January 2019 – Page 2 – Andrea Arthur Owan

3 Ways to Add Prayer to Your Busy Day

There’s a passage in the book of Colossians where St. Paul writes:

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”

And you may be familiar with his directive to the Thessalonians to:

“Rejoice always,pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

There is nothing like drawing yourself away to a special, quiet place to commune with God in prayer, uninterrupted and unconcerned about time.

But I get it. I know it’s sometimes difficult to squeeze in prayer time in our over-saturated schedules, especially if we haven’t penciled in or planned on a specific time to devote to it.

So what should we do? Say, “Ah, well, I’ll try again tomorrow?”

Or do we look for another way to pray. A way that can be both satisfying and effective.

After struggling with this for a while, I knew I needed to get creative with my prayer life. While I feel something critical is missing if I don’t sit down in the morning and start my day with a time of Bible reading, devotion and prayer, there are other times of the day I feel the distinct calling of God to pray for someone in particular, someone He brings to mind. And I know I need to pray for that person, right then and there.

I can’t always stop what I’m in the middle of, so I need to utter a quick, but focused and heartfelt prayer. If I have time, I might text them a “How are you doing?” message, if that’s what I feel I’m being led to do. Just letting someone know they’re on your mind often does wonders for their spirits, and it’s all God asks you to do.

But what about those other directives Paul gives us about praying for the church, for our nation’s leaders, other believers? How do possibly accomplish that on a busy day?

A lot of organizations and groups have devised techniques to help us remember the five major prayer points or encourage us in our prayer life. Here are several of them you can use or adapt for your situation or needs.

Maybe some of them can help us accomplish what seems an impossible task.

The Five Finger Prayer Prompt—

The basics of this prayer are:

Praise—(thumb) praising God and Jesus for who they are

Thanksgiving—(index or pointer finger) Thanking God for His love and salvation

Confession—(middle finger) Confessing our sins and shortcomings

Intercession—(ring finger) Praying for others in need

Petition—(pinky finger) Praying for ourselves

Another type of five-finger prayer is one frequently taught to children.

Thumb—Pray for those closest to you

Index or Pointer finger—Pray for those who teach and heal, like teachers, doctors, and minsters in need of wisdom and patience in leading others

Middle finger—Because this finger is the tallest, it has been designated for prayers for government and business and administrative leaders. While they need wisdom too, the Bible says we need to pray for them so we can live in peace.

Ring finger—Because this finger is the weakest finger, it represents those who are weak, ill, or in mental anguish or pain. They need constant prayer.

Little or pinky finger—This finger is reserved for praying for yourself. The feeling is that once you’ve prayed for all of the other people, you can better put your needs into perspective at the end.

It’s easy to put either of these two finger methods to great use when you’re out walking, or at the gym working out; when you’re cleaning house or working in the yard or your garden.

Labyrinth Praying—

Can’t go on a long pilgrimage? Try using a labyrinth prayer model.

A labyrinth is defined as a clear path in and out with a center where you can stop and rest. It was developed in the Middle Ages for those who couldn’t go on long pilgrimage journeys.

You may have a labyrinth in your town you can visit. One of our local hospitals has set up a small one outside one of their buildings. As most are, it’s a circle design where the path is outlined by rocks. My husband and I encountered one of a slightly different design—although still a circle—in a lavender farm in the rolling foothills of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Instead of rocks, beautiful English and French lavender plants lined the route. The exquisite views and splendid aroma added a sense of peace to the walk.

Don’t have a labyrinth near you? Consider designing one in your backyard. Although most are circles, I don’t think it has to be. Just designate a clear path you can enter, a destination where you can stand or sit a moment in meditation and rest, and a path by which you exit.

Or figure out an outside area where you work that would be suitable for you to walk as a labyrinth. Is there a usually-quiet break courtyard you could use? Could you walk around the building?

Get creative!

Prayer walking through your home—

Another technique is walking through your home and praying for specific concerns or needs in each room. Or thanking God for the blessings you’ve received there.

In the kitchen you might pray for inspiration on planning healthful meals for you and your family, wisdom in food preparation, a joy of cooking and meal prep.

In the family room you might focus on friends who have or will gather there, that they feel love and peace in your presence.

