Running full steam every day exhausts our mind, body, and soul. Learning to keep tasks and a to-do list at bay requires cultivating intentional good habits. If not, all the little and unnecessary things will clutter our minds. Keeping our minds free and decluttered lends itself to creativity, unlike instinctual animals such as our pets. Our greatest gift to think logically can also be our greatest weakness if we do not use it for its intended purposes to serve and care for one another. Many social and environmental issues dominate our culture, which has caused a great divide within our communities. The effects are detrimental to our mental health, our physical health, and eventually our spiritual health. Our whole being has responded to these changes with cabin fever symptoms of restlessness, irritability, loneliness, depression, and hopelessness. To combat these cabin fever symptoms, entering into the wilderness gives us a sense of getting back with nature, getting back to our roots. It helps us rediscover and use our most significant asset of logic and reason to become aware of ourselves with nature, our community, and our creator. Do you want a “going out” experience and want liberation from whatever holds you down and keeps you from finding joy and contentment? Being delivered mentally, physically, and spiritually is needed to find freedom and receive hope when things seem hopeless.
As we navigate through the last few months of this year, we want to prepare our hearts for the more extraordinary things to come next year. If you desire a “Wilderness” experience, the Star of the North Retreat Centre has put together an “Aurora Living” program showing you how to learn and practice a contemplative way of living. (Aurora Living program not affiliated with HansonEllis).
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Being delivered mentally, physically, and spiritually is needed to find freedom and receive hope when things seem hopeless.
Are you ready to go deep into the wilderness and contemplate and prepare yourself for a new and better version of yourself? Here are a few things we recommend to help you fully experience what nature has to offer you in finding tranquility and peace. If you know someone that is in need to refuel before the end of the year, the following products make a great “Wilderness Care Package” to send them off with.
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There is a kind of deep satisfaction and quiet contentment when you know that you live each day not just for yourself but for someone else. When the morning star rises early in the morning, illuminating the sky and your bedroom with the first rays of light, the dawn of a new day has begun. As you open your eyes to greet the morning light, a familiar and warm arm gently hugs and embraces you. Knowing that you are loved, needed, and appreciated each day brings fullness to your day. Bringing two hearts and souls together signifies a sacramental and symbolic bond, testifying the love the two people have for one another.
For the newlyweds that are just starting their journey of life together, many questions will arise. Newlyweeds will start pondering questions as will our marriage weather out these storms that we will face in this new era of uncertainty? Will we have kids? Will we be good enough parents? Will we stick it out to the end, through sickness, in health, for richer or poorer, and through good and bad times? The what-if questions are typical; our response to them will determine how strong the marriage will be. Let not the passage of time be a force that separates two hearts but let the passage of time be the driving force to grow deeper in love for one another, mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Tweet This: “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back. “ Cherish the union of marriage because it is worth the time invested.
“Never give up, Great things take time. Be patient”
Life has been immensely challenging the last year, with so much on each of our plates. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our everyday life is turned upside down. We want to reach out to our Wellness Blog readers to share hope and positivity amid challenging times. As an event company, HansonEllis commemorates birthdays, promotions, anniversaries, and weddings. We relish seeing happy and successful events and marriages. Celebrating life with love, trust, faith has been our slogan for more than a decade.
Just how can each one of us celebrate life during these times? For the married couple, living life with love, trust, and faith are not easy. Having support to help you walk on your journey of married life can bring closeness and have you grow deeper in love with one another. The Worldwide Marriage Encounter has been assisting couples in experiencing new ways of appreciating one another, new ways to communicate through the same love language and helping with ways to continue to enjoy the journey of married life together. Worldwide Marriage Encounter is not affiliated with HansonEllis, but we feel the enriching, and transformative experience to married couples is invaluable. It is not couples therapy or counseling but a sharing of experience. Ready to have a marriage encounter with your better half in a powerful way? Join the WWME Edmonton Virtual Weekend November 5-7, 2021. Registrations closes on November 1st.
Are you Newlywed and looking forward to the many years ahead with your wife or husband? Or a couple celebrating an upcoming anniversary? Our newly arrived sand timers will be a timeless gift.
