Note from Hannah: This is a guest post by Darcy Forrest, who practices acupuncture and Chinese Medicine right here in Southern Maine. 

Winter…..
Most people from the Northeast hate it. It’s cold, baron, icy, and brown. Bringing out the trash becomes a slight form of torture, and the thought of getting out of the shower at 6am haunts you as you watch your last show on TV before bed. Then there is the shoveling, the scraping, the dog begging to go out when the thermometer reads 9 degrees…the numb toes, the dry skin, the icy hands, and the overstuffed winter coat that makes you feel like you’re stuck in bubble wrap.

Ohhhhh, winter. Why do we loathe thee?

I spent a few years in Tucson, Arizona, where the winter is not a winter, and snow literally means a city wide shutdown.  It’s nice all winter long, nothing really dies, nothing freezes, and people all start to become really active because they’ve spent the past six months holed up in their apartment with the swamp coolers blasting all summer.

For me though, it just felt off.  I wanted to bundle up, to wear a winter hat, have a white Christmas, feel like I could just cuddle under a blanket and relax.  It’s quite the coincidence that I left Maine because of the winters, and there I sat, dreaming of snow and freezing temperatures..

To make this long, random story short…my body missed and needed something that only about half the country are so fortunate to have.

Seasons.
Real, live, seasons. They are amazing, and once you leave them, after growing up with them, you miss them dearly.  I feel so fortunate to have nature guiding me, showing me how to adapt to change.

We are part of our universe, a microcosm of the macrocosm, we are a reflection of our environment through and through. This is what Chinese Medicine is;  it’s being in accordance with nature, harmonizing our beings with our surroundings,  allowing things to take their course, allowing change, growth, and decline.

When we are not in harmony with these cyclical changes, things pop up, a rash, low energy, hip pain, diarrhea, headaches, etc.  These symptoms are our bodies way of telling us that something is off, and it’s trying to fix it.

How do we help?

We listen. We accommodate. We provide.
Winter gives us the opportunity to rest.  Just like the trees, the animals, and virtually every living thing, we need to go into hibernation.  I’m not talking about literally hiding in your house with stores of food for a few months, I’m talking about slowing things down.

Conserving energy, relaxing, resting, reading a good book, meditating, stretching, and just allowing yourself downtime.  It’s freezing outside, and this tells us that we need to stay warm, wear layers, protect your skin from wind.  That coldness tells us that we need to balance it with warmth, we should be eating warm things, soups, stews, cooked veggies, and meat.  

Winter corresponds to the kidneys in Chinese medicine, the kidneys correspond to bones, and bones are the deepest source of yin.  Bone broths, homemade stocks, and marrow are perfect ways to nourish our bodies during winter.  The color of the kidneys, and of winter, is black.  Black wood ear, mushrooms, black sesame seeds, purple onions, eggplant, and other black or dark veggies are key.

Drink warm teas, adding ginger, cinnamon, or fennel, which all warming spices.  Start your day off with some soup or some old fashioned oats.  Do light exercises, stretching, yoga, taiji, qigong, or light walks.  Allow yourself to be tired, go to bed early, and settle down after dinner.

Be lazy! Do something you’ve been wanting to do, a hobby, a craft, a project…get creative.  Sleep in on the weekends!  Who doesn’t want to sleep in? Winter is telling us, it’s ok!!!! Listen.

Instead of loathing this cold, dark, yin filled season, try to embrace it.  

Accept it as your opportunity to slow down.

It’s truly a gift in a way..it literally forces us to comply, giving us a chance to store our energy and preserve our qi and blood.

This gives us the reserves for spring, a season characterized by bursting forth, new beginnings, growth, and cleansing.  Giving our bodies the roots, or a good foundation to work with, will yield healthier and brighter bodies this March.

Take the time to cater to yourself.  Your body and spirit will benefit greatly from a little TLC.  You deserve it.

Darcy Forrest, LAc, Dipl. OM is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist.
Her office is located at:
Downeast Acupuncture
55 Foden Road, South Portland
downeastacupuncture.com
207-530-0075

I’m around little kids a lot these days. It’s amazing how early and thoroughly they learn to push our buttons. They know our weaknesses, and they aren’t afraid to use them.

A very convincing cry, some irritating whining, or even a guilt trip. Man, they are good.

I try to remember the motto posted in my daughter’s classroom at daycare: They’re two. Whatcha going to do?

I give kids credit, they really don’t have a lot of power. They have to use what they can. They are resourceful, really.

While it’s skilled for kids to at least try to push buttons to get what they want, the same is not true of adults.

As adults, if we purposefully say something to another person just to get our way or get them to feel something negative, then that is unskilled communication.

I’m not trying to shame anyone. We all do it sometimes.
It’s important to notice it and to be honest: button-pushing is for children.

If we try to push another person’s buttons we are being selfish and ill-intentioned.

What you are communicating is: appease me or else I’ll make you pay emotionally.

I teach in my workshops that the centerpiece of effective communication is always good intentions.

Good intentions don’t necessarily mean you are being nice. Good intentions definitely do not mean you are being a pushover.

You can (and should) be both well-intentioned and assertive. These two things go hand in hand.

If you want to be effective- to be heard, respected, valued, connected- what you say has to be rooted in wanting something good.

Maybe it’s that you want to be less angry so you can better connect with your partner. Maybe you want to end a relationship so that both parties can move on and not be left hanging. Maybe you need to fire an employee to maintain the integrity of your business.

These are all scenarios where you might need to say something difficult, real, and hard. AND at the same time, they are rooted in good intentions.

You can push buttons if you want to provoke anger, drama, and chaos.

But skilled communication is about maintaining integrity and being grounded in good intentions.

Want to learn more? I offer communication coaching and small group workshops. Email me at hannah@newapproachesme.com or call 207-553-2260.

I looked up at the bar, but I knew I couldn’t do any more. I had reached muscle failure. I looked at my coach, feeling defeated, and said, “I’m done.” She looked at me warmly and said, “Okay.”

As I caught my breath, I thought about how I didn’t make it through the whole workout. It was a failure, a disappointment.

Then I looked up at the whiteboard, where the workout was written. I started counting up the pull-ups I had completed in the 20 minute workout.

56.

Wait a second…when and how did doing 56 pull-ups become possible? And when the heck did it start to represent a failure?

I started CrossFit about two years ago. I cared only about gaining energy and sleeping better so I could live my life more fully.

But soon there were other perks. I got a lot stronger. I made friends. My body changed.  The tough workouts helped me gain confidence in how mentally strong I am.

So why with all the apparent “successes” did I feel like a failure on this particular day?

In his funny and brilliant TEDx talk, positive psychologist Shawn Achor says that your brain keeps changing the goalpost for success.

If you are trying to run five miles, you might feel great the first time you get it, but then your standard changes. Pretty soon you are disappointed when you “only” ran ten miles.

Without practice, our brains will start to attend to the negative information. We focus not on what we are doing, but on what we aren’t doing.

While I was overjoyed when I did my first pull-up, my goalpost for success kept moving.

Soon, I had moments of not appreciating how far I had come.

I’m glad I recognized my warped perspective that day and was able to change my mood from one of defeat to one of pride.

Having the ability to shift perspective is one of the keys to happiness.

Achor points out that the realities of the external world only account for 10% of your happiness. The other 90% is the way you think about your life and the world.

Being happier in the present is how we end up being more productive and thus more successful.

He says most people are doing things backwards, waiting for happiness that follows success. If we wait to “get” success in order to be happy, it won’t come. Remember, success is always a moving target.

So how do we focus on happiness in the present?

Achor suggests some very simple but effective techniques, such as writing one thing we are grateful for each day for 21 days. He also suggests writing one positive and encouraging email to someone in your social circle.

He is also a proponent of exercise (though I’m unsure of his position on pull-ups specifically).

November is the perfect time to start one of these practices that emphasizes gratitude. If we start to look for things that are positive in our lives, our ability to sense and store positive information in the brain becomes strengthened.

But sometimes it is hard to see this positive information. Maybe it’s more than just habit.

At the heart of it, I think failure is just fear in disguise. We ask: What if I fail? But what we are really asking is: What if I’m not good enough?

Being “good enough” means being loved and feeling a sense of belonging. These are the most important aspects of our survival aside from food and shelter.

As infants and small children, heck even as teenagers, we are dependent on others to live.

This makes us vulnerable to fearing the loss of love and acceptance.

In our fear, we see all the ways may not be love-able and acceptable. Our story of ourselves becomes one of  “not enough.”

This habit of fearful thinking, of collecting data on how we don’t measure up, becomes a huge distraction. It becomes a lens for seeing ourselves and the world. It can take an awesome accomplishment and make us only see the “not-quites.”

How do we get out of the habit of fear/failure thinking and feel assured of being good enough?

I believe we are all worthy of being in this human tribe. We belong by virtue of being born.

Let me call in an expert to back me up. He’s the one person who has done the most remarkable job of making children of all ages feel loved and accepted. And he’s someone you want in your corner.

Mister Rogers.