I’m sure you can think of a million prayers you could utter in each of your children’s rooms. Even if they’re grown and gone, you can thank God for their lives and the joy they’ve brought to yours, for any struggles they have, obstacles they face.

These prayers can be said when you’re cleaning these particular areas, or when you’re preparing for your day. When I’m preparing my beloved’s breakfast (and lunch he’ll pack off to work), I can do a lot of rejoicing for a husband who works hard and provides, and offer up my labors as a pleasing sacrifice to God, rather than moaning because I scraped myself out of bed before sunrise when my beloved has a 7:00 AM meeting.

When you’re at work, you can pray for each client that enters your door, each co-worker you encounter, each patient you’ll see.

You can turn down the talk radio program and offer up prayers at stoplights; pray for each person you see in the checkout line. It’s amazing what God reveals to you when you’re observing the people in front of you, including the checkout person. Harried moms with exhausted, whining children. Bleary-eyed high school and college students. Lonely seniors struggling to coordinate their credit card payments and lift their groceries.

Instead of looking at prayer as an obligation or burden, as I am sometimes guilty of doing, I can view praying as a privilege, a way to connect myself—and others—to God. A way to enrich and change my life and the lives of others. I often remind myself that the prayers of a righteous person avails much!

It’s always amazing to me to see how my spiritual life deepens and expands when I approach prayer this way.

Would you like to share your techniques?

Do you have any special prayer techniques that have enriched your prayer life? We’d love to hear them!

It’s great when we can learn from others.

Until next week, when we look more closely at praying for ourselves as this new year unfolds, I encourage you to try one of the prayer techniques we’ve discussed today. And please let me know how it works for you!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Using the New Exercise Guidelines: Easier to Achieve Success

Even if you’re not a big exerciser, you probably know exercise, or physical activity, is a critical component of good health—both physical and emotional/mental. Even the Health and Human Services Department of the United States government thinks so, and they get in on the act of improving our nation’s overall health by establishing exercise guidelines.

They recently made some guideline changes you’ll be interested in, if you’re concerned about maintaining or improving your and your family’s health.

A little history—

While I’ve been studying guidelines for some 40 years, doctors and scientists have been writing about them and trying to establish norms since the 19^th century. As research improves, the guidelines change. They’re never perfect, but they usually do set a good foundation for people to aspire to. (I wouldn’t count the current food pyramid among those aspirating tools, though. Companies and special interest groups had too much influence in its development.)

Why exercise?

God created our amazing bodies to move in a variety of ways. When you keep that in mind, you realize that exercise can be a form of praise and worship to the One that created you!

But for those of you needing some extra motivation, remember there are tremendous benefits to exercise. Exercise can:

prevent chronic diseases
improve mood
improve overall health
improve quality of life
sharpen mental function
boost concentration
improve sleep
get you connected with nature (if you exercise outdoors)
increase your metabolism, which can help you lose or maintain a healthy weight
remove toxins from your body through metabolism and sweating
increase lung capacity
improve heart function
tone muscles and sculpt body, which can improve balance, increase metabolism, and improve your body image

Some background on the new guidelines—

The United State’s Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has designed new guidelines (updated from 2008) that are better tailored for age and ability. This is great news because we’re rapidly shedding the one-size-fits-all in exercise and dieting myths!

The new guidelines wrap around the idea that the amount of exercise you should aim for and get, and the mix of activities you engage in, depends on your age and ability. Essentially, the exercise becomes more personalized. That’s great, because we’re all unique.

Do you have a preschooler at home? Then you need to make sure your bundle of energy gets at least 3 hours of run or jump-around activity. Shutter the video games and television and get your charges outside or to a pre-school gym. Mommy and me classes are also great to get their activity and yours in too.

Are you an “older” adult? You’ll want to aim for at least 150 minutes a week. (Since people say 80 is the new 60, I’m going to guess that a lot of technically “older” adults don’t feel old, but the technical definition is anyone 65 years or older.)

Does 150 minutes sound like a lot? Years ago we would say that amounts to 30 minutes of exercise, 5 times a week. Then more recently, experts said exercise needed to be done in no less than ten-minute blocks.

