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Sticks and Stones Bullying

Sticks and stones may break his bones but words will never let him rest

They eat him up then churn his guts, like vermin they infest

He can’t see why they make him cry, he wonders if he’ll ever know

He is a prisoner at school and home, there is just no safe place for him to go

Each day he’s the pray for kids to slay and his father is just the same

Even all alone in his room his thoughts repeat this negative game

He questions if life is just a strife as he repeats the same day again

He feels so small and hates it all when will he find a friend?

All alone he’ll never know, at 13 his life he chose to end

Sticks and stones may break our bones but words can end a life

We don’t know what others feel so to everyone we must be nice

By Mona Nyree Stephens

Let the deeper message of the poem Sticks and Stones Bullying sink in as National Bullying Prevention Month has come to an end.

While the scenario depicts an extreme outcome of bullying the internal pain it causes remains the same.  We never know the hidden struggles of another. When people become victims of bullying in childhood or in adult relationships those words often become their internal voice. It perpetuates a cycle of pain and low self-worth. We must think about how our words and actions affect one another.

Over 20% of all children in the United States have experienced some form of bullying and over 30% of adults (in their adult lives) have experienced it as well. What’s worse is 40% of them believe it will be ongoing. On the extreme end, it can lead to the loss of a life. Children who are bullied are 2.6 times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers and 2.2 times as likely to have suicidal ideation. On the less extreme but more common end it leads to stress, loss of confidence, and anxiety. 70% of adults who are bullied experience depression and in 19% of them it leads to a mental breakdown.

With the effects of bullying so detrimental to one’s well-being, no matter the age, it’s important we all ponder how we can be a friendly face to all those around us.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

3 Steps to Resolving Conflict in Your Life

Is there any day that passes without a crisis? Your life does not have to be chaos, crises or so turbulent. The key is learning new tools for resolving conflict in your life.

Your life today can feel out of control. Emotions such as anger and frustration can take anyone over in an instant. Unresolved emotions feed nearly all conflict. Stepping out of truth undermines resolution and fuels more conflict. Conflicts become crises when you ignore emotions and step out of your truth.

Life isn’t about avoiding or denying conflict. So, what’s the most powerful thing you can do? You can learn how to deal with conflict quickly, consciously, effectively and truthfully. You can learn intelligent responses to conflict, rather than reacting. You can decide to take actions that lead to peaceful solutions. You can feed your own power to resolve conflicts.

Building your powerful skills to resolve and avert crises takes three steps:

1) Becoming aware of your emotions
2) Seeking the truth
3) Creating peaceful solutions

unresolved emotions and confict

Becoming Aware of Your Emotions

You can gain the tools for naming and taming your emotions. All day long you experience feelings that create emotions. Your heart sends messages to your brain constantly, leading to physiological changes moment to moment directly tied to your emotions. Some emotions cause you to feel depleted or weak. Other emotions have the opposite affect, renewing or strengthening. If you are unable to identify the source and how to move out of depleting emotions, conflict is sure to follow.

list of depleting and renewing emotions

Choosing to leave a depleting emotion to get back to a neutral space immediately and sustainably moves you through and out of conflict. Even better, you can choose to move to an opposite renewing emotion and blast right out of conflict. Knowledge about your emotions is power.

Seeking the Truth

Being truthful allows repeated conflicts to end. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses with speaking your truth gives you immediate access to find more of the truth of any situation. Everything begins with understanding your part of a conflict, your part of a missing truth and your part of any resolution. Too often, we all begin looking to every one but ourselves to find cause, blame and judge. Looking at others merely masks the truth and moves us farther away from where we should be seeking answers. One thing is sure: if you are embroiled in any conflict, you had a part in making it happen.

Five elements of truth must be explored in order to start resolution. These five elements when clearly understood open your perception to the truth behind the words being spoken. When you find yourself in conflict, feel conflict or are reviewing past conflicts, solutions unimagined before emerge when you are honest about these questions:

  • Where do I live my truth the strongest?
  • Where am I the weakest in living truthfully?
  • How do I usually step out of my truth?
  • What are my most truthful qualities?
  • Do I know anyone that is a great example of living truthfully?

The more time you put into these five questions, the faster you become at checking for your truth about what any conflict is really about.

Create Peaceful Solutions

You can see patterns in the way you create conflict in your life. These patterns emerge from your mind. Your mind is an efficient engine for learning ways to get the things you want.

Your ego works hard to protect you from its perceived dangers. Obvious signs of conflict are when your fight, flight or freeze automatic mechanism is triggered. The emotions that cause a flood of biochemical reactions in your body are produced to give you the best chance of surviving an immediate threat. However, today you have little reason to react in this ancient unconscious programmed survival reaction mode to the kind of conflicts and issues present in your life.

Your behavior patterns go beyond ego and survival responses. These patterns also include unconscious beliefs and judgments that generate negative thinking. Let’s just say that “negative thinking” is the constant presence of thoughts that undermine or sabotage your success. Repeating experience-driven memories condition your thinking and responses to all situations you encounter daily. They can haunt you during restless sleep. But, these negative patterns don’t have to be your master. You can reprogram your mind to focus on new thoughts and experiences that are supportive and positive.

Patterns also exist in how you look to resolve conflicts. As you look at the conflicts you have dealt with, a picture emerges of your strategy for resolving conflict. Like an impressionistic painting, all the little blots and strokes of paint add up to a picture when you observe them from a little distance. You have to become aware of how you unconsciously manage conflict. A simple model you can use to determine your default strategy to resolving conflict is called the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument shown here:

thomas kilmann conflict mode instrument

Source: Thomas-Kilmann

Accommodating — cooperating to a high-degree often at own expense and against own goals, objectives and intentions. This approach can be effective when the other party is the expert, has a better solution, or for preserving relationships.

Avoiding — This is simply avoiding the issue. No one’s goals are being achieved. This strategy can work when the issue is not significant, too costly for everyone or when there is no chance of winning. It’s also effective when the atmosphere is emotionally charged and you need to take a pause.

Collaborating — This is where partnering is the approach to achieve both party’s goals. This is breaking through and out of a win-lose approach to conflict, instead working for the win-win. This is where new, previously impossible solutions appear.

Competing — This is the win-lose approach prevalent today. The winners in conflict assertively and aggressively work to achieve their own goals, commonly at the expense of the other party. This approach delivers quick, decisive action at the expense of relationships or even integrity.

Compromising — This is the all lose something scenario where no one achieves what they want. Everyone has goals and this appears to be an easy way to at least meet some amount of goals. However, it leaves no room to produce a better solution that meets longer-term needs for everyone.

Once you are aware of your default strategy in the pattern of conflicts you experience at work, home or in any part of life, then you can choose to take the third step in resolving conflict in your life: empowering peaceful solutions. Peaceful solutions have at their core both the awareness of everyone involved in a conflict and the intention to keep everyone in their power. When people are in their power, they are aligned with their purpose, integrity and intentions

A person who empowers peace is one who:

  • Maintains a good sense of humor
  • Maintains humbleness and humility
  • Maintains integrity
  • Quells the ego and stays in the heart
  • Is not attached to outcome
  • Is not afraid of feelings
  • Does not avoid conflict
  • Listens intensely
  • Speaks directly and tells the truth
  • Is non-judgmental

Empowering peace also includes an awareness for everyone involved by:

  • Modeling self-respect and respect for others
  • Having a sensitively toward the other person(s)
  • Having an inclusive attitude rather than excluding others
  • Allowing mistakes for self and others

You don’t have to be perfect at all or most of these attributes for empowering peaceful solutions. You simply have to become more aware of yourself, your default strategy and begin modeling these empowering attributes to begin seeing previously impossible solutions more easily emerge.

Enabling a New Paradigm for Resolving Conflict

The three steps that build a new paradigm for resolving conflict are simple and deliver immediate results without needing perfection or a regimented process to follow. These steps better help to resolve or avert unnecessary crises in your life. They have the impact of reducing stress, building your resilience and increasing harmony in a world full of conflict, chaos and uncertainty.

The choice is yours to spend a little time outside of conflicts to reduce the impact they have on your life.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

The Trick is Treating Yourself

As Autumn descends and the leaves fall, our own physical and mental states begin to go through seasonal changes, too.  If you’re not careful, a true witch’s brew of toil and trouble await. So pay close attention to how shorter days, lowering temperatures, and rain impacts our mood.  The Fall can also contribute to a wide range of illnesses.  These include insomnia, irritability, headaches, and digestive issues.

