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Vitamins for Women: The Magnetism of Confidence

confidence attracts confidence

We are outdoors these days, even in the heat.  We are drawn to the sunshine, to nature, gardening, travelling, tending, tanning.... reveling in the lovely lazy days of summer.  I know that after a week in Colorado, on my first solo vacation in years, I felt adventurous, alive, and confident.  Things that I hadn't really felt in a long time.


Confidence draws people.  If you feel good about yourself, you feel good about your world, and people, known and unknown,  want to share that with you.  Self-assurance is alluring.


In our daily routines, we may forget to relish our confidence.  It is often easier to embrace the "can't do that" mentality, than it is to fearlessly forge ahead with the "can do" attitude.  Plus we are also programmed to be ashamed or embarrassed if things don't go just right... so it is easier not to try, than it is to try and fail.  


Remind yourself of the magnetism of confidence and then realize that there are many, small things that we can do to increase our assurance-quota.  They don't require a lot of effort but the impact is significant.


1) Like yourself and assume that people like you, too.  It makes it easier to be around others, and it stills the small nagging voice that tries to undermine you.  If I don't like myself, who will?  


2) Don't slouch.  My grandma Louise was a firm believer in sitting and standing tall and proud.  Evidence suggests that slouching makes you look and feel insecure. When I am feeling most afraid is when I stand my tallest.


3) Make eye contact.  Confident people look at you directly, whether the situation is pleasant or not.  Even if you are feeling insecure, eye contact will NOT relay that message to others.  


4) Clean out the clutter in your wallet, your purse, your desk, your closet.  Clutter tends to overwhelm us.  File receipts, copy business cards into your smart phone, throw away garbage and snippets of meaningless papers.  Managing your clutter will help you feel in control of your life.


5) Stop envying others.  Remember someone is always richer and someone is always poorer than you.  Skinnier, fatter, prettier, wiser, wittier.  Relax, stop comparing and relish who you are and what you have. 


6) Start a gratitude list.  Be grateful for the small things as well as the large.  A car that gets you to work and is paid for, a job that let's you pay your bills, your good health, the bird nesting in your backyard, the view from the bridge as I cross the harbor to work....all things to be grateful for.  You are blessed. 


7) Make a decision, don't over-analyze, don't ponder every possible ramification, those are anxious and paralyzing behaviors.  Make a commitment and never look back.  Be glad for your decisions; even those that don't end up quite as you planned have undoubtedly taught a lesson or afforded an adventure you may never have otherwise experienced.  I try never to spend energy ruminating on what some could label as mistakes.  I can't change the past, but agonizing can ruin the present.


8) Step away from the mirror.  You can be your own worst critic.  Paying too much attention to your appearance generally causes unhappiness. It also takes away your energy from doing something constructive with positive, long-term results like exercising, attending classes or seminars, or meditating.


9) Congratulate yourself on daily done deeds.  Never under value what you have accomplished.  If you have a to-do list, create an already done list as well.  I like to list activities and tasks done on a calendar.  Later I look back and remind myself of everything that I have done.


10) Take care of yourself.  Start trying out new, healthy recipes.  Use produce from the farmer's market.  Take a walk in the morning and another at dusk.  Meditate and pray.  Get adequate sleep.  Take a good blend of multi vitamins for women.  Start breathing with intention.


Be healthy, be safe, take your WomenVitamins, and be blessed, Kersten

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Women Vitamins: Is It All In the Details?

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I am in Colorado for a week of vacation: staying in Breckenridge, smelling the fresh air, enjoying the mountain scenery, driving around, taking pictures like mad.  The snow still lingers on the high peaks. The days are crystal clear, the nights are crisp and cool. At 10,000 feet, I am almost 2 miles above my home, south of Houston, Texas.  

Everything looks so green and beautiful. It's so darn beautiful. The water cascades down the mountains in bridal veil falls.  The rivers and creeks are running over 4 times normal volume.  I have booked a white water rafting experience for tomorrow morning on the Arkansas River about 2 hours south of here.  I am excited.  I have returned home and my heart is gladdened.

And yet, when I really take a close look, I see something disturbing: millions of dead pine trees.  Lodge pole pines ravaged by the pine beetle....mountainsides covered in dead brown skeletal remains of once stately evergreens....and my heart breaks.

I read in a local paper, that the snow fall this last season was average to below average, and the run-off waters are so much more because the pines are dead....every pine consumed 10 gallons of water, that now flows down, unused, and unimpeded.  I don't really understand how the pine beetle infestation became so overwhelming...why nothing was done to prevent this, or to stop it, or to minimize it. 

It's sort of like the oil tragedy occurring in the Gulf....miles of our fragile eco-systems under assault...by overwhelming forces that we can't seem to alter or affect.  Forces that will affect all the inhabitants, the effect of which will impact all our lives for years to come.  

