Tag: Self-Confidence

Self confidence requires making subtle shifts in how you use your body as you create mindfulness and awareness that exponentially increases your ability to influence, listen, be resilient, manage stress, maintain energy and be more effective. Rather than numbing yourself to uncomfortable circumstances and powering through them, you can learn to mindfully choose to respond in a way that leaves you feeling whole and at peace.

You Can Be Merry and Be Healthy – It’s Okay to Take Care of Yourself!

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Fearless Mindset, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness.

Don’t you love the holiday season with its bright lights, lovely music, and pleasant aromas of pine trees and baked goodies? It’s such a festive time of the year!

Yet all that glistens is not gold, as the saying goes. There are inevitable stresses during this time of year. Rather than writing a typical “how to relieve your holiday stress” article, I’m sharing something you really need to hear…

But first…Which of the follow stress triggers really get you down the most? (Please come over to my Facebook Page and let’s share.)

Is it being busier, trying to get everything done perfectly on a tight schedule?

Is it feeling trapped by obligations, being pushed beyond what you can physically and emotionally handle?

Is it spending beyond your budget, thinking you’ll deal with it later, when in reality the bills nag at you, robbing you of joy?

Is it falling into unhealthy patterns due to your history, family traditions and personal beliefs?

Is it being thrown together with a family member who brings you pain?

Is it seeing an empty place where a loved one was last year, but isn’t this year?

Is it the disruption to your routine that allows little down time that makes you crazy?

Is it feeling guilty for eating and drinking things you normally wouldn’t?

Your ability to handle all of these stress triggers revolves around one thing…your self-care. And I’m sure you’ve already read plenty of articles of how to deal with holiday stress that tell you to do this and do that. What you really need is permission to take care of yourself – to be told it’s not selfish to nurture your own wellbeing. So let me reassure you…

It’s okay to set limits to what you can do physically and emotionally.

It’s okay to set a budget for what you can spend and then stick to it.

It’s okay to do things differently than everyone else.

It’s okay to start a new family tradition.

It’s okay to schedule alone time to think about how you can make even a slight change in the coming year.

It’s okay to be more deliberate about your choices.

It’s okay to indulge a little.

It’s okay to treat yourself to a massage or a brief getaway to gain some breathing room.

It’s okay to walk away from family squabbles and go for a walk or to the gym.

It’s okay to insist on getting to bed at a reasonable hour.

It’s okay to bring new meaning into your holiday: identifying why and what are you celebrating… family, connection, or spiritual growth.

It’s okay to take time out to do breathing exercises to center and balance yourself when you feel tense.

It’s okay to view friends as family, if your family has let you down.

It’s okay to say, “No! Not this year”.

Didn’t you feel the stress flow away as you read, “it’s okay”? We all need reassurance that we can choose what’s okay for us. In the same manner, we respectfully and lovingly allow others to have the same freedom of choice. As each person calmly explains their point of view, it can promote peace and greater awareness – the very foundation of being merry and being healthy. And that’s what I wish for you. Have a happy holiday season everyone! See you on my Facebook Page.

Breathe Your Way to Wellness With the Yoga Alternate Nostril Breathing Technique

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness.

Do you find that you don’t appreciate the little experiences of each day as much as you should, whether it’s a pleasant conversation, a delightful meal or a spectacular sunset? Don’t you owe it to yourself to savour these gifts? We can all create greater appreciation and connection with our world by slowing down and becoming more aware. Connecting our appreciation with our breathing is an excellent way to do this.

In my last post I shared some breathing exercises for you to try. Do you find that you forget to deeply breathe for days on end? It’s not unusual that your mind gets busy with day-to-day concerns and that it has trouble quieting down. One thing I’ve found to be very helpful is to leave visual reminders throughout your home, car and office. It could be as simple as coloured dots strategically placed to catch your eye and remind you to slow down and breathe. Or you could use fashionable wall art, signs, or shelf decoration that remind you to breathe.

Rather than worrying about the past or the future, learn to be present in the moment.

Use breathing to achieve awareness. Practice cueing your breathing process throughout the day in a variety of good and bad circumstances (cooking a meal, travelling to work, talking with a co-worker). Breathing in reminds you to open yourself fully to the experience, to how you feel, what you’re thinking, and how you’re reacting. Breathing out lets the tension, worry, and anxiety flow away. The next inhalation opens you again.

