Category Archives: My Recommends

November 1, 2022 · 11:11 am

Three Ways To Fight Overwhelm – Body, Mind And Soul

My Secret Hacks to Quelling Overwhelm?

Besides coffee? Two old things and one new thing stand out.

Flylady’s concept of breaking routines down into manageable bites changed my life.

Not so much because I followed her specific routines–I needed to build my own. But because of the methodology behind FlyLady (created by Marla Cilley). The idea that a routine and habit don’t require much to become established–just 15 minutes a day. And tackling any bear of a task can still be done in time-bites of just a few minutes at a time.

Flylady’s concept was life-altering because it helped me focus on reframing everything into baby steps. And that made things much easier to accomplish as a WAHM, a military wife, and active volunteer at the school. Meditation, sales copy, exercise, laundry that never gets folded (LOL)–EVERYTHING can be broken into 15-minute bites.

Brain health and mental hacks are an area I’ve been deep-diving into for years.

Brain coach Jim Kwik teaches a concept of helping the brain wake up in the morning by tying a cognitive task to a habitual one, like brushing your teeth. It’s impressive really. I’ve been using it for over a year now, and it’s had a positive effect.

Learning about the brain’s natural rhythms for sleep cycles, cycles of alternating dominance between right and left brain function during the day, and how to frame my daily tasks around those left vs. right brain rhythms has also significantly improved my quality of life and work. I don’t hate myself when I pay attention to my sleep cycles. When my left-brain steam runs dry, I let it rest and shift my tasks to right-brain-focused activities.

Respecting and using my own natural brain intervals to my advantage by planning around that timing really helps me take my work to the next level and reduces mental stress. I’ve been using right vs. left brain techniques for several years, and whenever I fail to mind those mental routines, I don’t feel as on my game.

To me–this is the most crucial routine/habit/hack I’ve acquired.

My newest life-changing routine/habit is framing my daily and weekly to-do lists around the concept of “what will help me feel like I have won the day?”

It’s a bit of a meditative technique and a Jedi mind trick, BUT it’s working, and I feel less overwhelmed. Less overwhelm is a GIFT, and it helps me drive farther! I have my giant list of things that need doing, but I filter them into daily to-dos with this framework.

This approach requires a disciplined mind, and works well for someone who is in tune with themselves, is highly motivated, and likes to work hard. Each day the list can be adjusted as needed because things pop up and change our schedule. But focusing on wanting to feel like I “won the day” keeps me on top of the things that even my subconscious wants me to take care of. Because I can’t trick myself into feeling anything I genuinely don’t.

Life can be overwhelming. These 3 routine-based life hacks contain my “body-mind-soul” approach to reducing overwhelm.

A way to reduce physical overwhelm by breaking tasks into smaller bites.
Reducing my mental overwhelm by working with my brain’s natural rhythms and how it wants to work.
And by supporting my emotional well-being–ensuring that my soul feels satisfied at the end of the day.

4 Comments

Filed under My Recommends, Random Thoughts

Tagged as anxiety, brain cycles, overwhelm, routines

June 4, 2021 · 12:22 am

Copyright and Fair Use…

I run into creative licensing discussions when writing ads for clients–frequently.

Many myths abound over an image’s fair use, what’s considered public domain or free, whether you can be sued if you’re not profiting, etc.

The following resource was developed for educators, but it is one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-understand explanations of creative copyright that I’ve found.

https://www.theedublogger.com/copyright-fair-use-and-creative-commons/

Roses – Pins for a Cause…

In honor of John’s fight against Glioblastoma and for Brain Cancer Awareness Month, our daughter Jack has designed a “Charity Rose” enamel pin to help raise funds for brain cancer research and awareness.

She is donating all profits to the Dr. Marnie Rose Foundation, which is one of the only foundations that raise money for brain cancer research. Many thanks to Mrs. Rose and Little Matt’s for their support and encouragement along the way as Jack’s vision for this project took shape.

John’s favorite flower was the red rose, so it is fitting that this first dedicated pin be a rose. Jack designed both a red rose and a special grey rose for Brain Cancer Awareness Month. It all started with her drawings, which she then modeled into the many necessary digital files that only she knows how to do.