Who should have noticed the first few beetles killing the first few pines?  Or paid closer attention to the details of running and overseeing a drilling platform?  Maybe we all need to start paying attention to our hearts and our minds, our mouths and our bodies.....watching for the first signs of our own potential disasters.  Unkind words that wound unnecessarily, stress and issues that age and debilitate us, friends in need we ignore, exercising that we avoid, the junk foods we continue to eat, the consequences we trivialize.

I took this week off to center and  to heal myself from a stressful year.  I realize that I forgot to attend to my needs and attended the needs of others instead.  I am breathing in the pine scented air.  Thank God, all of the pines are not dead....the valiant still stand tall among their fallen brothers.  I am breathing in health and courage for my own spirit, and I will take that back with me when I return home. 


Note to self: Do not over look small details that signal problems; deal with them before they become unsolvable disasters.

Be safe, be healthy, take your women vitamins, and be blessed, Kersten

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I am Brave

Went to Oakley outlet today...great stuff and great prices, so I went to their website and found this cool app for making a collage....just some fun.

http://OakleyMe.com

Women Vitamins

Women Vitamins

Golden leaves and Golden Memories

Fall is one of my favorite seasons.  The weather cools down, and I can turn off the AC and open the windows at night.  There is an energy and a rebirth of vitality..in the way the animals play in the morning crispness, and in Texas there is the second blooming of the roses.

Although I truly enjoy living in Houston now, I can not help but miss this golden time up north..I always loved fall in Dakota, even though it can be the shortest season in history!  Some years there would only be a few precious weeks between the heat of summer and the first snow flakes of winter.  Once in a blue moon, we would actually have an Indian summer...warm weather returning for a while after a sudden first frost.

There was a tang and enthusiasm in the air....fallen leaves, the return of migrating Canadian Geese....even as the days shortened, requiring the donning of jackets, the resulting rosy cheeks from cooler breezes....and the lurking knowledge that winter at its fiercest and finest was only a few short weeks away.

There is a golden glow to my autumnal memories.  I remember the honking of the geese as the myriad V formations would spiral to land on the lakes and sloughs near my farm.  The satisfaction of harvesting the best apples in the county from the large, old, apple tree out front we lovingly called Grandma.. Fall was an interlude of time and space  from which we reorganized our lives and property to be ready for the onslaught of another brutal winter.  We walked fences, tended livestock, brought hay bales home and stocked the barns. We had pie socials, harvest festivals, and community get togethers.

We relished each golden day...knowing how long it would be until another such day would bless us.

Women Vitamins: Remembering Dakota

I spent 12 years on a farm in South Dakota raising my daughter....living close to the land and to nature in rural America was a conscious choice and a gift I wanted to give my child.  We lived about 5 miles out of a small town of 500 people.  The surrounding area was gorgeous; rolling hill country, sloughs and lakes, larger than life blue skies....wild animals and birds everywhere.  I taught school during the day.  The evenings and every other moment of 12 months of the year focused around the farm.  I had a commercial flock of 300 ewes, Arabian horses, ducks, some vagabond chickens, a Great Pyrennes dog, assorted cats, and a China gray goose that showed up one day and decided to stay.

The work was hard and constant....just because a fence was newly put up, did not mean it stayed up.  Unending rhythms of work are unbroken and continuous.  Fences always need repair, and barns alway require paint, fields need plowing, disking, and cultivating just as animals need feeding and tending, nursing and observation.  The cycle is  harmonious and comforting...demanding and redeeming. Snow starts to fall at Halloween and stays around until May....the frost line can go down to 8 or 9 feet depending on how long the Arctic fronts and their -30degree temperatures decide to stay.  It is not a land for the faint-hearted.

Dakota is still a land of pioneers.  Strong people, hard working, dedicated, good-natured, willing to share a joke or a lend a hand... There is a work ethic and a sense of responsibility drilled into them from childhood starting with simple chores of feeding cats and dogs and chickens....thru their adulthood and working with the seasons and with the forces of  nature and the vagary of God.  Farmers are the most optimistic of us all, sowing with hope, tilling and cultivating with expectation, and harvesting with thanks.....if the rains aren't too heavy, or too late, or too little, and the sun is not too hot, nor too infrequent...if the tornadoes don't hit and the wind storms don't strip the rows.....and if hail doesn't shred the plants.

I saw the end of a lot of small farmers...  They were unable to compete with large corporate farms...unaided by our own government which chose to subsidize Australian wool and sheep farmers over American sheep farmers.  Land prices rose, grain and meat prices fell.  Some left for the Cities, others held on with diminishing returns, some turned to politics, others borrowed to expand and hoped the bankers would be flexible.  Their children, my students scattered like seeds in the wind....and thank God for Facebook...we have all reconnected.

This week it was 90 degrees in Houston, and a friend sent a picture of the first snowfall in South Dakota this winter.  I miss the life in Dakota, the people, living with nature....but I do not miss the 6+ months of gray skies and snow....I keep them all in my prayers....every dog, child, fox, deer, coyote, pheasant, farmer and farmer's wife..cow, sheep, horse and pig....Bless them all.  Keep them strong.....