Motivation and Emotional Wellbeing

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman

Welcome to the August 2020 edition of TotalWellbeing, your guide to the 8 dimensions of wellbeing. This month we set our sights on motivation and nurturing our emotional wellbeing. Staying motivated, especially under challenging circumstances, can be one of the toughest things we can do. The key to maintaining your drive and persevering is to set small goals that ultimately lead to your bigger, overall goal. That way you have small successes and cause to celebrate along the way that will help keep the light of your hopes and aspirations going strong. Then once you do end up reaching your primary goal, the satisfaction is all the better for having endured.

Check out the information below for some tips on how to stay motivated and don’t forget that through your Employee Assistance Program you have access to 4 professional wellness coaching sessions per year. These can be used to work with a personal wellness coach to set, work on, and reach your goals! Call today to get started.

As a quick reminder, your online portal, PersonalAdvantage, also has helpful resources and tips and resources on staying motivated, resilience exercises, emotional wellbeing support, and more.

To your total wellbeing,

The MINES Team

Pushing Past Your Plateau

We promise ourselves we’ll change our lifestyles for better health. We start diets, launch exercise programs or try to quit smoking. And then we stall. We hit a plateau, putting us at risk of losing precious gains or quitting altogether.

If you find that you are stuck on a plateau, try these 6 steps to help you find a way to jumpstart your progress and reach your goals:

1. Define your aim clearly. “It’s impossible to hit your target if you don’t know exactly what you’re aiming at,” says Dr. Mercer, who gives about 50 speeches a year to executives and other audiences.
2. Don’t let laziness creep in. “Sure, it’s easier not to do something,” he says. Instead, stay focused on your path. If you promised yourself you’d exercise at 6 a.m., don’t hit the snooze button when the alarm goes off. Remind yourself firmly about your goals and get moving.
3. When you don’t want to exercise or you want to quit your diet, take three seconds to picture how you want to look or feel at the end of your program. A lot of people begin such programs because they want to look attractive to others, while others are interested in improving their health.
4. Use a time-limit approach to your program. “Give yourself, say, 12 weeks to accomplish a goal within your program,” he says. When you reach that goal, set a new one and give yourself another 12 weeks. “This enables you to track your progress and helps you to define your target. Use the scale, measuring tape or other device to measure your progress in the time period and to help you set new goals. The best cure for putting things off is a deadline.”
5. Give yourself rewards for reaching your daily, weekly and monthly goals. “For instance, tell yourself you’ll go to a movie you’ve been wanting to see if you get your exercise in that day,” he says.
6. Think about committing to a self-punishment if you fail. “I worked with a group that had to write a check to charity and put it in my hands. If they didn’t reach the goal, which was well within their limits, I was to mail the check by a particular date,” Dr. Mercer says. “Every one of them reached the goal.”

Read the full article here.

If you or someone you know feels stuck in a rut, remember that Your Employee Assistance Program is here to help you and your household members. In addition to free and confidential counseling you have access to professional wellness coaching as well. Your coach can help you set and analyze your personal, professional, and wellness related goals, and help you find the motivation you need to take the next step. Call us at 1-800-873-7138 to get connected right away. Also, PersonalAdvantage has a ton of great resources and FREE webinars.

Emotional Wellbeing and Release

You don’t want to get rid of emotions, you want to manage and get them under control. A three-step method of emotional release has helped many of our clients. The first step is to identify exactly what it is you’re feeling and label it. As we said before, emotions often defy description, but try. Building a better emotional vocabulary makes it easier. Write down as many adjectives as you can for anger, anxiety, and depression. Use a thesaurus, get words from friends, family, and co-workers. Sort your words in order of intensity. Learn to examine your emotional state and attach a label that describes it with some degree of accuracy.

Next, experiment with thoughts that increase the intensity of the emotion you’re feeling. Then try thoughts that will reduce that intensity. Rate the intensity level of your emotions on a one-to-ten scale. Learn to raise and lower your level with your thoughts.

Learning to release emotions is the third step. This can happen in a number of ways, such as acting them out, talking them out, or thinking them out. Shouting, crying, or being fearful takes the edge off your feelings, allowing you to think more clearly. You can talk about how you feel with a friend, family member, or counselor. Sometimes, images and thoughts can release you from emotions. Here are a few rules to remember about releasing feelings:

• Mean what you say, say what you mean, but don’t be mean when you say it.
• Don’t break things that don’t belong to you.
• Don’t hit other people.
• Don’t hurt yourself (physically or with drugs, food, etc.).
• Use a little judgment when in public.

Read More

Remember, your Employee Assistance Program is here to help you manage your stress and emotional wellbeing. If you need additional information, or to access services, please call MINES and Associates at 1-800-873-7138 today.

Question of the Month

This month lets try something different. Instead of asking ourselves a question, ask someone else a question. That question is going to be “will you help me?” First, think of a goal or project that you are in the middle of, or need to get started on. Next, find a friend or family member and ask them for help with it. Involving someone else may just be what gets you moving on something that you have been procrastinating on.

This Month’s Focus

Free Webinar:

Stay Motivated: Tips for Leveraging Your Superpower

MINESblog:

New to TW? Check out our past Blogs!

Advocating for Change Amidst Pandemic and Protest

COVID-19: Stress & Anxiety Reduction

COVID-19: Home Workout Essentials

Important Links

COVID19 Resource Page

Visit our BLOG

MINES and Associates

Current Training Catalog

Balanced Living Magazine

LinkedIn

MINES Archives

Contact Us

Email MINES

Getting Ahead This Year and Emotional Wellbeing

Happy New Year and welcome to the very first 2019 edition of TotalWellbeing, your guide to the 8 dimensions of wellbeing. To help start the year on the right foot, this edition will be focused on getting ahead and developing a “can-do” attitude. We hope that you find the resources this month, like our free webinar and info-packed articles, helpful for getting a head start on making 2019 a great year both personally and professionally.

