For awhile I was interested in “improving my life, but finally, I broke through to another level where I really enjoy my life more than ever before, so much so that I don’t choose to call it life improvement anymore, now it’s fine tunning until someday will be time to climb another mountain or perhaps crawl out of a future ditch. Either way, this is time to enjoy life and keep track of the recipe that works for me in case I or my kids someday need it.
Being mindful is a really valuable way to make sure the limited resources of time, energy, patience, and money, that I am lucky enough to have, get spend in the best way to restore myself mentally, physically, spiritually so that I can “mΔlama pono” (protect what is good in myself and the world).
Today I moved some time slots around and felt like it worked out better, having play breaks in a long school day (vs doing a lot of school in a row), moving “special time” with my daughter to right after lunch, making outside play an option instead of something I “must do”, making lego play at night an option instead of something I “must do”. I splurged on a planner I love so I actually have somewhere to write down those changes, it took me a while to allow myself to write notes with my fast, ugly handwriting in my beloved planner, but that is what it is for after the dates expire it becomes trash…
Top values for this spring:
Gratitude > Undertaking > Restoration ie Break Taking
Serenity > Prudence > Emotional Courage
Proactivity > Transformation > Routine Building
Resilience > Antifragility > Gratitude
Perseverance > Awareness > Grace
Mindfulness > Kindness > Patience
Humility > Assertiveness > Gentle-Curious-Kind Communication
The master spring theme for our family is creativity, as nature seems to create flowers and music in overdrive in the spring after a rest in winter.
This is the first time I was able to select my values using my “gut” intuition rather than choosing from a list, it’s powerful. I didn’t use the lists because I preferred too, I used the lists when that was the only way I could.
This is the list I used to use from author Russ Harris:
1. Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, life, etc.
– Russ Harris
2. Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences.
3. Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want.
4. Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself.
5. Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture or cultivate beauty in myself, others, the environment etc.
6. Caring: to be caring towards myself, others, the environment etc.
7. Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, improve.
8. Compassion: to act with kindness towards those who are suffering.
9. Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others.
10. Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or others.
11. Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations.
12. Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others.
13. Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty.
14. Creativity: to be creative or innovative.
15. Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded and interested; to explore and discover.
16. Encouragement: to encourage and reward behavior that I value in myself or others.
17. Equality: to treat others as equal to myself, and vice-versa.
18. Excitement: to seek, create and engage in activities that are exciting, stimulating or thrilling.
19. Fairness: to be fair to myself or others.
20. Fitness: to maintain or improve my fitness; to look after my physical and mental health and wellbeing.
21. Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances.
22. Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise.
23. Friendliness: to be friendly, companionable, or agreeable towards others.
24. Forgiveness: to be forgiving towards myself or others.
25. Fun: to be fun-loving; to seek, create, and engage in fun-filled activities.
26. Generosity: to be generous, sharing and giving, to myself or others.
27. Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others and life.
28. Honesty: to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others.
29. Humour: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life.
30. Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves.
31. Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, dedicated.
32. Independence: to be self-supportive, and choose my own way of doing things.
33. Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself — emotionally or physically β in my close personal relationships.
34. Justice: to uphold justice and fairness.
35. Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing or caring towards myself or others.
36. Love: to act lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others.
37. Mindfulness: to be conscious of, open to, and curious about my here-and-now experience.
38. Order: to be orderly and organized.
39. Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from otherβs points of view, and weigh evidence fairly.
40. Patience: to wait calmly for what I want.
41. Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties.
42. Pleasure: to create and give pleasure to myself or others.
43. Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others, e.g. taking charge, leading, organizing.
44. Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking.
45. Respect: to be respectful towards myself or others; to be polite, considerate and show positive regard.
46. Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions.
47. Romance: to be romantic; to display and express love or strong affection.
48. Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself or others
49. Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings and actions
50. Self-care: to look after my health and wellbeing, and get my needs met
51. Self-development: to keep growing, advancing or improving in knowledge, skills, character, or life experience.
52. Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals.
53. Sensuality: to create, explore and enjoy experiences that stimulate the five senses.
54. Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality.
55. Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself.
56. Skilfulness: to continually practice and improve my skills, and apply myself fully when using them.
57. Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging, and available to myself or others.
58. Trust: to be trustworthy; to be loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable
If you only keep 3 or 7 values they say a lot about who you are or who you want to be, you can also look over the list and see who your mom or dad or society wanted you to be, the slight or great difference between what other want for you and what you want for you is quite painful. If anyone knew the pain they caused you they would be happy to free you to be yourself, but it’s something that no one else know except the individual.
Thinking about the changes:
Undertaking > Restoration: I don’t want my kids to see me working frantically and make that a habit, I enjoy making the most of the day, but things are going well and I would rather slow down. I can’t help think of my martial art’s instructor telling me a story of an old bull and a young bull on top of a hill, they look down the hill and see a lot of female cows, the young bull says “oh look at that cow, let’s run and mate with that cow,” the old bull says “no, let’s walk and mate with all those cows.” If I had a better idiom, I would use it, but for some reason, I don’t have a better one yet for this concept.