All the more reason to make sure we are spending at least as much time on self-comfort, as we are on self-care.  That’s because adapting to Autumn can lead to fatigue of the body.  In fact, Autumn can affect our overall balance more than we imagine.

The Twilight Zone

As bewitching as an early twilight may seem, look again! Fewer daylight hours makes us more subject to mild states of anxiety and melancholy. In this spooky season of skeletons, the influence of the sun can also be seen on a physical level.  That’s because UV rays stimulate the production of vitamin D, which is useful to bones.  Sunlight also stimulates the production of serotonin, helps muscle relaxation and balances our biological rhythms. Less light darkens our mood.

That’s why, even when the days become shorter, it is important to treat yourself to more soothing time spent outdoors.  Try to work in a leisurely walk, hike, or bike ride during the week.  Think of it as a way of “stocking up” on light.  The sun’s bag of goodies allow the body to produce melanin during the night.  Melanin improves the quality of sleep and acts directly on your body’s hormonal balance.

“Weather” or Not

Changes in temperature and light also affect the immune system, almost playing tricks on it. Long before COVID, you probably remember in past Falls, how common it was to show symptoms of colds and flu, (“seasonal illnesses”).  The last thing we need is prolonged fatigue, with a side helping of apathy.  You can combat them both with equal measures of self-comfort and self-care. Think of them as aiding in the response that our body gives to outside stresses when the weather requires us to put in extra effort to adapt.

Choose warm bubble baths, pedicures, and massages over curling up on the couch with Halloween candy binging old TV shows.  All that sugar can throw your self-comfort into a tizzy.  As grandma used to say: Enjoy some candy, but don’t let it go to “waist!” If caring for yourself turns into distracting or numbing or avoiding, it’s time to pause. Always check in with yourself — what are you really craving in those moments?

Ask “whether” you really need it. And “whether” you need self-comfort or self-care in that moment.  When you need comfort — you’re craving warmth, pleasure, a break.  Pamper yourself by following your body’s yearning for “feeling good.”  When you need care — you’re craving self-respect, connection, alignment.

Fall Into Healthy Habits

Treat yourself with kindness and honor your strengths and values.  Follow your heart’s yearning for “doing good.”  Write in your journal.  Have a soulful chat with your best friend. Declare your gratitude.  Gaze at the stars on a crystal clear night.

Let’s not forget that Autumn is a season in which nature offers the great beauty of her golden crown.  Spectacular colors and healthy foods of exceptional quality abound.  Mushrooms – including truffles – pumpkin, grapes, sweet figs and more are in season. Enjoy these guilt-free treats.

do you need self-comfort or self-care?

Care for Your Mind – While Comforting Your Body

With the transition to Autumn, our body makes very clear demands on us.  But don’t overlook the signals that the mind is sending us, too. Well-being is achieved when body and mind are both healthy and in balance.  The best approach to the change of season involves taking self-care and self-comfort of the entire body and soul.

If You’ve Got It – Haunt It

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is real.  It can cause fatigue, poor concentration, nausea, irritability and decreased desire.  Any one of which can disrupt our ability to get out and enjoy life. Recognizing moods and emotions can be more difficult with masks on, but it’s necessary to stay in touch with yourself.  Make an effort to evaluate your general well-being, so you can activate and remedy the discomforts you feel. Don’t forget to look in on your friends and neighbors, too.  They may be feeling lost. It’s always easier to get out of a maze together, through teamwork.

The peak of Fall doesn’t have to be scary.  Just treat it with respect while treating yourself to the self-care AND self-comfort you need.  And don’t forget to carve out some time for fun along the way!

by Mark Smith, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

Comfort in Times of Discomfort

It’s completely natural to feel somewhat ungrounded right now with the amount of action at play.  From the happenings of this pandemic, to ongoing national fires, to political tensions rising, these are issues that affect us and our communities in both subtle and overt ways. 2020 has been somewhat of a training ground by teaching many of us how to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. As we continue to navigate new norms and general uncertainty, we can practice comforting ourselves and our loved ones throughout the process.

This being said, efforts of self-care have never seemed more relevant than they do today. And though there are countless ways to offer ourselves comfort, we would like to suggest three simple practices that may offer you sustainable support.