If you missed us last month, last year, or if you are completely new to TotalWellbeing, you can catch up on our newsletters page. Remember, this newsletter is aimed at providing helpful information about various aspects of your wellbeing and then connecting it all back to important and relevant parts of everyday life. Just like last year, we will focus on looking at each facet of wellbeing from a small, personal level and then examine how it connects to the bigger community level as we explore how our wellbeing is tied to the world around us in often surprising ways that you may not have thought about before. And as always, if you have questions or have ideas for topics you’d like to see don’t hesitate to email us using the link in the right column.

To your total wellbeing,

The MINES Team

Your Emotional Wellbeing

Since we are headed into a new year it may be a good time for a refresher on what Emotional Wellbeing actually is. According to SAMSHA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration), Emotional Wellbeing is your ability to effectively cope with life stressors and create and maintain satisfying relationships. From this definition, it is easy to see how your emotional state and wellbeing could be connected to your ability to be productive, execute plans to reach goals, and nurture relationships. This is because before you can take care of others’ needs, you must first take care of your own. This year, as you plan on how to make 2019 a great year, first think about the emotional needs and barriers you may have that need to be addressed before you can begin exerting your energy outward. Then, once you are in a good place emotionally, think about how you can use that stability and positivity to channel your energy into productive and social ventures to build your external wellbeing. All of this will help create a foundation ripe for growth that will serve you for the rest of the year and beyond.

Enhancing your emotional wellbeing can be hard. But the good news is you don’t have to do it alone. Call MINES any time of day to get set up with a counselor or wellness coach to talk about reaching your goals, countering stressors, and busting down barriers. Please call us at 1-800-873-7138 to get connected right away.

Question of the Month

What are 3 goals that, if achieved, would help make 2019 a great year?

Quote of the Month

“Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind, and spirit – the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an effect on our state of wellbeing.”

– Greg Anderson

Community and Global Perspective

Making the most of a day, a week, a month, or a whole year is largely a combination of goals, good habits, and your state of mind. However, not everything is in our control. There are plenty of things out there in the world that we encounter daily that can impede our personal efforts. Negative or positive news on TV, things going on in your social circles, work-based items that eat up a significant amount of time or cause stress, and any other number of things that life throws our way, can often distract and discourage us from our goals. This is why it is important to monitor your feelings and to think critically about how you react to things out of your control. By paying attention to this aspect of your mind you can identify sources of stress and counter them as they come rather than let things build up and compound the negative effect they have over you. Being aware of your feelings in this way is also great mindfulness practice that will become easier over time, and as you become more in touch with yourself you will reinforce your emotional resilience making you a stronger person overall.

Do Your Bucket List: 7 Ways to Focus on the Things that Matter

MINESblog:

Coming soon: National Law Enforcement Day post (Jan. 9th)

New to TW? Check out our past Blogs!

Important Links

Visit our BLOG

MINES and Associates

2018 Training Catalog

Balanced Living Magazine

LinkedIn

MINEs Archives

Contact Us

Email MINES

The Relationship Between Self-Motivation and Emotional Wellbeing

Welcome to the May edition of TotalWellbeing, your guide to the 8 dimensions of wellbeing. This month we are going to take a look at emotional wellbeing, specifically how your self-motivation can help improve your emotional state of mind. If you missed us last month you can catch up on our newsletters page. As we make it through the year we will continue to emphasize the concept of community and look at how our actions affect our community, country, and in some cases the rest of the world.

To your total wellbeing,

The MINES Team

How Emotional Wellbeing is Related to Your Motivation

It is very easy to procrastinate, feel overwhelmed, and get burned out. However, if you are able to find motivation and attack each task you have on your plate, then these become less of a burden and your emotional wellbeing will be improved. It is vital to find things in your everyday life that make you happy, satisfied, and feel good. This blog has some great ways to help you be proactive about stress and some easy things you can do to help reduce it. It is also important to think of what you are grateful for, what motivates you, and how you look at your job, family, and personal wellbeing in order to figure out how to thrive in your life.

If you would like to talk to a counselor about these topics, please call us at 1-800-873-7138 to get connected right away. Also, PersonalAdvantage has some great tools and webinars this month to improve your knowledge around communication, teaching children about life changes, and resilient parenting to help support social wellbeing, and be sure to check out our “Estate Planning” infographic.

Question of the Month

What areas of your life do you lack motivation and how can you find motivation?

Quote of the Month

“The only person you are destined to become, is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

MINES Updates/Community World View

Emotional Wellbeing can encompass a lot of areas, feelings, and guidelines of how you live your life. How you perceive your emotional wellbeing also stems from your background, what you distinguish as normal, your biases, and your willingness to step outside of your comfort zone. Being able to look internally is a big step to seeing how you can improve your emotional intelligence. However, it is important to recognize that each culture has a different perspective on what being “emotionally well” really is. Patriarchal societies tend to think that showing your emotions may not be the best way to enhance your emotional wellbeing. However, that is not say that they don’t want to expand this side of wellbeing or that they don’t promote it in other ways. It is important to accept that how you express your emotions and how you deal with the various stressors in your life is unique to you. Take time to observe how others communicate about their emotional wellbeing to see how you can better support them.

This Month’s Focus

Check out this month’s webinar on Estate Planning

This Month on MINESblog:

Proactive Stress Management

Check out this Month’s Infographic

Important Links

Visit our BLOG

MINES and Associates

2018 Training Catalog

Balanced Living Magazine

LinkedIn

MINEs Archives

Contact Us

Email MINES