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Boundaries?? You say….Some of us have them and make great use of them and others, well, we say…”What are boundaries???”

According to Berkeley Well-Being Institute, “Psychological boundaries – or the standard by which we want people to treat us – are harder to identify,” compared to a “fence (that) might be used to keep 2 things separate from each other or to provide protection from another entity.”

How we “allow” others to treat us and how far we are willing to let them push our buttons or tell us what to do, how to do it, etc. is a reason we need to set up boundaries.  Many boundaries are “situation-specific,” meaning they may change somewhat according to the particular situation. Say you don’t answer calls from a specific person after a certain time because they always seem to need your help or your ear to listen to their complaints, etc. However, if an emergency situation comes up, you do drop those boundaries (or some) to assist in the emergency situation only.

Boundaries are required from things such as how close you allow a person to get up into “your space,” to what time to turn off your phone, what topics you are willing to discuss (the old saying about don’t discuss, finances, religion or politics was made for a reason and still holds true!), what types of language you will accept (e.g., certain swear words or inappropriate comments), to certain topics that trigger you and manipulation, to name a few.

It is more difficult to set boundaries with some people. You know who those are in your life. But, it is so important to set them up and keep them as much as you can. When you stick with your boundaries you will decrease your stress level immensely. You are being true to your needs and beliefs, which decreases stress. When you stick with those boundaries, you are not letting people walk all over you, take advantage of you or manipulate you. You are not allowing them to zap all the energy out of you. You are not letting them guilt you into anything,

When you have a strong awareness into your wants and needs, it makes it easier to keep boundaries. When we know ourselves and are aware of our beliefs,  it allows us to really understand who we are and what we are about, which then allows us to relay this information to our family, friends, and others. This allows us to understand what boundaries we need to make.

When we are flexible with our emotions, we can “Accept the reality of the situation accept our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and consider our values – all of which informs our behavior for that given moment. (Cherry et al, 2021, Ciarrochi,, Bilich, & Godsell, 2010) “We use psychological flexibility to create and communicate boundaries for each situation rather than imposing a one size fits all approach.” (Berkeley Well-Being Institute)

On the other hand, “When we are rigid in our emotions, behaviors and thoughts we experience psychological inflexibility. Psychological inflexibility is a risk factor for experiencing mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression. (Cherry et al, 2021, Ciarrochi, Bilich, & Godsell, 2010) “Moreover it can prevent us from living in a way that is intentionally aligned with our own goals.” (Ciarrochi, Bilich, & Godsell, 2010).

So, you see, there are reasons why boundaries are important. Besides what I stated above, they allow us to protect ourselves from people and situations that may be dangerous or just not beneficial to us.

Boundaries can help us connect deeper with ourselves to better know and understand ourselves, our wants and needs.

By gaining better self-awareness and insight, “we can get to know ourselves in a deeper way and share that with our partners, family and friends. Boundaries can be a way of demonstrating compassion towards yourself and compassion towards others.” (Berkeley Well-Being Institute)

Has this convinced you of setting up some boundaries? I hope so. Sure, it isn’t always (or often) easy to set up and keep boundaries, but once you start, it does get easier and, is such a wonderful gift you can give to yourself.

Where and how do you find calm when you are feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelm, when you are feeling so stuck and not able to move forward? There are things you can do to feel better – to find calm. When we are feeling like this, we get so stuck in our thoughts, which actually get us more stressed and anxious, that we can’t even see the opportunities that may be presenting themselves to us. When we get that stressed, our whole being gets so tense that we just can’t see any “openness;” everything is dense and negative. When this is the case, how could we see anything positive and light? It’s just not going to happen. This is when we need to “find calm!” However, this is when we just can’t even imaging calm, let alone be open to it.

Okay, then, just how can we “find calm” you ask? I’m going to give you several self-care acts you can do that will allow that stress, anxiety and overwhelm become a little less dense and heavy and allow it to soften and lighten, showing you the light at the end of the tunnel.