You can counteract emotional distress, fear, grief and anxiety by simply learning to breathe through the experience. It doesn’t matter if the strong emotion is caused by something real or imagined. What you perceive or believe in your mind manifests in your body in a physical way. You become tense, and tension affects your ability to think clearly, act rationally, breathe deeply and relax. Tension also causes pain, anxiety and panic. Shallow breathing serves in a self-protective function – that of cutting off a feeling you don’t want to handle. On the other hand, if you can learn to release your strong emotions through breathing awareness, you can break the negative, destructive power of these strong emotions. The conscious use of breath is a valuable tool in learning to express emotions appropriately.

Today I’d like to teach you how to do the yoga alternate nostril breathing, which will significantly enhance your emotional wellbeing. Involving both nostrils allows your body to become balanced. But first you must increase your awareness of imbalanced breathing so you can bring it back into balance. I encourage you to do this exercise in short practice sessions daily.

Exhale completely, using both nostrils.
Press your finger against your right nostril, closing it completely.
Inhale slowly and smoothly through the left nostril only.
Hold that inhaled breath for a few comfortable seconds.
Then close the left nostril and exhale through the right nostril.
Hold while comfortable.
Inhale through the right nostril only.
Release your left nostril and close off the right.
Exhale through the left nostril. Hold.
Keep switching between left and right nostrils as you inhale and exhale rhythmically for a total of 10 to 15 sets.
Go back to breathing through both nostrils.

Your body really does know how to heal itself if you provide it with the balance and harmony it needs. Breathing is a primary method for correcting any disharmony. Learn to listen to what your body is telling you as it attempts to regain balance. Responding to those messages and you’ll feel more centered and at peace as you learn to accept your limitations and be forgiving of yourself and others.

More than creating greater satisfaction in life, proper breathing can increase your concentration, assist you to tune into your deeper, creative self, AND make you physically, emotionally and mentally healthier. Are you ready to feel a greater connectedness with your family, friends, community, and the Earth? Contact me and I’ll support, coach and hold you accountable as you create the deeply meaningful life you crave.

Types of Exercise That Foster a Healthy Lifestyle and Greater Happiness

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, The Feldenkrais Method®.

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.” ~Plato

Would you like to improve your thinking, memory, motivation, mental wellbeing, physical health and even reverse some diseases? Well, you can by elevating your heart rate on a regular basis. Yes, I’m talking about exercise!

John J. Ratey, M.D., author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, and researcher on the mind-body connection, has found that exercise is our best defense against everything – mental disorders, addiction, mood swings to mention a few. “Moving our muscles produces proteins that play roles in our highest thought processes.” Ratey says.

The wonderful thing is that we can feel an almost immediate change in our brain after a workout. Why is that?

First, regular exercise helps your body optimally use energy. For example, food is broken down into glucose – the body’s energy fuel. Your pancreas produces a hormone called insulin, which regulates the amount of sugar in your bloodstream by letting glucose into the muscle, fat and liver cells. “We think of insulin as a ‘key’ that opens doors to the body’s cells, so glucose can enter,” said diabetes educator Gary Scheiner. 79 million people in the US are pre-diabetic because their sedentary lifestyle has made them insulin resistance. The insulin key can’t open the frozen lock, so glucose can’t get into the cells to fuel your muscles. The resulting increased blood sugar makes the pancreas crank out more insulin, which causes you to become very tired. It’s a vicious cycle! Exercise can reverse this process and give you your energy back. That’s just one of the many mind/body systems that your body needs regular exercise in order to function properly.

Regular exercise also builds a sustainable cycle of wellbeing. Regular exercise builds strong lifestyle patterns that support mental wellbeing, which in turn motivates you to keep exercising regularly. It’s a win-win-win! And when you are physically active, you’re more social, which boosts self-confidence. It alleviates anxiety, stress and depression. It improves focus and helps you replace addictive behaviors and bad habits with healthier choices.

How much and what types of exercise will help you achieve your peak performance? It’s recommended that you exercise 30 minutes per day/5 days a week at the minimum. That’s only 2½ hours out of 168 hours of your life every week. Isn’t that a small investment for the greatest return – a long, healthy, and happy life? (Note: If you have any medical problems, consult with your physician before beginning a new exercise routine.) Here are some suggestions:

Aerobic Exercise. This type of exercise gets your heart rate up and makes you sweat and can be sustained over a long period of time. Work up to doing aerobic exercise four days a week, at 60 to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate. Try running, swimming or biking.

