Vlog: How Do Health Issues Influence Your Decisions?

How do your health issues influence your decisions?  

I came up with a list of areas in life where health issues may play a part in decision making.  Maybe you can relate, or maybe you have other areas of concern and influence that I haven't mentioned here.  Let me know.  I'd love to hear about them.

Home:

• Where to live:  type of structure, apartment, assisted living, house, climate that's best for your allergies, etc.
• Close to doctors/hospitals
• Wheel-chair accessible
• No stairs, one-story, ramps installed
• Security
• Convenient parking

School:

• The major/program you choose
• Location
• Accessibility
• Campus support
• Proximity to doctors/hospital
• Clubs available
• Campus community vibe:  accepting, friendly, helpful, positive

Job:

• Accessibility of the facility/office
• Discrimination
• Convenient location
• Convenient parking
• The vibe you get from the interviewer/staff
• The type of job you want to do:  do you want to help people in the health field, or do you spend enough time in doctor's offices and hospitals already.  There are other ways you can help others, though, so you may want to think about it.

Relationships:

• Friendships:  Who do you connect with?  Who treats you like everyone else?  What about the accessibility to local hangouts and social clubs?  Can you get to where you can meet new people and also hang out with current friends to encourage bonding?What's your attitude toward others?  What are their attitudes toward you?  Do you hang out with people who are different from you and maybe not all that nice just because they are popular?
• Romance:  Do your health issues influence who you marry/partner with?  Do they really "get" you?  Do you get positive vibes from them?  Are they compassionate and understanding?  Do you have the same lifestyle?  Do they have health issues, too, or not?  Do you want kids?  Do they?  Do you share the same hobbies and interests?

Activities:

• What sports do you like?  Is that connected to your health issues
• What about the books that you read?
• Games you play?
• Where you travel, or if you travel at all?
• Where you go for walks/wheels?
• Accessibility
• Attitude:  Yours and that of others
• Maybe you check things out beforehand to see if you can handle them.  Have a practice run at an activity.  Check out the facilities.
• Do you ask your doctor before you try an activity?

Family:

• Do you want to be near them in case you have a medical emergency and need their assistance?
• Do you want to be far away from them because they have always sheltered you and made you feel like you couldn't do anything on your own?
• Have they fostered your independence?
• How has that influenced your decisions and decision-making skills?

Fostering Friendships

Happy Friday!  I hope you have some fun plans for the weekend.  A friend of ours from California is coming to visit, so we're looking forward to that.  

Friendships are important to our well-being, as I've mentioned before.  They help keep us healthier, improve mood, reduce stress, and so on.  But, how can we foster friendships in this crazy busy world we live in?  There are many ways to do this:

• Take a class--Do this with a friend and/or to find new friends with a common interest.
• Go on a day trip--Grab your bestie and hit the road!
• Have a heart to heart--Simply sit and talk with your friend(s).  Really listen.
• Play a game--Sports, board games, charades, yard game, hop scotch, anything.  Just play!
• Go out dancing--Or turn up the music and spontaneously dance with your friend in your living room.
• Chat on the phone or via Skype--Call a friend you haven't talked to in awhile and chat.
• Visit a friend--Arrange to visit a friend, either local or out of town, you haven't seen in awhile.
• Volunteer--Grab a friend and work together to benefit a good cause.  Or volunteer by yourself to meet new people with the same giving spirit.
• Get crafty--Invite a friend over and break out the fabric, super-glue, construction paper, yarn, paints, anything crafty, and go to it.  Crank up some high energy music to add to the fun.
• Go to a sports event--Invite a friend to go to a local or big-league game.  Bond over burgers, dogs, and drinks while you're at it.
• Work together on a big project--work with a friend restoring a classic car, building furniture, or restoring a house.

These are just some ideas.  What would you add to the list?  I'd love to hear from you.

Please consider joining my new Facebook group Fostering Friendships.  I'm really excited about it.  It's all about helping you make friends and foster those current friendships in your lives.  The group is free and I have a theme for each day, and lots of ideas to make the group fun.  Come join us!  

Time Management

Do you find that you don't have enough time for the things you like to do?  Then take a gander at 168 Hours--You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam.  In it, you'll find all sorts of tips to save time and do the things you really want to do.  There are real-life examples throughout.  We each have 168 hours in each week, so even if we work 50 or 60 hours, we still have 108 to 118 hours during the week to do other things  Make sure to set aside time within those remaining hours to do the things you enjoy doing.  

