, your momentum is slowing and you feel like you’re losing your grip. You know you’ve got to find the energy to keep going because you know if you let go, all your hard work will have been for not. It’s time to stop losing your energy take it back.

While you’ve tried to keep focused on your position and keep moving upward and onward, you may have found yourself letting others drain your energy, or maybe you have consciously given away your precious energy reserves. In either case, it’s alright. You can reclaim your lost energy, recharge and get going again.

Losing Your Energy

There are many ways to experience energy drain, one is to let others get to you. When you’re feeling uncomfortable, upset, angry, or disgusted about anyone or anything in your circle of influence, it not only distracts you from your mission, but it drains your precious energy reserves. It is important to acknowledge the situation, if you must, let it go, and move on. In a sense, saying, “Oh well… I care but not too much.”

If you let someone be responsible for negatively affecting your state of mind, you have given them control over you. Stop doing it; take full responsibility and control of your own state and preserve your energy.

If you’re needing support or compliments from others to make you feel good, attractive, or feel as though your life is worthwhile, then you become dependent on others for fuel which is fleeting. Your true power and energy comes from within, not from others. The trap, here, which potential can overdraw your energy account, is if you fall into the pleasing of others to make you feel better about yourself, you will not only be distracted, but you will also be watching your energy go down the drain.

Unforgiveness is a black hole that feeds on your energy. If you’re harboring bad feelings about someone or something that has mistreated or robbed you from feeling good about yourself, you must let it go, or else be a slave to that person or circumstance forever. Forgiveness is the only way to repair the damage.

Set boundaries to limit how people can have access to your feelings and your life. If someone is constantly dragging you down, holding you back, or leading you astray, establishing firm boundaries and enforcing them can protect you from letting these kinds of people drain your energy. You have the responsibility for creating and monitoring your own boundaries concerning other people and their access to your physical, mental and spiritual states.

Take It Back

While significant energy loss can be exhausting, constantly being aware of who you are and why you are here, will help you preserve your energy and keep you focused. Knowing and honoring your purpose, message, passion, and mission (PMPM) will help you discern when it’s time to limit someone’s access who may be draining your precious energies.

Even though you feel like you’re losing your grip, or losing ground, not to worry (worry is another energy drain) just survey your surroundings. Be objective as you evaluate your situation, while monitoring what is going on all around you, then make the changes you need to make to keep the energy you need to keep going on. Keep in mind increasing your passion can build up the additional energy necessary to move you further, faster, more productively and with even greater results.

Composite Hybrid Approach to a Better Life

Looking after yourself will require a composite hybrid approach to a better life, ensuring you have the resources to stay on top of your game.

Whether you’re a soccer mom, an emergency room nurse, a firefighter, a law enforcement officer, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you should make time to look after yourself.

Think about it: yes, people depend on you to deliver the goods and look good while doing it, but what resources are you drawing upon? You are drawing water from your well.

What if your health runs dry? Then where will you be?

What about all those people who depend on you? Where will they be?

It’s up to you to make looking after yourself just as much, if not more, of a responsibility as being there for others. If you don’t, your days of service may be numbered.

Your body is the gift you were given to do all the great things that you do. Without proper care and maintenance of your body, you will not have the resources to perform at your best. So, take some time out of every day to care for and nurture your physical temple.

Composite Hybrid Approach to a Better Life

You’ll need to adjust your daily routine to develop a composite hybrid approach that works for you, ultimately leading to a better life. Your unique mix of diet, exercise, relaxation, and maintaining a sound mind and heart is all up to you and subject to change at any time.

Even so, remember that neglecting yourself is unhealthy and will ultimately come at a high cost in the long run.

10 Steps to a Better Life

Some of the components of your composite hybrid approach to a better life should include the following elements: Emotional Release

1 Emotional Release

You can’t hold back and bury your feelings. You need to find ways to let it out and deal with your emotions, or else they will eat away at you and make you subject to contracting a disease or declining faculties. Team up with someone you can trust with your innermost details, and/or write out your frustrations in a journal. Find your way to bring them out of the hidden recesses of your mind, heart, and body.

2 Get Comfortable in Your Skin

This is not a competition, of a race. The only person you are competing with is you. Take your eyes off other people. Do not judge yourself or compare yourself to anyone else. This is about you, your own personal best. It’s not about anyone else. Be the best you can be, and don’t let negative thoughts hold you back; avoid putting yourself down or being envious of others. This life is not about them; it’s all about you.

3 Joy Break

Take some time out each day to do something you love, even if it’s just for a few minutes. You are your own supporter; no one knows you better than you, and you should be the first to see that you are spending some time “in the zone,” whatever that means to you. You deserve this, especially if the bulk of your day—or your life—is spent serving others. Find something you enjoy, and take a joy break at some point in your day.

