Finding out your core values

Finding out your core values

To have a life balance, you should first know your core values. This is the first message I give in my coaching sessions about life balance. I am always happy to help my clients find their core values.

What are core values?

Values, simply explain as the foundation of your life. They serve as your compass for deciding the most important things in life.

Examples of values:

  • Loyalty
  • Spirituality
  • Humility
  • Compassion
  • Honesty
  • Kindness
  • Integrity
  • Selflessness

Many of us never had the chance to reflect on our core values. We need to understand that values ​​are essential to our day-to-day living.

  1. Personal values ​​set up your priorities in life. When you know your priorities, you will properly manage your life and what is really important for you – profession, family, love, or money.

  2. Personal values ​​help you attract friends with the same interests as you. When you identify your values, you join a group that shares the same values.

  3. Personal values ​​define your relationship values ​​too – How your relationship should be with others, especially in romantic relationships.

  4. Personal values ​​help others understand you and avoid misunderstandings with you. They will know exactly what to speak about and whatnot.

  5. Personal values ​​will help you find the city you will live in and how you will get to that place. 

  6. Personal values ​​will guide you in dealing with other people, especially those who have different values ​​than you.

  7. Personal values ​​help you know your vision and where you want to go – your goals and your limitations.

Book A Free Coaching Call

Finding your personal values

Did you ever think about what is really important for you in life, which parts of life are your priorities?

Get some papers and a pen and start with:

Step 1: Ask yourself what do you consider most important in your life. To help you answer this, try closing your eyes and think about how you would like others to think of you and what your life should actually stand for.

Step 2: Think about the things you like and the things which give you energy and power. Ask yourself, what really inspires you?

Step 3: Ask yourself, what do you really want to do in life? What makes you happy?

After noting down your answers to the questions, underline the main words and nouns that resonate with you. Make a list of the words you have identified. This is a great way to have a visual view of your values and have it in front of you.

The next step is to align your values with your goals.

Book A Free Coaching Call

Why should you Ground Yourself regularly

To be grounded gives your energy, a point of steadiness, and you will feel clear, centered, strong and focused.

On the other hand, you may lack focus or be easily distracted, you feel spacey/scattered/anxious and be easily affected by what’s going on around you (especially with other people’s energy or mood).

I have learned the power of grounding techniques and how it can divert your mind to be present and have focus.

Grounding techniques are great tools to break out if you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed.

Grounding refers to the ability to return to the present moment with sustained attention.

Sometimes we need to break up the negative thoughts and make sure that we quit the circles of ideas which are flying through our minds. We need to keep the past where it is and live at the present. It is also important that we do not overthink about what is to come. The past is gone and the future is yet to come. The past will cause us depression while the future triggers anxiety.

Truthfully, the present can determine our path in the future that is why we need to live in it. Live in the now!

However, the most recent scientific research has explored grounding for inflammation, cardiovascular disease, muscle damage, chronic pain, and mood. The studies found out that grounding affects the living matrix, which is the central connector between living cells. Electrical conductivity exists within the matrix that functions as an immune system defense, similar to antioxidants .

Scientists believe that through grounding, the natural defenses of the body can be restored.

Book A Free Coaching Call
Why grounding?
Despite its lack of evidence, many people have reported improvement for conditions such as:
 
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Chronic pain
  • Anxiety and depression
  • Sleep disorders
  • Cardiovascular disease
How to practice grounding?

Grounding can be performed both outdoors and indoors, depending on the technique you choose to use.

What are types of grounding?

There are many types of grounding. All of them focus on reconnecting yourself to the earth and to the present moment. This can be done through either direct or indirect contact with the earth.

Grounding techniques to try:
1. Inside Grounding

When you’re inside, grounding yourself requires a bit more effort and in most cases, equipment.

  • Use a grounding sheet or socks while you sleep.
  • Use a grounding mat in your home office chair. This equipment has been thought to help ground you throughout the day.

Start with some deep breathing before looking around the room you’re in. Use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. This can be done aloud or silently, depending on your situation.

  • Describe 5 things you see in the room
  • Name 4 things you can feel or touch
  • List 3 things you hear
  • Name 2 things you smell
  • Think of 1 thing that you would like to change in that place.

Outside Grounding
Walk barefoot. Have you ever been outside on a warm summer day and felt the urge to run barefoot in the grass? One of the easiest ways to ground yourself to the earth is to walk barefoot. Whether this is on grass, sand, or even mud, allowing your skin to touch the natural ground can provide you with grounding energy.
Lying on the ground: You can increase your skin-to-earth contact by lying on the ground. You can do it in the grass by the park or on the sand at the beach. If you’re going to ground yourself in this way, be sure to take the proper precautions and never lie somewhere you could be injured.

2. Outside Grounding
  • Walk barefoot. Have you ever been outside on a warm summer day and felt the urge to run barefoot in the grass? One of the easiest ways to ground yourself to the earth is to walk barefoot. Whether this is on grass, sand, or even mud, allowing your skin to touch the natural ground can provide you with grounding energy.

  • Lying on the ground: You can increase your skin-to-earth contact by lying on the ground. You can do it in the grass by the park or on the sand at the beach. If you’re going to ground yourself in this way, be sure to take the proper precautions and never lie somewhere you could be injured.

One way to be in sync with nature is through grounding. Grounding can not only benefit in restoring our immune system but also restore sound mind, at least with my experience.

Book A Free Coaching Call

Say goodbye to tranquilizers with only 2 methods

People are overthinking about their past and the consequences that come with it; how it can affect their future and other things that could happen.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) said that you can achieve the greatest effect with just a small amount of effort. That 80% of the result is already achieved with 20% effort. For the remaining 20% success one wastes mostly unnecessary energy. If we lower our own expectations, put aside excessive perfectionism and give our best – as good as it is possible – there is also energy left for ourselves.

No one expects us to do everything perfectly.

Stress comes when we think that we are losing control and we let the external world affect our internal world.

Stress causes a lot of serious diseases like heart problems and blood clots, but also psychological diseases like burn-out or depression.

Life can be overwhelming at times which results in stress. It could be something happening in the office, or the needy children, or a disorganized household, or the lack of leisure activities.

What sounds like normal everyday life is for most primarily one thing – pure stress. But it’s not just packed days, but also the fast pace of our times with the expectation of constant accessibility that are partly responsible for the fact that many people are under a great deal of stress every day. Time and again, studies show that stress-related illnesses have been on the rise in recent years.

We often don’t even realize how stressed we are until it’s almost too late. The more we accumulate in our daily to-dos, the more our internal pressure increases.

Often, we only notice how stressed we really are in the quiet moments. Instead of relaxing, we continue to work and postpone the break. But it is precisely short breaks that are so important. Help to reduce stress immediately with proven and tested psychological methods.

Book A Free Coaching Call

So what to do when everything is just too much? These 2 psychological methods will help you cope with stress.

Method 1: First take a deep breath with the 4-7-11 method.
  1. Leave everything behind. Put down the pen and pause for a moment. With the 4-7-11 method, we get ourselves out of the circles of thoughts.
  2. Breathe deeply into the belly while counting to four. Then exhale for seven seconds.
  3. Repeat the whole thing eleven times. Numerous studies prove the effect of conscious breathing as a relaxation technique. Under stress, we breathe far too shallowly.
  4. Deep breathing, on the other hand, resupplies the body with sufficient oxygen and lowers blood pressure. Counting at the same time creates new focus and interrupts stressful thoughts.
Method 2: Feel your body and breath

Usually we breathe completely unconsciously. Relaxation techniques direct our attention to breathing to ease the way out of stress and tension. Breathing is one of our basic rhythms, a rhythm that we can consciously influence.

Here are relaxation exercises:
  • Sit or stand upright and place both hands on the tips of your lungs. Consciously breathe in and out into this area. Feel how the chest rises and falls.
  • Place your hands on the lower ribs and feel how the ribs expand and close again in your breathing rhythm.
  • Place your hands on the lower abdomen, the fingers below the navel, the thumbs above and feel the breathing movement here.
  • Put the backs of your hands on your back as high as possible and feel the expansion of the breathing space in this area.
  • Put your hands on the kidney area, feel the breathing space here.
  • Put your hands on your sacrum, feeling the small movements that your breath is in this area triggers.
    Put your hands on the lower costal arch again and feel from here all of your breathing
Book A Free Coaching Call

5 Facts About Effective and NonViolent Communication

The pandemic doesn’t want to end. We are getting stressed and the rhythm of our lives have significantly changed – getting louder and quicker by the minute. In the middle of a working day, we sometimes forget to be empathic and forget how to effectively communicate without hurting anyone. We should know how to effectively communicate with our family, friends, and colleagues in a nonviolent way.

An essential part of resiliency is how we communicate and build our network. To communicate efficiently, we need to know that communication is a two-way road and not one. We need to send and receive.

There are rules to follow when we send. Some sensitive issues are unmentioned because of the fear that it might get us in trouble. Marshall Rosenberg inspired me with defined points that will help us have smooth, effective, and non-violent communication.

  1. Stop playing the right game. This is tricky. Being wrong often leads to punishment. Punishing someone by mistakes leads to shame and denies a person the chance for his needs to be met. Describing your situation rather than defending yourself provides better understanding for both the sender and the receiver, making the atmosphere lighter.
  2. Don’t use dialect tackle language. Don’t label people, as to who is who, and what is what. Based on what is right and wrong, judgments label dialects.
  3. Official Language, that means you have to do something because someone told you to do it. You have to acknowledge that everyone has a choice. It’s very stupid of us if we will always force things on people. if you really think that you have to do something, then it is a must, and to be obligated to do something is not good.
  4. The best way to communicate something to someone is through the OFNR way. It’s called the giraffe language; let’s speak giraffe language its 4 steps: OFNR
Observation

No interpretation, you just describe what it was – observation without you – I noticed that you did that and didn’t.

  • Making an observation is better than judgment. You can say, “the last time you gave me a gift was one year ago,” rather than saying “you never got me presents.”
  • Examples of judgment:
    a) “You were saying mean things.”
    b) “You were trying to make me feel guilty.”
    c) “You are lazy.”
    d) “You are too late again.”
  • Examples of observation:
    a) Say, “I don’t like what you’re saying.”
    b) Say, “You are my partner, and we are supposed to support each other more.”
    c) Say: “You order food every day, and you said that we have to hire a cleaner cause I don’t want to clean.”
    d) Say “Our appointment should have been at 8 and it’s already 8:30.”
Feeling :

Then feeling and how you feel.

  • I feel hurt is a description. As if or like, I feel ignored is a description of a thought.
Need:

Need is also very important. What is my need? What is your need?

Sharing my Requests like “How does that sound to you?” or action requests like, “Can we do this and that in our meeting tomorrow?”

Book A Free Coaching Call
For example:

I am so sad that my friend has not answered his phone for 10 days and never called back. So what I did was the next time he called me, I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t sick or didn’t have any emergency.

This is what I told him,

  • Observation – “I have reached out to you many times in the past weeks but you don’t pick up the phone.
  • Feeling – I feel very ignored.
  • Need – It would be great to connect more with you since we have been friends for a long time.
  • Request – Please at least let me know when you’re busy as this is very important for me. You can send me an SMS or call me back when you’re available.
  1. Positive judgments and compliments are not always good.

Regular compliments are not always good, including saying:

  • You are smart
  • You are the best boss
  • You are beautiful

Some people are pressured to keep their image based on the compliments they are given and this can affect the development of their true self-identity.

Instead, say it in a NonViolent Communication (NVC) way.

    1. Be specific about what was exactly done for this, and not just general.
    2. Share the feeling you have about it.
    3. Share your needs and why it’s important for you that he or she is like that.
    4. You can then see how they receive appreciation.
Book A Free Coaching Call