A UCA Member’s Personal Well-Being Journey

Well-Being

“Successful people are just those with successful habits.” — Bryan Tracy

Well-Being

Ever so often we are told wonderful accounts of our member’s stories. We shared some in Unified Caring Association members shared their reviews of our benefits. Since then we have had another of these stories shared with us. This UCA member who used the Personal Well-Being Survey self assessment. Excited, they gave a recount of their journey to a healthier life-style and better well-being. We want to continue to celebrate this good news with the rest of our caring community.

“As a member of UCA I have taken advantage of the HeartMath Personal Well-Being Survey.  At the end of April of this year, I took the Personal Well-Being Survey and the results were quite frankly miserable and frightful. I scored [an] unwelcoming score of 19!  Nineteen?!? I knew if I didn’t make changes in my life right then, I was headed down an anxious and exhausting road.

I decided to get together with one of my peers, who was familiar with this survey, and ask for guidance on how to make the adequate changes in my life, to help MYSELF.  I have a hard time with stress management (first test scored 9) and emotional vitality (first test scored 19). I knew that if I didn’t hurry up and make changes in my life, I was on the path to unhappiness and a life full of stress.  After talking with my peer, I started breathing exercises. How this has worked drastically in my life! I faithfully did my breathing exercise for 2 weeks, then it became 4 weeks, and now it’s a daily routine of mine. I’ve also implemented other techniques for myself.  Morning affirmations, saying out loud what I’m grateful for, saying out loud what I can work on to make me better than I was yesterday. And let me tell you, these exercises have helped me in more ways than one.

I recently took the Personal Well-Being Survey, almost 2 months after my first survey and the results were so eye opening!  I scored a total well-being of 86! Eighty-six!!!! WOW!!! I was blown away; my stress management was scored at 87 and my emotional vitality scored at 82!  This test has opened my eyes, to the changes that I have made, I must continue doing! I’m so grateful that UCA has this available to me as a member and all other members.  I will continue to make my changes and keep using the resources that UCA has to offer to better myself.

THANK YOU UCA”

We are so glad that this member has had so much progress in their personal well-being score, and for all of the tools that they continue to use! Thank you for sharing your journey with us all. 

Would you like to read more about Unified Caring Association? Read our other blogs on caring such as 5 Tips That Help Better Our Lives, member benefits like UCA & Scholarships, and caring the UCA way (Invest in Others to Make a Caring Impact). We love sharing  with our caring community and are excited to continue to do so! 

5 Tips That Help Better Our Lives.

If we search the internet, magazines, and television shows we often find the theme to be how to improve aspects of ourselves and our lives, a.k.a. tips for better health. It is safe to say, we often search for answers and ways to improve our lives. Not just the lives of those we know and love, but our own lives too. Below we have a handful of answers to help with our continued practices.

1.) Practice Mindfulness- Unified Caring Association’s recent blogs on mindfulness and meditation are a great resource on this. When we quiet our thoughts, we allow our minds the freedom to be creative, solve problems, and heal.

2.) Be Positive- Positivity is self-generating. We hear and experience kind acts and how they are passed along, like holding the door open for someone who in turn picks up another person’s wallet that has dropped. Think about the 2002 movie Pay It Forward, and how one kind act generated a large movement that expanded beyond the initial town.

3.) Be Kind- Kindness is often linked with positivity, and is self-generating as well. However, being kind allows for the opportunity to receive positivity. Also, being kind applies to yourself as well.  We can be hard on ourselves and kindness allows for the space, love, and patience we often overlook. If you are looking for a simple way to promote kindness in your day, check out UCA’s Caring Challenge for daily caring and kind acts.

4.) Show Gratitude- Gratitude can be shown in so many ways. We recently uploaded a blog about sharing gratitude through the gift of time and saying thank you. But there are many other ways that we can show gratitude to become better at it. One way can be by bringing a treat for your team such as cookies, fruits, etc. Another way to start recognising and brainstorming ways to show gratitude is writing down 3-5 things we are grateful for each day as a review for that day. The more consistent we are when doing this, the better we become at recognising and showing our gratitude.

5.)Smile- The most simple and tangible way to better our lives is to smile more. Smiling not only uses less muscles in our faces, it often subconsciously makes us happier. If we try to incorporate smiling in our days we will feel better and doing the four other suggestions above becomes more natural.

