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Category: Self-Leadership Skills

Feeling Drained? Discover How to Manage Your Energy and Reclaim Your Vitality

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Change Your Life, Self-Leadership Skills.

When you’re feeling drained, a somatic approach makes you fully aware of energy sappers and how to renew your physical, emotional, and mental energies.Don’t you just hate it when you try to use your cell phone, but the battery is dead?  Not because you’ve made so many calls, but because the apps running in the background have used up all the energy? These hidden drains on your operating system affect your ability to connect with others. Is something similar happening with your mental and emotional energy when you’re feeling drained? Are there hidden energy zappers working in the background that you’re not even aware of?

At the end of this article, you’ll find a list of 95 possible hidden energy drains. I encourage you to look the list over and identify the ones that are impacting your life right now. But for now, it’s more important to work on the skills that will help you manage your energy mindfully and intentionally. Then when you identify an energy zapper, you’ll know how to pull its plug!  

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3 Ways to Control Emotional Dysregulation — Restore Balance and Peace

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Self-Leadership Skills.

We can learn to control emotional dysregulation in moments of stress, more importantly, we can expand our resources to prevent emotional dysregulation.Wouldn’t it be cool if we had an on-and-off switch so we could control emotional dysregulation? We feel ourselves losing it…click…we turn it off and reset. Well, I’m going to share with you three tips that work to get emotions under control quickly and effectively, like turning a light switch off, so keep reading…

Emotional dysregulation is something we’ve all experienced. Situations happen that push our buttons and we experience out-of-control reactions and responses. You see it when people fly off the handle, lose their cool, or can’t resist an urge. Their responses are disproportionate to the situation at hand. We struggle with regulating, controlling, managing our emotions. What can we do?  

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Set Yourself Up for Success — 6 Simple Strategies You Can Use Daily

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Change Your Life, Self-Leadership Skills, Stepping Forward.

Set yourself up for success by using my 3-step system, plus 6 simple strategies that give you a firm foundation for making any kind of lasting change.Are you energized to face each new day? Or is it starting to feel like “the grind” or maybe even like a meaningless “rat race”? Many people have learned to be satisfied with the status quo, but if you want to set yourself up for success, be willing to do some fine-tuning now and then.

You can set yourself up for success by following some really simple, yet surprisingly powerful daily strategies. These are especially effective if you’re a service professional juggling the demands of a private practice with your personal life.

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How to Improve Your Feeling of Well-being — P.E.R.M.A. Model for Happiness

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Self-Leadership Skills, Stepping Forward.

You can improve your feeling of well-being and happiness when you focus, not on possessions or events, but on creating beauty in every moment of life. Are you in the pursuit of happiness? Or are you waiting for it to come to you? “The pursuit of happiness” is one of our unalienable rights, according to the U. S. Declaration of Independence. Isn’t that interesting? They focused on the process of searching for happiness, not happiness itself. Think about that deeply, because it will begin to profoundly change you.

If you want to improve your feeling of well-being, it’s important to make the mental shift away from the idea that “I’ll be happy when this thing happens”. Because when you get that thing, it’s not the key to lasting happiness. No, life shifts again and you want more or something different. The key to feeling happy isn’t simply obtaining your desires. The key is finding delight in the whole process of living!

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I Am So Disappointed In Myself — What Can I Do About It?

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Life Skills, Self-Leadership Skills, Stepping Forward.

When you say, "I’m so disappointed in myself" – pause, peel back the layers, assess without judgment, and make a plan to move forward.“I swore I would do better, Maria. I want to do better! But every time I get hurt or stressed out, I can’t help myself. I reach for ________ ( Fill in the blank with chocolate, ice cream, cigarette, alcoholic drink, TV clicker — all the things we distract ourselves with.) I feel so disappointed in myself!”  Can you relate to my client’s heartfelt plea? What do YOU do when the person you disappoint is you? And more to the point, what healthy things can you do instead?

Since we’re our own worst critics, we tend to turn off compassion and turn on self-disgust when we disappoint ourselves.  If that’s your default setting, know that you are not alone. Neither are you locked into always responding that way. 

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