Make Your Home a Sanctuary

Take a moment to ask yourself, how do I feel in my home? Is my home a space that is set up to offer me rest and nourishment? Or is it a space that feels cluttered, messy, and at times frustrating?

Being that our homes are where we spend the majority of our time, it’s important to create a space that matches our preferences and needs. We do this by creating a space that functions with us instead of against us, this opens us to the possibility of experiencing home as a site of refuge and unmatched comfort.

When we allow our homes to be occupied by belongings that no longer have purpose, or hold space for incomplete projects that drag out longer than anticipated, the harmony of the space itself becomes disturbed. To remedy this we recommend thoughtfully purging items in the home that are taking up unnecessary space. By organizing and letting go of excess items we create a more sound environment to inhabit, this of which will offer a sense of deep comfort and help the home feel at peace.

Spend Less Time on Technology

With work, school, and various other pursuits being steered to the online space many of us are spending hours upon hours fixated to the screen. It’s wise to become mindful of how we are relating to our devices as most of us are over consuming, and numbing out. When our attention is captivated inside of a screen we are not in our bodies. We literally become dis-embodied and this in itself plays host to a variety of uncomfortable symptoms that build over time.

While smartphones, televisions, and computers stimulate a world inside the screen they ultimately distract us from engaging with real life sensations. This is problematic to our physical and mental health since our bodies are designed to move, walk, and be amongst nature, yet activities are now centered around media outlets. It’s important to find a healthy balance with how we use our technology, and begin returning to the simple pleasures of life for comfort.

Practice Kindness and Generosity Towards Others

When our inner world is struggling to experience a sense of safety or comfort, it can feel nourishing to extend kindness towards someone else. Odds are that if you’re feeling unsettled, others around you are too. So instead of closing off and waiting for the uncomfortable feelings to pass, we can actively use the discomfort as a force for good.

Let’s remember that kindness and generosity doesn’t have to be exhausting or extravagant. It can be as simple as connecting and making conversation with the cashier ringing you up in the store, delivering canned goods and warm clothing to a local homeless shelter, or calling up a friend and asking how they’re doing. The idea here is to get ourselves out of the victim-hood that so often accompanies us in times of distress, and return ourselves back to our own source of power and compassion.

No matter how you choose to find comfort during these turbulent times, know that you are not alone. Find a daily rhythm that feels good to you, and support yourself with actions that feel both enriching and expansive.

By Melissa Aparicio, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

The Journey Back to Ourselves

We are the vehicles traveling down this road called life and along the way we inevitably lose pieces of that vehicle. Most of the time these pieces no longer serve us and are replaced with upgraded parts at the next pit stop or let go of completely. However, there comes a time when many of us reach a pit stop and the parts of ourselves that were lost along the road were so important we forget what makes us, us.

That can manifest as no longer knowing what brings us joy, what we are passionate about, or even the aspects of our personalities we adore. How do we get this specific type of amnesia? How do we prevent it? How do we rediscover who we are, if we find we lost ourselves? The answers to these questions are the journey back to ourselves.

Drawing a Blank on the Journey

An accident where we bump our heads or suffer a traumatic brain injury isn’t how this type of amnesia creeps in, despite how the movies depict it. In real life, the process of forgetting who we are is subtle and often happens over a period of time. The way this manifests will look different for each individual but it always involves the same two elements.

  1. Total immersion in a person, cause, or activity
  2. Giving up the activities we enjoy or part of ourselves

Who would willingly stop doing the things that bring them happiness or repress parts of themselves they admire? It seems ludicrous. Yet, it is the case and is oftentimes done unconsciously. Imagine someone entering a relationship where the other person becomes the center of their universe or becoming immersed in the pursuit of a career and everything else suffers. There are countless examples of how the amnesia can show itself, but it begins with total immersion in a person, cause, or activity. Once the person is immersed, it is easy to put off doing the things that once brought them joy or even expressing themselves in the manner they use to. It’s subtle. It takes time.  But one day we look and realize we lost ourselves somewhere along the journey.

Prevention Tactics to Getting Lost

Don McPherson says it best, “true prevention is not waiting for bad things to happen; it’s preventing things from happening in the first place.” When it comes to losing ourselves, the easiest cure is to never lose ourselves in the first place. This can be done in a plethora of ways, but the best recipe for prevention is as follows.

  1. Schedule time for the activities, people, and things that energize and recharge us weekly — or monthly at the least. These things must become sacred and treated as such. It’s easy to let circumstances dictate our schedules but much like a doctor’s appointment, once it’s scheduled, only an emergency would stop us from following through. We must treat these parts of ourselves the same way.
  2. Make a list of the values and personality traits we love about ourselves, then make a quarterly journal practice to make sure you are still living out those values and expressing those traits. Even when we are in total immersion, an honest quarterly check of where we are with ourselves can help us course-correct when needed; before it’s too late.

At the end of the day, these prevention tools seem simple yet they are paramount in helping us set boundaries and gain self-awareness of the subtleties that contribute to loss. Remember this particular type of amnesia can take years to manifest and it happens through subtle changes over time.

From Lost to Found

Now that we know how we lose ourselves and ways to prevent it, what should we do to find ourselves if we realize we have lost ourselves? Waking up and realizing we no longer know who we are can be one of the most depressing experiences of our lives. When asked what we like to do or what we love about our identities, our answer is “I don’t know.”

While this may seem devastating, it’s an opportunity to get curious. The road back to ourselves begins with curiosity and experimentation. When we are lost the best thing we can do is write down the things that use to bring us joy, the parts of ourselves we use to love, and make the effort to step back into those things and ways of being.

Sometimes we find out that those activities or traits no longer bring us joy. That’s when we try new things. We make a list of activities we’d like to try and take ourselves out on “dates” to do these things. We think of the types of people we adore and what personality traits and values we love about them. We ask ourselves what it looks like if we were to step into those traits. We let curiosity lead the way as we experiment, rediscover, and uncover the person we are again.

It’s helpful to explore why we allowed ourselves to slip away from us in the first place but the most important step – once we find and get back to a place where we feel whole and that we know ourselves again- is to practice the prevention techniques.

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Navigating Through Challenges

If one thing is certain, it’s that we all face challenges from time to time. The challenges themselves come in all shapes and sizes and are oftentimes unexpected. It’s important to recognize that challenges are simply a part of growth, and are not inherently bad or something to fear. That’s how navigating through challenges works best.

When we are met with challenges that feel overwhelming, difficult, or even impossible, we must ground ourselves with confidence in our ability to face these passing circumstances. We can do this by examining how we relate to our challenges, and from here see this mental shift come to life.

Changing Our Direction

Consider for a moment what your last major challenge was? How did you handle it? What kind of thoughts streamlined through your mind? How did your body feel as you navigated? These are all relevant and revealing questions to consider when remodeling our relationship with difficulty.

From a young age many of us have been conditioned to avoid, shutdown, or adversely react in the presence of a challenge. Though this is understandable, it is not sustainable. There are only so many times we can go around a problem before having to directly face what’s in front of us. We must be willing to meet our challenges as they come, and approach our difficulties with a level of steadiness. This way we can move through them feeling much more capable and confident in making the decisions that follow.

Strengthening Self-Trust

At the heart of building this confidence is strengthening self-trust.

By deepening trust in ourselves clear discernment becomes more readily available, and all decisions can stem from this place of inner knowing. Self-trust helps clear out the excess noise of doubt, second guessing, and confusion – and remedies the need to outsource a second, third, or fourth opinion from others. Because ultimately the decisions we face are up to us and no one else.

Part of feeling confident in our decisions requires fully accepting the possibility of disappointing others. The habit of people-pleasing can be a tough one to shake, but oftentimes we let our better judgment down by prioritizing someone else’s. This can feel destabilizing to our confidence and result in more harm than good. By staying grounded in who we are, and honoring our personal truth, we can navigate through any scenario without it having to be overwhelming.

Shifting Worry Into Wonder

The most effective way to meet our challenges is with an attitude of openness and curiosity. By shifting our worry into wonder we go from thinking “oh no” to “what if”, and this is a mindset that allows for us to turn adversity into opportunity. Instead of stressing about the outcome we can shift our focus to what’s directly in front of us, and regain our power through our chosen actions.

discernment checklist to navigate through challenges

By Melissa Aparicio, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Simple Tips for Seniors to Spend Less… And Live More

If you’re a senior who has to get by on a tight budget, you know how stressful it can be to worry about money. The problem is that worrying about money can take over our lives, distracting us from what really matters. And if there’s one universal truth about worry, it’s that it never accomplished anything. So why not trade in your worry for action? Start with some simple tips to spend less.

