Tag: Self-care

The Caring Movement has the Spotlight!

The Caring Movement spotlight

Thanks to a recent article from an interview with Unified Caring Association President Lane Michel, in the series “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” (published in Authority Magazine and on Thrive Global), the Caring Movement has the spotlight!  The Caring Movement is truly a work that needs to be allowed to “unfold,” with active participation from those people ready, willing and able to make a difference.  

“Unified Caring is one of those big ideas having a huge impact on many thousands of lives…People are invited join the UCA membership community that helps them impart self-care and in turn give care to others. Together, we work to address urgent unmet needs for greater caring. UCA has a special knack for caring for the innocent beings needing so much more from us all: children, the elderly and animals.”

Lane Michel, UCA President

You are Invited to Care!

In true UCA form, the invitation above is a reminder for us to really think about what the Caring Movement is all about.  It all comes down to asking

  • what is in your heart,
  • how you want to give back, and
  • how you can get outside of yourself to bring joy to others. 

At its core, the caring movement is about being actively engaged in building caring communities that truly make a difference.  In the long run, the UCA believes that we can be happier and healthier when we are connected to and serving others. Truly, becoming the humble custodian of such a movement gives grace to all of our lives.

Self-Care is Critical

At UCA we understand that caring for others and being of service also requires a level of self-awareness and care towards oneself.  That is why we are a community where members are encouraged to practice self-care in order to become a stronger player in the art of caring for others.  Members have a variety of self-care benefits they can choose from to begin a self-care journey.  A great example is the Self-Assessment Tools developed for UCA members. Members in crisis can get quick help through their free 24/7 certified counselors hotline. And when they find they are ready to get out and have some fun being of service, our Volunteer Network is an exciting and easy place to get their caring feet wet! 

More on the Caring Movement

To learn more about UCA’s Caring Movement, we invite you to now watch our YouTube videos.

From here to there, and everywhere in between, being a Custodian of the Caring Movement is just the beginning of a life-long journey of fulfillment.  Hope to see you there!

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center, Virtual Volunteering, radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Highlighting UCA’s Self-Assessment Benefit

Self-Care sign

It’s been an exciting year so far for Unified Caring Association (UCA) members.  Now that Spring is here, we are in full swing with major new benefits!  If you are checking your inbox, you may have gotten the news that UCA has partnered with the adventurous organization of “Dear God, Are We There Yet” to bring global virtual volunteer opportunities to our members.  Additionally, we rolled out the exciting new benefit of Pet Wellness and Insurance Plans through Wagmo!  You can read more about that in the article 3 Reasons Why Pet Wellness Plans are Important.

Yes, that’s right, UCA is here to support you in caring for others, including your furry friends!  But we don’t stop there.

We know how hard it can be to put forth your best effort to support the people, causes, and pets that make up your community of caring.  That’s why we specialize in helping you care for yourself too.  Have you ever heard the saying, “You can’t give from an empty cup”?  Well, there is merit to that statement, and we’ve got you covered. 

You may be wondering if you are “good” at self-care. And, that is a great place to start. Why not take your self-care assessment to kick off your journey of filling your cup?  The best part of the assessment is making 3 self-care goals and assigning an accountability partner!  

UCA self-assessment sample

One of UCA’s members shared,

“When I took the assessment, one of my goals surprised me.  Sure, eat well/get more exercise and meditate for 10 -15 minutes every day being on my list were pretty predictable.  But, it was my first goal which surprised me, and even more surprising that it was my first goal.  I wrote “Buy myself new clothes.”  I was honestly surprised at my honesty. It seemed so selfish and unapologetic. Then I thought about it more and read the secondary part to the goal (how I plan on fulfilling it). I recognized the sincerity coming from my inner voice. I said I would put aside money every week to save to be able to buy new clothes. I must really want this for myself!  And it was true. Usually when I bought new clothes it was for my kids — probably a common thing for parents. 