But based on the current research, we now know that the exercise doesn’t have to occur in those compulsory, 30-minute chunks, or even the smaller ten-minute and can actually be racked up in much smaller increments. Little batches throughout your day seem to be just as effective as the dedicated blocks.

Exercising enough? Great, but you’re in the minority.

If you travel to Seattle, Honolulu, or the California coast, you’d think everyone in the country is an exercise addict, but that’s not the case. According to Harvard Health Publishing:

“Eighty percent of the population is not meeting the guidelines. Each year in the U.S., an estimated 10% of premature deaths and $117 billion in healthcare costs are associated with inadequate physical activity.”

If that’s true, encouraging exercise—and bringing it back into the schools!—would improve our nation’s health and have a positive effect on all of our pocketbooks.

What’s changed in the new exercise guidelines?

The primary change in these new guidelines is—

Move more, sit less!

We’ve heard a lot about the health dangers of sitting in the news the last couple of years. No matter what your age, you’ll benefit from exercise, although the benefit may emerge in different ways.

For a young person, exercise aids normal growth and development, both physical and mental. It strengthens bones and muscles and improves their lung and heart (cardiovascular) health.

For an older adult, it can keep muscles and bones from deteriorating and weakening and can help improve balance, which helps decrease the risk of falling and serious injury. In turn, that helps seniors maintain more independent and active lives for longer durations.

One of the critical components to the new guidelines is that it bases your dose of physical activity on the activity’s relative intensity.

For example, a brisk walk could count as a moderate physical activity. But what’s moderate physical activity? It’s working at an intensity high enough that you can speak comfortably but not sing.

Not in shape? Your intensity level might be reached sooner than someone who’s more trained or younger, so make sure you DON’T compare your efforts with someone else’s!

How to begin an exercise program or incorporate the new guidelines—

If you’re just starting out, you will definitely want to begin more slowly and carefully. Then you can increase the exercise duration, intensity, and frequency.

But as I’ve cautioned many times, DO NOT increase all of these factors simultaneously!! Increase one of them at a time, over a period of several days or weeks. You’ll notice more rapid improvement at the beginning and then a slow down. At the slow down point, you can choose to maintain the status quo, or you can mix things up by changing the intensity or frequency.

For example:

You’ve decided to walk your neighborhood every day. If you’re huffing and puffing after half a mile, you’ve gone too far. If you don’t feel as though you stressed your system much when you return home, you probably didn’t work hard enough during the activity.

Let me give you a more personal example.

My husband decided to take up our older son’s challenge to run a 5K race with him. (An easy length for my son who is a former high school long distance runner and now half-marathon competitor.) So, my husband consulted me on how he should go about training for it.

Since he’s really in good physical condition, (a recent stress test showed him to have the heart function of a trained athlete 20 years younger than his chronological age), I told him to run up the main street near our house—which heads uphill—and then back down, in a loop. Round trip from our garage is 1.2 miles. I told him to do that at least three times a week at a comfortable pace to see how he felt, and how the post-arthroscopy knees felt.

Things felt good after a week, so I told him to either increase his mileage by 10% OR increase his intensity by 10%, which would essentially improve his mile-a-minute time.

Things were going great, until he had chest pain, which curtailed his activity until we could determine the cause. It turned out to be a spasming esophagus, which can mimic heart attack pain. So after his down time, he had to start over.

Then he injured his ankle downhill skiing with our younger son right after Christmas, which has set him back again. He is just now returning to training, and plans to do so at the gym on the treadmill. We’ll see how it goes. I suggested he test his ankle strength and stability by doing heal raises, wind sprints, figure eight drills and high knee jogging and fanny kick running. But he’s bypassing those for straight-on running.

He’s also just returned to work after two weeks of holiday vacation, so it could be slow going due to mental fatigue (just being back to work!).

What type of exercise is best for your age?

What about straight forward, or single direction/single plane type of exercise, like running?

While it might be great for cardiovascular health, it’s not going to give you improvement you might want in balance or muscle strength. And therein lies the challenge:

To have a good, overall fitness level, you need to incorporate a variety of exercises, like—

Aerobic activity— walking, running, cycling, swimming. Something done for sustained periods.

Muscle-strengthening activity—resistance training with weights, bands. Something that improves your muscle mass, endurance, strength, power and muscle health.

