Nurture Yourself First: Gentle Steps in Personal and Planetary Transformation - Softcover

Marrin DSS, Ilenya A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504354974 ISBN 13: 9781504354974

Verlag: BalboaPress, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Nurture Your Self First provides inspiration and gentle, powerful steps for accessing your natural self-compassion, resilience and heart-centered wisdom so essential for thriving in today's world.

Far beyond occasional pampering, nurturing your multi-dimensional Self is now critical for joyful, purpose-filled living. Nurture Your Self First shows you how to share and care and climb your personal mountains without depleting yourself. Doable strategies can help you erase anxiety, drop overwhelm, bounce back from burnout, and release people-pleasing.

As you learn to observe, accept, forgive and love all aspects of yourself, inch by inch you consolidate your transformation. As you create space to live and love in fulfilment of your purpose, you naturally extend your personal empowerment to broader circles and uplift many others as we move forward in an age of living love.

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Nurture Yourself First

Gentle Steps in Personal and Planetary Transformation

By Ilenya A. Marrin

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2016 Ilenya A. Marrin, DSS.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5497-4

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix, 
Introduction, xi, 
Part 1: My Journey, 1, 
Chapter 1 Crashing and Crawling into Self-Nurturing, 3, 
Chapter 2 The Self-Nurturing Project Is Born, 12, 
Part 2: Nurture Yourself for a Change, 19, 
Chapter 3 Are You Ready for Change?, 21, 
Chapter 4 Self-Nurturing Is Not Selfish, 27, 
Chapter 5 Stress: An Opportunity for Self-Nurturing, 30, 
Part 3: Nurturing Change: Six Simple Strategies, 33, 
Chapter 6 My Spiritual Insurance Clause, 35, 
Chapter 7 The Neutral Loving Observer, 37, 
Chapter 8 Self-Forgiveness, 43, 
Chapter 9 Listen for the Loving, 47, 
Chapter 10 Meditation, 60, 
Chapter 11 Nurturing a Positive Focus, 66, 
Part 4: Fine-Tuning Change: More Gentle Strategies, 71, 
Chapter 12 Nurturing Your Future Now: Naming Your Heart's Desires, 73, 
Chapter 13 Transform Your Story, 76, 
Chapter 14 Affirmations to Anchor Intentions, 80, 
Chapter 15 Nurturing Positive Focus through Language, 85, 
Chapter 16 Self-Nurturing Templates, 89, 
Chapter 17 Emotion: Ego Energy in Motion, 93, 
Chapter 18 Mirror, Mirror, 102, 
Chapter 19 Nurturing Your SMART Parts, 106, 
Chapter 20 Self-Forgiveness: Moving Deeper, 116, 
Part 5: Keep the Change, 127, 
Chapter 21 Nurturing Your Levels of Consciousness for Personal Transformation, 129, 
Chapter 22 A Self-Nurturing Lifestyle, 140, 
Chapter 23 Self-Nurturing Circles, 146, 
Part 6: Be the Change, 151, 
Chapter 24 Nurture Yourself and Change the World, 153, 
End Matter, 159, 
Endnotes, 161, 
Bibliography, 163, 
Math Chart: Ripples of Self-Nurturing, 165, 
Spiritual Exercises, 167, 
Life Satisfaction Assessment, 171, 
Tracking Chart Example and Template, 175, 
Book Club Questions, 179, 
Suggested Reading, 181, 

CHAPTER 1

Crashing and Crawling into Self-Nurturing

I finally asked the right question, "How can I quit pushing and driving myself?"

Illness Allowed Self-Nurturing

After college I became a child welfare social worker in Texas. Periodically, I had to go through court to remove badly neglected or abused children from their parents, which was extremely stressful. Invariably, I developed a chest infection that indicated I was grieving. I needed antibiotics and two or three days of rest. At home I slept, read, sewed, or embroidered, embracing quiet or mildly creative nurturing activities while my body recovered. Although I was sick a few times a year, this program worked fairly well for quite a while.