What I gained about this is self-care is about at least recognizing my personal wants and needs, and making a plan of how to fulfill them.  By doing that, it keeps me out of a place of feeling lack.  It helps me to plan for attainment and an abundant life.”

For UCA members that have already taken the self-assessment, we want to hear what you learned. Contact us here (write in the subject line “self-care assessment”) to share how taking this assessment may have surprised you and changed how you look at your self-care. Can’t wait to hear about it!

If you are not yet a member of Unified Caring Association, join us! There are so many benefits for memberships that start as low as $15 per month.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center, Virtual Volunteering, radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Tips for Ending a Toxic Relationship

toxic relationships

The following short poem symbolizes the effects a toxic relationship can have on our growth. Even if growth isn’t our goal, toxicity in relations can either help our happiness fly or paralyze it.

Toxic Relationships poem by Mona Nyree Stephens

Because we are humans, it’s inevitable we are in relationships. Even if we consider ourselves a recluse, we have work relationships, doctor patient relationship, transactional relationship, and many more. With that fact, it’s important to understand the signs of a potentially toxic relationship, when to distance ourselves from it, and when to end it completely.

Signs of a Toxic Relationship

Before we dive into some key indicators of a toxic bond, it’s important to understand the definition. According to the author of Toxic People, Dr. Lillian Glass, a toxic relationship is “any relationship between people who don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness.” Here are a few signs we may be engaged in one.

  1. After being around said person we feel drained
  2. A lack of support or desire to see the other one succeed
  3. Grudges or an underlying resentment is present
  4. Dishonesty and lack of trust are present
  5. There is a lack of respect expressed
  6. Being around them feels like we are walking on eggshells

These examples are just a few of the many symptoms, a simple internet search will reveal more.

How to End or Distance Ourselves from These Relationships

So we found out we are in a toxic relationship, now what? Do we cut the person out entirely? What happens if they are a family member? The answers to these questions depends on our personal experience and the level of toxicity the relationship exhibits.

Cutting Out

For the most part, people who we do not share obligations with and whose presence in our lives is strictly by choice, are the relationships we get to consider cutting completely. Those are the relationships that if they continue, will rob us of happiness in the end.

In many cases, the best way is to simply let the person know that this relationship isn’t healthy and because we care deeply for ourselves and the other we are walking away. This can work even in business partnerships but will need to be handled accordingly. The hard conversation of “ending contact” can be done in person, on the phone, through a letter, or any other means of communication and that is something we must determine ourselves. The main points are these:

  1. Be firm and set clear boundaries
  2. Do not engage in the “on again, off again” cycle of behaviors

Then we must forgive and cease contact with said person. In the extreme cases changing our number, getting a restraining order, or moving may be the best way to do this. The number one tip to share is for us to seek professional help to see why we allowed the toxicity in our lives in the first place, to heal, and then to cultivate self-love. The toleration of toxicity speaks volumes about ourselves and deserves to be interpreted.

Distancing 101

In some cases, the toxic person might be our family member, the other parent to our children, or our roommate we are bond to contractually.  In these kinds of cases, cutting the person out of our lives completely may not be possible or something we are not willing to move forward with. What we must do is protect our peace and happiness. The best way to do this is to:

  1. Set firm boundaries and never waver
  2. Spend less time with this person and be honest about the reasons why
  3. Reduce conversations to small talk and avoid triggers
  4. Remember it is not our job to save or try to change anyone
  5. Remember we can love someone from a distance

Another two key tips for ending a toxic relationship are to seek professional help and commit to our own growth and healing. Remember… it’s surely time to grow in an upward direction. So, we must take inventory of the people who help us soar versus the people that keep us stagnant.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center, Virtual Volunteering, radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Don’t Let Self-Awareness Become a Prison

self-awareness prison

It’s important we set ourselves free from all cages of our own minds’ creation. Put simply, we cannot let our thoughts, tendencies, or habits become the forces that hold us back from the life we deserve or the goals we set for ourselves.

As Aristotle once said “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom;” it can be the key that sets us free from what within stifles us.  This knowing of ourselves or conscious knowledge of our own character, feeling, motives, and desires is self-awareness. While self-awareness can be the key to freedom from our own internal prisons, for some of us, it’s what keeps us trapped.

The Cage

How does knowing ourselves lead to self-imprisonment? How does it hold us back from a life we truly deserve or our potential?

The answer to both questions is straightforward; we use the awareness reasoning for why things are the way they are or cannot change. For instance, take the person who loses a parent at an early age and fills in the parental role for their siblings as their surviving parent spirals into addiction. This person grows up feeling the need to be in control and due to the addiction also develops co-dependent tendencies. As an adult, this person becomes self-aware of how their upbringing has affected them in their adult life. This person uses it as the reason to define why their relationships have been toxic. They have anxiety when they feel out of control. This person accepts a life of toxic relationships and anxiety, or withdraws from all relationships and only puts themselves in situations they can control.

Circumstances like the previous instance keep us stuck and do not promote growth.

Freeing Ourselves

In order to free ourselves from lives of stagnation, we must use self-awareness as a road map to change. To do this we must follow these steps:

  1. Recognize whether the thoughts, tendencies or habits we become aware of contribute to our growth, goals, or life we’d like to lead
  2. Commit to doing whatever it takes to work on and heal those thoughts, tendencies or habits
  3. Develop an action plan to change
  4. Seek professional guidance and support, when we feel stuck or needed

At the end of the day, knowing ourselves can set us up for either greater life satisfaction and growth, or become the shackles that hold us down. But, we don’t have to let self-awareness become that prison. The choice is ours.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Looking for Hope in All the Wrong Places

hopeful hands connecting

We by and large started life with unlimited hope. We dreamed all day long. Our imaginations took us to places fantastic, exciting and purposeful. We could live with setbacks; experience them and then move on to the next dream.

The only limits to hope as a child were delivered through life experiences. At an early age, life began teaching us that with hope, dreams and imagination comes pain, disappointment and struggle. That is the mistaken view of life learning that confines us all to a perpetual deficit of hope. This is the view where factors outside of us are too negative to overcome. This is also the view of hope as being something requiring immediate positive feedback.

The Source of Hope

In truth, hope comes from our beliefs. It is a thing so fundamentally within our being. Hope can be seen through others, but that is merely a mirror of what we have within ourselves.

Here is another truth: hope needs no evidence to be alive. Hope springs from what we knew as a small child. It springs from a belief in the power we have to shape our world by choice.

Hope needs no immediate gratification because hope knows no time. Hope is timeless.

Role Models for Hope

We can think of someone we know of, living or passed, that is a role model for hope. What gave them the power to go through all of the sacrifices, struggles and hard work to stay true to their dreams? When they faltered as we all do, what was it that pointed them in a direction they believed was right?

If we look deeply and honestly, we’ll see that hope came from within their beliefs. Their beliefs fed their curiosity and imagination. Their dream and the drive to see their dream manifest emerged through the power of hope.

The Right Place to Find Hope

If we find our self looking for hope in the wrong places, we only need to remember that renewing hope simply means going back to our childlike sense of curiosity and imagination. By reigniting our adventure to dream we can again imagine what our heart desires. Our core beliefs then start filling our thoughts with such positive and hopeful ideas. Hope begins to accumulate to fulfill our dreams. 

So, today, spend some time to dream and renew hope. Delight in having a childlike imagination. It’s still there. And so is the true source of hope.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Stop Reliving Glory Days; Create Glorious Days

looking in rear view mirror

With the holidays rapidly approaching so too is the probability we’ll hear a family member relive stories from their glory days for the umpteenth time. The stories we’ve heard so much we can repeat them verbatim, of how they won an athletic award in high school, the time they shared a cab with Cher, the time they saved someone from drowning, and the examples go on.