These tips will help you take steps toward stretching your dollar further. The best part is that you don’t even have to make sacrifices. In fact, these simple changes will help you get more out of life and ditching all that worry about money will be like icing on the cake.

Reduce Your Housing Costs

For many seniors, worrying about money goes beyond day-to-day expenses. There’s also the bigger concern about becoming a burden to loved ones, and most often, it’s the big expenses and debt that create this burden. As worrisome as this is, there are actually some easy ways you can reduce spending on these big expenses.

Fixed expenses, like your housing costs, are ones you can’t avoid entirely, but they may not be quite as fixed as you think. For example, making your home more energy efficient is a simple way to lower utility bills. And if you have a mortgage on your home, you can save even more money by refinancing. Refinancing allows you to replace the mortgage you have with one that gives you better terms. There are some costs involved, and refinancing does reduce the equity in your home, but the benefit is that you can lower your monthly payments or even access the equity you have in the form of cash, which can be used for other major expenses you have.

Always Look for Discounts

Reducing your fixed expenses has a dramatic impact on your financial situation, but it’s just as important to find ways to reduce smaller expenses too. These small savings add up, and as a senior, you have one big advantage going for you: senior discounts! The great thing about this strategy is that it doesn’t involve missing out on anything. Instead, all you really have to do is make the most of the discounts and savings that are available to you.

The Balance has rounded up a list of chain restaurants that offer senior discounts, but if you don’t want to be limited to chains, they also recommend checking with any city’s tourism website for local deals. As long as you’re willing to search, you can truly find discounts for just about anything, including shopping and travel. What this ultimately means is that you can stay budget-conscious without having to give up the activities that help you stay connected, or the self-care essentials that keep you well.

Avoid Scams and Money Traps

Of course, being budget-conscious also means protecting your hard-earned savings from scammers. The fact that scammers target seniors is an unfortunate reality that we all have to be aware of, but it’s easy to protect your money with some smart strategies. For example, Consumer Reports recommends protecting your savings by opting out of mail solicitations and using a call screening service for your phone, along with setting up safeguard measures at your bank.

Along with preventing outright scams, it’s also good to be aware of ways that legitimate businesses get consumers to overspend. One example from AARP is how big box stores will use marketing strategies and even configure their store layout as a way to get you to buy more. While this isn’t the same as being scammed, it’s just as important to be aware of these tactics so you can avoid falling prey to them.

3 simple tips for seniors to spend less

Money isn’t everything, but just like the air we breathe, we need it to live. That’s probably why so many people worry about money. The good news is that financial worries can become a thing of the past. With these money-saving tips, you’ll be spending less and living more, which is a goal we can all get behind!

By Karen Weeks, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

Tap Into Your Inner Navigation System

Imagine what life would be like if we had a direct line to our intuition that we could pick up and dial into at any time. This line would instantly connect us to the version of our self who knows what to do in order get to the other side of any obstacle, trauma, or experience we’re currently facing. We could gain knowledge of how to cope, what step to take next, or just the exact words we need to hear in the moment. This inner navigation system is available on demand. We just need to tap into it.

inner navigation system

That direct line may seem like some futurist technology out of a science fiction novel, yet it’s something that exists. It’s something that we can harness for our self through the tool of journaling… a specific type of journaling.

A Powerful Journaling Practice

The benefits of journaling are getting broadcasted everywhere. Several psychologist, like James W. Pennebaker, have dedicated a great portion of their research to understand the subject better. Some of the findings are that journaling boosts the immune system, helps us process complex emotions, better problem solve, and a slew of other benefits. One benefit that none of the research seems to point to is journaling’s ability to connect us with our internal navigation system, in other words our intuition.

The best journaling technique to access our intuition involves hemisphere switching while journaling. This involves writing with our left hand to answer tough questions, go deeper on experiences, emotions, and whatever comes up. By doing so, we tap into our internal guidance system, on demand, and get responses that normally wouldn’t occur. This has allowed many people to navigate challenging life situations and emotions with greater ease.