Fast-forward past my two years of social work in London, my writer/editor/publicist career in Las Vegas, and my private practice as a psychotherapist in Tucson.

Stress and Chronic Illness

I worked once more in children's services, this time in a large county in California with some of the toughest assignments in the agency. I was responsible for children so emotionally disturbed that they could not live in family foster homes but needed round-the-clock professional supervision in group homes. Many had been in the system for years.

It was not easy, but I felt I was making a difference by helping children and families through some incredibly challenging situations.

One December morning, I was expecting a promotion to supervisor. Instead, we huddled in an impromptu staff meeting and learned that the county had declared bankruptcy. There would be no promotions. Hiring was frozen. I narrowly missed a layoff. Caseloads went up, but the client visits, case documentation, court reports, and court appearances still had to be completed. I still got crisis calls in the middle of the night.

I did my best to manage it all. I met deadlines, saw my clients, wrote thorough reports to minimize time waiting in court, and juggled multiple crises daily.

My health went down the tubes. In the first fifteen months after the county bankruptcy, I took prescribed antibiotics thirteen times. I was never free of chest congestion and sinus infection. A chronic cough ruled my life. Many times a day in my cubicle or in meetings with clients or on the freeway, I doubled over and coughed for minutes. Eventually, I recovered from the spasm and carried on. I seldom took days off even when I was sick because catching up with missed work was impossible, and I could not expect my colleagues, who carried equally heavy workloads, to pick up the slack for me.

I continued to have neck pain because of whiplash and bulging discs from an auto accident a few years earlier. I developed carpal tunnel syndrome and wore a wrist brace. Tired and achy all over and never a sound sleeper, I could not get comfortable in bed. I spent hours awake in the dark, flopping around, imagining strategies to help my clients, rehearsing testimony or simply fretting over how to get everything done. Some days I nodded off in traffic. Scary!

Mounting stress undermined my normally calm disposition. Many mornings I sobbed in the shower. There was not enough of me to go around. I felt my energy pouring down a black hole. Then I commuted an hour to my office, checked dozens of phone messages, and coughed my way through another round of calls, meetings, and client visits.

Cracking My Cosmic Egg

After about a year of this routine, I attended a weekend workshop on individual and world peace and had a revelation. For the first time, I saw how I sabotaged my inner peace by pushing and driving myself to excel. I was relentless, and my health was taking the hit.

Although excited by my new perception, I had no idea how to change my approach. Pushing and driving had been a part of me for so many years that I didn't realize I was doing it until that moment. On a break, I mentioned my stunning self-awareness to my husband, who said, "I've been trying to tell you that as long as I've known you." Yikes!

Next up in the workshop, a remarkable man named John-Roger, founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, educator, and author of more than fifty books, sat on a low stage and chatted with various participants. I raised my hand, eager to ask for suggestions on how I could be kinder to myself. He called on someone else. I laughed with the crowd as he talked with that person. But I really wanted to ask my question. He was looking around for the next person while I kept waving my hand. I was so enthusiastic that I jumped up and started down the aisle. He called on someone else, but he told me I was next. I sat down and enjoyed the discussion as the level of humor stepped up another notch. John-Roger had a gift for speaking to the heart that ranged from the sacred and profound to the hilarious in a moment.

At last, I walked to the microphone to ask my question. "How can I quit pushing and driving myself?"

"I don't think you can," said John-Roger.

My heart sank.

John-Roger turned to the audience and began cracking jokes. I listened and laughed too, and in a couple of minutes, he turned back to me.

"You through with your stuff now?" he asked.

My only thought was a moment between my husband and me a few years earlier. "All I can think to say is once when we lived in Tucson, Alf and I were having a big argument, and I was upset and crying. So he mooned me!"

Uproarious laughter!

John-Roger looked...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BalboaPress
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1504354974
• ISBN 13: 9781504354974
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 198
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar