Tag: #sayno

Thoughtful Thursday posts, Uncategorized

Thoughtful Thursday – January 18, 2024

amybenoit

My intention is to post a Thoughtful Thursday column each week and share some of the insights I have learned in the past week. Here are some of the things I’ve learned this week:

Psych2Go – 11 Things You Should Say “NO” To
  • Toxic people – toxicity breeds negativity
  • People who make you feel unsafe –you have the right to feel safe and not on edge
  • People who disregard your emotional wellbeing and feelings –you deserve to have the freedom to express your feelings
  • Situations that make you feel unwanted –you are worthy
  • Negative self-talk –be reflective rather than critical
  • Comparing yourself to other people –everyone is different and unique, and everyone has their own flaws, abilities, and strengths
  • Bad partners –you have no obligation to stay in a relationship
  • Resisting growth and healing –you are your own masterpiece, and you can own every aspect of who you are
  • Needless waiting –you can’t recover your wasted time.
  • Letting other people’s opinions determining your worth –people will always have an opinion of you. Opinions are not facts.
  • Shrinking yourself to fit in –you’re missing out on the opportunities to grow and reach your greatest potential

Say no to the things that aren’t serving you so that you’ll be saying yes to a clear mind and happier life surrounded by more love and light.

Optimal Relationships Daily – Learning Better Marriage Communication Tools
  • Take more couple time alone – uninterrupted time for just the two of you.
  • Manage your own irritability and stress. Take care of your health and get adequate sleep.
  • Use your everyday life to reduce stress. Tune in as your partner talks about their day:
    • frustrations and irritations
    • the things they are proud of
    • the unpredictable events or people in our lives
  • Couples learn, over time:
    • They learned the cast of characters in each other’s lives.
    • They learned more about the worries and pressures each faced.
    • They offered no advice, criticism, solutions, or suggestions.
    • Instead, they offered a supportive listening ear, true friendship and empathy, and support and validation.
  • Ask for an ally, not a problem-solver.
  • Use touch to effectively communicate. Actions speak louder than words. Show you care.
  • Tune in to dreams, hopes, and aspirations. As you learn your partner’s dreams, hopes, and aspirations, both of you will feel more connected.
Life Kit – Popular myths about sleep, debunked
  • Myth: it doesn’t matter what time of day you sleep.
    • Truth: It does matter. Your circadian rhythm is influenced by natural sunlight in your environment. We need to get exposure to natural sunlight. Blackout curtains and wearing sunglasses on the way home in the morning (shift work) can help your circadian rhythm if you are a shift worker.
  • Myth: Being able to fall asleep any time, anywhere, is a good thing.
    • Truth: It takes a well-rested, healthy person 15-20 minutes or longer to fall asleep. Being able to fall asleep right away generally means you aren’t getting enough sleep.
  • Myth: One night of sleep deprivation will have lasting negative effects.
    • Truth: One night of sleep deprivation can happen from time to time and is normal. Try to get back on track as fast as possible.
  • Myth: Many adults only need 5 hours of sleep or less per night for general health.
    • Truth: Not getting enough sleep can result in compensatory naps. Sleeping for 7-9 hours each night is best for optimal health and well-being – improved heart health, longevity, brain health, etc.
  • The best way to get into the recommended range is to start adding 15 minutes to your overall sleep routine and add more sleep time as needed until you wake up feeling refreshed and have energy through the day without reaching for coffee or energy drinks.
  • Watching tv is not recommended before bed. Reduce screen time.
  • Make sure your bedroom is under 70 degrees when sleeping. Increasing temperatures results in more nightmares and more tossing and turning.
  • Myth: Exercising within four hours of bedtime will disturb your sleep.
    • Truth: Data does not back this up. Exercising can result in better sleep. Exercise releases endorphins, which are mood elevators and can help with the number one cause of sleep difficulties, which is stress.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzEyNzUzOC9yc3M/episode/YTdhZmEwMmQtN2RkYS00OTM2LWI4OTYtYzJhYWQ3Y2Q0ZmM0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQkJmwsOeDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ

Talks at Google – Shelmina Babai Abji – 8 Strategies for Women to Emerge as Leaders at Work

  • What value am I going to create? What is it that I would know that they don’t already know? Speak up. You have ideas that matter.
  • Scan your mental chatter and intentionally pick a response that will allow you to show your worth. You are hired for one reason: the value you create towards the success of your organization.
  • Intentionally seek assignments that push you out of your comfort zone, that challenge your current competence, and that build new competence. The more competence built, the higher the value you create for your organization. The best way to build more competence is to step outside your comfort zone.
  • Listen and learn. When you step outside your comfort zone, if you’re not stumbling, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. You’re learning as you’re stumbling.
  • Look back at who you were before you learned so much. Look at how far you’ve grown.
  • Who knows you? How are you known? The conversation about people that people are having in the room while they aren’t present is determining their career projection. The way people talk about you when you aren’t in the room is your personal branding.
  • Panel interviews – the person who gets the job depends on who around the table advocates for them. Find “sponsors” who will advocate for you.
  • Create a personal success plan. Every week, set aside time to reflect on what you’ve learned and what successes you’ve had in the last week.
  • Surround yourself with people who are celebrating you, or you become your own cheerleader. Don’t wait for anyone. Recognize that you have worked so hard to be where you are and achieve what you’re doing.
  • Focus on what you can control. Do not expend your time and energy on what you can’t control. Uncertainty is always going to be there.
  • You have limited energy and limited attention, and you get to decide where you’re going to allocate your energy and attention. Always be asking: Is this worthy of my attention? Should I be doing this task? Will it move me closer to my definition of success? Will it contribute toward the success of my organization? If not, learn to say no. Structure your days around your highest priorities.
  • Saying no can show people that you respect your attention, time, and energy. When you respect yourself, others will respect you.
  • When you go into a meeting, set intentions. If you don’t set intentions, you will be driven by someone else.  When you become intentional, you will not let their behavior drive your behavior. Behave in alignment with the brand you want for yourself. Show up as a leader no matter what. If you show up as a leader when the conversation is highly emotionally charged, people will remember that.
  • Be very intentional about who you seek advice from. If you have a mentor who is not challenging you, who is not contributing to your growth, or who does not have the capacity to advise you to move forward, you are blocking your success. Have multiple people you seek advice from and seek “sponsors” who support and advocate for you.
  • **Note that this podcast did not actually cover the eight strategies expanded upon in her book.**
Self Improvement Daily – Defeating Perfectionism

Perfectionism is an avoidance tactic and a form of self-sabotage. Perfectionism can lead to indecision, the limiting belief that you aren’t good enough, and never accepting something as finished. In order to overcome perfectionism, you need to take imperfect action and overcome self-sabotage to become that next, better version of yourself. That can only happen through taking action.

I have reflected on this quite a bit this week because it resonates with me.

Yesterday, January 17, marked one year at my job, a job I love and am passionate about. Yesterday also marked the end of week two of my post-graduate paralegal certificate program, which has been very interesting and demanding so far.

I had been discerning being a criminal prosecutor for *years* since college, yet I was hesitant to accept my current (non-attorney) role due to ongoing health issues and uncertainty in the number of appointments and treatments I would endure. I accepted the job anyway, even though the timing wasn’t *perfect*.

This past year, in my position, I decided to gather more information and talk to actual criminal prosecutors at my job and ultimately decided not to pursue being a criminal prosecutor – something I had been thinking about for *many* years. A paralegal certificate program was never on my radar. In the process of conversation and achieving clarity, I decided to go for it and pursue a paralegal certificate, despite not having it all figured out. 🤷‍♀️

The point is, I was uncomfortable and was waiting for the perfect time for everything: the perfect time to accept this job, the perfect time to gain clarity in my discernment process, the perfect time to start this paralegal program. Yet, if I had waited for the perfect time to take this job (when my ongoing health issues were resolved), I would not have come this far and discovered all I have. I would still be waiting. Boy, would my life be very different today if I had still been waiting for the perfect time to start. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals + All About Productivity

amybenoit

“Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” was written by Oliver Burkeman, published in 2021, was named after the concept of an average lifetime being just 4000 weeks, and is one of the most useful books I have ever read.

If you succeed in getting things done on your to-do list, more things will inevitably seem important, meaningful, or obligatory. Getting things done won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time” – the demands will increase to offset any benefits. You’ll be creating more things to do.

Oliver Burkemann

The more you believe you might succeed in “fitting everything in,” the more commitments you naturally take on, and the less you feel the need to ask whether each new commitment is truly worthy of a portion of your time – and so your days inevitably fill with more activities you don’t especially value. This is why it is SO important to learn how to say NO to obligations without feeling guilt, pressure, or obligation.

People complain that they no longer have “time to read,” but the reality, as the novelist Tim Parks has pointed out, is rarely that they can’t locate an empty half hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find time and use it to try to read, they’re impatient to give themselves to the task because they’re inclined to interruption. Social media and what we think of as “distractions” aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.

Tim Parks

When you get tremendously efficient at answering e-mail, all that happens is you get more e-mail.

“Nobody ever really gets four thousand weeks in which to live – not only because you might end up with fewer than that, but because in reality you never GET a single week, in the sense of being able to guarantee that it will arrive, or that you’ll be in a position to use it precisely as you wish.”

“We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. A plan is an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.”

Oliver Burkemann

“The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.”

Oliver Burkemann

Spending at least some of your time “wastefully,” focused solely on the pleasure of the experience, is the only way NOT to waste it – to be truly at leisure, rather than covertly engaged in future-focused self-improvement. In order to most fully inhabit the only life you ever get, you have to refrain from using every spare hour for personal growth.

Tips: focus on one big project at a time, keep an open and closed to-do list with a fixed # of entries to have on your current to-do list, establish predetermined time boundaries for your daily work, accept that you can’t dedicate as much time as you want to everything and decide in advance what to not give as much effort to in your life, seek out novelty in the mundane and pay more attention in every moment, and practice doing nothing.

When in doubt, do the next most necessary thing.

Five questions to consider:

1. Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? We naturally tend to make decisions about our daily use of time that prioritize anxiety-avoidance.

2. Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?

3. In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be? Once you no longer feel the stifling pressure to become a particular kind of person, you can confront the personality/strengths, weaknesses/talents, and enthusiasm you find yourself with and follow where they lead.

4. In which areas of your life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing?

5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?

If you want to learn or hear more, Oliver Burkemann has been featured on many podcasts on Spotify! I highly recommend listening to this link to a Talks at Google YouTube video with Oliver Burkemann:

This book is one of the best books I have read and I highly recommend it!

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Thoughtful Thursday posts, Uncategorized

Thoughtful Thursday- February 16, 2023

amybenoit

My intention is to post a Thoughtful Thursday column each week and share some of the insights I have learned in the past week. Here are some of the things I’ve learned this week:

Self Improvement Daily- Heck Ya or No Thank You

We tend to overcommit to things out of obligation, guilt, boredom, or an overall lack of boundaries. You can control what you commit to, and you can and should say no to protect your time, boundaries, and self-care. “You deserve to feel like you’re putting your heart into everything you do. That’s a real possibility in your life. And the only way you get there is by raising your standards.”

So the next time you’re making a decision to do something or not, ask yourself “Do I really want to do this?” If your answer is “Heck Ya” then follow the pull of it. If it’s anything else, politely say “No Thank You.”

Brian Ford
How to Be a Better Human- How to get the medical care you deserve

Doctors are often rushing from patient to patient, and many times patients feel unheard. Here are some tips to get the medical care you deserve:

Prepare for your appointment with a chronological written history of your issue/story. This helps because if you feel/look fine at your appointment, you can still get your doctor’s attention with a written chronology of information and also save the doctor time. Also, come prepared with questions. Often doctors are rushed, so having your story written down and organized helps!