Anaerobic exercise. This is high intensity exercise that can only be sustained for a brief time period, like sprinting. For example, after you’ve warmed up and have walked for about 10 minutes, break out into a sprint for 5 minutes, then go back to walking until your heart rate slows again to where you can comfortably talk, then repeat the sprint/cool down cycle.

Strength training exercise. Use weights or resistance machines twice a week. Do three sets of your exercises with weights that allow you to do ten repetitions in each set. Personally, I love my Cross Fit class!

Balance and flexibility exercise. Focus on this twice a week for thirty minutes. The Feldenkrais Method® (which relieved my chronic pain too), Yoga, Pilates, tai chi, Aikido, martial arts, archery, and dance are all good choices.

Brain exercise. Never stop learning. Numerous studies show that the more your brain continues to learn, the more likely you are to keep your thinking abilities and ward off dementia.

Doing a mix of low, medium, and high intensity exercise is important as each does beneficial things for your mind and body. If you need to split it up into 10-minute intervals, 3 times per day, that’s still effective. Your brain and all your muscles needs to be used in order to keep your quality of life at its best.

I recommend you read or listen to the audio of: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey. It will get you up and moving as it changes forever how you look at the connection between brain health and exercise.

Are you motivated to try some of these types of exercise, but you need someone to keep you accountable and on track? Contact me and let me support and challenge you each step of the way as you activate your inner abilities to achieve and maintain your motivation for total wellness and fitness. Let’s get started as soon as possible!

If you haven’t you received your free copy of The 7-Point Body Wellness Assessment yet, download it right now. It will help you get started on the path to a healthier you.

Supercharge your Power of Concentration by Learning How to Focus Better

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness, NLP, Private Practice Advice, Somatic Coaching.

Are there times when you struggle to focus on the task at hand? Perhaps that’s because there’s too much going on in your attentional field. What’s that? It’s a term used to describe everything within your attention span – your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, sights and sounds around you. Right now your attention is on the website reading this, but you may at the same time be distracted by other things like the mug of tea you’re sipping, the sound of your child or pet in the background, the thoughts of a deadline looming later today.

Focus is the ability to attend to internal cues (what’s going on inside of you, your feelings and thoughts) and external cues (what’s going on around you, like the knock on the door) in your attentional field. In all areas of life, whether you’re giving a presentation at work, having an important conversation with your spouse or training for a marathon, in order to excel you need to be able to focus.

What can you do to learn how to focus better? Here are two main skills you’ll need to master:

In order to tap into the tremendous power of concentration, determine what the relevant cues to the task at hand are and learn to focus only on them. We learn to selectively focus on or block out cues every day, otherwise the background noises and activities would drive us crazy.

Think about a star ball player. He must be in tune to his technique, his opponent, the score, the referee, the coach, and time remaining on the scoreboard, to name only a few cues vying for his attention. What would happen if his focus shifted to the pretty girl in the bleachers? He, in all likelihood, might miss the ball flying towards him. Hence at this point and time, that pretty girl would be considered a performance-irrelevant cue that must be ignored.

So the second skill for achieving better focus is determining what the performance-irrelevant cues are so you can ignore them as you strive to excel. These would be anything that would hurt your performance when you must accomplish a task.

There are two types of harmful cues that you’ll encounter:

Interfering cues are those that directly hurt your performance such as negative thoughts, anxiety, and concern over what others think.

Irrelevant cues are those that distract you from an effective focus including what restaurant you’ll go to tonight, the project that you must finish by tomorrow, or that pretty girl in the bleachers.

Each of us has a different dominant focus style, which is what we default to under stress. We pay attention in two distinct ways. These two focus styles are…

Internal-focus style. These people are totally and consistently focused during a specific activity like a presentation, a practice session or a competition. They need to keep their focus narrow, thinking only about their performance all the time. The down side of this intensity is that they also tend to be easily distracted by their surroundings.

External-focus style. These people only focus on their specific activity when they’re about to begin the event or competition. They function better by taking their mind off of the activity at all other times, because they tend to over-think, becoming negative, critical, and anxious. For them to excel, they must focus on other things when they’re not actually performing.