In the incredible Crayon Factory Tour Episode, it turns out there is a goldmine of tidbits on how to overcome fear. It’s probably the best 28 minutes of television ever. Go ahead and Hulu it.

In the episode, after Mister Rogers shows us the mesmerizing crayon factory film, he does a little drawing. He even admits that he’s not very good at it. It’s true. He’s not.

What he teaches in those moments of drawing a primitive little scene are invaluable life lessons. He teaches about valuing the process, not the outcome. He remarks, “It’s just the fun of doing it that’s important.” He notes the satisfaction that comes from just taking on a task. “It feels good to do things,” he says.

He even notes how empowering it is to try things and make them happen, saying, “Until you start to do it, it will not come true.”

I think it’s evidence of my claim that there is no failure, only never trying.

It’s the trying that matters.

In case we are still feeling a little afraid to try our hand at drawing (or pull-ups, or a job interview, or a relationship, or a game, or a trip, or a class, or a test, or a speech, or whatever feels so darn scary), Mister Rogers says:

In a way, you have already won in this world because you are the only one who can be you. The things you do are always a little bit different from anybody else and that’s the way its supposed to be.

I believe it.

I believe just being you is enough. Everything you try will be unique to you. It will never be evidence of you being not enough. It will only be evidence of you showing up and trying in this world.

That’s enough.

Truly believing this is what makes for real happiness.

Whether you are pulling your body weight up so that your chin touches a bar or something more lofty like starting a new career or making a major life change, please do it.

Do it your way, with all your effort. There is no point in holding back. Do it for the love of doing it, for the sense of pride in doing it, and because only you do it in that unique way.

And when you are through, you will know who did it. Because you did it.

I’ll be back when I’ve recovered from writing this freakin’ long post. And I’ll have more ideas for you.

Until then, do you have things you want to talk about?

Let’s converse in the comments section, okay? What do you think? Is Mister Rogers awesome or what? Is failure about fear? How have you learned to overcome fear of failure?

(Special thanks to photographer Chris Bean for the pull-up picture)

New to this blog? It’s all about giving you a fresh perspective on emotional well-being. There is a subscribe button over there in the left margin. I also offer counseling and coaching for people looking to make positive life changes and overcome fear. Email me at hannah@newapproachesme.com or call 207-553-2260 for more info.

I know how this is going to sound. But I’m going to say it anyway. Be careful of being nice.

The problem is that we do “nice” in ways that are actually detrimental.

The misconceptions about how to be nice are the key issues.

One of the main problems is that a lot of kind people believe it’s essential to please everyone.

Now most of us are aware that being a people-pleaser is hard on the person doing the pleasing. There is the exhausting work of always saying yes, trying to read minds, and always doing what the other person wants.

It’s sometimes hard to get nice people to change just based on this, “it’s not good for you” argument.

So I go for two other cold, hard truths about people-pleasing.

1. When you spend energy pleasing everyone, you inevitably cheat the people who are most important to you.

When you people-please you make everyone important. Not everyone is equally important to you. So don’t treat them that way.

While you are fretting about what a coworker, stranger, or other peripheral person thinks about you, you are wasting your energy, time, and focus. This is energy better used on people and relationships that matter.

You only have so much emotional and physical energy. Are you going to let it be used on people who don’t actually love and care about you?

2. Pleasing others is not the same as being connected.

Positive relationships are based on connection. This is not achieved when one person is pleasing the other.

People-pleasing is subpar in terms of bonding.

If you are not being you, just being what other people want you to be, then they cannot connect with you. You are not available, you are being someone else.

You cannot be both a people-pleaser and an authentic person.



Agree?

Here’s what I’d suggest instead-

Be real. Be honest. Be yourself. Care more about the people you love than people you don’t. Invest your energy wisely. If you do this people you care about will like you back. This is what yields a more satisfying life, not people-pleasing.

Ready to get off the people-pleasing train? I can help. I offer coaching for people-pleasing recovery in my office in Portland, Maine and by phone. Email me for more info at hannah@newapproachesme.com or call 207-553-2260.

This week I’m over at What to Expect talking about pregnancy, motherhood, and identity. Find out about the surprising moment of panic that led me to discover how to overcome the new mom identity crisis… (click here to link to the post).

It was great to be featured on What to Expect and to add my story to the Word of Mom blog. I believe it’s important to have real stories of pregnancy and parenting. The reality is more messy than the cute pics of babies and families on Facebook suggest. Chaos, craziness, and general mayhem is as much a part of child-rearing as adorableness and laughs.

I think it’s good to be more authentic and this promotes being more reasonable in our expectations of ourselves and our children.

