Étiquette : coach

Publié dans Coaching, Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Taking rest in busy times

Publié le par Snowrose

This month has been surprisingly busy, and I have taken a short break from my blog/social media; taking rest in busy times is necessary. I personally find social media exceedingly tiring, and in truth, it is the first thing I will drop when life gets busy or I come down with a cold. While I do love writing, my blog is also lower on the priority list. I am hoping that November will be a bit smoother!

I think rest is underrated as an activity and should be considered a virtue in this busy world. When I say rest, though, I am not talking about doomscrolling. Taking rest involves a combination of adequate sleep and leisure.

Getting good sleep

Taking rest

A good night’s sleep is an important part of rest. I personally found the impact of sleep to be massive after my sleep apnea diagnosis. I spent years with interrupted sleep (like every mom does), but the sleep I did get was awful! You can read more about my experience with getting set up with my CPAP here. Adequate sleep means you are sleeping long enough at night with quality sleep. If you are struggling with sleep, it’s important to look at your sleep hygiene. When do you turn off screens for the day? Do you have a nightly routine? What sleep cues can you start to incorporate into your routine to help you wind down at night?

Taking rest and leisure

Leisure is the bigger part of rest that I feel is underrated in our society. Many consider being busy with a full timetable the epitome of living a good life. I argue that it is in slowing down and enjoying the present moment that you live life to the fullest. Leisure activities are things that refill you and rejuvenate you. They are fun! There is no one-size-fits-all list of leisurely activities, but take a moment and reflect: what activities refill you? I personally love ART, as you may have guessed. With this being said, I also love gardening, playing with/training my dogs, archery, video games, reading, learning theology, and playing board games. I have other interests too, but these often fill my soul when I need a leisurely activity that really hits the spot.

Publié dans Coaching, Goal Setting, Health, Mental Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Passion: Finding and Pursuing it

Publié le par Snowrose

I’ve been listening to the audiobook “Prudence” by Fr. Gregory Pine OP recently. This, combined with life circumstances for myself and friends, has led me to think. I’ve been reflecting on the importance of pursuing your passion. While I believe there is an inherent need to work for the sake of supporting yourself or your family, I think it is wrong to settle. I don’t mean to be critical here, but I want to encourage true flourishing. In my opinion, it is a disservice to yourself and others to stagnate when you could be living a more genuine and fruitful life.

Why find your passion?

This is an important question to address. There is a trend these days to wanting to “live your best life”, but social media does not give a foothold on what this really means. In my opinion, living your best life is one where you live a life full of meaning (and the psychological sciences tend to back me on this). If you are living life, looking to the future for some place of happiness and contentment, you are missing the point. Life exists here and now in the present moment. When you are living out your passion, meaning is vibrant and service is life-giving. You may have hard days, but they don’t wear you down, leaving you empty.

What is your passion?

Some people have a clear idea of their passion, but not everyone does. Your vocational needs and state in life impact how you can live out your passion, but neither prevents you from finding it nor pursuing it when the time is right. There are many ways you can choose to live life and serve through work. Sometimes you will need to work for the sake of work, and finding your passion will come from reflecting on those experiences. In short, I believe your passion is the intersection of your interests and talents. In practice, this is actually a pretty broad space that will need discernment and reflection to narrow down.

A Venn Diagram of the intersection of Interest and Tallent showing Passion.

There are resources you can use to help you identify where you will flourish most, like the amazing work of Patrick Lencioni: 6 Types of Working Genius. I think this is an excellent tool to help you discover your passion and how to live it out most fruitfully. In general, though, if you take time to explore and really think about your interests and talents, you should find an area of overlap. The options of work that crop up from that overlap are where you are most likely to find something truly life-giving and meaningful.

A personal example:

After years of tumult accompanying my husband’s journey through mental illness and a career change, I found my passion, and he has found his. I personally realized that I am most interested in psychology, helping others, theology, and the arts. These have intersected with my talent for teaching, synthesizing information, art, and supporting others in this beautiful, budding business. I absolutely love this work and find it refilling.

My husband, after working in crime prevention, hoped to one day be a police officer, and looked at what he had enjoyed most in his jobs when he realized that was not a realistic option. He chose driving and went into the trucking industry. I can say long-distance trucking is NOT a family-oriented career, but he has finally found a position that he LOVES that suits our family’s needs. From wanting to clean up the streets of crime, he has discovered that his interests and talents overlap beautifully, keeping the streets clean… of garbage. He comes home satisfied even after a hard and messy day.

Want help finding yours?

If you aren’t sure where to start, come and see! As a coach, I can help you live out your best life and move towards flourishing and wellness.