It is a beautiful design, manufactured in high-quality materials, partnered through one of the most notable pin design companies in the US – and worthy of attention.

There are 150 roses in this first run. Please help Jack reach her fundraising goal and spread the word? If ever there was a cause that I’d appreciate your help with promoting, this is one of them. Thank you for helping her make this work.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/689262850/charity-rose-enamel-pin-brain-cancer

The Pressing…

My personal philosophy is that Life is in the Overcoming.

There is no grace without choice.

I don’t always understand the overcoming, but I know that
growth is impossible without overcoming something.

Steve Whyte describes it as a pressing–like grapes for wine.

My New Fruit Fly Gnat Trap…

I’m pretty excited tonight, as my new gnat trap arrived in the mail today.

I make smoothies every morning. And I buy what organic fruit I can.

But along with the territory comes gnats. And the last batch of bananas I picked up at Whole Foods brought a bunch in.

And because I’m using fruit every single day, the problem doesn’t go away so easily.

Thank goodness gnats don’t bite, but still! Done with them! Want them OUT.

I looked into some of the homemade traps. Make a paper funnel, stick it in a little glass or vase with apple cider vinegar and a drop of dish soap. And supposedly catch all the gnats.

Nope, didn’t work for me. And for my friends who’ve used it, it seems they never get more than a couple gnats when they do it.

So I finally took to Amazon, the King of Product Reviews. And I found a trap with great reviews from a company called FlyFix.

So I ordered it and it arrived earlier today.

However, tonight we had friends over for dinner. And little gnats visited everyone at the dinner table. Ugh. Thankfully our friends are really down to earth, but everyone was clapping, trying to kill the buggers. Not my preference for entertainment. We’d been so busy getting ready, that I hadn’t opened the package or even thought about it.

Finally I remembered the package and ran to get it. We cracked that sucker open, poured some apple cider vinegar into it, closed it up and set it on the table. The instructions state to allow a few hours for the gnats to find the trap, but in less than an hour, it’d already caught a couple! 🙂

So I’m thrilled. This is already as good as trying the DIY method. So as far as I see, it’s looking promising. And it blends in with the apples well!

I can’t wait to see how many gnats it’s trapped by morning.

2 Comments

Filed under My Recommends, NaBloPoMo

Tagged as gnat traps

November 23, 2011 · 2:02 pm

Three Communication Tips To Help You Get Your Point Across

If I’m not careful, I can be a talker. As a natural at the art of capturing a story, it’s a gift. But it can also be a weakness. Here are three tools I’ve found useful to help me stay trim in my communications and remain effective in the long run. This includes marketing and sales.

1. Remember that people communicate (and retain) information best in three main ways: audio, visual and kinetic. A balance of the three seems to work best. Honestly, sometimes we need to shut up and let a picture say a 1000 words or let someone get a literal handle on something. But beyond that, the truth is that some people retain and communicate best by hearing their own thoughts expressed in audio. Which means, get them into the discussion and you’ll get the best out of them.

My son is an example of someone who performs best through discussion, not just listening. He has an unusual visual impairment with a kind of blend of parallax and monocular vision (and medical terms I find difficult to describe). Due to this, his thoughts literally form best through discussion and the hearing of his own voice. Once he’s been a part of the discussion, he’s your man and knows exactly what to do. Without it, he has a harder time putting his thought process in order or “getting it” because he has no mental black-board to “see” things in his mind. When he can verbalize thoughts as they take form, the quality of his work is amazingly better, because his brain is wired that way. It’s been an interesting path of discovery for us at home and I’ve learned to tailor my communication for others as a result.

2. There is a book that I love called: How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less, by Milo Frank. I listen to the audio version on a periodic basis to remind me how to trim my words and get to the point.

3. Once words are spoken, you can’t take them back. So if it’s the wrong words, or just too many, the problem is the same. I like to keep in mind an old adage that goes something like this: “Better they wonder why you didn’t open your mouth, than why you did!”

These are some thoughts that have helped me in both my professional and personal communications, as well as marketing. I hope they help you too.