What do you think? Did you have a new mom (or dad) identity crisis? 

To cap off the week, I thought it might be fun to make a big list of everything I could think of to help you with motivation and change.

This blog is filled with ideas that can help you sustain positive change. I hope the following ideas, with links to posts, can help you in your process.

Feel inspired? Add some more ideas to this list in the comments section.

Hannah’s Strategies for Sustaining Success:

• Know why you are doing it
• Create a compelling list of your motivators
• Ask for help
• Get quality information and guidance
• Understand that mistakes and setbacks are part of the process
• Stop using that really bad f-word: fail. There is no such thing.
• Reject perfectionism
• Give yourself credit
• Build on momentum
• Stay lighthearted
• Look beyond a win/lose mentality
• Practice
• Experiment
• Start with knowing that you are worthy. Just by being.
• Focus on what you can control: Your process and not the outcome.
• Strengthen your sense of self
• Know you have options and choices

Don’t miss the new ideas that will surely come along…sign up to get this blog in your email or by RSS over on the left margin of this site.

A post for grown ups only due to realistic (okay, okay… inappropriate) language.

Change is hard and maintaining motivation over a long period of time is a classic human difficulty. I believe that if you are going to invest in a key life change, you want to think about starting in a way that will set you up for long-term success.

Building a strong foundation for change requires intentional thought.

Why?

Because sooner or later the usual suspects come knocking on your door: stress, fatigue, pressure, social situations, burn-out, and lack of preparedness.

When that moment comes, and it always does, two little words stand between all your hard work and the impending self-sabotage.

Fuck it.

Those two words cue the U-turn into setback city, often to get lost and not re-emerge to changeville for a long time.

Real change that lasts requires a strategy that addresses the “Fuck-It Factor.” (FIF for short).

What makes you vulnerable to the FIF?

Weak-sauce motivators.

Motivators are the reason you are making the change in the first place. There are some predictably poor motivators, ones that will fail against the FIF early and often.

Here are some POOR, LAME motivators:

• SHOULD and it’s cousin SUPPOSED TO.  People don’t like to do what they should. The inner rebel will always say “eff it.”
• MUST or NEED TO.  These are based in fear or desperation. When the fear eases up, the crisis passes, must and need to become maybe and sometimes very quickly.
• Relying on someone else. Often someone wants you to do it more than you want to do it. No one likes to be told what to do. Your inner rebel bubbles up and you’ll end up eating potato chips in your car and hiding your receipts from your spouse like a guilty criminal. For example. So I’ve heard.
•  Superficial. Motivators that are associated with appearance or are status-based are not sturdy for the long-term. They don’t tend to be compelling and don’t make the foundation for positive life change. You are not changing for your benefit really, only for how you superficially are seen by others.
• Wishy-washy, confusing, or not very defined. Motivators that are unclear simply don’t hold up.  If you aren’t really clear about why you are doing something, it will not happen for long.
• Vague. If you can’t clearly hold onto why you are doing something with great specificity, you won’t be able to keep it in view for the long-term.

Lasting change is anchored by strong motivators.

How you talk to yourself about why you want to change is the key to being successful. You can create strong motivation if you actually want the change and also talk to yourself very intentionally about why you want this change.

Here are some ideas for motivators that will help you stand up to the FIF:

• Want. Start with “I want to because….”. Why is it that you, and you alone, want to make this change?
• Choice. Understand how the change is your choice. Even if you have enlisted someone to support or monitor you, remember YOU made that happen. Change is about owning your choices. There is no supposed to or because someone said so. You are an adult. Own it.
• Feel. Be clear with how you will feel physically or emotionally different as a result of the change. Understanding the benefits on how it feels to be in your body when you are making this choice, this change. Compare that to what it’s like to not change. I’m motivated to do things that allow me to feel well, energized, even keeled, and able to sleep at night. What physical and emotional feelings motivate you to make your decisions?
• Detailed. Write down your motivators with as much description as you can. Say in as many details why you want this and how it will improve your life. What will be better and different? Focus on the positives as a result from the change.
• Visceral. If you have a strong physical reaction when you write or say your motivators out loud, that will be an indication that you are on track. I want you to feel something powerful. So powerful that “fuck it” won’t stand a chance.

If you really want to make a change, I encourage you to write down your motivators right now. See if you can follow these guidelines. If you want to be brave, write it down in the comments section. I promise to allow only supportive comments towards anyone brave enough to share!

Over time, pay attention to new motivators you didn’t even expect. Keep your list of reasons growing and growing. You can do this!

