What do most of us do when taking a trip to somewhere we’ve never been? We find someone who’s been there and ask them about it because we want to make the most of our trip!

If we put that much thought and effort into a trip, how much more should we be putting thought and effort into the other important areas of our lives?

Just as getting information and advice from friends is a big help when planning a trip, coaches and mentors can be very helpful when designing our lives. 

Steven Spielberg said, “The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” 

A true mentor gives you access to wisdom and experience because they’ve done or become what you want to do or become. They don’t coach from theory; they mentor from experience. 

Let’s say you set a goal of making a million dollars. Would you rather be mentored by an experienced multimillionaire or coached by someone who has no experience, only theory? 

Mentoring is a partnership that goes far beyond teaching and holding you accountable. Your mentor gives you access to experience and wisdom, encouragement, and mutual growth. 

It seems everyone has gone into life coaching since the 2020 pandemic. Coaches are a dime a dozen. But genuine mentors, well, they’re worth their weight in gold. 

The Transfer of Skills and Knowledge

A mentor is someone who is much further in their field than the mentee, which means they can provide insights the mentee still needs to gather through real-world experience. 

The transference of wisdom, skill, and knowledge can shave years off the learning process.

This exchange of knowledge accelerates skill development because not only can a mentor teach the mentee new skills, but the wisdom they impart helps the mentee put everything to work to tackle obstacles and challenges with an informed, strategic approach. 

The Thread of Wisdom

A mentor is a compass, providing guidance as you navigate the industry or life situation. You can leverage their experience to become more skillful and create new opportunities. Not only does this help with things like career advancement, but it amplifies purpose and direction.  

Emotional Support and Growth 

A skillful mentor helps nurture emotional well-being and personal growth. They facilitate a safe space for open and honest communication, which allows you to discuss your fears, dreams, and challenges. That emotional reassurance will help you in every aspect of life.

Networking Connections

Your mentor wants you to succeed. They wouldn’t be investing their precious time and energy into you if they didn’t. As an established person, they can introduce you to influential contacts and expand your network. 

Inspiration

Your mentor should be someone you respect and wish to model. Your partnership isn’t just about gaining wisdom or new skills. They inspire you to build a work ethic and adopt the qualities you see in them that you admire. Your mentor is your role model.

Final Thoughts

Many people succeed without a mentor, but they often learn the hard way, struggling with challenges and stresses they could’ve avoided had they reached out to a wise and experienced mentor. Why make the journey any more difficult than it has to be?

If you aspire to greatness and want to unlock your best life, finding a mentor you respect and admire could be worth its weight in gold, so why wouldn’t you accept help from someone who’s already taken the journey you’re about to embark upon? 

The post Do You Need A Coach or A Mentor? appeared first on Lifestyle.

It’s hard to let anger and bitterness go. It isn’t easy getting over someone who has hurt you. Feelings of resentment and distrust linger and burden the heart, filling one’s life with negativity. And forgiving them seems almost impossible. 

A study published by Springer Link revealed that “Bearing grudges is associated with a history of pain disorders, cardiovascular disease, and stomach ulcers.” 

Holding grudges and resentment is associated with a higher risk of heart attack, disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, back pain, headaches, and chronic pain. Additionally, harboring resentment may cause mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

Choosing not to move past the hurt caused by others is doing yourself a disservice because it harms your health and well-being. 

Why Do We Struggle to Let Go?

A 2021 analysis by researchers explored why we hold onto resentment. Surprisingly, low self-esteem plays a factor, causing us to seek validation because we want others to agree with our actions or beliefs. Otherwise, we tend to feel morally inferior; we become defensive and have difficulty accepting and forgiving others. 

In some cases, people simply have an inability to let go and forgive. Hurt and bad feelings can seem almost overpowering. 

Strategies for Moving Forward

Awareness Through Meditation

Meditation brings awareness and reduces stress by calming negative thoughts and restoring a positive outlook. 

Prayer and meditation relax one’s heart and soul. As we rely on God’s power and promises, we experience deeper peace and self-acceptance. 

Freedom Through Forgiveness

Forgiveness is freedom. 