Prudence > Emotional Courage: I want to take small risks of being myself with my family, letting them hurt me and perhaps hurting them in order to know each other.
Proactivity > Routine Building: I have some habits now I’ve waited a lifetime to have, but it hasn’t been for even a month yet, so I really want to keep checking in and make sure I build good habits into something permanent, specifically not yelling at the kids, writing everyday for now, being a little brave towards being myself, thinking about the way I live at least once a week to see if it could use an alignment.
Resilience > Gratitude: Health, good times, good company, these are gifts that are received rather than built, gratitude doubles my joy from the good moments of life, so why throw that away?
Awareness > Grace: If I notice things going wrong, sometimes it seems I could go further and respond as someone who has made many mistakes in the past rather than impatiently, at least as much as possible.
Kindness > Patience: I’m sleeping a little better, I have everything I need, I think I should give the extra energy to those people who I didn’t have patience with when I didn’t have the sleep or energy I needed. Now I can. I was only human with a newborn, but now I can make it a focus.
Assertiveness > Gentle-Curious-Kind Communication: It’s important to be assertive, but it’s just a start, communication is between two people, assertiveness is creating internal safety, but connection is the higher goal and the way I’m experimenting with is by being gentle, curious and kind with my family who I’ve been too rude with for too long.
Arena 1: Interaction with Human Kind – Life Time Goal: Kind Connection
βI shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.β
-Etienne de Grellet
Tools: Assertive Communication, Acceptance, Gentle, Curiosity, Kind Communication
Tiny Plan: make routines to check in with friends more.
πΉ Share and Recieve Kindness – Thank you readers, you guys support me so much. In a world where friends move out of state, it’s also nice to have perspective of so many friends from around the world. It’s a different kind of friendship, but the world is changing so I’ll take what good I can from where I can.
Arena 2: Spirituality – Life Time Goal: Finding my voice and purpose in due time.
β Someday is someday.
Tiny Plan: Keep Clarifying My Dreams, Intentions, Goals, and Plans with this Check-In.
πΉ See problems as opportunities. – Going fine. When I started thinking it was right and just to reasonably discipline my daughter the discipline stopped being emotionally draining. I want her to learn to curb her rule-breaking glee with my safe punishment not in the wider world whenever possible, and whatever pain is hers to find later, that is far beyond my control.
πΉ Clarify my Dreams, Intentions, Goals, and Plans Here – It’s been a long time, since December. I wrote a post, didn’t publish it and that made my process stuck, perhaps guilt or just not knowing if I should publish or delete the outdated post.
Arena 3: The World – Life Time Goal: Responsibility to take action towards my inner callings as they become known to me.
Tiny Plan: Keep writing every day until I feel stronger in the habit.
Balance Between Arenas: Harmony – Life Time Goal: Make sure I safeguard my production capacity not just produce as much as I can with no kindness for myself or thought of quality or enjoying the small, beautiful moments of life.
Tiny Plan: Keep Kon Mari decluttering.
πΉ Money: Keep Careful Track of Your Income and Expenses. – Doing better, mentally hating finances less, all the logins are fixed, discussing purchases before making them, need to check two accounts, one to see if it is open and another to check interest rates, but almost all the accounts are in order. Recording spending now.
πΉ Cleaning – Cleaned the bathroom for the first time since my son was born almost a year ago, not bad, it’s not perfect, but it’s naturally sanitized with four thieves oil, no hair or large debris.
πΉ Creative Endeavors: Brainstorming, Drawing, Painting, Sculpting, Writing, Architecture. – Going okay, I’m doing small drawings without deciding to do big projects that are out of reach.
Weekly Review:
6 Points of 7 Points = 86% this week, it feels right, which means a lot to me because it means this thought experiment is matching my internal cognitive dissidence and that the system is valid, not just words, but a way of extending my thoughts and life into words in a way that helps me sculpt my life better than if I didn’t do this.
You guys are so supportive, some comment (thank you for that), some write articles I check out and that breaks me out of feeling stuck, and I have no way of proving, but it feels like others contribute in the overall momentum of joining me in the zeitgeist of wanting to transform the digital world into being full of more love than hate, more understanding then attacking and more useful than fake. We may be from different places, different religions, different genders, different ages, but it seems like all my readers (based on the comments and articles I read from you guys) are highly honest people who use writing in different ways to tell the truth, whether it is emotional truth in poetry, real truths from everyday life, from traveling, from medicine, it seems like we are on a journey of truth and being human together and I’m eternally grateful for the kindness I’ve experienced from you guys, which is unlike everything people complain about the digital age being like. I wish all of you guys a great night’s sleep, it’s something so wonderful if you don’t have it and something that can be forgotten if you always have it. Much love. π€
bubblegummonkey.com 
You share so much and I find it all so very meaningful.
I think you are wonderful.
I know how terrible one can feel without sleep as I had a terrible bout with insomnia about ten years ago and after my sister passed away, I did not sleep for a month but after my Dr gave me sleeping medication , I was able to sleep again.
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I no longer take sleeping pills and I sleep well on most nights. I love my sleep . Wishing you a restful sleep tonight.
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Thank you! I did sleep well (almost always have), it’s kind of funny to me that my sister has never been able to sleep well and I almost always have even though raised in the same family, same noise level. The end of pregnancy was the only time I remember not sleeping and one thing I noticed it seemed like every little ache and pain from one day was there the next day, I really think healing is slowed to a crawl without enough sleep, but perhaps depending on your body type. I think because my grandfather can’t sleep through the night with a large prostate at age 101, that’s why I started appreciating my own sleep a lot more. I never forgot about it because when he woke to use the restroom at 4 AM one morning in 2006 when he found my grandmother seemed “off” and she was taken to the hospital with a clot in her leg that ended her life a few hours later. I was 21 then, and it was like losing a mother since she was a mother surrogate for me, but the positive was I have never been unappreciative for a good night’s rest since that day. π
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I also think sleep is healing , there are facts to back that up!
I can understand how appreciate sleep, I do also,so very much!
That was very sad about your grandmother having the blood clot and dying from it.
My mother I think died from a blood clot too,
She had hip surgery and while in the hospital (for about a week)
Unfortunately she was not gotten out of bed much.
A nurse checked her late at night (it was the day after Christmas ) and she has passed away,
Our family did not do an autopsy but it was surmised she probably had a blood clot to her heart and it I am sure she would have lived if she had had proper care.
She was healing well and a full recovery was expected.
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sleep? well, insomnia is a way of life for me as a night shifter and a nurse…been about 30 years now and never found a balance that lasted for long- trust me- in all that time i have tried EVERYTHING. But i am still alive , which goes to show that we actually can survive with very little sleep if need be- albeit not as our “best selves”…it seems to me( and maybe i am wrong but) you may be someone who way over thinks things and that can really affect sleep for sure… Its great that you can get all those thoughts out here..But maybe take a little time to not analyze too much and sleep will go back to your “normal”? just a thought…Namaste Chica!!
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I’m a heavy analyzer in writing, but I think an under-analyzer in daily life. When I have a clear goal I can be dogged instead of being aware of if it’s worth the cost or really right for me to achieve the goal. Also, I can be very point A to point B, so much so that if I don’t write about reviewing my life once a week, I actually may not even think about it once. Some people do better than others without sleep, now that you mention it my dad slept only four-five hours most of my life and almost never got sick, so I guess if you have the right sleep for you that is already perfect, but a lot of people struggle to do that. My sister and my husband are really bad insomniacs and until I knew people who just couldn’t get it together with sleep I took it for granted the usually good relationship I have with sleep. It’s nice that some people can adjust to night shift so that the essential services are always there for everyone. I worked on 24 hour shifts three days a week for many years on the ambulance, but when I was not at work I was always a day person. I suppose if I was a night person I could have lived that way just as easily, but I hate missing the dawn in the morning. I’m glad to hear from you, your can do attitude always inspires me to find a way to make things work with what I have and also reflect on my life to see if what I think is true. But unfortunately, most of the errors of my life are those of underthinking and under analyzing not of over-analyzing, but I do understand why I come off that way in writing because this is where almost all the analyzing perhaps other people can do in their heads has an outlet in my life. Thank you for your service as a nurse, it’s the lifeblood of the medical field. π
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awesome…yes, you know yourself best!! and like i said, it was just a guess on my part based on your writing. hugs!
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That list of values by Russ Harris really put me into deep thoughts and analysis of myself as i read through. I can picture your thoughts as I go through this post. great write up!!. Thank you!
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Your very welcome, I’d be really interested in which your top values are if you want to share, but it’s so personal I understand if you don’t. π
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It’s okay. I’ll really love to share.
My top values are: humility, love, creativity, generosity, friendship, respect, trust and spirituality.
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It’s fun to meet someone else who values humility a lot. For me, humility was something that allowed me to learn a lot (martial art’s and academically) but when I lost touch with it I would hit the worst parts of my life, being too perfectionistic and afraid to be human in taking risks that could lead to failure, like new relationships, intimacy with the relationships I already had and starting any new creative ventures. I haven’t always been aware of my values, but looking back on my life I can see that during the rough patches were the times I lost my humility and even when bad things happened if I was in touch with humility it gave me peace and courage to think of the bad things as “challenges” that many people face, it let me reach out for more tools or strategies from experts or other people. I think many people undervalue humility in particular. That sounds like a great mix, (possibly) trust and spirituality for your mind, love, generosity, respect, and friendship for relationships, and humility to enable the creativity of your soul. Thanks for sharing! π¨
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