This is a series on motivation and change. You can catch up with the first and second posts, which I recommend.

When you decide that some change you have been contemplating is “worth it,” the next step is to decide if you are ready.

You are ready if you both want to and can devote at least some of your resources to the project.

If I want to start painting my shed, I at least need some paint, a paintbrush, and an afternoon.

I also need to know how to paint.

The next question is: Do you know how to make this change?

The bigger the project, the more important that you really consider this question. It might be okay to just experiment painting the shed. But if I’m going to town on the entire house, I might really want to be sure I know what I’m doing.

I guess I’m a fan of “expert” advice. Before I paint, I at least get some tutorials from the paint guy at Home Depot and watch a YouTube video or two.

How big is your project? How important is it that you get the right information? What happens if you try to make a change but in your ignorance do damage?

If you are working on your body, your relationships…you know, things that involve your most precious assets, you really need to be sure you are well-informed.

Before you make a change, really use your critical thinking cap. Look for information and guidance that is based on expert knowledge and that makes sense. Look for sources you trust. Look for the information to add up across multiple sources.

Remember, the foundation of any successful change process is quality information and guidance.

This is not a step to be skipped!

Next up: finding strong motivators to build and sustain life-change.

This is the second blog in the motivation series. You can catch up with the first one here.

It seems to me that everyone likes to be motivated, so it may disappoint you to know that you can’t be motivated to do everything.

The overachievers out there hate to admit this, but there is only so much time, energy, and focus. Our mental, physical, and emotional capacity has limits. Trying to push past these limits is unhealthy and problematic (more on that another time!).

When you are thinking about making changes and working on feeling motivated, a crucial step is to get real with your capacity to make the change.

First you have to decide how important something really is to you. Not how important you think it SHOULD be, but how important is truly is. I don’t care who you are, if it’s not really a priority in your life, it just won’t happen. This step is as much about deciding what to give up as it is about what to invest in.

I advise clients to make good investments of their time and energy. If you are going to make some kind of change, don’t do it willy-nilly. You need to prioritize. Invest in things that make the grade now in terms of your interest, commitment, and energy. Decide to wait on things that aren’t that important right now. You can always give it attention later.

My basement is a mess. It’s not that I don’t like an organized basement, it’s just not that important right now, compared to other things that I want to do. Waiting until a snow day is my chosen strategy. It’s not about being lazy, it’s about prioritizing.

Once something becomes worthy of a finding motivation, then you need to assess exactly how “worth it” it is. How much time, energy, emotion are you able and willing to put towards it?

Contrary to popular belief, you can be motivated to do something, but not go “all out” on it.

For example, I started this blog a couple of years ago. I wanted to show how the kinds of information and topics that I talked about in therapy have broad application. I wanted to do something new and positive, and to share my knowledge and observations with a wider audience.

However, I didn’t have a lot of time. I didn’t have a whole lot of energy either. But I assessed that I had enough to start and to do a few posts, and see what happened. If I did a little over a long period of time, it would still meet my goals and could fit into my life.

I call this the “plod along and see” strategy. I was comfortable with a long-term approach that allowed me to spend only a little bit of time, that would add up as the months went by. As a consequence, my readership has grown slowly but steadily. In this way, it’s a success. The blog has served to help me develop my voice, to clarify my interests, and hopefully to provide some useful information to readers.

If you have something you want to do or to change, assessing the “worth it-ness” of your project is essential. If it’s worth it, then you need to decide how much of your finite resources (time, energy, money, emotion) you invest. You can always adjust this over time.

Motivation tends to build over time if it’s worth it and if what you invest lines up with what you can give. It’s also important to stay open to what you might gain or lose that you didn’t expect. We need to respond to this information and change our strategy accordingly.

Think you have a project worthy of finding and sustaining motivation? Read more tomorrow to see if you are ready and able to start your project!

Understanding what motivates us is incredibly rich and useful information. Unfortunately, most of us are totally clueless about how motivation works. We think we know, but we don’t.

This week, I’m featuring a series that is intended to help you better understand motivation so that you can apply it to your life.

Change is not just about doing. It’s fueled by an internal process. Thoughts and feelings are as essential to the change process as action. If you focus on what you are doing, but not the thoughts and feelings, it’s a set-up. You can’t truly be successful.

If you want to be motivated, you need a strategy. It has to be intentional. Motivation is not an accident. The most common myth is that you wait for motivation to strike you. You will be waiting a very long time. This is NOT how motivation works.

Want to learn more? I’ll be posting everyday this week on motivation. Have a question you want me to cover? Send me an email at hannahcurtis.lcsw@gmail.com.