Thank you so much for your interest in Daily Gifts this week:-)

A “Daily Gift” is a step toward accomplishing your personal goals.  It’s a gift from you, for you.  Whether your intention is to strengthen your relationship with your husband or to find some “me time”, you must have a goal to begin making a plan.  What “Daily Gifts” do you give to yourself?  Feel free to review some of the options that we covered in our scenarios this week.

“Daily Gifts”

• Take one small step toward your vision each day.
• Never stop imagining or dreaming.
• Make “action” your new way of life.
• Be mindful of what makes you happy and create a list to revisit when you’re stuck.
• Look at pictures of happy moments every day.
• Surround yourself with your network of positive friends and family.
• Give yourself one compliment a day “I am who I want to be and where I want to be.”
• Buy a card with a positive message every week and address it to yourself.
• Create memories in a new home by hosting a house-warming and posting pictures.
• Turn that mental image into a reality.
• Construct a vision board with pictures from magazines of want your life to be.
• Create a social Gmail calendar for your family and friends.
• Design a personal calling card.
• Pass out your card to one new person a week.
• Make one networking call a day to old and new acquaintances.
• Create a “List of Likes” (A list of 50 activities to do alone that make you feel cheerful)
• Compose a short list of 5 long-term personal goals.

Positive Insight:

• Finding time for you is a process.
• Moving forward and making changes in life, is a mindset.
• Every day is an opportunity to move closer to your goals.
• Balancing personal and relationship needs with your partner’s takes practice and time.
• Apply the same work ethics and investment practices in your relationships that you would for your career.
• A new environment brings our true identity and self-worth to the surface of our outward facing image…embrace it.
• Keep in mind, the only person that needs answers to personal questions is YOU!
• Determination, creativity, compromise and an open mind will lead your path of positivity.
• We often forget about our own wellbeing and take the relationships that are closest to us for granted.

I hope you can benefit from the week’s scenarios and The Insight.  Check out next week’s entries when we discuss “Trusting Your Inner Voice.”

Have a wonderful weekend and don’t forget to treat yourself to a “Daily Gift.”

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

A Positive Perspective for Life, Love and Relationships

The Scenario: She’s been married for fifteen years and has two daughters. As a stay at home mom, the main focus has been the children for many years.  Recently, she feels like her enthusiasm for life is gone.  In addition, the relationship with her husband is almost platonic.

Where does she begin her search for the excitement that she’s missing amidst the daily responsibilities of a stay at home mom? Is it too late to change the relationship with her husband back to what it once was?

She can take a holistic approach to finding excitement about life. The feeling she wants is physiological.  Studies have proven that physical activity releases “happy” endorphins in the brain and creates a “natural high”.  Some sort of physical activity each morning when the kids are off to school will give her the boost she needs to start the day. Reduce the bad carbohydrates, drink lots of water, increase fruits, and vegetables in her diet.

Next, create a “List of Likes.” This is a list of fifty things to do alone that make her feel cheerful and giddy.  Childhood activities are included, like chewing her favorite grape Bubblicious gum (ok it was mine), listening to music so loud that the neighbors call the police, or making snow angles in the raked leaves.  Then create a shorter list of five personal long term goals, like taking a poll dancing classes or learning a new language. It could even be as simple as learning how to play chess or a video game.

Her “daily gift” will begin with one activity from the List of Likes and start one of her long term goal. These two steps toward change add the unexpected pleasantries to her outlook on life and may ignite a spark.

In addition to communicating with her husband how she feels about their relationship and reaching a mutual understanding they will define the goals for change.  Together, they will find a common interest outside of the children and their home life.  It can be as inexpensive as playing a card game where the stakes are high , or as expensive as a golf lessons and cooking classes.  If time is an issue, which it is for most, then schedule a meeting on your Google calendar in the middle of the week.  The meeting will begin after work, in the lobby bar of a hotel for a cocktail.  It will end with an overnight stay.  It’s a great way to break the monotony of life.

The Insight: Determination, creativity, compromise and an open mind will lead the path to a positive outlook on life. We often forget about our own wellbeing and take the relationships that are closest to us for granted. Being mindful of what makes you happy and creating a list that you revisit will be helpful when you’re stuck in a routine.

by Sheba

www.bySheba.com

A Positive Perspective for Life, Love, and Relationships

The scenario: She’s an unemployed, recently married woman without children.  Choosing love over a rewarding, lucrative career wasn’t easy.  She relocates from California because her husband’s business is in D.C.  They live in the suburbs of Northern Virginia.  She has a wonderful marriage, travels the world with him, and leads a full life.  However, restoring her sense of self-worth, growing her own network of friends, and finding a less demanding but fulfilling career has been near to impossible.  She’s often depressed, to everyone’s dismay, because her sense of identity is lost without her old “title” of Vice President.  Her new title is “Unemployed Wife” with a savings account to reflect her years of hard work.

How can she reestablish her sense of self-worth without a “title” and a full-time career?  What steps can she take to create a new network?

She may have found a false sense of identity in a “title” to begin with.  Titles mean a lot to the entitled and those that understand the industry. We forget that when we’re engrossed in our profession.  Years of experience, sacrifice, and determination has allowed her to achieve her goals.  The title just comes with the package. Therefore, her sense of identity and accomplishment can reside in knowing what it took her to earn that title.  Not having one does not signify a lack of achievement.

However, it is important to her.  She can begin to reestablish her sense of self-worth by creating a professional page on a social network, writing a blog, and creating a website that lists her accomplishments and personal interests. She can also create a calling card with the site information. This may increase her sense of self-worth as she passes it out in social settings.

Her “daily gift” will begin with passing out her card to one new person a week.  In addition, she will make one networking call a day to old and new acquaintances. It enables her to inform others of her accomplishments without turning into a talking resume.  It also reminds her of who she is without the “title.” The results are positive from every aspect.

Volunteering for charity organizations can also expose her to another network. She may be able to use her skills, search for part-time employment in the meantime, and or create a consulting practice in her field of expertise.

There are many social networks online but what she wants is an interpersonal, exchange network with face to face interaction.  Go back to the “sand box” days and apply those social skills.  Invite your husband’s friends out for a girls’ night, look for a Social Meetup group online where people who fit a social profile meet at a site nearby, join a class at the gym where the setting is a little more intimate and, be social.  Create a personal elevator pitch.  One sentence that tells people who you are, not who you were, any additional information you want to share, and let it lead into a question.

In this age of information we’ve forgotten our social graces. Where are the days when we would introduce ourselves to someone, shake their hand, and tell them about ourselves?

The Insight: A new environment brings our true identity and self-worth to the surface of our outward facing image.  Who are you?  What do you do? What is your title? These are questions we sometimes loath and sometimes love.  It depends on the phase in life we’re in.  Keep in mind, the only person that needs answers to those questions is YOU! Practice being social at home, in front of the mirror, and create your personal elevator pitch. “Hi, I’m (add your name) I’m new to the area and love it.  What about you? How long have you lived here?”

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

A Positive Perspective for Life, Love, and Relationships

The Scenario: As a child of divorced parents, she has commitment phobia.  However, in fear of spending the rest of life dating her boyfriend, she’s decided to move in.  They’ve been together for three years and are still madly in love.  Subletting her apartment to maintain her sense of security gives her comfort in knowing that if it doesn’t work out she’ll have a place to live.

It’s now been six months since she’s moved in.  Claustrophobic and stifled best describes her current state of being.  When she lived alone, there was an after work routine that she loved.  She’d take a shower, throw on comfy clothes, get on the phone with her girls, eat left over lunch, and spend the rest of the evening with her boyfriend.   Now, when she comes home he’s there.  He wants to spend time cooking dinner and talking, right after work!  If he randomly invites friends over that she can’t stand, he’d like her to be social, right after work! On Sundays she used to have brunch with the girls but now, it’s brunch with the boyfriend…again…and again.  She’s miserably unhappy and wants to leave.

What can this stifled woman do to remedy this situation?  Would it be so bad if she just moved back to her apartment?  Maybe things would go back to the way they were?   She thinks she’s not a “relationship” person and maybe it’s time to quit all together. Not true.

If she moved back it may feel like failure to both of them and take its toll on the relationship. Saying that she’s not a relationship person is negative.  What she is feeling is natural.  As human beings, we live in our carved out comfort zones.  She is simply outside of her element and it’s created anxiety in her life.  In addition, her fleeting fate in relationships, based on her personal experience, makes her think about the easy way out.  Just quit.

Relationships are alive and want to be nourished.  The amount of compromise and communication that takes place in a successful relationship is infinite and unyielding.  We all want to have a partner in life but it works both ways.  He has needs as well.

She can create a “daily gift” that will give back to her and her boyfriend all week long…a social Gmail calendar. She can schedule which nights she cooks, he orders, and they cook together.  They can discuss and plan which nights are hers to entertain, which nights are his, and plug it into the calendar.  With our hectic lives it’s hard to remember or prepare for everything.  If they’re both aware of who is visiting, they can accommodate one another’s needs for personal space and privacy.   Sunday brunch is easy to remedy…compromise; one Sunday together then one Sunday apart.

As far as her after work routine is concerned, a compromise may satisfy both. This is what relationships are all about.  Maybe she’ll shower, spend time with her husband over dinner, and call one girl friend each night that they don’t have plans.  They both will condition their friends to respect their relationship time and she will no feel so stifled.

The Insight: Balancing your personal and relationship needs with your partner’s takes time and practice.  We schedule business meetings and over communicate agendas at work but we don’t always apply that same work ethic to our relationships.  If we take the time to communicate our needs and make sure the other person’s needs are taken care of, then we can both benefit from that kind of consideration.

by Sheba

www.bySheba.com

A Positive Perspective for Life, Love, and Relationships

The Scenario: She’s a career woman, in her early thirties, and has lived with her roommate since college. She just bought a townhouse and will live alone for the first time. The excitement to own a home, do yard work, have privacy, and embrace all the other “firsts” that come with taking a new step in life thrills her. However, something happened that she didn’t expect.  After she moved in, the mood changed.  It went from excitement to loneliness.  It wasn’t her roommate that she missed but the responsibilities that she now managed alone made her realize that she wanted someone to share her life with.  Her home is now a constant reminder of the significant other that she doesn’t have.

Now what? How does she change her outlook on her new life? What can she do to manage the loneliness? Should she stop imagining that significant other in the kitchen with her?

She can begin to change her outlook by recognizing her own accomplishments and being proud of herself.  Share that joy with her network of friends and family.  She has the ability to achieve her goals during an economic recession and to get outside of her comfort zone.   That speaks volumes about her character.

Create new memories by hosting a house-warming and posting pictures on a wall of new and wonderful moments in her home.  When she comes home from a long day at work and the sun has set, she’ll turn on the light and see the smiles of her family and friends on the picture wall from floor to ceiling. It’ll bring a smile to her face and help her manage the loneliness.

Never stop imagining or dreaming. Turn that mental image into a reality. He can be in the living room, in the bedroom, and taking long trips with her on the weekends.  There are two things to do to foster that positive energy. The first is to create a vision board with pictures from magazines of the life she sees for herself.  The second is her “daily gift”.  She’ll create a small step, each day, so that moving toward her vision is an action that becomes her way of life.

The Insight: Moving forward in life is a mindset. Every day is an opportunity to move closer to your goals. There may be unexpected emotional set-backs but focusing on the “daily gifts” that move you forward will also make you happy.  Look at pictures of blissful moments, surround yourself with your network of friends, and give yourself one gift each day.  It can be a simple compliment such as, “I am who I want to be and on a new path in Life.”

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

A Positive Perspective for Life, Love, and Relationships