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Latest Posts by sayobeth - Page 3
Treat yourself to a self care day this weekend!💕
[tearing at my hair] no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted
morning and night
I love not having social media (and no tumblr doesn’t count, most people think this website doesn’t exist anymore and I hope it stays that way). Everyone who wishes ill of me for being myself and doing me will have to literally google me and all they’ll find is career achievements, news articles, publications, charity events, galas, and nothing but shining reviews
Should’ve been born a cowboy
The 7 Day #IChooseMe Challenge
The next seven days, choose YOU.
Choose yourself.
Prioritise yourself.
Take care of yourself.
If you’ve been feeling lost lately, or life has been off track - this challenge is great to bring you back on track.
It helps you have some structure in your life, while allowing you to have fun and plenty of spare time.
I am not a therapist or a doctor. Take this advice as you would from a friend.
With this challenge, you’ll feel a little more fulfilled, happier, and you’ll have a set routine.
You only have to accomplish 6 small goals a day for 7 days to finish this challenge.
____________________________________________
The Night Before Day 1
- Get in bed by 11:30 pm, even if you’re not tired.
- Try to finish all your work.
- Set your phone away from you.
____________________________________________
Day 1
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day with a 10 minute stretch. Do this before you eat.
- Read 2 news articles.
- Write down 3 things you’re grateful for today.
- Eat at least 1 fruit of your choice.
____________________________________________
Day 2
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day with a 6 minute, deep breathing meditation. Sit cross legged as you face south east, close your eyes and focus on breathing deeply.
- choose a healthy option for lunch. Salads, soups, healthy wraps, a light rice bowl - eat something with lots of nutrients.
- Compliment someone at work/ school today!
- Clean your room.
____________________________________________
Day 3
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day by telling yourself any 3 affirmations. Look at yourself in the mirror and speak out loud. This could be something like …”Today is going to be a good day. I’m capable of accomplishing and handling everything sent my way. I am a positive, healthy person and I genuinely love the person I am, or I am becoming.”
- Drink 2 litres of water today. Add a piece of lemon or mint if that helps!
- Read 5 pages of any book of your choice. If you don’t like reading, then listen to this podcast (start at 1 minute to skip the intro)
- write down a list of qualities you think you need to work on. It could be things like being on time, working on your anger, etc.
____________________________________________
Day 4
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day with a lymphatic drainage massage! This is a 10 minute video.
- Write down 3 things you’re grateful for today.
- Do a 20 minute workout.
- Change your bedsheets and covers. If you have some lavender mist lying around, spray it under your pillow for a good night’s rest.
_______________________________
Day 5
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day with a 6 minute, deep breathing meditation. Sit cross legged as you face south east, close your eyes and focus on breathing deeply.
- Eat a fruit of your choice.
- Read 2 news articles.
- Drink 2 litres of water today. Add a piece of lemon or mint if that helps!
____________________________________________
Day 6
- wake up at 7 am or 2.5 hours before work/ school.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Start your day with a 10 minute stretch. Do this before you eat.
- Write down 3 things you’re grateful for.
- Tell yourself any 3 affirmations. Look at yourself in the mirror and speak out loud. This could be something like …”today is going to be a good day. I’m capable of accomplishing and handling everything sent my way. I am a positive, healthy person and I genuinely love the person I am, or I am becoming.”
- Call up your mum, family member, friends and have a chat with them. Find out how they’re doing.
____________________________________________
Day 7
- Sleep in till 9 am today if you like! But if you have work or school, get up at 7 am / 2.5 hours before you have to go.
- Make a to-do list for the day. Groceries, laundry, assignments due, appointments - make it a habit to note it down around 20 minutes after you wake up.
- Put on a face mask of your choice.
- Eat a healthy, filling breakfast. If you can’t eat in the mornings, then have a glass or two of water.
- If you can step outside, go for a 30 minute walk. If you’re unable to, then do some stretching at home.
- Write down how you felt this whole week. Did you feel better? Was there some structure in your life?
Green girl Christmas💚
christmas eve
The Conditions of Change
When adults seek change, they often focus on the intended result while hurrying through the practice. However, growth requires a bit more than 'just trying something out'. Here are some tips to help bring change upon your life, good luck!
Consistency
Real change, especially as an adult, requires many, many repetitions of a behavior or movement or position. 'Trying hard' is usually counterproductive as it tenses the muscles and the emotions. It is necessary to let the exercise or method work without undue ego participation over time. The practice has to become, for a time, 'just what one does.'