Forgiving someone who has wronged you releases you from their “death” grip. 

Acknowledge that the situation happened. Evaluate how your feelings about the situation might be affecting your physical and mental health and behavior. 

Accepting your feelings and the fact that the situation occurred weakens their hold on you. Accepting doesn’t mean that you welcome what happened or agree with it. Remind yourself that you are in control, not the person who caused the event. 

You have the power to forgive and move on with your life. You have the power to give yourself emotional freedom by releasing resentment, hatred, and bitterness.

Be Compassionate

You never know what a person is going through that might be causing them to lash out and hurt you. Perhaps they’re facing the loss of a loved one or a broken relationship, or maybe they’re struggling with feelings of low self-esteem. 

Evaluate your past interactions with them. If they’re usually kind and non-confrontational, then perhaps they’re going through something nobody knows about.

Being understanding and compassionate can facilitate forgiveness. 

Create Emotional Space

Research by psychologists Ozlem Ayduk and Ethan Kross found that creating emotional space (self-distancing) helps greatly with overcoming the negative feelings caused by grudges and resentment. 

Self-distancing involves thinking about the situation from a third-person perspective rather than an active participant perspective. 

Here’s how it works: Envision that you’re watching actors in a movie replay the situation that occurred; this helps you to see the “big picture’, increasing your ability to cope with the past and have a broader perspective on the event.

Final Words

It’s okay to feel sad, angry, or upset. Those kinds of emotions are trying to tell you something. But holding onto anger and resentment hurts your health and well-being. 

It’s hardly ever easy to forgive and move on, but it is in your best interest. So, use these strategies to help you cope, forgive, and unburden your heart when someone hurts you and unlock your best life! 

The post When Should You Let Go Of Grudges And Resentments? appeared first on Lifestyle.

5 Ways To Stop The Negative Effects Of Social Media

According to DemandSage.com, nearly 5 billion people use social media worldwide, which is more than half of the world’s population (61%). Experts predict that number will rise to 5.17 billion by 2024. It’s probably no surprise that Facebook leads the field with 3.05 billion users. The typical social media user is on six different platforms. 

Social media has many benefits and can be a positive tool. It allows us to connect with family and friends and interact with businesses. 

We can use it to preserve memories and share experiences or things of interest. 

We can use it to learn new skills or teach others. Take YouTube, for example, you can learn just about anything you want to know, from fixing the garbage disposal to knitting a winter scarf!  

Let’s not forget about Pinterest and its vast pictures and short reels. Then there are Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and others that offer images and videos with brief written explanations.

Despite these benefits, social media also has its disadvantages. 

Research shows that spending too much time on these platforms can lead to increased stress, loneliness, isolation, and depression.

Claude Mellins, Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, writes, “Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health.”

We need to be wise and protect our minds when using social media. Why? To maximize its benefits while minimizing its detrimental effects. 

Here are five ways to do just that.

Customize Your Feed

Be ruthless. Social media exists for you; you don’t exist for social media. 

Unfollow, block, or remove negative or fearmongering people or pages. Delete toxic friends. 

Limit who views and comments on your posts. 

People are not entitled to have access to your life. So, don’t let them guilt, shame, or manipulate you into thinking they should have a say in your life. 

Keeping a small circle of virtual friends is perfectly okay (and perhaps even healthy).

Replace people and organizations with accounts that inspire and encourage you – that build you up and make you feel good about yourself.

Look for people who embrace their natural beauty and focus on wholesome things. Follow people who are constantly spreading positive words of motivation across their feeds.

Use this Ancient wisdom as your guide: 

“Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (Philippians 4:8; New Living Translation.)

You are in charge of what kind of social media content streams into your mind and heart. 

Be The Boss

How many times have you bombarded your mind with updates, news, and irrelevant posts as soon as your alarm goes off and you wake up? 

This is one of the worst ways to start your day. It often leads to losing track of time, rushing out the door because you’re late, and adding unneeded stress and anxiety to your life. 

Why let social media boss you around and dictate the quality and flow of your day? Isn’t it time for you to be the boss?

Instead, consider adding screen-free activities to your morning routine, like journaling, meditating, and practicing gratitude.

When you start scrolling through social media at a time of your choosing, set a time limit on how long you spend on each app. And don’t let the virtual world replace the real world. 

Turn off Notifications

Just because you always have your phone with you doesn’t mean you must always be available. Cut yourself free from social media’s umbilical cord of relentless streams and feeds.  

Give yourself a few minutes of peace and quiet or focused, uninterrupted time to do your work or something that’s really important to you. 

Remember, social media makes its money through advertising dollars, so the apps are designed to interrupt your attention and hijack your focus to lure you to their feeds so they can generate revenue from ads.

One of the most effective ways to regain your precious time is to switch off notifications as often as is necessary during the day. Don’t let social media use you.

Be Aware

Be critical of social media and realize that most posts and reels you see are someone’s best moments; they only show you what they want you to see. They’re projecting an image or a brand; they’re not displaying their typical day-to-day life for the whole world to see.

Detox

Try this sometime today or this week: Set your phone down and be fully present in the moment. 

Look around the room, notice how the light shines through the window, and listen to the different sounds around you; be aware and fully present. 

Time yourself for sixty seconds. Breathe. Live. Soak in the sights, fragrances, and sounds of the world around you. If you’re brave enough, do this a few times a week or day to wean yourself off your addiction to social media. 

Why not trade social media time for something more constructive with your time? Do something to improve your life by acquiring a new skill, write a paragraph of the next great American novel, resurrect an old hobby, read, exercise, enjoy a stroll in the sunshine, journal, draw, paint, or play a musical instrument, and more!

Live Life!

Live with passion and unlock your best life! Laugh, be curious, explore, celebrate love, and have adventures! Grow, serve, and give back instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media, living life through someone else’s screen.

The post 5 Ways To Stop The Negative Effects Of Social Media appeared first on Lifestyle.

We put a lot of stress on ourselves to create the perfect Christmas and make special memories that no one will ever forget. The holiday season feels magical, with sights, smells, and sounds that fill us with wonder and delight. 

But you don’t have to have the perfect Christmas for it to be a blessing. In fact, being overwhelmed and stressed can make the holidays feel burdensome. Nobody wants that. 

If you talk to people with a few Christmases under their belts and raised kids from infanthood to adulthood, they say you shouldn’t jampack your holidays full of everything; give them room to breathe and to be surprised. Putting all your effort into making the holidays perfect and memorable is unnecessary. Do less to enjoy it more. 

Spare yourself unneeded stress by asking yourself these powerful questions to manage how you spend your time and energy during the holidays.

How important is it to buy gifts for Christmas? 

A special feeling comes with seeing a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with heaps of presents underneath spilling out onto the floor. Everyone is so excited when it’s time to open the presents, ripping off bows and tearing through paper. But how many of the gifts do people usually really only care about the rest of the year? Maybe one or two? It isn’t the number of gifts that’s important; the thoughtfulness behind them matters most.

What will the kids remember most about Christmas? 

Kids will remember the spirit of Christmas and what you did as a family more than the gifts. They will remember traditions or special trips like a ski trip instead of staying home. Gifts are important, but so are events and beautiful experiences. 

What are the top 3 most important things to focus on? 

1. Quality AND quantity time. Be fully present! If Christmas is about anything, it’s not about the stuff you get but the time you spend with the people you love! Doing something special with each child or family member during the season means so much to them. 

2. Traditions. What’s something fun you can do every year? Traditions create lasting memories that will warm the soul for years to come, long into adulthood when our loved ones are no longer with us. 

3. Community. The holidays aren’t a time for us to only focus on ourselves and family. Christmas is a time to remember that we’re blessed to be a blessing – that it’s really more about giving than receiving. Making an extra effort to care for people in the community, choosing a name from one of the many angel trees we see this time of year and buying them a gift, or volunteering as a family in your faith community to make Christmas special for less fortunate families, will make Christmas extra special for you and your family – one that the kids will never forget. 

With so much to do and the pressure to make it perfect, Christmas can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t make it complicated; keep it simple. Take a page from the books of others who’ve gone before to learn the true meaning of Christmas.

May you receive the gifts that matter most this holiday season so you can truly be blessed instead of burdened this Christmas.  

The post Burdened Or Blessed This Christmas? appeared first on Lifestyle.

There’s just something special about the Christmas season that ignites people with a sense of wonder and excitement. It’s the perfect time to spread goodwill and generosity, especially to those who routinely make our lives a little bit easier, better, and brighter.

Among the people at the top of our gift-giving list, besides our loved ones, should be people we might not think of often but play important roles in our world.  

These are the people who do their jobs quietly day in and day out and often with very little heartfelt appreciation. It’s even to overlook them and take them for granted. 

Why not acknowledge their service by doing something extra special that makes their Christmas merrier and brighter? Consider adding these folks to your Christmas gift-giving list this season.

Your Postal Delivery Worker

The post Make Christmas Merrier For These People, Too! appeared first on Lifestyle.

You can learn a lot from rude people. And with the Christmas season upon us, class is in session. The holidays bring out the best or the worst behavior in people. It can happen to the best of us. You can be an angel one minute and a Grinch the next, especially if someone steals your parking spot. 

Rude people are like a cold, blustery wind that blows holiday warmth and cheer away.

It’s impossible to avoid Grinches during the holidays. You’ll come across impatient shoppers, rude clerks, and probably one or two festively challenged family members, along with many others who will steal your Christmas spirit if you’re not careful.  

Face it. Dealing with difficult people is hard! So, if you can’t beat them, join them, right? Wrong.

Remember two things. You’re not responsible for their happiness, and two, rude behavior says more about them than you. 

But remember this, too: The holidays are stressful, and you never know what someone is going through or trying to survive. So have compassion; be kinder and a little more patient.

With that in mind, here are some typical holiday Grinches you’ll likely run into and how to handle them. 

Grinch #1 – The rude clerk. 

The best way to handle rude or short-tempered staff is to be kind. Will you feel like it? No, especially since they’re paid to be helpful and nice. But take a deep breath, smile, and be kind anyway because they face a lot of stress during the holidays with longer hours and more shoppers. They encounter more than their fair share of grumpy, difficult people during this time of year, while also trying to plan something special for the holidays for their family and loved ones. Just because you’re friendly and nice doesn’t mean most shoppers are. Make it a point to share a warm word of encouragement or a nice compliment. Be the one who brightens their day. Be kind.

Grinch #2 -The grumpy relative. 

We all have that one relative who just can’t wait for the holidays to end, right? And they complain about everything, pointing out what’s wrong with the world and how the season is too commercial. Their very presence puts a chill in the air and sends a shiver down your spine. And if they happen to ask what you want for Christmas, you have all you can do not to say, “Earplugs would be nice.”

How do you respond to grinchy relatives? You guessed it. With warmth and kindness. Chances are, your loved ones are struggling with things, too, just like the store clerk. And even though you’re not responsible for their happiness, you are responsible for your own, so be pleasant and cheerful. Don’t take things personally; ignore their behavior. Be generous with your gifts of love, gratitude, and kindness to them. Celebrate hope, joy, and peace while giving their negativity a pass. 

Grinch #3 – The Grinchy colleague. 

The holidays tend to amplify whatever emotions people are feeling. Some of the people you work with will be lonely, sad, depressed, or struggling with problems you don’t even know about. The happiness of the holidays can make some people feel very empty, especially if they’re dealing with a loss or a significant problem. Again, try not to allow their negativity to affect or infect you.

Be warm and positive, even if it seems to rub them the wrong way; don’t dim your holiday glow to make them feel better (but be caring and sensitive if you know they’re dealing with losing a loved one or struggling in a relationship). Keep your holiday spirit and do something nice to help them feel happy. Your kindness might lift their spirit and strengthen their heart. 

Be the Reason for the season in human form to the people you meet.

You never know the burdens people carry. We spend so much time focusing on unlocking our best life that we overlook the needs of others sometimes, especially in the holiday rush.

Let the warmth of your love and kindness glow this holiday season. Christmas is about giving, not getting. Give grace, second chances, and the benefit of the doubt. Let your joyful spirit and grateful heart help someone else unlock their best life this Christmas.

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