Tag: life

WIP Wednesday February 2019: Silence and Screen Time

WIP Wednesday February 2019: Silence and Screen Time

by Christine Benedict ♥ 2 Comments

To start the year off, I made it my goal to practice positive self-talk in the month of January. I wanted to begin 2019 with the mindset that I am beautiful, I can be who I want to, and I choose faith over fear. I aimed to pay more attention to what I was saying about myself to myself and replace any negativity with these positive phrases I had chosen.

To be perfectly honest, it was hard for me to stay mindful of that. While January was a wonderful month of Jake and I staying home and just enjoying life together in our house and our city, this quiet somehow muffled my self-talk.

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Why Winter Helps My Mental Health

Why Winter Helps My Mental Health

by Christine Benedict ♥ 4 Comments

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Most people love the warmth, sunshine, and liveliness that come with summer. Maybe it’s because of my tendency to be contrarian, but I come alive in the colder months. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great beach vacation or day spent kayaking on a lake, but I’d so much rather be sitting by a fire or even enjoying a chilly stroll around the neighborhood.

I know a lot of people are impacted by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in winter, but did you know that it can also affect people in summer too? I don’t know if my aversion to summer is SAD, but I think it’s good for everyone to keep in mind that for every person who agrees with you, there is bound to be someone who feels the opposite. If you’re someone who has trouble when the days get shorter and the temperature drops, maybe hearing what I love about winter will help you through this season.

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The Biggest Mistake I’ve Ever Made

The Biggest Mistake I’ve Ever Made

by Christine Benedict ♥ 9 Comments

biggestmistake1.19-10Smart kids get good grades. Good grades get you into good colleges. Going to a good college gets you a good job when you graduate. Getting a good job gets you a good career. Getting a good career gets you a good life.

Sound familiar? We’re pretty much all taught to think this way in the US. And if you’re a bright kid, you’ve probably internalized this mentality and formed your life plan around it. You set goals constantly, have a straight and narrow path that is both comforting and stress-inducing to follow. You know exactly how to get what you want from life.

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Read This if You’re Struggling with Your Resolutions

Read This if You’re Struggling with Your Resolutions

by Christine Benedict ♥ 2 Comments

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So we’re a few weeks into 2019. Life is getting back to its normal routine, and if you’re like me, you’re finding that some of the changes that you wanted to make were easier imagined when you were in the dream-like state that comes around the holidays. There’s something about the brightness of December coupled with the mixture of uncertainty and optimism from the New Year that makes us feel a little unstoppable. Our hearts are warmed by the December holidays, and we see ourselves looking over this edge into a landscape of possibilities.

But even an exciting edge is still an edge. There’s fear there, when you’re standing at a precipice. When you visit the Grand Canyon, you’re in awe of what lies before you, but you’re also a little afraid. That’s kind of what I think happens to us when we make New Year’s resolutions.

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I’m Making 2019 the Year of “No”

I’m Making 2019 the Year of “No”

by Christine Benedict ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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Lately, I’ve been seeing people online choose a word that they want to represent their experience in 2019. It’s like a new spin on resolutions—what do you want your future year to boil down to in one word? I’ve seen lots of great words like “create,” “inspire,” and “grow” that make the chooser’s goals fairly easy to imagine. They make sense; they’re positive, and goals centered around that idea would naturally lead to good things.

On the other hand, the word I chose for 2019 is “no.” That’s right, I chose the word from which most negativity in our language comes. And I chose it because I think it will bring a great deal of positivity to my life in 2019. I chose it because there are some things I need to learn to say “no” to if I’m ever going to move forward.

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WIP Wednesday January 2019: Practicing Positive Self-Talk

WIP Wednesday January 2019: Practicing Positive Self-Talk

by Christine Benedict ♥ 1 Comment

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Happy New Year everyone!

This month’s goal is related to something that we all do: talk to ourselves. I don’t care if you don’t like to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. And sometimes we don’t say the nicest things. Often, we say things to ourselves that we’d never say about other people. So why is it ok for me to tear myself down when I’d never do that to someone I love?

How you talk to (and about) yourself is a great barometer for how much self-love you’re in need of. I’m not someone who constantly insults myself and has trouble saying anything positive, but I know that the things I say when no one else is around could use some tuning. And I’ll bet that once I really start paying attention to what I’m telling myself that I’ll realize I say worse things than I thought.

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12 Things I Learned in 2018

12 Things I Learned in 2018

by Christine Benedict ♥ 1 Comment

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For my Work in Progress Wednesday goal this month, I wanted to use December as an opportunity for reflection. I’ll be honest and say that most of my reflecting happened in the past week and a half or so because this Christmas was just so busy. So while this wasn’t something I necessarily had on my mind all month, I do believe that thinking back has made an impact on my mindset in the last 10 days.

For me, one of my favorite things to do—or something I’m rather naturally inclined to do—is to reflect on the past in order to decide my path for the future. As I got thinking, I decided to share what my most important lessons were month by month. Here’s a look back on my 2018 and all the lessons I learned.

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The Challenges of Making Friends as an Adult

The Challenges of Making Friends as an Adult

by Christine Benedict ♥ 5 Comments

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Sometimes I’m kind of shocked when I reflect back to high school and remember how many friends I had. While I always had just a couple of really close friends, I had a good 10 or so friends who I spent time with regularly. What? Who was I?

It was great for that time in my life, but that’s not really what would work for me now. Truthfully, I prefer to have very few very close friends than a lot of friends who I’m not quite as close to. And now that we’ve all gone to college, graduated, and settled, my friend group has become just that. Here’s the thing–even though I have a few absolutely fantastic close friends, none of them live in the same state as me. Bummer. We keep in contact regularly, but I don’t think any of them would argue if I were to say that it’s important for all of us to have friends where we are as well.

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Intuition & My Life, My Love, and My Work

Intuition & My Life, My Love, and My Work

by Christine Benedict ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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I think it’s safe to say that everyone knows what it’s like to have a gut feeling about something. But have you ever thought about where it comes from? How do we just know something? Is it instinctual? Is it something we’ve previously learned that we have just mostly blocked from memory? Or is it something else?

I consider myself an intuitive person. And if you want to know me at all, you should know that my intuition is an essential part of who I am and how I live my life.

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WIP Wednesday December 2018: Reflecting & Moving Forward

WIP Wednesday December 2018: Reflecting & Moving Forward

by Christine Benedict ♥ 1 Comment

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My goal for November was to practice gratitude.

Once again, I feel that I’m standing in front of a learning experience I didn’t expect to have. What I learned this November is that you don’t need to make a measurable change in order for you to see the change. I’m someone who is constantly striving for self-improvement, always looking for goals to set myself, and often belittling my own accomplishments.

This November, I’d say that I achieved my goal. I made gratitude a part of my everyday life. But I still feel like I didn’t make an “improvement.” Why? Because I didn’t learn some new skill or some other demonstrable factor. I’m having one of those moments where I wish I could step outside of myself and say, “Christine–you realize that because of your goal, your entire mood changed last month, right?” Yes. I realize that. And I’m, well, grateful for that. But I feel as though I didn’t accomplish much.

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