Here are tips, some of which are based on the information in Vanderkam's book:

1.  Look at how you spend your time:  Keep a time diary for a week or two to see how you spend your time.  Do you find that you spend a lot of time watching TV and surfing the Internet?  My husband and I have been watching a lot of DVDs lately of old sitcoms from the 60s and 70s.  We also spend a lot of time online.  Although that's fun and can be relaxing, there's no reason to sacrifice other activities that would potentially bring more joy by spending countless hours staring at a screen.  Cut that time down drastically to find the room in your life for the things that have been sitting on the back burner for weeks, months, or even years.  For us, that has been to start a game night.  We get together once a month to play party/board games with friends.  It has added an important and fun social element to our lives.

2.  Decide what you want to do:  What would you really, really, really like to do?  Choose two or three and set out to find  ways to fit them into your schedule.  Maybe you'd like to spend more time with your children, or take a pottery class, or exercise.  Go for it!  Get out there and do it.  As Vanderkam notes, that last one is a must.  Fit exercise into your schedule so you increase your endurance, you feel better, and you have more energy to take on all the tasks of your day.  I'm exercising more often these days.  I notice a big improvement in my mood on the days I exercise versus the days I don't.  My husband and I are also taking more time to spend with our pets.  We have six cats and a parrot.  We spent a good share of our free time volunteering at animal shelters over the last several years.  While that is important and we loved it, we realized that we weren't spending enough time with our own adopted pets at home.  So we reduced our volunteer time drastically.  Now we only occasionally volunteer.  We hope that when we retire we'll be in good health and able to volunteer somewhere ever day.  That's quite a few years down the road yet, but something we're looking forward to.

3.  Decide what you don't want to do:  We spend a lot of time doing things we think we should do.  Delete 'should' from your vocabulary.  Are you tired of housework?  Do you cringe everytime you're asked to serve on yet another committee?  Are there friends or family members you would rather not see as often?  It's okay to back off.  Listen to yourself and find out what changes you would like to make, then go about making them.  Learn to say 'no' more often, so you have the energy to do the things and spend time with the people that make your heart sing.  I admit I don't spend as much time on household chores as I used to.  When my husband is at work, I work at home.  When he comes home, I spend time with him.  That's also when I tend to do chores too--after work.  Just because I'm home during the day, doesn't mean it's chore time.  It's work time, like it would be for anyone who works outside the home.  

4.  Unclutter your life:  By this I mean, go through and get rid of things in your life that you don't need.  Clutter can dampen your spirits, keep you bogged down, and potentially kill your motivation.  So, this project is a good one to do during the times you used to watch TV and spend glued to the Internet.  Go through your home and get rid of anything you don't use, want, or need anymore.  If you haven't worn something in a year, most likely you won't ever wear it again.  Give it away or pitch it.  Have you saved all your school work, or souvenirs from trips?  It's time to thin them out.  Are you afraid to get rid of anything anyone has ever given you just because it might hurt their feelings?  It's your stuff now; it's up to you what you do with it.  Get a box and go through these things, only keeping the items you truly enjoy and use.  When you're done going through your home, hit your office.  Do you absolutely need every piece of paper, every report, every statement, every knickknack, every email message, every document on your computer, every sticky note, every manual, or every freebie from conferences that fills your work space?  I'm guessing , no.    Spend some time before your work day starts or during your breaks to sort through some of these things.  I'm not saying you should get rid of everything.  Keep the things that are dear to you or that you really need, of course.  Just get rid of the clutter.  

All these things will help save time in the end.  Give them a try and see if they work for you.  I'd love to hear how you decide to make time for what's important to you.  Contact me at amy@acnlifecoach.com or post a message here.  Also feel free to visit my website at www.acnlifecoach.com.  Take care.

How to Get Out of an Exercise Funk

For Throwback Thursday, here's a post from my Making Fitness Fun blog from about a year ago.  Enjoy!  

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Getting into an exercise funk is no fun.  I've been there.  I love being fit, but there have been times when I just didn't feel motivated to work out.  There have also been dark periods when I didn't even want to think about fitness.  I blame that on menopause.  I can't imagine any other reason for me to fall out of love with fitness. 

Luckily, I've always been able to get out of a funk. Because you can't stay in it forever.  It's nonproductive, feels yucky, and the longer you stay in it the harder it will be to get back on track. Here are some things that have helped me to snap out of it.  Use what works, chuck out the rest.  The important thing is that you get moving again.  

1.  Ask Yourself What the Problem Is.  You can't fix something if you don't know what's wrong.  What's the root of your funk?  Did someone make fun of you at the gym?  Are you overwhelmed by the terminology that your trainer is throwing at you?  Dig deep to find out what is causing this lack of motivation, fuzzy-headedness, blah feeling--whatever your funk encompasses.