Bone-strengthening activity—Critical for post-menopausal women, or women who have suffered from eating disorders and low weight. Exercises like running, resistance training, jump roping, dancing, or impact exercises (keep it reasonable and on the low side), improve bone health and reduces your risk of fractures.

Balance activity—Another critical component for aging people, balance activities improve coordination and reduce the risk of falling and injury incurred from falls. Tai chi, yoga, dancing, walking backward, one-leg (stork) standing, standing or walking on your toes, skipping frontward, backward, sideways, and diagonally all help improve balance.

And surprisingly, doing some of your lower-impact exercises or calisthenics with your eyes closed can improve your balance. Just don’t be skipping around the house or gym with your eyes shut!

Multicomponent physical activity—Selecting several physical activities to keep your brain sharp and on its toes (along with your body) is the way to go. Play tennis and swim; hike and bike; dance and jog. It’s okay, and better, if you don’t limit yourself to just one exercise. For us ADD types, that’s a winner!

I really can’t stress enough just how important it is to find exercises that incorporate ALL of these components. I’ve personally learned that the frustrating way.

When I was a gymnast, my cardiovascular health was good, even though I wasn’t a runner. (I really loathe running, which is good, because I’m primarily a power muscle athlete; and my feet and ankles don’t tolerate running.) And my balance was superb, upside down or right-side up! When our high school psychology teacher had us do this little experiment of putting vision-warping glasses on and trying to walk a straight line, I had no problem. Super easy! I could walk a straight line with my eyes closed. I’d spent most of my life doing that; I knew where my body was in space almost all of the time it was moving, upside down or right side up.

When I played competitive racquetball in college and grad school, I was zigzagging all over the court, improving my hand-eye coordination (which wasn’t always good) and improving my reaction time, power, and balance.

But when I became a body builder, my physique and muscle strength improved, but the constant one-direction activity nearly destroyed my coordination and reaction time.

Now, years later, after sitting way too much every day and just walking or weight training, (I had to drop tennis after a nasty Achilles tendon injury several years ago), I’ve noticed that my balance has plummeted. (The fact that my hearing has plummeted too hasn’t helped the balance issues.)

So now I’m walking, hiking, and dancing. Doing morning calisthenics that wake me up while working on breathing, muscle tone, and balance has helped immensely.

I’m having to learn to regain my balance with my left foot too. For two years a bone spur in my big toe has caused me to walk primarily on the outside of my foot. Now that the spur is gone, I’m re-strengthening the big toe (I was amazed at how weak it had become) and stretching out the joint capsule and tissues.

It feels good to be able to put weight on that toe again, even though it screams at me before settling down for the exercise ritual.

And that story can help you as you select your exercise:

Know your body and your interests and tailor your exercise program to meet those personal goals and likes!

Keeping those things in mind will help you stick with your exercise program and find other, like-minded exercisers to workout with!

The basics of the new guidelines—

Keep in mind that these new guidelines are “evidence-based,” which means they’ve been drawn from an overview of scientific study/research results.

Preschool-age (3 through 5 years): physically active throughout the day with the goal of three hours of activity daily

Children and teens (6 through 17 years): at least 60 minutes daily of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity; include vigorous activity, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activity three times a week

Adults: at least 150 to 300 minutes weekly of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, or 75 to 150 minutes weekly of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or an equivalent combination of both, plus muscle-strengthening activities at least two days a week

Older adults: multicomponent physical activities that mix balance activities, aerobic activities, and strength training can help prevent falls and injuries; reduce overall sitting and replace it with light (or when possible, moderate) activity

Pregnant and postpartum women: at least 150 minutes weekly of moderate-intensity aerobic activity

Adults with chronic conditions or disabilities: follow adult guidelines as able, including both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities

I’d like to tack on one caveat for pregnant women: Please follow your doctor’s advice and keep a close tabs on your blood pressure and heart rate during exercise. I had to curtail my walking toward the end of my older son’s pregnancy due to my blood pressure soaring too high.

I hope you found this overview of the new guidelines helpful, and you’re ready to get started!

NEXT WEEK we’ll start taking a closer look at the science of exercise and dieting and how you can improve your success rates in both areas!