Neither approach is right or wrong. The important thing is identifying your focus style and utilizing it to improve your powers of concentration. If you’re trying to force yourself to adopt a style other than your own, you’ll find that under pressure you’ll revert back to your normal style and that could really throw you off your game.

Would you like assistance in utilizing your personal style to excel at everything you do? We can work together in person or via Skype. Please contact me and I’ll be happy to help you identify your weakness and learn how to tap into your strengths.

A good place to begin is by taking my 7-Point Wellness Assessment. You can download your free copy by clicking here.

How to Improve Self Image and Fitness with Cutting-Edge Mental Strength Training Techniques

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Fearless Mindset, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness, NLP, Somatic Coaching, The Feldenkrais Method®.

“A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.” ~ Joyce Brothers

Did you know that how you see yourself in your own mind has a great impact on your fitness level? Scientists and sports coaches have found that when you imagine yourself as fit and healthy, the brain believes it, which encourages you to make choices that consistently support your self-image as a fit person. To reinforce this positive shift you can definitely benefit from mental strength training.

That’s right! To improve your physical fitness you need to strengthen your mental fitness. Why? Because mental strength training will help you shift your self-image so you are empowered to reach your potential. Imagine how your fitness will improve when you can…

Focus and deal with distractions. Rather than having a result-oriented focus, you’ll be able to focus on the present moment rather than becoming self-conscious.

Gain self-confidence. You’ll be able to overcome doubts as your self-confidence increases.

Develop a fearless mindset. You know that one event doesn’t define you as a person so you’re not afraid of embarrassment or failure.

Control your emotions. You’ll be able to deal with setbacks and errors as you stay composed under pressure to perform.

Replace perfectionism with competence. You’ll be able to accurate assess yourself without unrealistic expectations or being overly critical.

Improve endurance. You’ll be able to perform at your peak for a longer period of time when you are able to work in the “zone”.

Adopt a healthy belief system. You’ll be able to identify irrational thoughts and replace them with a healthy, positive way of thinking.

Find your true motivation. You’ll be able to deliver your optimal performance because you’ll be doing things for the right reasons.

What mental training techniques can you use to create a better self-image and boost your fitness level? Here are a few techniques I like to use with my coaching clients:

Relaxation: Calming your mind and body relieves tense muscles, which is essential to allow your muscles to stretch without tearing or pulling your skeletal frame out of alignment. By relaxing and contracting mindfully through all of your muscles groups you create deeper mine/body awareness that allows you to move more freely.

Visualization: Imagine yourself enjoying the benefits of reaching your goal. Do you want to reduce one size? Visualize how great that feels…how much better your balance is…how much stronger you are…how much more stamina you have…how well your clothes fit…how happy you are with the renewed energy to take that mountain hike or play ball with the children. The more engaged you become in this, the more your brain actually believes it to be true.

Anchoring: An anchor is a preset response to a specific stimulus. To help you feel like working out, recall a time when you had an awesome workout. Visualize the experience fully, and at the peak moment set an anchor or cue that makes your brain relive this feeling each time you employ the anchor.

Reframing: Identify your unhelpful thoughts and replace them with positive statements that support a positive self-image. Remove the phrase “I should” from your vocabulary. Instead use “I can do X now, which is so much more than when I started.” Also, get rid of the all-or-nothing mentality by refusing to personalize or over-generalize each event. One event does not define who you are as a person.

Mental editing: Whether you perform an exercise routine or only picture it, you activate many of the same brain connections that link what your body does to the controlling brain impulses. It also stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, which increases the heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. For example, Jack Nicklaus excelled because he practiced each shot in his mind before taking it.

You’ll get the best results if you enlist the assistance of a trained coach who can teach you how to do each of these techniques correctly. Mental strength training is all about taking you from where you are now and enhancing your fitness and self-image incrementally until your mind/body health transforms you into a top performer. Contact me and we’ll schedule an appointment so you can get started on your path to an excellent self-image and improved fitness.

Tag: Self-Confidence

You Can Be Merry and Be Healthy – It’s Okay to Take Care of Yourself!

Breathe Your Way to Wellness With the Yoga Alternate Nostril Breathing Technique

Types of Exercise That Foster a Healthy Lifestyle and Greater Happiness

Supercharge your Power of Concentration by Learning How to Focus Better

How to Improve Self Image and Fitness with Cutting-Edge Mental Strength Training Techniques

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