Find out more!
Publié dans Goal Setting, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Juggling Change

Publié le par Snowrose

This September, I have not been able to blog weekly like I had set as a goal. Changes in my son’s schedule and my husband’s work schedule have left me juggling change. As I mentioned in my last post on transitions, I find it pretty hard to navigate changes all at once. Juggling is my favorite metaphor for balancing the duties that come with being a wife, mother, and entrepreneur.

Juggling Change but Holding Routine

I think the successes this month have been worth the efforts to hold onto routine amid the change. Rather than blogging, I focused on a few other things this month so far. First, I published my gratitude journal, “Grow Your Happiness.” I have been delighted at the interest from an online Catholic community I am in. Then, I released some new, simple fabric designs to complement the Mini Saints and Sacraments collection on Spoonflower. I have also been working on creating French Prayer Cards to add to my free resources (the English ones were already there).

Meanwhile, on the mom front, I am getting back into the swing of my son’s various activities, homeschool routine, and adjusting the daily routines. I think one of my favorite parts of kids growing up is the enthusiasm they have for learning how to do certain chores. Obviously, my son is not interested in everything, but he has taken up learning how to vacuum with much gusto and excitement. Until this point, he was not quite old enough to use the vacuum. With the coming of the new school year and shuffling of household duties, he excitedly asked to try!

How is your household finding the September shift?

Publié dans ADHD, Coaching, Mental Health, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Transitions are hard!

Publié le par Snowrose

Transitions have never been fun for me. September is, for most of Canadian society, a month of many transitions. It is the start of the school year for students and parents. It is the start of activities, sports, and groups in the fall. It is when Parish life picks up after the summer break. There are so many transitions within this month!

What makes transitions harder for some than others? To an extent, we can rightly say that everyone is different! For those neurospicy individuals like me, though, transitions are distressing. I have an overlapping symptom set with Autism, and I find immediate transitions and longer-term changes to be very difficult.

What can help in tough transitions?

For me personally? I have found certain strategies work better than others to support me during times of transition. Being able to visualize the expectations inherent in each change has been the most effective tool to keep nervous systems regulated.

While some thrive with bullet journal set-ups, I find making them much more enjoyable than actually using them. I used to use handwritten agendas to mark my calendar and visualize my time and commitments. In the digital age, though, as a mom (who doesn’t really like carrying more than I have to after the years of diaper bags), I find phone calendar apps to be just as effective as a written agenda.

At home, I also use a whiteboard to indicate which days I have chosen for what household task. With homeschool, we have a dedicated bookshelf space with each day’s topic set aside. We use a master list with clear expectations of which day has which topic.

What have you found helps most during transitions?

Publié dans Coaching, Goal Setting, Health, Mental Health, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Exciting update: Grow Your Happiness

Publié le par Snowrose

Publishing soon!

Over the past two years, I have been steadily working on a book titled “Grow Your Happiness.” In this book, I offer a method of increasing your baseline happiness through intentional gratitude. The front matter explores the scientific literature on dispositional happiness (the day-to-day baseline happy feeling you return to after ups and downs) and how gratitude can increase that.

The book is almost ready for publication and will be published in September!

In “Grow Your Happiness”, I have made the scientific information accessible and easy to read, despite citing over 20 studies and primary sources. You will learn the real impacts of this virtue on the happiness you experience. Next, after exploring how gratitude can make you a happier person, you will find 365 prompts. These prompts were intentionally chosen to increase the breadth and depth of this important virtue steadily over time.

A sneak peek inside:

I’ve given the book a sunflower theme, with earth tone colours. There will be a Kindle edition in plain text for anyone who wants to use their preferred journal. I chose the sunflower theme to symbolize the journey of growing happiness. Sunflowers are beautiful plants whose blossoms always look towards the sun. After all, they need direct sunlight and grow into huge flowers that brighten up any space they are planted in. Accordingly, I hope that everyone who uses this journal can also look at the proverbial sun of gratitude and blossom into happier people!

Here is an example of the journal theme:

I hope that this book will reach many people. I believe it will make a dramatic impact if used intentionally. Gratitude is such an important virtue! Although this book focuses on increasing dispositional happiness, the research shows much more. There is research coming out showing that gratitude can positively impact your relationships, health, and more!

Publié dans IFS, Mental Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Building Community

Publié le par Snowrose

I have often wondered what it would be like to live somewhere where building community is part of the culture. Over the last five years, I have been trying to build community intentionally, and I have found it to be needlessly hard. Canadian culture, especially in the big cities, is not anything like the international community imagines. We have an overdeveloped sense of autonomy and an individualistic mindset. From the conversations I have had with those who immigrate to Canada, the culture shock is isolating. As someone born and raised here, I love my country, but I hate the autonomy of our culture.