Until then,

get moving, even if you haven’t moved much in a while. You will enjoy the many benefits!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Getting Unstuck: Starting Your Year With Prayer

I encountered a lot of grief last week. Not my own, but the deep-seated, clinging grief of others. Overwhelming grief that came in wave after wave after wave of drowning torture. Fellow believers baring their souls.

And it wasn’t just loss of a loved one grief. It involved loss of a dream, loss of a job, injuries that curtailed work and careers, mental illness in loved ones, anxiety and depression, self-esteem issues and fear.

Some of the grief was fresh, some of it lingering. Some of it was being clung to like a mantel, and it produced a soul-breaking shame.

It reminded me just how much all of us need prayer, and how little time we usually devote to it.

And it reminded me that just like getting your day started right, getting your year started right means beginning it with focused prayer.

But what do you pray for?

Taking stock of what you can take stock of for your year—

There are certain things we know will likely happen in the year, and things we hope to happen. It could be continuing in the same job, having to interact with the same difficult co-worker that was a thorn in your side in 2018. It could be a new semester of tough professors; or a new job. A wedding, a joining together of two families.

Whatever is already on your 2019 calendar, it’s not too early to start praying. Or too late. God is still on the throne and He majors in the business of changing lives—yours and others.

And if you really don’t know what to pray for, then spend your prayer time asking God to reveal that to you. He will. He wants us to pray. Praying for the right thing in the right way with the right motive is a sweet aroma to Him. And just sitting in His presence, listening to Him can reveal a plethora of insights and new directions!

I’ve been blessed to be a witness to some pretty powerful results of prayer, both as a recipient and a participant. What I’ve learned over the years is:

EVERYTHING needs to be committed to God in prayer.
Prayer should be our first resort, not our last.
While you’re making plans, He orders your steps.
Unless the Lord builds your house, you labor in vain.

But what about all of your past failures? Are they holding your prayers back?

It’s so easy to get mentally and emotionally stuck on our past failures. And that can affect how we view our futures and how we set goals, make plans, and pray.

In pastor, author and writing coach Cecil Murphey’s January newsletter, he offers some advice on how to flip the outlook and enjoy more—and better—results.

“In 1987, six of us talked about the year ahead. We were good friends, met regularly, and decided to meet New Year’s Eve and read from a list that began with, ‘I resolve to . . .’

Each of us read our list and *Joel was the last, but he hadn’t written anything. ‘I just can’t do it. Each year I start out with grand ideas and strong determination of things I want to achieve. By the end of February, I’ve failed.’ He talked for a couple of minutes about individual fiascos such as developing an exercise program and being on time for appointments.

One of the others said, “But even if you failed, you tried.”

I didn’t see that response as helpful to Joel and was trying to figure out what to say. Then, in one of those rare moments of clarity, I said, ‘I’ll bet you never learned to ride a bicycle.’

“I certainly did!”

‘But didn’t you spill a few times?’

‘Everyone does—‘ and then Joel started to laugh. ‘I get it! I don’t have to remember my past when I plan my future.’

I thought of Joel’s words today and how well he had said them. Then I pondered several times where I’d fallen short of my goals last year. Although I struggled with guilt, my lack of success hadn’t crippled me.

‘I didn’t succeed in everything last year,’ I said aloud. ‘I don’t have to focus on what I didn’t do right. I can concentrate on what I want to achieve.’

Are you like Cec Murphey’s friend, Joel? Focusing on the past failures rather than the times when you tried and tried and tried again and finally succeeded, like when you learned how to ride a bike? Or when you learned how to walk? You probably don’t remember that one, but you undoubtedly fell repeatedly on your diapered fanny and kept at it until you successfully toddled around and then sprinted.

Do you approach your prayer life like that kind of persistence and trust in the One who hears your prayers?

Or does your past keep worming its way into your memory and soul, dragging you down and short circuiting your prayers, robbing you of your future hopes and dreams?

Getting your year off to a great start with prayer—

Because our prayer life is so important, and we need to get 2019 off to a great start, ll of the January Meditation Mondays posts will be dedicated to prayer.