1. Breathing exercises. If you follow me, you know breathing exercises are my end-all and be-all choice to calming down and opening up. By just sitting straight in a comfortable chair, straight back, shoulders soft and down, and feet flat on the floor, take 3 slow, deep belly breaths. Then just do a quick body scan starting from the top of your head down to your feet. What is your body telling you? Are you feeling any sensations (tightness, heaviness, pain, discomfort, racing heart…)? Can you attach any emotions to those sensations. Just sit and take deep breaths and exhale with a sigh to allow that energy to start moving. Feel your body relax. Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling. Your body is telling you something. Listen to it. Do this until you feel ready to get moving. Allow the thoughts to come up. You may even see some inspiration and opportunities.
2. Meditation. The breathing exercises above are a type of meditation. But you can also sit and listen to calm, relaxing meditative music. You can sit and focus on your breathing, or even watch a candle flickering. Try to clear your head. Allow thoughts to come in and acknowledge them, then let them go. Do this until you are feeling calmer.
3. Connect with nature. Go for a walk or run. Maybe do some stretching and exercises. This allows the endorphins (our natural “feel-good” hormones) to release, making us feel better.
4. Give yourself a break. Allow yourself this gift; this self-care act of love to yourself. Maybe take a quick power nap; or a bubble bath with candles lit and soft, relaxing music in the background. Add some essential oils to the mix, or even in the bath (make sure you have ones that you can do that). If you want to break away from reality for a while, take even just 15 minutes to read a good book that can just whisk you away for that time. Or, maybe watch a little comedy on tv to make you laugh. And, you can always call your go-to friend to help you out; you know that friend that just knows what to say and when to say it to make you feel better.
5. Have “tea time.” Chamomile is always a good tea to calm and relax you. Or, any calming tea of your choice.
6. And, last but not least, by all-time go-to…EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, also called “Tapping.” If you are not familiar with Tapping, it is kind of like acupuncture, but without the needles. You tap on certain meridians while tapping on something that is bothering you, and it calms down your nervous system.  I attached the video I did on tapping for “Finding Calm” below.

There are 6 ways to help you find your calm. By putting your body in a state of calm, you are allowing your body to heal and be healthier. When we are stressed in a state of overwhelm and anxiety, our body tenses and inflammation begins, causing illness. Stop it in its tracks! Break up that stress by doing one of these self-care activities to calm yourself and allow you to find calm.

Go to my website, www.wellfitways.com to find out more about Self-Care for Women 50+.

Make it a Great Day! Remember, you are the creator of your life. Let it be a great one!

WHO ARE YOU?

Do you know who you are? Really know who you are? I didn’t for many, many years. I started to and then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. That was when I really began to know myself. What a blessing that was. I was given a second chance to find me. To find out who I really was and am. 

Is this something you struggle with? Who am I? What do I like to do? What do I not like to do? What is my life purpose? Do you hold your feelings in during a conflict? Do you say yes to everyone and everything…except to yourself? 

Do you want to get to know yourself? Let’s try something…Introduce yourself to yourself!

Say, “Hi (name)! I would like to introduce you to (name). She is ….. (fill in the blank)”

How did that go? Were you able to fill in the blank? If not, finish reading this blog post and go back to this exercise after doing these exercises several times and see what comes up. Don’t try too hard. Don’t use your head. Instead, use your heart. What is your heart telling you about yourself? Go back to this exercise anytime you want to check on who you are.

Let’s go over 3 easy steps you can take right now to start learning who you are, so you can be true to YOU!

1. Tune in to your feelings, emotions, thoughts, surroundings, life etc. Become self-aware of all these things. What do you feel? What are you thinking? What emotions are inside you? Are you aware of where you are, your surroundings, your heart and soul? 

2. Trust your gut and follow your heart. Think about how you feel inside before you give an answer to someone. What is your gut and your heart telling you to do. The more you sit with these questions, the easier it becomes to be intuitive of your feelings.

3. STOP pleasing others. Please yourself first. This doesn’t make you selfish. It is self-care. If you aren’t happy, how can you make anyone else happy? Have those boundaries and say NO when you feel you want and/or need to. It is difficult to say “No” in the beginning, but it really does get to be easier, makes you feel so much better and, many times is a relief.

There are 3 steps (actually 5), but who’s counting? They sound pretty easy, no? Yes, they do sound easy, maybe not so easy to put into action. It takes a commitment to do this. You have to make the time to do it. But, isn’t it worth it to find you? You only get one chance in life, why not make it the best one ever, doing You, being You? 

Take the time to sit with yourself, starting with just 5 minutes a day for a week. Then add another 5 minutes…keep adding time to just sitting in the quiet and breathing from your heart. Meditation is wonderful. It has taken me years to get to 30 minutes of just sitting and “being,” but I have made such wonderful advances in understanding myself and listening to what my body is telling me. How it feels physically, emotionally, spiritually…. Your’s will too. 

Being true to YOU and finding who you are and what you want in life makes for a happy and healthy life. The more you do things that you love to do the happier and healthier you are going to be. We need to take the time to do these kinds of self-care acts for ourselves. Nobody else can make us happy, but US. This is being true to YOU. 