Willingness
The practices that change long standing blocks will usually seem, when presented to an adult learner, to be too subtle, too corny, not relevant, and mostly downright wrong. One must be willing to really try something different if one is at the point where one's own ideas have failed. Of course, discernment cannot be completely disposed of, but if a learner wants what another person has, they must be willing to do what that person did, however unnecessary or stupid it seems.
Sustainability
So often adult learners hurl themselves into an activity, and neglect other aspects of their lives. Soon they end up dropping the practice and rarely get back to it. A good practice must be one that can be 'what one does' for a good while. Immersion approaches exist, for example a 30 day retreat, but then carryover to one's regular life becomes the issue.
First Things First (Urgent Things Second)
In our over-busy, over-booked lives, if we wait for a 'free moment' to practice something, it invariably never arrives. To have consistency with a new practice it is necessary to make it a priority and see that it gets done first, leaving less important things, even if more urgent, to 'scroll off the screen'
The Plateau is Where the Work Starts
All people have latent abilities that come online easily and quickly when they start a practice (often called newbie or 'noob' gains). But once the latent abilities are developed and the participant is working to develop brand new capacities, the going is much much slower. This is where the large majority quit, discouraged, but this is where the work really is beginning.
Anticipate Anxiety
Real change even in small amounts will cause anxiety, which can be insidious and hard to attribute to the new practice. In an uncanny way, impulses to start something incompatible with the new practice, or new worries, confusion, or minor injuries will threaten to derail the change process. Barring gross demonstrable harm, the need is to 'stay the course!'
Don't Look to Validation or Approval
If another person is the reason to do something, in a moment they can become the reason not to. When a practice is undertaken to please someone (and yes this can be unconscious or semi-conscious) there are two big barriers: 1) effort gets substituted for the fruits of the practice, and the practice gets or stays sloppy because even sloppy practice shows effort, and 2) the instinct for autonomy (buried itself in some measure in the unconscious) will cause resistance
Frequent self-measurement is unhelpful
When one has undergone real change others will point it out, don't worry. Trying to get one's inner judge to validate oneself takes attention off the practice, apart from any concern that self-measurement will not be accurate.
The Placebo Effect is Not the Effect
Whenever one takes on a new promising practice there is going to be an immediate sense of elation. There is nothing wrong with enjoying this, but know that 1) it wears out in two to six weeks, 2) the real beneficial effect of the practice will be much more subtle at first then this elation, and take months or years to manifest. Many believe that when the elation stops, it means the practice has stopped working.
Understand the Difference Between Almost Nothing Happening and Actually Nothing Happening
When a ten-year-old wakes up in the morning no one notices a change in size from the night before, but actually there is, and over the course of years, that becomes very apparent. Real growth is like that, in that, almost nothing is happening. But with any practice, participants may worry that they are following a dead end. While some discernment and critical thinking may be needed in selecting a practice, once started attention should be focused on the actually practice, with some faith that results will come.
Work With Others
When working alone, long-standing defensive patterns can undermine the intended practice or even turn it into its opposite. Not that any growth practice is like an Olympic sport calling for perfect performance--one is simply seeking to stay in the 'stretch zone' or 'edge'. Other people, either peers or coaches can help with that by supplying explicit or implicit feedback. Not because they are know everything, but because they have gone or are going down the same path, and are more objective about you ('a different set of eyes').
Find Where You Are and Work From There
Don't try to work from where you want to be, that will be slower not quicker. This is about acceptance, a prerequisite for change
The Tightrope is an Illusion
When in new experiential territory, it can seem that the practice being encouraged will either quickly fall into a pitfall at one end, or into the opposite pitfall. There is no happy middle envisionable. This is just a lack of experience. For an experienced aerialist, the rope has come to appear like a sidewalk.
Don't Get Stuck in Inspiration
Inspiration, such as from most self-improvement materials and forums provides temporary elation by itself and therefore can become a habit. But nothing changes from inspiration. Slightly more important is turning inspiration into intention, definitely more important is turning intention into action, and absolutely more important is turning action into consistency.
There is No Such Thing as 'Ready'
Change is made by starting to work where you are with the tools at hand. In time, other tools will come to hand. The feeling of 'ready' does happen in life, but it has to do with situations already mastered. Also where aggression, anger, or desire is mobilized, the feeling of ready is not relevant.
Change is More About Unlearning than Learning
Here is what often happens: a man or woman wants to change a pattern so they focus directly on it and have initial success doing something different. Then they focus on other things, thinking the change is in the bag. The unwanted pattern comes back! The learner despairs that they cannot learn. Actually, the unwanted pattern was never gone (yet) it was just suppressed. It takes a longish trail of resuppression and practicing new habits until new practices become dominant.
Don't Make Effort the Focus
Many adolescent and adult learners have grown up in invalidating, emotionally treacherous environments where they could never be sure that their choices and criticisms wouldn't be attacked. This can lead to a over-emphasis of effort as a universally defensible good--remember the saying "You can't blame a guy for trying." But effort, increases arousal and tightens muscles, and strongly undermines some areas of change like breathing, relaxation, meditation, flexibility, and social skills. Of course with 'zero effort' nothing will change but effort should not be the focus.
Make Distractions and Irritants Part of the Practice
Everyone has had an experience of finding a quiet place, preparing to meditate or stretch, and BAM!, a loud sound like a leaf lower erupts. Or for nice guys they might have guilt at doing something 'selfish'. There is a temptation to wait to a better time, which often becomes never. Our ego fears we will do something badly! But the truth is, anything that cultivates growth will be done, at best, badly (really just imperfectly). Doing something even less perfectly is just as good, or greater an opportunity for self awareness as doing something just imperfectly. Awareness, attention, and mindfulness is increased.
The Rubber Band Effect
When we push against a homeostatic system, even one with a unhappy 'set-point', the system pushes back. To succeed, of course consistency and perseverance is necessary, but on occasion, several interventions need to be brought to bear simultaneously to reach a threshhold where the homeostatic set point is 'flipped', or reset.
Green girl life!!
Healthy Eating 🥑
daily reminder that a woman's place is in:
the lab
space
engineering
academics
leadership
EVERYWHERE
I can feel myself changing. I see the difference in my behavior, my attitude, my thoughts, the new boundaries I’ve established. The groundwork has been laid. Let the transformation resume. I am ready for all that is coming to me.
Visions from my Pinterest feed: Grey + STEM Academia Edition.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4
You owe it to yourself to be consistent.
You owe it to yourself to be disciplined.
You owe it to yourself to stay focused.
If I was a cowboy I’d be the Queen
It’s still in the 80s where I live but I hope it’s nice and chill for everyone else
Staying on top with fitness
Happy Sunday
join me in an sunday reset! let’s get our lives back on track! 🌷
space 🕯
put on a playlist that motivates you!
clear your floor of all clutter and mess
clear off all the surfaces of things that don’t belong there (desk, dresser, nightstand countertops, etc) and give them a good dusting and wipe down
catch up on laundry and fold it all immediately!
change your sheets and make your bed
vacuum and sweep
clean your bathroom really well! don’t forget to mop
remove all the out of date food from your fridge and pantry
do your dishes and clean your sink
reorganize things that tend to get messy during the week - make your space work for you! 💕
body 🌱
put on a cute set and do some movement! a whole work out, a hot girl walk, a dance party, some light yoga from bed - whatever works best for you and your body <3
drink a ton of water! hydrated girlies are happy girlies
have a nourishing meal with loads of fruits, veggies, and protein
get some sunlight
take an everything shower - shave and exfoliate, and don’t forget to moisturize!
do a hair mask
do your full skincare routine and a gentle face mask
do your nails or go get them done
mind ☁️
put your phone away and have some quiet time - maybe read a book, doodle, or meditate! just give your brain a rest from the noisy workweek
journal
set some goals for the upcoming week and think about how you can actually achieve them
organize all your assignments / tasks for the week in a planner - everything will seem less overwhelming when you write it all down!
spend some time with friends or family
do something you love to do!
and finally, go to bed early tonight! you got this, angel! ✨🌸
Half of me wants to become a corporate baddie who claws my way to the top and creates incredibly insightful pieces of work and becomes renown in her industry as a trailblazer and an intellectual,
and the other half of me just wants to be a beautiful wife decked in Lululemon and designer goods, driving my Lexus to Pilates class, drinking green juices, taking tennis lessons, getting hydrafacials, and being an active community member in charity events and private school events for my future kids.
trying to live mindfully
whites