These five options are a great way to begin reviewing and practicing ways to better our health and lives. Once we incorporate these tips, we begin to experience the freedom of a more successful and stress-free lifestyle. We become more creative and experience more happiness in the moments we come across each and every day.

Would you like to read more about gratitude, mindfulness, how to promote better health, and Unified Caring Association? Read our other blogs and visit us at our Unified Caring Association website to learn more about caring and caring acts. We are happy you are here, and to share our experiences with you. Thank you from the Unified Caring Association Team!

Unified Caring Association- Pinterest Thankful oday to promote better health!

How to Improve the World By CARING

Improve the world by caring!

At Unified Caring Association we value caring acts that help improve the world, but what does the word CARING mean? We find that everyone has a slightly different definition of this word. We took the time to consolidate some of the answers we have heard and have them listed below that helps us convey how there can be more caring in the world.

C: Communication – in relationships, parenting, workplace, community

A: Actions – caring is a verb – action spreads caring in the world, like UCA’s caring challenge, caring family activities, care for planet, care for each other and self-care.

R: Respect – our planet, air, trees, water, animals and other’s life stories

I: Integrity – shared stories of caring heroes, truth and being authentic with our word

N: Nurturing – how to nurture the growth of caring in the world – caring encouragement and inspiration

G: Giving – tips on how to provide love, empathy, emotional support and caring to the world

There are so many other ways that we have heard to share caring in the world. It is our belief that the more caring there is in the world, the better place it will be for us all. And we need to spread caring more than ever! We love sharing the caring in our blogs like, It All Starts With Self-Care and Caring Challenge Recap. Or get a daily dose of caring on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and/or Tumblr.

Our intentions shape our reality. When we hold the intention of caring in our hearts we propel our lives away from apathy and toward caring connections. What we think, anticipate, hope or fear about an experience can feed it’s outcome. Tempering our attachment to a certain outcome and mindfully processing any concerns can open our minds and widen our range of experience and possibility. We infuse our energy into every outcome that we imagine, imprinting our energy into the experience. If we wish to experience greater happiness, we must infuse with caring!

It All Starts With Self-Care.

One of the first things we can do to care for others is to care for ourselves. It is really difficult to be of service to others if you are not caring for yourself. This feeling is like standing up with one leg buckling beneath you. Self-care is a pillar we can build upon, and Unified Caring Association has many tools to promote and aid in self-care health.

The UCA website has a section under Member Benefits that has resources for self-care. There is a wonderfully easy and insightful self-assessment tool we created to help you learn where you are strong and where you might need to improve to be healthier and happier. There is also access to the Personal Well Being Survey™ designed by the HeartMath Institute. This survey gives you an idea of your stress management techniques and general level of your well-being at the current moment. Once you have an idea of where you are now, it is easier to decide on tools for where you would like to be heading next.

Our Unified Caring Association website provides links to resources that provide fitness and nutrition tools for our members to enjoy. (Keep an eye open for those membership discounts on these types of products!). Another part of self-care is the the health of your mind. Unified Caring Association has a portion of it’s self-care resource section dedicated to many kinds of meditation and mindfulness activities. These tools help you relax and feel rejuvenated, find inner peace, and support your inner healing. All of these can help inspire and spur you on with your new healthier lifestyle choices and much more! Wheew, so many resources to help you take care of yourself!

Earlier we mentioned it is important to take care of yourself so you can take care of others as well. So why is this so important? “Self-care means paying attention to and supporting one’s own physical and mental health … But, it’s also one of the first things to fall by the wayside in times of stress, especially for those who are primary caregivers.”

(https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/self-care-4-ways-nourish-body-soul-2017111612736) Self-care is important so that you can continue to be effective and energetic in all aspects of your lives, including taking care of your self-esteem, self-efficacy, maintaining and building relationships with friends and family, and so much more.

Once you have taken steps to care for yourself, caring for others becomes easier and more sustainable because you have more band-width, energy, and fortitude to care for others. We love to see people diving into self-care, because it means that there are  more caring acts happening in the world. We can all agree that more caring and positivity in the world is a great thing!

Want to read up on more ideas to promote caring acts? Check out our Caring Challenge Recap and check out our other blogs like Caring Through the Gift of Time.

Caring Through the Gift of Time

Caring

What is one of the purest caring acts a person can give? Is it a job where you get money? A trip around the world? Or is it a piece of jewelry, costing a lot of money? It’s hard to say, because every person is different and perceives acts of kindness a little bit differently. But when breaking down any example of what a person has done that is an act of caring we can follow the metaphorical bread crumb trail to arrive at the core. The gift given was the gift of time. Many people today are on the go, moving from one place to the other. Their faces in smartphones with eyes scanning the pages fluttering by with the flick of a fingertip.  It has become more rare to pause and take a moment to share our gratitude with others.

In an article written by Harvey B. Simon, M.D. and published by Harvard Health Publishing, there is a great description of what the word gratitude means. “The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier) We heard a great memory one time. Growing up, they were always reminded that if a person gives you five minutes or more of their time, thank them. This can be done verbally on the phone, by email, or even through “snail mail” as a written letter. (Bonus points if it is written legibly by hand). This personal touch and the gift of your time to those that have spent precious moments connecting with you goes a long way.

Acts of gratitude have been shown to have many benefits including improving your health. One such example of this is talked about in an article titled How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain, written by Joel Wong and Joshua Brown for Greater Good Magazine, Science-Based Insights for Meaningful Life. It is here that we see a study on sharing gratitude through writing letters. What was found was that “…when [they] compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding suggests that practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time.” (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain)

One other note about sharing your gratitude is it is self-perpetuating and a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have spent many hours observing how others and myself are affected by the simple genuine thank you. Often there is a smile and a warming of the eyes that accompanies a thank you in return. Think about the last time you were thanked. How did that made you feel. We bet you are smiling now as you replay that memory.

Unified Caring Association has a history of promoting acts of kindness in their CARE program that helps others share their thanks and gratitude for others. One of these was in response to a natural disaster in California, where many upon many lost their homes and possessions. UCA helped with gathering of donations for the people and their families that were affected. (UCA members can read the full article HERE.) There are so many other articles like this on the UCA’s website. If you want to read more about UCA’s caring acts, there is a snapshot in Caring Actions! Also, UCA has a Caring Challenge where each day has a prompt for a caring act such as thanking someone!

How do we summarize all of this information about gratitude and taking the time to share it? By simply taking that small but important moment to say thank you. Thank you for your time, your attention, and your kindness. Your time is precious, and it is honored with gratitude.

Love our blogs and want to read more? Unified Caring Association has other caring blogs that inspire us all such as Unified Caring Association – Your Life is What We Care About!

Unified Caring Association – Moving Caring Forward

Often shortened to UCA, Unified Caring Association is a care promoting network and resource hub. This hub is filled with resources for others and yourself in the same place. It was founded in 1987 and renamed in 2012, and with 150,000+ members and growing, there is a lot to draw from in this association. As a member of UCA you can find products and services for growth that make your life easier and more fulfilling personally, with others, at work, etc.

The first thing you notice amongst the blues and oranges painting the page when visiting the UCA website is the UCA logo. A cheerful yellow sun in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Next to the logo is the best summary of what UCA is here for. “Moving Caring Forward.” Awesome! Once a member of UCA, you can find offers that include:

-multitude of benefit options for health, self-care, family, and community

-virtual volunteer network

-caring news and inspirational writings

online shop filled with goodies, and more!

All of these options link back to the core value of CARING. Because being a part of UCA is joining a caring community that shares tools, ideas, and resources.

When a member joins they become a part of the UCA C.A.R.E. program. This is a special C.A.R.E. project team that focuses on providing caring support to benefit individuals who are not able to speak for themselves. These C.A.R.E. partner projects assist non-profits to create meaningful change in the world by focusing on creating improvement through caring in the areas. These caring areas are: Children, Animals, Reforestation and the Elderly.

Unified Caring Association

What is super fantastic is that there is a way to get a daily dose of care through: Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn! The images and quotes posted are cheerful, uplifting and just the right pick-me-up at any moment in your day! Join UCA and follow UCA on social media to feel and share the care!

UCA MEMBERS: PLEASE LOGIN AT UNIFIEDCARING.ORG TO ACCESS ALL YOUR BENEFITS.

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