Coaching

Nurturing Healthy Self-regard: Social Media and Body Image

By |2024-04-26T12:58:47+00:00April 24th, 2024|Christian Counseling For Teens, Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development|

There’s a verse in the book of Proverbs that says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” (Proverbs 4:23, ESV) This verse points out the truth that the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and attitudes we allow into our lives and thoughts influence us in profound ways. The things that preoccupy your mental and emotional landscape shape the person you are and become, including body image. This is why you ought to be cautious about what you allow to enter your mind and heart. In our culture, we are hyper-conscious about what we put into our bodies, but we don’t often show the same kind of vigilance when it comes to the influences we allow into our lives. Social media, like any other tool, can work for our good, but it can also harm us. It requires wisdom to discern when it is not working for you and undermining your well-being. Developing a healthy body image Your body image is an amalgam of the attitudes, thoughts, and feelings you have toward your own body. A positive body image is when you appreciate what your body looks like, what it can do, and what it feels like to inhabit it. Additionally, a positive body image applies to the whole as well as the parts. You appreciate your body as a whole, but you also like parts of yourself. Positive body image doesn’t mean you don’t have things about yourself you may not like or would like to change. It simply means that your predominant attitude toward yourself and your body is one of positive self-regard. On the flip side, a negative body image is when your predominant attitude and feelings toward yourself are negative; you don’t feel comfortable in your body, you wish to change [...]

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Communication Styles in the Workplace: Understanding the Analytical Communication Style

By |2024-07-10T09:35:51+00:00March 15th, 2024|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Relationship Issues|

Just like our personalities, we each have our way of communicating, especially in the workplace where we must collaborate with so many people. Understanding our communication style and that of our colleagues and clients can be a great help as it enables us to boost productivity, have better working relationships, and reduce work-related stress. This article is about one style - namely, an analytical communication style. In trying to help understand the different communication dynamics in the workplace, Mark Murphy, who is a leading leadership coach and author came up with the following four types of communication. These are namely: Analytical Intuitive Functional Personal His work further stresses that no communication style is better than the other. Though all of them have different characteristics in how people employ them, they are all equally important to have in an organization. Teams can look at projects and situations from diverse perspectives if everyone is allowed to communicate in the way that suits them best. For this article, we will focus on the analytical communication style. We will describe their main characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses and how to properly work with an analytical communicator if you are not one. Main characteristics of an analytical communication style Judging from the name, we can already see that this is someone whose communication style is geared toward analysis. Below are some key characteristics: Data-driven When they have a point to communicate or a stance to advocate for, they rely strictly on empirical, undisputed data. This means their presentations will include statistics and research-based information. They do not entertain hypotheticals; for them, numbers and proven patterns don’t lie. Logical Analytical communicators work best with information that is logical and factual. They will not rely on feelings, personal opinions, intuition, or optimistic thinking when presenting ideas. This [...]

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Helping Your Body Flush the Chemicals of Stress

By |2024-03-28T12:31:54+00:00November 16th, 2023|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development|

Stress is not simply difficult on your emotions; it is hard on your physical self as well. Whether stress is low-grade and ongoing, or spikes from an intense or critical situation, your body mounts a response. In stressful moments, the brain floods the body with hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. In a truly dire situation, these hormones keep you alive! They trigger your flight-or-fight response, enabling you to do things you could not manage under normal situations. However, once the situation has passed or settled, it is not beneficial to keep these hormones circulating. Extended periods of exposure can cause an elevated heart rate and blood pressure. Concerns of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) could arise. If you have been through a stressful situation there are a few activities that you can do to flush the stress chemicals out of your body and bring “happy” hormones back. Also consider reaching out to a counselor if you feel exceptionally overwhelmed or anxious feelings persist. 4 Strategies for Overcoming Stress Combating stress chemicals with water. Drinking a lot of water is a terrific way to clear the body of stress hormones. Water will most quickly flush the stress hormones out of your body. Likewise, you should minimize caffeine and alcohol intake so as not to thwart efforts. Caffeine is a stimulant. If you have been through a stressful situation, your body is already flooded with stimulant. Alcohol, though not a stimulant, is falsely soothing and addictive. In the long term, if overused, it can actually raise cortisol levels. While taking a bath or shower may not rid your body of stress chemicals, it can have a calming effect. Hot water and Epsom salts can relax muscle tension brought on by stressful situations. Using exercise to [...]

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The Pursuit of a Life Well Lived: Bible Verses About Life

By |2023-10-26T12:56:42+00:00August 3rd, 2023|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Spiritual Development|

What is life all about, and what makes for a life well-lived? We all pursue the good life or versions of what we think approximate the good life. A part of what it means to be American is the pursuit of happiness. The problem is that what we think life is all about, and what we think will make us happy, is often a cul-de-sac that doesn’t take us where we want to go. There are many Bible verses about life that can help. Bible verses about life One way of looking at the entire storyline of the Bible is to see it as the contest between life and death. God is the source of life, of all that is good, right, pure, noble, lovely, and beautiful (Philippians 4: 8-9; James 1:17; John 1:4). Turning away from God and choosing our own path is choosing death because life – true, deep, rich, and abundant life – cannot be found anywhere else. Throughout the Bible, God is calling people to return to Him, to find life, and we resist God’s invitation to pursue our own path, to our peril. Some Bible verses about life are below: Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” – Luke 12:15, NIV If we’re honest with ourselves, our lives are often structured around the acquisition of things. Our energies are poured into tasks to be able to acquire more. That’s not to say every waking moment is spent trying to accumulate more possessions, but it’s to say that things capture our imagination and seem to function as a measure of success and a meaningful life. We desire great cars, vacations, the latest tech, trendy clothes, and designer [...]

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