2.  Go About Trying to Solve the Problem.  Write down the problem and what you may be able to do to solve it.  Say it's that people make fun of you at the gym.  Let the gym manager know what's going on.  He or she may approach the bullies, get their story, and tell them to stop or risk being kicked out.  Each gym has its own policies regarding such matters, but I would think that most gyms would have a zero tolerance policy as far as harrassment goes.

3.  Revise Your Goals. Revising your goals can help re-energize you and smash those barriers.  Don't try to be a hot shot athlete if it's not in you.  Shoot for losing 1 pound, 5 pounds, or even 10 lbs.  Or you could set a goal to run a mile, then work your way up to a 5K.  Similarly, set a goal to increase the weight you lift by 2 lbs. or up your reps by 5 (or by just 1; come on, one rep, you can do it.) in a week or so--whatever feels right for you. Challenge yourself to help put the fun back in your workout.  Don't expect to be able to start back at your previous fitness level if you have been away from fitness for more than a couple weeks.  Start back slowly; work back up to your previous level and then shoot for more.

4. Choose Activities You Enjoy.  What do you like to do?  Play cards, play Yahzee, garden, walk, play tennis?  Great, do it!  Okay, so playing cards and Yahtzee aren't exactly the most acitive pasttimes, but you could work them into your program.  Never mind that they aren't the usual exercise choices.  Maybe that's the problem.  You may need to shake things up; become creative when designing workouts to put the zip back into your program.  For instance, you may enjoy picking a card from a deck before each exercise in your program. The number can represent the number of reps, while the suit can represent the sets.  

5. Manage Stress.  If you're feeling pressured about things in your daily life including family matters, community obligations, bills, and so on, your workout could suffer.  It can put a dent in your enthusiasm and time for exercise.  But keep in mind that exercise can actually help relieve stress, so make sure you take time to fit in fitness.  Make time for yourself.  Consider meditating, getting more sleep, or talking to a close friend or family member to get things off your chest.  If that's not enough, consult a financial advisor, your doctor, or other professionals for more expert advice.

6.  Don't Over-Think Things.  This happened to me.  The more I learned about fitness, the more confused I got. I felt like I had to work out  a certain way, design programs a certain way, go by the book.  Then I heard from a trainer that I admired that she made her own programs specific to the clients' needs, not by instructions in a book.  Yes, we need to learn theory, anatomy, physiology, programming, etc., when studying to be certified personal trainers, but we also have to loosen up a bit and go with our guts,  and a client's preferences and fitness level rather than a textbook when deciding what's best for a client. It's similar to what doctors have said about me regarding my history of spina bifida:  "You're not 'textbook'." When it comes to training, I don't think of anyone as textbook.  All clients have individual needs.  When I stopped over-thinking and started concentrating on the exercises I liked to do and had fun with, I felt much better.  Workouts were fun again.

7.  Leave Work at Work.  If you've got a lot on your plate at work it may be hard to let it go and concentrate on your workout, but you need to.  Workouts are great for helping you relax and keep your mind off work.  Don't fight that.  You need this facet of your life to help you decompress. Don't stew about work issues.  Clear your mind, relax, have fun.

8.  Think Positively.  No matter what is going wrong there are probably a lot of things going right, too.  Take a moment to realize that.  Each night before you go to bed, make sure to write down three positive things that happened that day.  Remember to include any fitness time you managed to squeeze in and if you grabbed a healthy snack instead of caving in and having that sugary soft drink or donut.  Think of how it felt when you were at the top of your program, kickin' butt at the gym.  You did it then; you can do it again.  Focus on your strengths and build on them. Then tackle your weaknesses.

9.  Concentrate on the Present.  So, you messed up that workout; you missed a jogging date with your best friend.  It's done.  It's over.  Leave it behind.  A good way to put it behind you is to start over.  Concentrate on the present.  Try that exercise you goofed up on again.  Take it slow.  Master it.  Call your friend to set up another jogging date and make sure to arrive early.  Don't let the past control you; rather, control your present.

10.  Stick to a Schedule. You have a better chance of making your workouts if you schedule them into your  day.  Working out early in the morning is great.  You get it in before the day gets crazy.  But I can't seem to exercise in the morning.  I get up early for work as it is, so getting up earlier to fit in exercise just doesn't cut it.  So, I usually have to wait until the afternoon.  One time of the day I hate working out is in the evening.  I'm too tired, plus I don't know anyone who goes to the gym at that time.  Do cardio most days of the week and weight training at least two days per week.  And allow for rest intervals during your workout as well as on off days to help your body recover.  Overtraining increases the risk of injury, so, yes, challenge yourself, but don't go overboard.

11.  Accept Off Days.  Maybe you're having an off day, but that doesn't mean you have to turn it into a full-blown funk.  Use these to re-energize yourself rather than kick yourself down. Come back more determined than ever to better your technique, increase your sets or reps, and up the weight your lift.