  • Try to get your doctor to listen to you. Some sample statements are “I want to really explain to you how this illness has affected my life.” For a chronic health issue, state “These symptoms are different than what I had been experiencing.” Emphasize what you have tried already for treatment. Ask your doctor what diagnosis the doctor thinks this is. It also helps to have a family member or spouse with you to get the doctor’s attention.
  • Have your primary care doctor or referring provider provide the specialist with a note of your symptoms, progress, what has been tried, etc.
  • Try to get to know your provider before an urgent issue comes up to build trust.

Doctors have more focus during telemedicine visits. There are fewer distractions, as they are only seeing one patient at a time, they aren’t dealing with others knocking on their door, etc. Virtual appointments present a greater opportunity to share your story.

I have learned that you really need to be your own advocate in the healthcare system. Throughout most of my life, I had various symptoms and was (mis)diagnosed with various conditions, and sometimes I was told that it’s “normal” or that it’s “in my head.” Other times, my symptoms worsened and I felt unheard because providers tried to tell me that it’s normal to have those symptoms with my diagnosis. After several doctor visits with different providers, many medications, and worsening symptoms, I decided to be my own advocate and write a chronological history of my symptoms, what medications I’ve tried, etc. and requested to be seen at the notorious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I am grateful that I was accepted for a second opinion. With my personal written chronological history and a list of questions, I finally left my appointment feeling heard and understood, and I was eventually properly diagnosed and presented with treatments and resources that had not been considered by other providers. Be your own advocate!

TED Talks Daily- The secret to making new friends as an adult

Friendship does not happen organically in adulthood. It is based on effort. In childhood, repeated unplanned interactions and shared vulnerabilities created friendship, which were easy in the school setting. These factors require more effort in adulthood.

Marisa G. Franco
  • Overcome covert avoidance, which is seeing people physically but checking out mentally. Show up and engage with people.
  • For friendship to happen, someone has to be brave and initiate conversation.
  • Having outside friendships is necessary for a healthy marriage and makes you more resilient through the difficulties of marriage.
  • Be vulnerable and assume people like you. For long-distance friendships and breaks in communication, assume people still want to connect but may be busy.
  • In-person connections tend to be stronger than virtual connections.
  • Find a group that meets around a hobby (hiking, meditation, book club, football, etc.). We tend to like people who are familiar to us. Ask members if they want to meet up before or after the group meets.

Our personalities are fundamentally a reflection of our experiences of connection or disconnection (coping mechanisms, friendly, open, cynical, aggressive, violent). How we have connected impacts who we are, and who we are impacts how we connect.

Marisa G. Franco
Jordan Harbinger Show- Death- Skeptical Sunday

The average funeral cost in the United States is over $11,000.

The rising cost of funerals leads to 88,000 bodies going unclaimed every year so that families won’t be on the hook for paying a bill.

funerals.org has helpful resources of your rights, ways to cut costs when planning a funeral, and funeral/burial requirements.

Some ways people cut costs:

  • Half of Americans choose to cremate to cut costs. Others proceed with immediate burial to eliminate the embalming process.
  • Shop around.
  • Purchase a casket online. Mortuaries are required to accept a casket from an outside vendor.
  • Plan a memorial service, where there is no need for embalming, refrigeration, a grave site, or a fancy casket.
  • Consider donating your body to a medical school for research.
  • Eliminate the vault. A vault made of concrete, steel, or lightweight fiberglass-type materials completely encloses the casket in the grave, while a less expensive concrete grave liner covers only the top and sides. No state or federal law requires the use of a burial vault, but most cemeteries do. The vault prevents the grave from sinking in after decomposition of the body and casket, making it easier to mow with heavy equipment.

Interesting facts:

  • There is no federal law mandating embalming. Some states require it. Most funeral homes have a policy that they won’t allow a viewing unless you embalm.
  • 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid are used in the United States each year.

The strangest idea from this podcast was the concept of green burials: no embalming fluids, no concrete vaults, only biodegradable burial containers (a small box that disintegrates into the earth within 3-6 months/after 12 months, there is no evidence of your burial), hand dug graves, and no polished monuments.

When I first heard this, it gave me serial killer vibes! However, the podcast host mentioned that green burials result in you being part of the earth just like every animal who died throughout history.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!