How It Works

The left side of our brain controls the right side of our body, and vice versa. About 90% of the population is right-handed. That means when they write, they are left-brain dominate. The left side of our brain is the part of our brain responsible for logic and reasoning. So, 90% of the population accesses mainly the logic and reasoning powers of their brain when writing. When the writing hand is switched for a right-hander, it allows access the right hemisphere of the brain where creativity and intuition reside. This taps into the intuitive navigation system instantly.

What About The Left-Handed or Ambidextrous?

For about 10% of the population that are left-handed this specific journaling exercise may not work. However, there are other effective ways for left-handers to access the opposite hemisphere of the brain.

One powerful way to do so is through meditating before journaling. Meditation relaxes us and according to Marilee Zdenek, we are more receptive to right-brain insights when we are relaxed. Another manner in which we can access the right side of our brain is by singing, listening to new music, or playing an instrument before journaling. Psychologist, Terry Lyles, found that listening to or performing music helps to stimulate the auditory cortex of the right-brain. These are some of the quickest methods to hemisphere switch.

Test Out Your Inner Navigation

A longing for coffee, $5.00, and the knowledge of where Starbucks is will get us no where unless we take the actions of going there and ordering our drink. The same is true with the knowledge just gained here about journaling. The next time you sit down to journal, try hemisphere switching and tapping into your internal navigation system to experience it’s power for yourself.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

Natural Movement for Exercise

The human body is designed to move.

As children we thoughtlessly ran around, we played, we crawled around on all fours, and experienced a freedom in movement that is too commonly lost upon entering later years. Nowadays when adults hear the word movement, exercise is usually the first association to come to mind– such as going to the gym, lifting weights, signing up for a class, and so on. Though these kinds of traditional exercises are beneficial to many, we aim to simplify what healthy movement means as an effort to inspire more of it throughout the day.

Natural movements are all about using one’s own body weight and limb mobility to get the blood flowing, and the heart pumping.

An alarming amount of people today find themselves living predominantly sedentary lifestyles. Meaning people are not moving their body’s frequently enough, thus resulting in a cascade of physical ailments that compound over time. Common physical symptoms of sedentary lifestyles include headaches, backaches, digestive issues, circulation issues, low-energy, excess weight, and much more. It’s also notable to mention that people who frequently engage in natural movement generally feel more confident, capable, and in tune with what’s happening in their body. 

Movement as a Basic Human Need

While the idea of exercise can at times feel a little overwhelming, we see movement as a basic need that can be met with a sense of ease. There doesn’t need to be any special clothing involved, equipment, or carved out blocks of time. Instead it’s helpful when movement can be treated with less seriousness, and instead be met with an attitude of playfulness.

There is no right or wrong way to go about this. When you find yourself with an extra few minutes simply get into the habit of asking yourself how can I move in a way that best supports my body right now? Then follow through.

Daily movement can look as simple as taking a walk around the neighborhood in the morning, or in the evening after dinner. It can look silly like sprawling yourself on the floor and stretching out your limbs. It can look like opting to take the stairs instead of the elevator, doing a short set of calf raises as you wait for your coffee to brew, or doing a round of jumping jacks with your kids in the yard. Our body truly thrives with this kind of spontaneous movement.

Though we are designed to move in a variety of motions, our realities often consist of repetitive movements that have stopped the body from having to ever guess. For example, when something is in the way of our path we often choose to walk around the thing instead of over it. Next time the opportunity presents itself try to keep the body guessing, subtly stretching, and moving playfully by going over the thing.

Walking is a very effective natural movement that helps the body equalize itself. Countless studies have shown daily walking to trim body mass, balance cholesterol levels, stabilize blood pressure, improve mood, sharpen memory, and lower the chances of many preventable diseases.

Start by walking outside for 15 minutes a day, and over time experiment with gradually increasing the distance and pace. When we move in these natural motions we are contracting our muscles, activating our connective tissues, strengthening our bones, increasing respiration, heightening circulation, and releasing certain hormones and cell signals.  

The world of fitness, vanity, and weight loss have given us many misleading ideas of what it means to be healthy, and can ultimately feel unapproachable. It’s important to keep our relationship with movement as do-able as possible, and remember that natural movement is a part of our inherent design. This way movement has a chance to be woven into various parts of the day, certain to enrich one’s overall health and well-being.

by Melissa Aparicio, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

Let’s Talk About S.A.D. Foods Versus S.O.U.L. Foods

S.A.D. food represents the Standard American Diet, while S.O.U.L. food stands for Seasonal, Organic, Unprocessed, and Local foods.

Despite the United States being one of the most prosperous nations in the world, many would be surprised to discover that Americans die sooner and experience higher rates of disease than most developed nations. This can be attributed to common diet and lifestyle choices.

By understanding the differences between S.A.D foods and S.O.U.L foods we can begin examining our food choices through a new lens.

S.A.D. Foods

The Standard American Diet (S.A.D) has grown to be problematic as it relies heavily on refined and processed foods with very little interest in fresh produce. Research has shown that the typical American diet is alarmingly low in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains– and extremely high in sodium, calories, saturated fat, refined grains (i.e. white flour), and added sugars.

This is apparent when visiting most conventional grocery stores which usually consist of aisles upon aisles of packaged and processed foods, often reserving only a small section of the store for fresh produce or dry bulk goods.

Heavily processed and unnatural foods are laden with questionable additives, food chemicals, dyes, and countless other substances that are used to manipulate taste, color, and shelf-life. Conventionally raised meats and non-organic produce are also suboptimal in nutrition and safety when considering the hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and soil quality that ultimately end up in our body.

Being able to identify S.A.D foods is the first step in making supportive choices in terms of how we eat. This is relevant since well over half of American adults have one or more chronic diseases related to poor diet and inactivity; that means that either you or someone you know is experiencing this. The normalization of S.A.D eating habits is sweeping through our neighborhoods, communities, and homes and with that are the chronic conditions that come along with it. In many cases these are conditions that are absolutely preventable, yet the culture of S.A.D foods inevitably usher people directly towards illness and poor health.

A few tips to avoid S.A.D foods:

  • Limit consumption of convenience and fast foods
  • Read the ingredients lists, if there are words you can’t understand or pronounce, walk away
  • Ask yourself, “how will I feel in my body after eating this?”
  • Avoid the aisles and shop mostly in the produce section
  • Choose organic & non- GMO foods when possible
  • Make it a goal to eat fresh foods at least once a day

On the other side of S.A.D foods exist S.O.U.L foods, Seasonal, Organic, Unprocessed, and Local.

eating more S.O.U.L foods

S.O.U.L. Foods

When we eat seasonally, we are eating with nature, not against nature. Meaning, we are opting to eat foods that naturally occur according to the conditions that are just right for particular plants and animals to thrive. Now that we are in the season of summer we can be sure to enjoy fresh corn, summer squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, melons, stone fruit, and berries. These are water rich foods that are synonymous with summertime as they re-hydrate the body and are native to soaking in the hot sun.

Organically grown produce is radically different from conventional produce. For one, organic foods contain fewer pesticides and other chemicals which have proven to have serious health repercussions. Similarly, organically raised animals are much less likely to be given antibiotics, growth hormones, or fed animal byproducts. Organic foods are also GMO (genetically modified) free, meaning that the DNA has not been altered in a way that cannot occur in nature.

Unprocessed foods are alive foods that have beneficial nutrients, vitamins, and minerals – these are the building blocks of a healthy, capable body. There are no weird ingredients in unprocessed foods because they haven’t been adulterated or tampered with. Fresh vegetables, fruits, dried grains, and beans, are examples of foods that you can buy in their most natural state.

Local foods are a treasure to have around as they are the freshest foods that don’t have to travel very far to reach your hands. The moment a vegetable is picked from the ground it begins to lose its nutritional value, so the sooner it can be eaten the more value you will receive from it. Local foods are also often grown or made in small batches, so there’s a lot of care and attention that goes into each head of cabbage or jar of honey being sold. Not to mention, you’re also supporting your local economy.

A few tips to eat more S.O.U.L foods:

  • Shop at your local farmers markets if available
  • Read full ingredients lists on boxes + labels
  • Aim for your meals to be colorful + diverse
  • Eat fresh + alive foods as often as possible
  • Select organic options when you can
  • Find out what’s in season and eat mostly that

Nutritiously rich S.O.U.L foods provide the necessary building materials for the body to repair, discern, and replenish. While S.A.D foods simply don’t have the aliveness to provide this kind of support ultimately robbing us of our own vitality. We implore you to curiously look around your own kitchen and discover if you’re creating an environment of S.A.D or S.O.U.L. nourishment.

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

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