My experience has been common: building community is hard. It is easier to live interdependently in rural areas, but in the city? Oh boy, individualism is the ideal. This has been detrimental to our population for so many reasons. While everyone has a fundamental integrity need for agency, individualism takes this principle too far. People wonder why rates of mental illness are continuously on the rise in Canada. The simplest answer? Broken homes and no community. I realize those topics are heavy and loaded, but as an adult child of divorce, I can attest to the impact of both. Canada is a land with so much potential, despite its cosmopolitan history. It’s not too late to turn things around for the next generations.

The solution? Intentional Community Building.

If we want to turn the tide on mental illness and suicide, we need to work intentionally to make and foster a culture of community. To be honest, we need to embrace the Canadian stereotype and welcome the level of hospitality and kindness that the international stage believes we have. To be honest, I don’t know the steps needed to make that change, but I know it is the direction that we need to go.

It has taken me 5 years to start seeing the fruit of building up a community at my local parish, with consistent support from my friends who live in other parts of the city. It took even longer to overcome the internalized autonomy. I believe every effort is worth it. As I have learned more about psychology, I’ve come to understand the importance of community. We are a species that thrives on healthy interdependence. Isolation kills, community gives life. Let’s work together on building a community.

Publié dans Catholic, Coaching, Health, Mental Health, Prayer, Reflections, Sam's adventures, Stress Management, Trauma

Why Everything at Once?

Publié le par Snowrose

I was having a conversation with a friend recently, who has been going through many many trials, all converging at once. She was feeling distressed, with good reason, but also found deep confusion over why God was allowing this timing.

In these circumstances it may seem like God is leaving you standing with no direction, or that you are being left to solve everything on your own. In my experience, counterintuitively, these circumstances are actually always an invitation.

An invitation? To chaos and pain? Well, no, an invitation to go deeper. Deeper into your relationship with Him, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with others.

Diving Deep

Going through life, there are always situations that are difficult and distressing, but they don’t necessarily mean you will experience an overwhelming level of emotions. When life events stir up a huge cascade of emotions inside, there are generally 2 main causes.

  1. You do not have a FELT sense of having enough support from your internal resources or social support network.
  2. The big emotions were already there inside, and you are in a situation that is poking at the places you did not receive love, support, and safety throughout your life.

An invitation

This is where the invitation comes in. In the first example, if you are in a difficult situation without feeling supported- it’s time to reach out and get help. That is no easy task, because it may not feel safe to do so, but you would be surprised how many people have lived through similar situations and who may have an attentive ear. You are not alone in the journey, others are traveling through the storms like you.

If your heart is being flooded by the intensity of your past experiences, that’s where you are being invited deeper into a relationship with God and yourself. Those places that you have lived through hardships that were held onto are usually there because the original experience was like scenario 1. You didn’t have the external connections necessary for post-traumatic growth. These are the places that we protect ourselves from the most inside, the places of trauma–big “T” and little “t” alike. Truly, these are the places that God wants to come into for healing and communion. These are the places we shut everyone out from, ourselves, others, and God alike.

But why?

Can’t he just take it all away? Make it better? Of course, but only with an invitation in, entering into the worst of it freely. God allows the circumstances of our lives to be invitations to self-reflection and awareness of the pains that we hold inside our hearts so that we can invite Him in on our own time to finally meet those unmet needs. We are made with such dignity that God will not tread freely through our hearts but will wait patiently until we are ready to say yes.

If life is getting too much, will you open the door?

Publié dans ADHD, Coaching, Goal Setting, Sam's adventures

Captured busy!

Publié le par Snowrose

My goodness! My well-intentioned goal of writing and contributing to this blog weekly has most certainly fallen through! This is a great place for my own self-reflection on the past season and look ahead to how I can do things differently next time.

First things first: why am I sharing my own pitfalls with you, dear reader? Well, to show that even if you look put-together, life is a process of learning and growing… for EVERYONE! I think what caught me off guard with this particular goal was a divide in my focus. In establishing this business, I’ve been working at the turtle’s pace, bit by bit. It started as homework for my Master’s degree in my “flourishing and development plan”, as a simple portfolio of my art, and has slowly blossomed into something bigger– and a little more immediate than my eventual goal of becoming a fully licensed psychologist. In the last few months though, I’ve had a lot of clarity for the direction I want to take this up-and-coming business to really hit the ground running. That’s where I stumbled: too many ideas at once.