Some of the prayer topics and ideas we’ll look at include:

Prayer and Relationships
Discerning Prayers
Using God’s Word to Breathe New Life into your Prayers
Imparting (and Teaching) a Heritage of Prayer

And while I’m a firm believer in parking yourself in a quiet corner of your home with your Bible, journal, pen and maybe some prayer beads, to spend quality, undistracted communing time with the Lord, I do realize that sometimes schedules make it difficult if not impossible to get on your knees in solitude. And when that happens, we usually throw our hands up in despair and are overcome with guilt.

For those times, we’ll look at some effective and satisfying options that let you multitask your prayer time with another, beneficial activity. The ideas will help you practice the encouragement St. Paul gives us when he says, “Pray without ceasing.”

It will become a sweet, fruitful habit. And in the process, you’ll find yourself becoming more receptive and responsive to the Holy Spirit’s voice. And that’s a benefit all of us need!

Until next Monday,

start brainstorming all of the things you could—and should be—bringing to the Lord in prayer.

And start by praying for yourself!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

*Not his real name

Are Your Standards Higher than God’s?

Most of the stories the group members relayed were full of anguish and turmoil. Pain heaped upon pain. And as I listened to them tell their stories, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

It was clear that some had told their stories before. Many times. And a few of them seemed to enjoy telling their stories. I wasn’t sure if they went on and on because they were nervous, or they wanted or needed to be heard, or they had gotten so accustomed to the attention they received when telling the story that they craved it, had become addicted to it.

Certainly, being Christians, they expressed joy in the Lord, and gratefulness for His salvation. But the peace He promises seemed to be missing.

And then there was the shame. The deep, profound feeling of shame they projected over their weaknesses, failures and hurts they’d caused others. Some had confessed their sins and turned from their evil ways decades ago, and yet they still wept over their behavior.

They seemed to focus more on their shame and sins than they did on the dismantling and destruction of their chains. Their cleansing.

They still struggled with feelings of unworthiness.

While they possessed the head knowledge of their new lives in Christ, they clung to the pain and sins of their old lives. They identified them.

They didn’t focus on being a new creature.

They forgot that when God forgives sins, He will remember them no more. As far as the east is from the west is the distance God has removed our transgressions from us.

They didn’t seem to want to let go.

They weren’t going through the process of renewing their minds.

And they were beating themselves up about it.

In short, it comes down to what Dr. David Jeremiah told a young lady who just couldn’t get from the God-forgiving-her-stage, to forgiving herself,

“So your standards are higher and better than God’s?”

Wow! That’s looking at through a different lens, isn’t it? And He’s right. When you stop and think about it, it’s ludicrous what we project onto our loving, tender, long-suffering and forgiving God.

Does all of that sound too familiar?

Can you picture this scenario?

Jesus tells you: “Your sin is forgiven, but I’m going to be banging you in the head over it for the rest of your life. Just so you don’t forget how awful you are and awful your sin was, and how much you owe me for My sacrifice and salvation.”

Can you imagine Him doing that to you?

Well, he doesn’t and He wouldn’t.

So why do we act as thought He does?

It’s becoming more painfully clear to me that so much of our mental, emotional, spiritual and sometimes physical anguish is self-inflicted. And it shouldn’t be that way. In fact, I think it grieves our Saviors heart to watch how we punish ourselves, and others who have also asked for and received forgiveness for their confessed sins.

How about you?

Are you stuck in the self-infliction pattern?
Have you set higher standards than God has for you?
Are you continuing to beat yourself up over some failure you confessed and know you’ve received forgiveness for?
Is your behavior threatening your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health?
If so, what will you do to change your attitude and behavior this year?
Do you need to confess to Him that you’ve been punishing yourself and seek forgiveness for self-harm?
Do you know anyone who needs encouragement and maybe some enlightenment and correction in this area?

My prayer is that we can all take the Savior at His word, rest in His peace and joy, walk through life with a light step, and reject the self-incrimination that can bind our hearts, minds, emotions and actions.

Let’s make sure we allow God to set the standards for our lives!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

BLOG SCHEDULE NOTE: As 2019 has dawned, it became clear that, in order to complete my memoir manuscript this year and prepare it for publication, and complete all of the writing set before me, that I would have to reduce my blog posting schedule.

To accomplish that, Free-for-All Fridays will be reduced to once-a-month posts, which will be published on the first Friday of each month.

So I’ll see you back here the first Friday of February, which happens to be the 1^st!