4 Yuk It Up

Find some humor throughout your day. Put a smile on your face, even if you don’t feel like it. The more you smile, the happier you will be. When things go awry, don’t get down; get up. Find the humor in the faux pas and give it a giggle, if not a full-on belly laugh. This will keep you on the bright side of life.

5 Look on the Bright Side of Life

Work on maintaining a positive outlook on life and all aspects of it. It’s easy when you’re juggling a variety of tasks and seeing something not going as you planned in your work, or even in the world, to start throwing stones and getting upset. These feelings of angst are not healthy and do not support your improved lifestyle, characterized by increased productivity and performance. Being optimistic, maintaining a positive perspective, and staying in a positive vibration helps build your immune system and create new neural pathways in your brain, thereby increasing creativity and enhancing your ability to solve problems quickly.

6 Make Time to Grow

You can just cut out some time from your day to nurture your self-growth. You can listen to a challenging or uplifting podcast, read a chapter in a book, take a jaunt to the gym, practice yoga, meditate, or spend time in prayer. Whatever resonates with you, take a few minutes each day to nurture your own personal growth.

7 Diet and Exercise

It’s the dreaded D&E (believe me, I know – I wrote the book on ‘Don’t Diet or Exercise,’ literally). However, if you want to live a fulfilling life in service to others, you need the energy and raw materials it takes to maintain the vitality to be present when others might have given up. So, take some time to exercise (it doesn’t have to look like exercise; you have to move your body and breathe). You can do that by dancing, taking the stairs, or briskly walking to and from the bathroom or parking lot. Eat more healthy food and take some vitamins and nutritional supplements.

8 Review Your Life

This is not part of your daily routine, but it should be a routine that exists in the hybrid composite of your life. Taking the time to sit back and reflect on your life —where it has been, where it’s leading you, and what you’re doing daily — is healthy. It may alert you to the possibility that your life has gone astray, that you have wandered off track, and that the path you are on may not lead you to where you want to be. It might be time for a change.

9 Have a Goal

You get more out of life if you have a goal. The more goals you set and achieve, the greater fulfillment you will experience in life. How many goals? Mark Victor Hansen says, “You can never have too many goals” (and he should know, having thousands of them himself). Take some time to think about the things in life you’d like to accomplish, whether small and easy to achieve or large and more challenging. Set out to knock them down, marking them off your list one by one.

10 Make Adjustments Along the Way

I recall my driving instructor saying, in driving class, “Never hold the steering wheel in a death grip, but point it where you want to go.” Keep it fluid, ever-adjusting, and move loosely and comfortably toward your desired destination.

Whoa, who’d have ever known what a key to life that would end up being?

So, take Brian Johnson’s advice (not the lead singer of AC/DC, but the driving instructor), and don’t live your life in a death grip. Loosen up and keep moving in the general direction you want to go, making the journey as comfortable as possible by always making minor adjustments along the way.

Looking After Yourself

We all pretty much do look after ourselves to some degree. We exercise, try to eat better than we might if we didn’t care at all, try to treat others politely or with kindness, but often neglect the other part of us that need tending to as well. Maybe it’s about time to think about looking after yourself more.

Start off with looking at ways you can honor your vessel, the body you were given to experience all the good things this life has to offer. The least you could do is to treat it like a car that you love, or even better, like the priceless treasure that your body is. While you might take your car in for a nice detailing, your body might be worth a little pampering too. Think about treating it to a massage, or a visit to the spa.

Hold sacred space aside for you to honor yourself. Make time to relax and settle into a peaceful state of mind. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, even if it’s only 17 minutes out of your day. This seventeen minutes is your sacred time, without interruptions. You might enjoy just closing your eyes and practice deep breathing, getting in tune with your heart or inner self. Just try it and see how this little, sacred space in time can affect the whole remainder of your day and your life.

Inside each of us is a little child version of us who longs to come out and play every once and a while. Honor this part of you, there’s no need to deny him or her, he or she is a part of you, so invite him or her to come out and play with you. Try to find occasions to make time doing the things that you used to like to do when you were younger. Remember the things that brought you joy in your youth? It’s different for all of us. It could be anything from riding a merry go round to playing ancient video games, and anything in between. Make time for your little guy or gal to come out and play.

Find your safe place. It could be a physical safe place or a safe place you can find in your thoughts and mind, where you can immerse yourself in the comfort of security. It doesn’t have to be a safe room or stronghold. You might find this level of safety and serenity soaking in a bubble bath, curled up in a comfy blanket listening to your favorite tunes, inventorying memorabilia, or reading a book accompanied by the dancing light of a scented candle. Whatever it is for you, wherever it is. This is your safe place, make time for it.

Think about taking the time to dream, daydream, or creative visualization. Using the creative power of your mind and imagination, you can go anywhere and do anything. This is youthful and powerful art that is often abandoned as we get older. When you were younger, the whole universe was at your beck and call, using the power of your imagination, and it still is. Look for opportunities and take the time to rekindle the flame of your power of visualization.

Every once and a while, schedule yourself for a Me Day. Make this day (the whole day, or at least a nice, big, fat piece of this day) all about you. Set aside a specific start and end time, and just get away. No thoughts about the cares of life, things that get you down, worrying about this or that. Just take the day and allow yourself the mental break from anything that might hinder your possibility of having the best time with yourself, and have fun being you. No judgment, just have a good time. This is your day.

Take a break from procrastination. We all have stuff that we’d rather put off ‘til tomorrow, and we know for some things, tomorrow never comes. Not this day. Just like you would take a day for yourself periodically, same goes for something that you might be putting off. You will be surprised how good it feels to do that thing you’ve been avoiding. Now you don’t have to carry around guilt about it any longer. As a matter of fact, you could do the thing first and celebrate its completion with your Me Day.

Go to the park or the beach and kick your shoes off. Take a hike in the woods, or whatever is your fancy, but connect with Mother Earth. Find the time to take a break surrounded by her magnificence, the green grass, the pebbles or sand, the sound of lapping waves or birds chirping. Take a dog for a walk. Don’t have a dog? Borrow one from a friend or neighbor. This is a great way to put yourself in a position to receive energy from Mother Nature.

I hope these ideas inspire to spend time looking after yourself more. You will be amazed at how much this will raise the frequency of your life, and better prepare you to enjoy all the good things this life has to offer, and by all means, be creative and come up with even better ways to look after you.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Preserving the Servants Heart

I have a servant’s heart, as do many of my clients. There is a downside to being selfless in service to others, and that is neglecting the self-care necessary to maintain a healthy life for the person with a servant’s heart. The result is a decline in emotional health, which is left to deteriorate, will affect the biological system, and add undue mental stress. This could result in a lack of self-respect, angst, premature aging, and a host of other health-related issues.

Servant must find ways to preserve themselves to serve their clients, community, and/or the world more effectively. Often, the servant feels as though “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one” (Spock, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan).

There needs to be a healthy balance; even so, one may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good, albeit rarely. Many have had to answer the call, including my 20-year-old son, who answered this call on a particular 4th of July while serving in the Armed Services in Afghanistan. Although most of us in the service of others will not face paying the ultimate price on their behalf, many have.

That said, to better serve others, we in service must pay sufficient attention to our own needs to maintain a healthy platform from which to work, enabling us to serve our communities more effectively.

Servants need to stop feeling the needs of others are more important than their own. If you have neglected your self-care, it’s time to take back control of your life and increase your effectiveness in service. Your needs are essential, and only you can attend to them. It can be uncomfortable, but taking steps to preserve oneself is paramount to success in effective service over time.

The key is balance

Learn to say, “No.”

For the servant, it may seem counterintuitive, but you were created with an internal sensor to help you monitor when and what serves the highest and best performance in your service. Some call it intuition; at the very least, it is that undaunted feeling of overwhelm, a clear indication the situation at hand is not congruent with your terms of service.

At this moment, it is undoubtedly prudent for you to exercise your ability to say “No.” (I can see that grimace on your face.) Stay with me…) You must start using this word. Uncomfortable as it may be at first, trust me, it will get easier. It’s a small two-letter word that will help you create enough space to establish an essential parameter. It is not your calling to be all things to all men, and besides, saying no doesn’t imply that you don’t respect or like someone; it only means no. That’s all.

You may need a little wiggle room to muster a firm “no.” If so, you could offer a stall tactic, such as, “Let me check my schedule and get back to you.”

If you have a long history of always saying, “Yes” when it was not in your best interest, you could dress it up a bit by saying, “Now is not a good time for me,” or, “That’s not my area of expertise,” and refer them to someone more keenly attuned to that particular circumstance or project.

You can refer them to someone who is better suited or equipped to take on the task or encourage the person approaching you to assess their abilities. Some insightful reviews might lead them to the conclusion that they possess the necessary skills to undertake it independently. Why not use your intuition to allow them to grow?

Suppose you have accepted a particular responsibility and felt uncomfortable or resentful about taking on the challenge. In that case, this is a clear indication that, when approached with a similar offer in the future, declining the assignment is certainly in order.

For those who call on you to serve them and show little respect for all that you do, ask yourself, “Would I let this person treat my son or daughter in the same manner?” If the answer is no, then it’s time to start setting some healthy boundaries.