Maintaining Balance

It’s always tricky with ADHD to see where the balance in that divided attention can be maintained. I’ve personally found my many interests and ability to hyper-focus to outweigh the impact of diminished executive function, especially when I take the steps needed for the support I require. In this case, I definitely bit off more than I could chew. So what now? Well, I’ll use a very helpful tool that DMU (Divine Mercy University) introduced me to in that same “flourishing and development plan” homework. WOOP!

No, no, I don’t mean to just exclaim exuberantly, though really it is a sound I make when I’m excited. WOOP is a really helpful system designed to take goal setting to the next level. It stands for:

So let’s WOOP my goal together:

Your WOOP Summary
Your Wish: Have an active blog
Your best Outcome: I’d write posts at least once a week
Your inner Obstacle: Getting distracted by other priorities
Your Plan: If “Getting distracted by other priorities” then I will “Choose a day to write and that be the business task”

Want to WOOP your goals too? Here is the practice space!

Publié dans Coaching, Goal Setting

What is life coaching?

Publié le par Snowrose

Unlike sports, where a coach directs the team to encourage growth and hopefully skill within the rules of a game, life comes without such clear cut direction. A life coach is someone who is given the opportunity to ask questions that facilitate growth while maintaining accountability in the direction that is right for you!

Do you feel satisfied in your life? Are you driven to accomplish your goals? Do you have motivation to fulfill your inner calling? If you answered no to any of these, a life coach can be of great assistance! Working together, we can sweep away the confusion of the demands of modern life and open a path to fulfilling your goals and achieving your dreams.

In a one-on-one context, a life coach can work with you to uncover what is stirring in your heart as a priority for this season of life, and give that fine tuned attention. In a group, you benefit from witnessing breakthroughs in each other and additional accountability towards the goals you have set for yourself. No matter your age and stage, a life coach can help you flourish and grow!

Have any questions? Want to work with me? Contact me! I’d love to hear from you. 😀

Let’s art the journey together!

Publié dans Reflections, Sam's adventures

Why “Snowrose blossom”?

Publié le par Snowrose

Some people choose business names that are catchy, others use their names, others still use something related to the product or service they are offering. So, why “snowrose blossom” for a life coach, herbalist and aspiring psychologist? On the surface, it is to represent the blossoming of the human person into flourishing and wellness, a blossoming of sorts. Snowrose, now that has more of a story!

Long long ago, in middle school, I got permission from my school principal to take high school language classes Saturday mornings at a high school. I was obsessed with Japanese culture and history, and jumped at it the moment I learned that I could take classes to learn Japanese. Yes, I was, in fact, that much of a nerd that I got up every Saturday morning and went to learn Japanese for 5 whole years. How much do I remember after not using it for a decade? Not a whole lot, but that is ok!

忘

れ

ま

す

During my classes, my friends and I came up with some OC (original characters) based off of their and my favorite anime at the time (Cough… Inuyasha… Cough… though I think they were watching Naruto). My OC’s name? 雪 薔薇 (Snow Rose). I chose this name combing two of my favorite things in nature, snow and roses. Creative, eh?

Yes, those are in fact images I created in photoshop as a teenager to show the mystery of this OC… and the made up magical flower known as the snowrose. From that point on, my gamer tag was either Yuki Bara or Snowrose and I embraced this as an expression of a facet of myself.

Fast forward to the year I turned 30, and I learned that what I had thought was a made up flower that imbued the essence of snow into a rose shape… was actually the name of a real flower!

Serrissa Japonica: the Snow Rose

Photo: NCU. “Serrissa Japonica; Snowrose”. https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/serissa-japonica/

This revelation genuinely blew my mind. Not only was this flower delightfully beautiful, it was a real, bonified, not made up flower… native to JAPAN! To top it off, it was not just a flower, it was a SHRUB! Now, to those unfamiliar with the British Comedian group known as Monty Python, go find them on youtube and have a good laugh. To those who are familiar, I was OBESSESSED with “The Holy Grail” in high school… and in particular, the knights who say NEE, or rather, the knights who now say Ikikipootangzoopoing.

Photo: Reddit. Mame Serissa Japonica (Snow Rose) – My First Bloom! https://www.reddit.com/r/Bonsai/comments/r8fb6n/mame_serissa_japonica_snow_rose_my_first_bloom/?rdt=53973

My new favorite flower then became the ACTUAL snow rose, Serrissa Japanica. This name represents my own journey to blossoming and flourishing, living out my life’s calling to help others bloom into the proverbial flowers they were made to be!

Let’s journey together and BLOSSOM like springtime!