When you are learning to be true to yourself, you need to get really “REAL” with yourself. Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t use your head to think. Use your heart. It is easy to think something and say, “No, that is how I feel.” But, is it really? I had to sit down and meditate quite a bit the last week because I was going to get an infusion that would help decrease the recurrence of my breast cancer. At first it sounded wonderful. A win-win situation. And, maybe it is for others, but I’m not so sure it is for me. I wasn’t sleeping, I was getting moody and agitated. This is something that I have not been doing since my diagnosis. I have felt wonderful since I found out. I was given a second chance to do things the way I wanted to. Then, I meditated and all this heaviness came up about the infusion. I cancelled my appointment. It wasn’t something I needed to do. It was something that I could do if I wanted. I still may at a later date, if it comes up feeling light for me. But just not right now. Maybe now is not the time for me. I can still get it at a later date. As soon as I cancelled the appointment, the heaviness lifted. 

Now, don’t go cancelling appointments that you need. I am NOT saying that. It is a wonderful thing. It just isn’t for me in this moment. And, it was not something I needed to do. If it was, I would have spent much more time meditating on it and talking with doctors about it. So, please keep what appointments you need to!

I’m just using this as an example. I was true to myself by not doing it. I listened to my body, to myself and stayed true to me. I became aware of the feelings my body was giving me, that heaviness, not sleeping, moodiness and agitation. So, I said NO. I did it to please myself and nobody else. I know it was best for me (not anybody else), and trusted my intuition. That is something I could not and would not have done several or even a couple years ago. It has taken a lot of sitting with myself (and the cancer) and meditating. Doing deep breathing and learning to breathe from my heart. 

So, it may sound easy and it may sound difficult. It is what you make it. At times, it can be difficult to do take these actions, but think of the outcome. It is wonderful. You can introduce yourself to YOU and know who you are! It is a wonderful feeling. 

Go out there and find yourself. Be True To YOU!

I was listening to a podcast and it was about feeling your best. It got me started thinking about what makes people feel their best. It really is different for each person. For some, it may be dressing up in a great outfit that makes them feel best. Others, maybe to get out and get in an awesome workout, maybe for some its about their career and landing a new client…and still others, maybe doing for others, maybe your weight…

What makes You feel your best? Is it things that you do for yourself, for others, or when someone tells you you are at your best? Some people focus on others’ opinions of themselves and forget about what they think about themselves. What I’m getting at is do you rely on others to make you feel good and at your best, or do you rely on yourself, how you feel, how you make yourself feel, things that you do that make you feel great?

What does feeling your best mean to You? What does that look like to You? What does that feel like to You? Do you feel worthy of feeling your best? Again, what does it take for you to feel your best…clothes, being happy, your work, your health, weight, others’ opinions? Ask yourself these questions. If you are not sure, take a 5 minute break and sit down in a quiet place, take a couple deep breaths and place your hand over your heart. Ask your heart these questions, AND…just listen. Don’t get into your head, don’t your mind answer (which is very difficult! I get it!)….just listen to your body. We are all our best until we get our heads into it. Our mind, ego, starts trying to protect us from all past pains, and keeps us away from what we are really feeling. So, again, ask your heart these questions, not your brain. Listen to what it has to tell you. If you quiet enough and just drop down into your heart, you will hear what it has to say to you. Don’t worry if you don’t get any answers the first time. It takes practice to just sit and be, to listen to your heart.

The more you do this, the more you will see that You Are Your Best! You always have been and you always will.

If getting to feel your best needs to be from someone on the outside, maybe it’s time to look inward to find your best self. Again, sitting with yourself and feeling what your heart is telling you, will allow you to find your best self right there, in You! Some people are like this, yet others need “accessories” to make them feel their best. Maybe great outfits, perfect hair, being at their dream body weight, looking their best…having people telling them how great they are in their jobs, as a parent, as a friend, as a whatever and wherever….And, hey, we all like to hear those things, and that’s great. But, is that what you wait for and need to believe you are your best?

Can you see that that stuff doesn’t matter. WE need to feel our best from the inside, knowing that we are Enough, that we are Beautiful, and at the perfect weight, and are an amazing cook, and everything else. Isn’t it more important that you feel your best from the inside out?

Other ways to do this, along with listening to your heart is with, you guessed it, Self-Care. Getting out and being in nature, being mindful of the sun on your face, the feel of the grass on your feet (yes, walk in the grass barefoot), listening to the birds and watching the clouds move by, looking at all the blades of grass showing us that abundance all around us. Tell me that can’t make you feel great from the inside out.

Other ways are doing yoga, meditating, getting enough sleep and eating healthy, along with all the things you do for yourself that make YOU FEEL YOUR BEST…INSIDE OUT!

To be honest, before I got cancer, I pretty much ate anything and everything I wanted. Yes, that did include a whole bag of cheese puffs…my ultimate favorite! If I felt like ice cream or getting French fried mushrooms from Swensons, I did. Luckily, I wasn’t overweight, so I didn’t worry about that, but, I also didn’t overly worry about how bad the food was for me. I felt I had a pretty good family history of basically healthy people. I went in and out of phases of healthy eating.

Then, in January of 2022, I found out I had breast cancer. I went through it well. I did my self-care techniques and learned some new ones. I read books on breast cancer and being healthy to help heal yourself. This included eating clean, exercising, doing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique/Tapping), deep breathing exercises and listening to what my body was telling me, using clean household products and skin care, keeping a healthy mindset, etc. I did this all to the best of my ability.

To the best of my ability…I say this because it seemed like each book said something different. “Don’t eat any dairy, nothing that comes from utters, to … you can eat dairy. Don’t eat peanuts, only almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, to…eat any nuts, they are great for you. So on and so on. Don’t eat sugar! Then, drink plenty of water, but don’t drink out of plastic, especially if the bottle has been out in the sun (because of the BPA). I already knew that one, but what I am getting at, is, it is not that easy to try to live healthy in this unhealthy world. I am not a nutritionist. I am just trying to give you some of the information I have found helped me. I advise you to speak with a licensed nutritionist to find what is right for you. I am trying to show how difficult it is to stay on a healthy, clean diet when you go out. This is just my perspective.

Anyway, I then started to stay away from dairy except for an occasional little bit of organic butter, oat milk creamer (2-3 grams of sugar) instead of my regular non-dairy creamer that had much more sugar. I drink water in a glass or a metal travel mug. However, it is difficult when you go to say, a ballgame or a fair to get water in a glass, or know that it is filtered water. I mean, I get it. People say then don’t go out or just have that as a cheat day. But, I want to go out and still be able to somewhat be healthy.

Being clean is important to me, however, I am not following it near 100%. The 3 things I state in this blog are the ones that I really work on. This is a work in progress, believe me! It is not all that easy, for the reasons stated above. Even just going outside and all you smell is fertilizers. Since my radiation, I cannot handle certain smells very well and mulch and fertilizers are probably the biggest ones I have a problem with, along with bonfire smoke.

So, here is my 3 things I try to do most of the time, even when I go out to try to be somewhat healthy in this non-healthy world:

1. Sugar: Sugar, as we all know, is not good for you. Have you ever looked at how much sugar is in a can of pop? It’s scary! From my readings, and for my cancer, it is okay to have natural sugars. The ones in fruits and vegetables. My take on it is to avoid added sugars as much as you can. Do that for a month and see how much better you feel. This is all from my readings. None of my medical doctors gave me this information. It was what I wanted to do to be proactive for my health.
2. Dairy: This is one that I have found to be pretty inconsistent. It really seemed to depend on which type of cancer you had, if they stated to watch dairy. In one of the books I read, the author who is a doctor stand, don’t drink any milk that comes from an utter! Well, okay then! Oat milk, almond milk, coconut milk and pea milk are not from utters the last I heard. I have not tried pea milk yet to be honest, so I can’t give you any information on that; but, I don’t mind any of the others. I get the vanilla flavored by unsweetened and they’re not bad. I love yogurt, but the Greek ones I love really had too much sugar and dairy, so I found plant-based ones, coconut milk yogurt that are pretty good. My toughest dairy product that I love is cheese. I unfortunately have not found a plant-based cheese yet that I really enjoy. I also haven’t really tried many because the first one had such a strange, plastic texture. But, I’m still working on it. I have not seen menu’s that say plant-based cheese. I may just be looking in the wrong places.
3. White flour: The last on my little list. I never really cared to much or thought too much about white flour until I saw that I should stay away from it. Now, anytime I get pizza, I thoroughly enjoy it and miss white flour! HA! But, I can say, I have gotten store- bought cauliflower crust pizza and from a pizza shop, and have really enjoyed it. Also, there are great whole wheat pastas out there, too.

So, this is my little list of ways to eat a little cleaner, and it’s possible to do out in the real world. However, the water is probably the toughest one for me. As I already stated, go to a fair or ballgame, and all they have are water bottles that have probably been out in the sun, putting all that BPA chemicals in the water. I’m sorry, but no thank you. I want clean, filtered water. Maybe, one day it will be easier to be out in the real world and go places where you have an easier time eating clean and healthy. But, start with these 3 things and you can at least by on your way.