It has been about over a month since most of us are in quarantine and need to stay at home unless going out to buy groceries, medicine or run essential errands. Our previous blog gave some tips on successfully working from home. This week, we are extending that further with successfully staying emotionally and mentally balanced while staying at home.
Recap from the last blog post we gave Tip #1, designation space/room for activities
Tip 2: Plan/organize a schedule
Office work to be done (morning/afternoon/night)
Kids school work to be done (morning/afternoon/night)
Meals (Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner)
Family Time (specific time during the day/ days of the week/ frequency during the week)
Keeping work life and home life organized can be done with a little help from apps online. If you are working from home, setting up your work environment at home is vital to help you stay focus. To help you finish your work and stay organized during these times is another factor you will need to consider implementing. A great tool to manage projects, tasks, to-do lists, and stay connected with co-workers is a Kaban platform called Asana. Visually it lets you organize your ideas, tasks, and projects in an easy to view format.
Asana.com
Now that our kids are at home with us 24/7, it is time to dust off those Algebra and fraction skills we learned and help teach and guide our kids with online learning. Kids are quite tech-savvy, but guidance is still needed from parents to help make sure they are on track with school work and time management. A great app to help you and your kids stay on top of things is an app called Cozi. It is geared toward syncing family activities and helping each family member remain productive and connected.
The Cozi app.has five features that make it a family-friendly app.
1: Family calendar, color-coded for each family member.
2: Shopping lists that the whole family can access in real-time.
3: To do lists/Chore list
4: Recipe Box and Meals, which lets you save all your favorite recipes to the app and allows you to add ingredients from the method to your grocery list.
5. Family Journal. It is a social media platform that functions more like a journal/diary, which lets you add a photo and write down memories.
Overall this app can be used by all members of your family.
Cozicentral.com
Both of these Asana and Cozi apps can be accessed on a desktop and your smartphone and synched yo all tech devices. If you start organizing your work life and home life with just these two apps, you will be quite surprised by how productive your day will be.
For some, apps are great, but you may still need to physically organize your day, week, and month on an actual piece of paper. If you need to plan on paper, then a paper planner can still accomplish the task of organizing your life. Below is our custom design sample of a weekly calendar you can download for free. This weekly planner can be used alongside the two apps mentioned above. Happy Planning!
Tip 3: Plan B- If the day or week not going as planned
You may have planned out the day, week, and month to a T and crossed your finger that everything goes as plan, but as life would have it when one domino falls, it knocks down another domino. If your week is not going as plan, it is always good to have a Plan B in place.
Plan B is not so much a plan to change what you initially want to execute, but it is more of a method of “What if” then “what now” plan.
If a family member does get sick during these times, have a plan ready, so the rest of the family will still be fed and taken care of. Here are a few resources to get food delivered without you leaving your home.
Boredom and loneliness will be at an all-time high if you do not keep yourself busy. Here are a few ways to keep your mind occupied and your kids busy when you are working from home. With all entertainment, it is wise to keep these activities on moderation.
Music can be a mood changer, feeling down and unmotivated? Here are a few music resources to make working from home a little easier (no elevator music, unless you prefer that type of music). Create your playlist, make it private or public to share with friends, family, and co-workers.
Top 5 Music apps:
Spotify
iheart radio
Youtube Music
Apple music
Google Music
Staying at home is an excellent opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t just keep your mind entertained but also keep it growing with podcasts. Keep up to date with contents on things that are relevant to you to gain better insights into your areas of expertise and make information easier to consume. Below are a few podcasts you can tune in.
Top Podcast Apps:
iHeartRadio
Spotify
Google Podcat
Apple Podcast
iTunes
Movie night is almost every night now that we are all at home. Make movie night fun with the entire family. Have a bonfire in the backyard and host a family movie night with a projector. Do a drive-in movie, including blankets and pillows in your car and watch a movie in the driveway in your car with the movie projected on the garage door inside your garage (make sure you do not turn on the engine if inside the garage, only roll down the windows).
Top Online Movie Streaming: (digitaltrends.com)
Netflix
Hulu
Disney +
YouTube
IMDb TV
Your mind overloads with mindless thoughts and endless binge-watching when you are at home all day. It is essential to keep your body in motion at this time of quarantine as well. Keeping your body moving helps with focus and concentration and lessens boredom and depression. Have an exercise program schedule daily or weekly for you and your entire family. Here are a few ways to keep your body moving.
Apps on your phone (Nike Training Club, Fiit, Fit, Peloton Digital, Fitbod)
Tip 4: Smart Tech Usage
Keeping your family’s tech usage will make sure everyone is still in connection with one another. Limit tech usage such as iPad, smartphone, TV, game boxes to a minimum. As you limit the tech usage, increase family time. Set a specific time of the day or week that the whole family can get together without any technology and just spend quality time. A great way to do this is by playing good old fashion board games. Some popular ones are listed below.
Monopoly
Scrabble
Catan
Chess
Pandemic
With just 4 tips to keep your mind and body in active mode, working from home will be a lot easier when you know that the rest of your family is following the same plan as you are.
The CDC is advising the use of non-medical cloth faced covering as an additional voluntary public health measure. Face covers are a key part of the solution to helping Americans get back to work. Made in the USA. Protecting our community!
This weekend’s news update by President Trump to extend the Social Distancing Guidelines through the end of April may have some of us pulling out our hair or some of us smiling and letting out a sigh of relief. How was your response to this news? Your reaction may be a sign of how well you will be able to endure working from home successfully and how well your relationship will be with family and friends. We want to have all our hair on our heads by the time we can go back physically to our jobs and to re-group and be back with our community. With the entire world’s economy largely shut down, this is as big of a stressor as the COVID-19 virus itself. How then are we to act and respond when we feel like we do not have any control over our circumstances? First, we have to know that there is hope no matter how bleak the outcome may look. We may not be able to control outside factors, but what we can control is our emotions and reactions to our circumstances. An important reminder to control emotional roller coasters during these uncertain times is to creates space not only in your mind for peace but also to develop physical peace at home by setting up your at-home environment for success. Since our daily routine may have shifted a bit and may or may not go back to what it was before, we need to be flexible to that change. Here are a few tips for setting up a successful and peaceful home environment that will win over with your spouse and kids and keep you sane while working from home.
Tip 1: Designate space/room for activities
Mom or Dad area to do work
Kids area for school work
Family entertainment
“Quiet Time” Prayers and reflection
Tip 2: Plan/organize a schedule
Office work to be done (morning/afternoon/night)
Kids school work to be done (morning/afternoon/night)
Meals (Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner)
Family Time (specific time during the day/ days of the week/ frequency during the week)
Tip 3: Plan B- If the day or week not going as planned
List of resource to restaurants for takeout or delivery (if not able to cook or a family member is sick)
Work overload/lack of focus and concentration (have an uplifting playlist and positive movie list to go to)
boredom/redundancy (have resources of physical activities to do to increase endorphins and stimulate creativity)
Tip 4: Smart Tech Usage
Refrain from watching 24/7 news on all social channels- can be draining and negatively impact your mindset and perspective
Set guidelines on watching YouTubes and Netflix
Have a “tech-free” hour/day to give your mind and eyes a rest
Tip 1: Designate space/room for activities
Keeping everyone in the household safe and healthy is the number one priority. Making sure each room in the house is cleaned and wiped down ensures a healthy household and helps maintain daily activities. For parents that have not been laid off but are still actually working but are now working remotely from home, keeping focused and on task requires a big learning curve for parents and kids. Similar to working at the office, there are designated spaces to get certain things done so work can be efficient. We have to look at our work environment in the same way. First, determine what type of work environment you work best and most efficiently. A space with you and a computer or open space with bustling noise around you? Once you figured out your zone of genius, designate an area that fits into this model. If quiet and physical wall boundaries are preferred, use a room that gives you the privacy to be alone. Having a lock on the door is a plus, so when doing intensely focused work, you can lock yourself in the room so no interruptions can distract and bother you. Set up your table/desk with necessary accessories to make the workspace flow without always running out to other rooms to pick up a pen, stapler, glue, printout, or a snack. Set a timer on your phone to complete your days’ work and let the rest of your family know when you will be done and available for them.
Once you figured out your zone of genius, designate an area that fits into this model
If social distancing is already enough for you, and isolation in a room seems like torture, find a space in the living room or kitchen to set up your workspace. This way, there is open communication, being able to attend to your family if they have any questions and, at the same time, do your work and snack and walk around to relieve fatigue. If you can handle distractions and can quickly refocus on the task, the open floor plan is doable.
It is vital that kids stay on task and not succumb to mindless games and Youtube watching all day. Set up a space where kids can feel motivated and inspired to do homework. Online learning is new and is a bit daunting with keeping up with emails and reminders of when school work is to be done and turned in. By setting up space and placing all their essential school supplies in one area, they are ready to learn and get started without excuses for not having a pen, paper, or computer/laptop available. Just like school, provide an incentive or reward when they complete their schoolwork. It can be as simple as a snack they like. If there is only one computer or laptop that the entire family shares, make sure you create a separate login screen, so they do not accidentally delete or move your important files or download spam or files with a virus.
The social distancing orders set by government officials has left some of us feeling isolated and alone. At home, we can still feel isolated and alone, even when there are people around. Prevent feeling lonely during these times by designating a space for family time. Good areas are the living room, kitchen, or back yard. These spaces are large enough for the entire family to gather and play games. The living room is probably the least used space these days since we rarely sit around with families due to our busy and hectic schedules. Now with more time on our hands, it is the perfect opportunity to utilize this room and bring back the “family room.” Place board games, videos, books, magazines, special toys, arts, and craft supplies in this space, so when it is time for family entertainment, you have it ready. Family fun is always better with food and drinks. Make sure to have a table that you can set up snacks and drinks, so the family stays in the room without going into another room to grab food and drinks.
The last room we must designate is for “Quiet time” used for prayers, reflection, and meditation. It is more important than ever to have space where we can calm our minds and connect with our Faith. During these uncertain times, we must continue to pray for our family, friends, leaders, teachers, the sick/poor, and ourselves. By designing a space that fosters tranquility and calmness will allow your entire household to ward off stress, keep emotions under control, and combat fear and anxiety. This quiet space can be a bedroom or living room. Add an aromatherapy diffuser to enhance the experience to help relax you, bring mental clarity, and energize you. Incorporate Faith-based icons, scriptures, verses, and quotes to help keep your focus during meditation and prayers. Include a journal to write down your thoughts, prayers, and gratitude.
Remember, when you clear your mind during meditation and prayer, you must also fill it with something good and not keep it void of emptiness. When your mind is void of nothing, negativity will always creep in. Invite your whole family to experience this quiet time. You will see a great mood shift if you incorporate this into your daily schedule. It is essential to stay mentally and spiritually strong during these times.
A few scents to keep your emotions under control. (Worldhealth.net).
Scents to Relieve Anger: Chamomile, Jasmine, Patchouli, Rose and Ylang-ylang.
Scents to Relieve Anxiety: Bergamot, Cedarwood, Cypress, Frankincense, Hyssop, Lavender, Marjoram, Myrrh, Neroli, Orange, Peach, Rose, Rose Geranium and Violet Leaf.
Scents to Increase Confidence: Frankincense, Jasmine, Patchouli and Sandalwood.
Scents to Ease Depression: Bergamot, Clary Sage, Grapefruit, Jasmine, Lavender, Lemon, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Neroli, Orange, Petitgrain, Rose Geranium, Sandalwood, Tangerine and Ylang-ylang.
Scents to Improve Memory: Bay Laurel, Jasmine, Lavender, Lemon and Rosemary.
Scents to Ease Sorrow: Clary Sage, Cypress, Fir, Marjoram, Rosemary and Sage.
Scents to Invigorate and Overcome Fatigue: Angelica, Benzoin, Camphor, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Clove Basil, Cypress, Eucalyptus, Fennel, Lemon, Peppermint, Pine, Sage and Spiced Apple.
Scents to Deal with Stress, Nervous Tension and Insomnia: Bergamot, Chamomile, Cinnamon, Cloves, Frankincense, Lavender, Lemon, Marjoram, Myrrh, Neroli, Nutmeg, Orange, Petitgrain, Rose, Sandalwood, Sweet Melissa, Valerian, Vanilla, Violet, and Ylang-ylang.
Scents to Calm Irritability: Chamomile, Neroli, Rose, and Rose Geranium.
This wraps up Tip #1, check our blog the rest of this week for Tip #2, #3, and Tip #4.