These stories bring our loved ones great joy to relive and share but we must challenge ourselves to think why do glory days end in the past? Why are there only a handful of glory day stories in our lives’ story arsenal?

The answers are simple, we’ve stopped creating glorious days!

A Period Where a Semicolon Should Be

A time in the past that is remembered for great success or happiness defines what glory days are. We can’t change the fact that time moves on leaving us only with memories of the past. However, as time inevitably changes we do not have to put a period at the end of a time period. When we do such things, it allows us to stay stuck a past we perceive better than our future. It is harmful to our current sense of self and even happiness.

An extreme example of this would be Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the moon and who uttered the words “one small step for man.” In his autobiography, Magnificent Desolation, Buzz recounted how he became absorbed in negative thinking and emotions on the journey home from the moon. He wondered “what does a man do for an encore.” Meaning how could he top what he just accomplished. Buzz put a period where a semicolon should have been after he experienced great success. After the landing, Buzz, drank his pain a way for 9 years which caused his marriage for 21 years to end. His prestigious military career also took a dive and ended on bad terms.

If Buzz had adopted the philosophy of Condoleezza Rice of “never spend any of your time being the ‘former’ anything,” he would have put a semicolon after the moon landing. He was much more than a former astronaut.

What could he had done differently that we can do currently?

Stop reliving glory days and instead create glorious days

Create Glorious Days

The definition of glory days is simple. In order to keep those days flowing, we must keep creating times of great happiness and success. We know the first step is to never put a period at the end of anything we do that causes us bliss or achievement. Now what do we do?

We get clear on what we need to cultivate happy experiences, even if we suffer a great loss. Get clear on what is needed externally and internally. Journaling and experimentation can help immensely with this process.

Finally, keep setting goals and focusing on growth. Success isn’t a destination, it’s a road we get to travel until the end of our days. Set goals you can be proud of no matter how small or great.

When we keep these things in our lives intentionally, not only does the quality of our lives begin to change so do the glory stories we share.

The only questions that remain are… What will we knock off our bucket lists? What new experiences will we have? What are the glory days we vow to create for of our present and future?

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Thanksgiving Every Day of Our Lives

Thanksgiving Every Day

The fall season has many of us feeling like Emily Bronte when she said “every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” For those of us in the United States, this season can be summed up in crisp weather, beautiful scenery, great food, and precious time with loved ones. With the greatness of Fall amongst us and Thanksgiving right around the corner, what better time to remember all the things we are thankful for this year?

The Best Time for Gratitude to Shine

While Thanksgiving serves as our gratitude mirror once a year, science invites us to reflect on what we are thankful for on a daily basis. 2020 aside, we as Americans are stressed, with 55% of our populations experiencing daily stress, we are among the most stressed out populations in the world! Moving from one task to another, dealing with family pressures, society, and our own mental well-being can feel like a lot to juggle.

With all this going on, it is critical we make time in our days to reflect on the things that are going right in our world.  The Research shows that expressing gratitude can lower stress hormones in the body, however, there are a slew of other benefits of giving thanks on a daily basis.

A Grateful Pill to Swallow

Gratitude is a powerful medicine for us humans. Keeping a daily gratitude has the power to transform the way we see and show up in our lives. These are just a few of the side effects of this amazing prescription:

  • Gratitude improves psychological health: According to Robert Emmons, a leading researcher on gratitude, it “effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. It also plays a key role in overcoming trauma and contributes to resilience.
  • Gratitude improves physical health: According to a 2012 study, grateful people experience fewer pains and feel healthier than others. They are also more likely to take better care of their health than their ungrateful peers.
  • Gratitude helps with goal attainment: Robert Emmons’ research concludes that grateful people are strivers and make more progress towards their goals. This is speculated to be because gratefulness is an emotional regulator of goal-directed action.
  • Gratitude leads to better relationship: Countless studies have shown that those who express their appreciation for others makes acquaintances more likely to seek ongoing relationships. It also improves the quality of the relationships we currently have.

A Last Plea for Daily Gratitude

If any of us are still on the fence about hopping on the daily gratitude train, consider the story of Addison Moore (name changed to protect her identity). Addison is a 26-year-old working for a young nonprofit. Meeting her funding goals keeps her in a constant state of anxiety. For all of 2019 and much of 2020, Addison found herself in a constant state of agitation. She woke up complaining about her life, blew up at traffic daily, and found her solace in sleep.

Addison heard about the power of appreciation in a book and began a gratitude journal in may of 2020. Addison was desperate for a change and began jotting down a few things she was grateful for each morning and before dinner. Addison didn’t think it would help and struggled for things to be thankful for.

By August her mind was racing with things she felt grateful for and she reports that her anger has completely vanished. “I still get frustrated sometimes, although it is extremely rare and it doesn’t boil over into rage like it use to. A gratitude journal gave me my life back!”

Do we need any more proof before we give ourselves the gift of living like it’s Thanksgiving every day of our lives? Take it from the scientists who dedicate their time to this study and take it from Addison who did a 180 on her life. Let’s make this gratitude plunge together for Thanksgiving and beyond!

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

3 Steps to Resolving Conflict in Your Life

steps to resolving conflict in your life

Is there any day that passes without a crisis? Your life does not have to be chaos, crises or so turbulent. The key is learning new tools for resolving conflict in your life.

Your life today can feel out of control. Emotions such as anger and frustration can take anyone over in an instant. Unresolved emotions feed nearly all conflict. Stepping out of truth undermines resolution and fuels more conflict. Conflicts become crises when you ignore emotions and step out of your truth.

Life isn’t about avoiding or denying conflict. So, what’s the most powerful thing you can do? You can learn how to deal with conflict quickly, consciously, effectively and truthfully. You can learn intelligent responses to conflict, rather than reacting. You can decide to take actions that lead to peaceful solutions. You can feed your own power to resolve conflicts.

Building your powerful skills to resolve and avert crises takes three steps:

1) Becoming aware of your emotions
2) Seeking the truth
3) Creating peaceful solutions

unresolved emotions and confict

Becoming Aware of Your Emotions

You can gain the tools for naming and taming your emotions. All day long you experience feelings that create emotions. Your heart sends messages to your brain constantly, leading to physiological changes moment to moment directly tied to your emotions. Some emotions cause you to feel depleted or weak. Other emotions have the opposite affect, renewing or strengthening. If you are unable to identify the source and how to move out of depleting emotions, conflict is sure to follow.

list of depleting and renewing emotions

Choosing to leave a depleting emotion to get back to a neutral space immediately and sustainably moves you through and out of conflict. Even better, you can choose to move to an opposite renewing emotion and blast right out of conflict. Knowledge about your emotions is power.

Seeking the Truth

Being truthful allows repeated conflicts to end. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses with speaking your truth gives you immediate access to find more of the truth of any situation. Everything begins with understanding your part of a conflict, your part of a missing truth and your part of any resolution. Too often, we all begin looking to every one but ourselves to find cause, blame and judge. Looking at others merely masks the truth and moves us farther away from where we should be seeking answers. One thing is sure: if you are embroiled in any conflict, you had a part in making it happen.

Five elements of truth must be explored in order to start resolution. These five elements when clearly understood open your perception to the truth behind the words being spoken. When you find yourself in conflict, feel conflict or are reviewing past conflicts, solutions unimagined before emerge when you are honest about these questions:

  • Where do I live my truth the strongest?
  • Where am I the weakest in living truthfully?
  • How do I usually step out of my truth?
  • What are my most truthful qualities?
  • Do I know anyone that is a great example of living truthfully?

The more time you put into these five questions, the faster you become at checking for your truth about what any conflict is really about.

Create Peaceful Solutions

You can see patterns in the way you create conflict in your life. These patterns emerge from your mind. Your mind is an efficient engine for learning ways to get the things you want.

Your ego works hard to protect you from its perceived dangers. Obvious signs of conflict are when your fight, flight or freeze automatic mechanism is triggered. The emotions that cause a flood of biochemical reactions in your body are produced to give you the best chance of surviving an immediate threat. However, today you have little reason to react in this ancient unconscious programmed survival reaction mode to the kind of conflicts and issues present in your life.

Your behavior patterns go beyond ego and survival responses. These patterns also include unconscious beliefs and judgments that generate negative thinking. Let’s just say that “negative thinking” is the constant presence of thoughts that undermine or sabotage your success. Repeating experience-driven memories condition your thinking and responses to all situations you encounter daily. They can haunt you during restless sleep. But, these negative patterns don’t have to be your master. You can reprogram your mind to focus on new thoughts and experiences that are supportive and positive.

Patterns also exist in how you look to resolve conflicts. As you look at the conflicts you have dealt with, a picture emerges of your strategy for resolving conflict. Like an impressionistic painting, all the little blots and strokes of paint add up to a picture when you observe them from a little distance. You have to become aware of how you unconsciously manage conflict. A simple model you can use to determine your default strategy to resolving conflict is called the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument shown here:

thomas kilmann conflict mode instrument

Source: Thomas-Kilmann

Accommodating — cooperating to a high-degree often at own expense and against own goals, objectives and intentions. This approach can be effective when the other party is the expert, has a better solution, or for preserving relationships.

Avoiding — This is simply avoiding the issue. No one’s goals are being achieved. This strategy can work when the issue is not significant, too costly for everyone or when there is no chance of winning. It’s also effective when the atmosphere is emotionally charged and you need to take a pause.

Collaborating — This is where partnering is the approach to achieve both party’s goals. This is breaking through and out of a win-lose approach to conflict, instead working for the win-win. This is where new, previously impossible solutions appear.

Competing — This is the win-lose approach prevalent today. The winners in conflict assertively and aggressively work to achieve their own goals, commonly at the expense of the other party. This approach delivers quick, decisive action at the expense of relationships or even integrity.

Compromising — This is the all lose something scenario where no one achieves what they want. Everyone has goals and this appears to be an easy way to at least meet some amount of goals. However, it leaves no room to produce a better solution that meets longer-term needs for everyone.

Once you are aware of your default strategy in the pattern of conflicts you experience at work, home or in any part of life, then you can choose to take the third step in resolving conflict in your life: empowering peaceful solutions. Peaceful solutions have at their core both the awareness of everyone involved in a conflict and the intention to keep everyone in their power. When people are in their power, they are aligned with their purpose, integrity and intentions

A person who empowers peace is one who:

  • Maintains a good sense of humor
  • Maintains humbleness and humility
  • Maintains integrity
  • Quells the ego and stays in the heart
  • Is not attached to outcome
  • Is not afraid of feelings
  • Does not avoid conflict
  • Listens intensely
  • Speaks directly and tells the truth
  • Is non-judgmental

Empowering peace also includes an awareness for everyone involved by:

  • Modeling self-respect and respect for others
  • Having a sensitively toward the other person(s)
  • Having an inclusive attitude rather than excluding others
  • Allowing mistakes for self and others

You don’t have to be perfect at all or most of these attributes for empowering peaceful solutions. You simply have to become more aware of yourself, your default strategy and begin modeling these empowering attributes to begin seeing previously impossible solutions more easily emerge.

Enabling a New Paradigm for Resolving Conflict

The three steps that build a new paradigm for resolving conflict are simple and deliver immediate results without needing perfection or a regimented process to follow. These steps better help to resolve or avert unnecessary crises in your life. They have the impact of reducing stress, building your resilience and increasing harmony in a world full of conflict, chaos and uncertainty.

The choice is yours to spend a little time outside of conflicts to reduce the impact they have on your life.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

The Trick is Treating Yourself

treat yourself with self-comfort and self-care

As Autumn descends and the leaves fall, our own physical and mental states begin to go through seasonal changes, too.  If you’re not careful, a true witch’s brew of toil and trouble await. So pay close attention to how shorter days, lowering temperatures, and rain impacts our mood.  The Fall can also contribute to a wide range of illnesses.  These include insomnia, irritability, headaches, and digestive issues.

All the more reason to make sure we are spending at least as much time on self-comfort, as we are on self-care.  That’s because adapting to Autumn can lead to fatigue of the body.  In fact, Autumn can affect our overall balance more than we imagine.

The Twilight Zone

As bewitching as an early twilight may seem, look again! Fewer daylight hours makes us more subject to mild states of anxiety and melancholy. In this spooky season of skeletons, the influence of the sun can also be seen on a physical level.  That’s because UV rays stimulate the production of vitamin D, which is useful to bones.  Sunlight also stimulates the production of serotonin, helps muscle relaxation and balances our biological rhythms. Less light darkens our mood.

That’s why, even when the days become shorter, it is important to treat yourself to more soothing time spent outdoors.  Try to work in a leisurely walk, hike, or bike ride during the week.  Think of it as a way of “stocking up” on light.  The sun’s bag of goodies allow the body to produce melanin during the night.  Melanin improves the quality of sleep and acts directly on your body’s hormonal balance.

“Weather” or Not

Changes in temperature and light also affect the immune system, almost playing tricks on it. Long before COVID, you probably remember in past Falls, how common it was to show symptoms of colds and flu, (“seasonal illnesses”).  The last thing we need is prolonged fatigue, with a side helping of apathy.  You can combat them both with equal measures of self-comfort and self-care. Think of them as aiding in the response that our body gives to outside stresses when the weather requires us to put in extra effort to adapt.

Choose warm bubble baths, pedicures, and massages over curling up on the couch with Halloween candy binging old TV shows.  All that sugar can throw your self-comfort into a tizzy.  As grandma used to say: Enjoy some candy, but don’t let it go to “waist!” If caring for yourself turns into distracting or numbing or avoiding, it’s time to pause. Always check in with yourself — what are you really craving in those moments?

Ask “whether” you really need it. And “whether” you need self-comfort or self-care in that moment.  When you need comfort — you’re craving warmth, pleasure, a break.  Pamper yourself by following your body’s yearning for “feeling good.”  When you need care — you’re craving self-respect, connection, alignment.

Fall Into Healthy Habits

Treat yourself with kindness and honor your strengths and values.  Follow your heart’s yearning for “doing good.”  Write in your journal.  Have a soulful chat with your best friend. Declare your gratitude.  Gaze at the stars on a crystal clear night.

Let’s not forget that Autumn is a season in which nature offers the great beauty of her golden crown.  Spectacular colors and healthy foods of exceptional quality abound.  Mushrooms – including truffles – pumpkin, grapes, sweet figs and more are in season. Enjoy these guilt-free treats.

do you need self-comfort or self-care?

Care for Your Mind – While Comforting Your Body

With the transition to Autumn, our body makes very clear demands on us.  But don’t overlook the signals that the mind is sending us, too. Well-being is achieved when body and mind are both healthy and in balance.  The best approach to the change of season involves taking self-care and self-comfort of the entire body and soul.

If You’ve Got It – Haunt It

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is real.  It can cause fatigue, poor concentration, nausea, irritability and decreased desire.  Any one of which can disrupt our ability to get out and enjoy life. Recognizing moods and emotions can be more difficult with masks on, but it’s necessary to stay in touch with yourself.  Make an effort to evaluate your general well-being, so you can activate and remedy the discomforts you feel. Don’t forget to look in on your friends and neighbors, too.  They may be feeling lost. It’s always easier to get out of a maze together, through teamwork.

The peak of Fall doesn’t have to be scary.  Just treat it with respect while treating yourself to the self-care AND self-comfort you need.  And don’t forget to carve out some time for fun along the way!

by Mark Smith, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

The Journey Back to Ourselves

roadmap as the journey back to ourselves

We are the vehicles traveling down this road called life and along the way we inevitably lose pieces of that vehicle. Most of the time these pieces no longer serve us and are replaced with upgraded parts at the next pit stop or let go of completely. However, there comes a time when many of us reach a pit stop and the parts of ourselves that were lost along the road were so important we forget what makes us, us.

That can manifest as no longer knowing what brings us joy, what we are passionate about, or even the aspects of our personalities we adore. How do we get this specific type of amnesia? How do we prevent it? How do we rediscover who we are, if we find we lost ourselves? The answers to these questions are the journey back to ourselves.

Drawing a Blank on the Journey

An accident where we bump our heads or suffer a traumatic brain injury isn’t how this type of amnesia creeps in, despite how the movies depict it. In real life, the process of forgetting who we are is subtle and often happens over a period of time. The way this manifests will look different for each individual but it always involves the same two elements.

  1. Total immersion in a person, cause, or activity
  2. Giving up the activities we enjoy or part of ourselves

Who would willingly stop doing the things that bring them happiness or repress parts of themselves they admire? It seems ludicrous. Yet, it is the case and is oftentimes done unconsciously. Imagine someone entering a relationship where the other person becomes the center of their universe or becoming immersed in the pursuit of a career and everything else suffers. There are countless examples of how the amnesia can show itself, but it begins with total immersion in a person, cause, or activity. Once the person is immersed, it is easy to put off doing the things that once brought them joy or even expressing themselves in the manner they use to. It’s subtle. It takes time.  But one day we look and realize we lost ourselves somewhere along the journey.

Prevention Tactics to Getting Lost

Don McPherson says it best, “true prevention is not waiting for bad things to happen; it’s preventing things from happening in the first place.” When it comes to losing ourselves, the easiest cure is to never lose ourselves in the first place. This can be done in a plethora of ways, but the best recipe for prevention is as follows.

  1. Schedule time for the activities, people, and things that energize and recharge us weekly — or monthly at the least. These things must become sacred and treated as such. It’s easy to let circumstances dictate our schedules but much like a doctor’s appointment, once it’s scheduled, only an emergency would stop us from following through. We must treat these parts of ourselves the same way.
  2. Make a list of the values and personality traits we love about ourselves, then make a quarterly journal practice to make sure you are still living out those values and expressing those traits. Even when we are in total immersion, an honest quarterly check of where we are with ourselves can help us course-correct when needed; before it’s too late.

At the end of the day, these prevention tools seem simple yet they are paramount in helping us set boundaries and gain self-awareness of the subtleties that contribute to loss. Remember this particular type of amnesia can take years to manifest and it happens through subtle changes over time.

From Lost to Found

Now that we know how we lose ourselves and ways to prevent it, what should we do to find ourselves if we realize we have lost ourselves? Waking up and realizing we no longer know who we are can be one of the most depressing experiences of our lives. When asked what we like to do or what we love about our identities, our answer is “I don’t know.”

While this may seem devastating, it’s an opportunity to get curious. The road back to ourselves begins with curiosity and experimentation. When we are lost the best thing we can do is write down the things that use to bring us joy, the parts of ourselves we use to love, and make the effort to step back into those things and ways of being.

Sometimes we find out that those activities or traits no longer bring us joy. That’s when we try new things. We make a list of activities we’d like to try and take ourselves out on “dates” to do these things. We think of the types of people we adore and what personality traits and values we love about them. We ask ourselves what it looks like if we were to step into those traits. We let curiosity lead the way as we experiment, rediscover, and uncover the person we are again.

It’s helpful to explore why we allowed ourselves to slip away from us in the first place but the most important step – once we find and get back to a place where we feel whole and that we know ourselves again- is to practice the prevention techniques.

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

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