Until then, walk lightly, and be forgiving—of yourself and others.

How to Start your New Year with a Health Self-Assessment Instead of Resolutions

Well, it’s likely that you’ve fully embraced your New Year’s resolutions and are hot on the path of pursuing them, you have them written down, or you have them tallied up in your mental storage.

But if you want to make life changes, is that the best way for you to start?

Instead of coming up with an endless list of resolutions, why not try a more focused approach, one that is more likely to bring you success.

Why not try formulating an annual overall health self-assessment first?

Advantages of first doing a health self-assessment—

Most people realize that the majority of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned with the first month of the new year. While there may be many reasons for that, an important one is that the resolution was either not carefully thought out or planned out.

There really was no solid basis for the resolution and logical path to follow to get there.

What is a health self-assessment?

With a self-assessment, you can gather the critical information to allow you to take a magnifying glass look at exactly where you are in life, identify the paths that need the most attention, care and adjustment and give you a guide for designing a change blueprint, making those important changes, increasing your chances of success and enjoying satisfying and effective life changes.

But what areas should you target in your assessment?

5 self-assessment focus areas—

Spiritual. While most professionals will list physical s the first category, I argue that your spiritual life is the most important one and the category upon which you structure and develop the other four.

Why is spiritual so important? Because a healthy spiritual life, with weekly church or religious organization attendance and involvement, has been shown to be a critical component in all communities where longevity and effective aging are the most successful. (We’ll explore this more when we talk about Blue Zones.)

Studies show spiritual health is associated with greater wellness. So if your aim is for wellness, why not use spirituality as your strong foundation? Something that involves more than just personal meditation (which is a critical component), or interacting with nature (also important).

My Meditation Mondays blog posts can help you with the spiritual category; but for now, make a personal assessment on how much time you spend—

Meditating
Praying
Attending church or a religious service
Gathering with like-minded friends of the same faith

Decide what you need (more Bible study, more prayer, engage with a local congregation) and take whatever steps are necessary to open and enrich your life to your spiritual needs and health.

Physical. Always focus on staying healthy, but make sure you fashion your fitness plan or program to meet specific goals.

Don’t be vague or general. Make a list of specific goals you want to meet. If you want to gain a certain cardiovascular fitness, decide what that fitness level will be and what it will take to reach it and maintain it.

What if you’re older and just want to aim for having more energy to run around with your grandkids, without having stiff knees or back, or couch-calling fatigue. What is it that’s driving you and the change or goal?

Knowing the specific answers to these questions will help you stay motivated and enjoy more success.

Intellectual. Make sure you devise a category, and activities, to exercise your brain and mental stamina.

Learn something new.
Play board games or crossword puzzles.
Study a subject you’re unfamiliar with.
Pick up a new activity. Exercise a different way. (Yes, this does trigger brain neuron growth.
Take a class at a local college or community college. Many colleges allow senior citizens to audit classes without charge.
Take an existing passion or skill to a new level. Improve upon what you already do or know.
Join a book or chess club, or conquer your public speaking fear by joining Toastmasters!

Social. This is another Blue Zone must—having a strong social network. We’re not talking a fraternity house number of friends, but a handful of really close people you can share your heart with. People who support and encourage and pray for you. Those you can call for help and rely on. People you can laugh and cry with, dine with, and live out life with.

Financial. Stressing about financial issues is one of the type 5 stressors on the life stress and depression-triggering list. It’s also one of the top reasons couples end up in counseling and divorce court.

So do the dirty (and probably unsavory) work of figuring out your financial status and what you need to do to improve it. While some of the changes you have to make may be drastic, like forgoing any dining out or downsizing from a spacious home to a cozy apartment. Purging the stuff you hoarded and stored in the garage. Living more simply.

These are not quality of life changes, but they might be quantity. Once you bite the bullet, so to speak, and make them, you’re likely to enjoy the simplicity and freedom you feel as you reduce your debt and feeling of being chained to work and monthly debt payments.

Decide what you want to do—like travel more, maybe—and draw up some plans and charts to meet that goal.

So start your 2019 right! Take the steps to really make this new year happier health-wise.

NEXT WEEK: We’ll take a quick look at the new fitness guidelines and talk about what they mean for you!

Until then,

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien