Tag: Daily Prompt

Proud Of Me

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When was the last time someone told you they were proud of you?

I think this prompt needs to be turned on its head. Instead of saying “when was the last time someone told you they were proud of you,” it should say “when was the last time you told yourself, you were proud of you.”

Our self-esteem depends on our opinion of ourselves. If we are regularly criticising our efforts instead of finding ways to encourage growth—we are going to go backwards. It is okay to be proud of even small changes—it is not about who has the proudest moment—it is about acknowledging our own worth, not waiting for external validation.

For me, the last time I told myself I was proud of me and that I had done a good job was last week when I printed off the latest version of my Inspiring Hope manuscript. I hadn’t seen the changes I had made in the last six months and it looks more like a real book everyday. It looks good. I am proud of it and all that I have learnt on my journey of writing it.

Take some time and consider when was the last time you told yourself you were proud of you. If it has been a while—what are you proud of recently? Beginning this month, join me and give yourself a pat on the back regularly. This will help motivate us to take on more challenges and grow into the person we dream of being.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/proud/

(Eating Disorder Recovery) for Dummies.

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Take a complicated subject you know more about than most people, and explain it to a friend who knows nothing about it at all.

Well it seems amazing to me that today I celebrate my 200th post. I am also proud to say that is has only taken me 276 days to reach this milestone. Not a bad effort for someone who—works full-time and is writing a book.

It is the topic of my book that I thought may work well with today’s prompt—my thing is—how eating disorder recovery is possible. I have worked in the field since the 1980’s and have many years experience supporting people living with and recovering from an eating disorder. But what are they and how does one recover?

Eating disorders are psychological and physiological disorders that takes over the lives of those living with them as well as their families. They are characterised by an obsession with food, weight and body shape. There are 4 types:

  • Anorexia Nervosa
  • Bulimia Nervosa
  • Other Specific Feeding and Eating Disorders
  • Binge Eating Disorders

People living with an eating disorder use a mixture of various behaviours to control their weight, numb their feelings and control their lives. Behaviours used that need to be manged in recovery are:

  • Restriction
  • Bingeing
  • Self-induced vomiting
  • Laxatives
  • Excessive exercise

Recovery involves stopping the use of these behaviours and replacing them with healthy coping skills. But how?

There are 6 stages of recovery. It is an individual journey and  can take between 2-7 years from the commencement of when people decide to recover. This in fact may be several years after the person was diagnosed.

The stages of recovery are:

  1. Nutrition Management
  2. Stopping Eating Disorder Behaviours
  3. Feelings management
  4. Passions
  5. Relationships
  6. Intimacy

My book—Inspiring Hope: How Eating Disorder Recovery Is Possible covers all of these areas and many more. Breaking the hold an eating disorder has is difficult. It requires addressing many individual issues some of which are initially unknown. There is no map for the journey, but it is definitely one that needs professional help. The quicker help is sought, the better. However seeking help late doesn’t mean someone is not treatable — even if you have had an eating disorder for years. Committing to recovery and connecting with a treatment team is what makes a difference. This is always hope.

Possible Inspiring Hope cover

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-prompt-2/

Will I Go?

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Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?

I love to travel.

If money were no object I would travel to more countries across the world. From my experience, more can be learnt about different cultures by getting off the usual tourist path—we have traveled recently to regional China and Canada in winter.  Learning about a country through its history joins the dots on why things developed and are the way they are.

When my husband and I are considering traveling to a new destination, I ask myself the following questions to discover if it is a place we can visit now. Even if the answer is no, it doesn’t mean it is a place I never want to visit. Everywhere has something new to offer.

  1. Will we be safe? This is particularly important as we like to get ourselves around places not go on tours where you may have a built-in safeguard.
  2. Will we be able to stay healthy? Is the food and water safe?
  3. What , how and where will we eat? What is it advisable not to eat?
  4. How will we get around the city? Will this be possible? In Nanjing we thought we would catch a train however when we arrived at the train station it was literally packed with people. There no signs were in English, we felt claustrophobic so we quickly left and made other plans.
  5. Where do we plan to stay?
  6. What local rules or customs do we need to follow? Can we live with them for a couple of days?
  7. What is the reason we want to visit the country or area? If this is strong enough it can change some of the other answers.
  8. How do we get from the airport to our accommodation? Once we needed to pre-book a private car for a two-hour trip across provinces in China.
  9. Are injections required to protect us from disease?
  10. All things considered is the risk too great for us to travel to this part if the world at this time? YES or NO.

If the answer is yes, we reconsider visiting if the situation changes. In the meantime we will go somewhere else. We will never stop traveling—meeting new people and learning new things as it takes us out of our comfort zone and allows us to grow in ways we couldn’t imagine. Bring on our next adventure.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/no-thanks/

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

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Here’s the title of your post: “An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse.”

Set a timer for ten minutes, and write it. Go!

The most important offer I couldn’t refuse was my first job. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I finished high school. I was 18. I had my life in front of me and only two prerequisites for my job—I wanted to work with people and I didn’t want to be a general nurse. Th world was my oyster but I didn’t know how to open the shell to get the pearl.

At the time my mother was working in the post office in the telegram department and noticed that the delivery boys were making a lot of deliveries to the local psychiatric hospital, literally up the hill. She inquired and discovered they had advertised for six trainee psychiatric nurses. This was a job mum thought would suit me, so she was excited.

At the time I didn’t know much if anything about psychiatry, but the more I investigated the keener I was. It was a type of nursing that dealt with people not bedpans and I was encouraged to talk to patients. Yes. This was my job and now I had to get one of the positions.

After two interviews, despite my young age I was offered a place. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. My career psychiatric nursing started 34 years ago on Australia Day—what a way to celebrate. It has been the perfect job for me. Now called mental health nursing, it has many areas of expertise. It has taught me many skills and allows me to help people get through very difficult times in their lives.

I am grateful to Matron for believing in this young woman and helping me find my pearl.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/race-the-clock/

Lessons From My Teachers

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Tell us about a teacher who had a real impact on your life, either for the better or the worse. How is your life different today because of him or her?

Teachers are about education. And from my experience good and bad teachers teach you skills, even if it wasn’t what they set out to teach you. My school years were the late sixties and seventies—a different era. Most of my teachers taught me well and used skills that I consider imperative today when interacting with or teaching my patients.

  • Caring
  • Confidence
  • Consistency
  • Good Communication
  • Honesty
  • Individuality
  • Kindness
  • Listening Skills
  • Non-judgmental
  • Patience
  • Respect
  • Self-Belief
  • Transparency

In 5th class however, my teacher was the opposite. He made my life so difficult. He picked on me, made me the laughing stock of the class and criticised everything I did. This lead to poorer marks that meant my grading in high school was lower than it should have been. Despite this I worked my way back up and the gifts I gained from him are RESILIENCE and a never say never attitude. All of these skills and qualities combine to make me the person I am today. It is all part of the patchwork quilt of my life.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/teachers-pet/

My Interesting Week

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Tell us how your week went by putting together a playlist of  five songs that represent it.

I was excited to see the topic of today’s Daily Prompt. This week for me has been varied and interesting which is unusual. My week began on Monday with Australia Day, which I celebrated with my blog post Celebrating Australia Day—an A-Z of interesting Australian information. The song I selected to represent this is “I am Australian” by The Seekers.

On Wednesday evening I participated in my Toastmaster club’s International Speech competition coming third. It as a fun night to end a particularly busy day at work. As there are no songs on speaking competitions so I choose a new song dedicated to Toastmasters International to represent this part of my week.

Friday evening saw me joining colleagues for farewell drinks with one of my staff leaving to work overseas for a few years. It is an exciting time and many memories were discussed.

On Saturday morning my husband and I attended a travel expo and began planning a trip for our 25th wedding anniversary later in the year. We haven’t made any decisions yet. However, I think a tropical holiday is in order and “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys represents that well. Unfortunately, Jamaica is a little for  us to travel for a week so won’t be the destination.

Today my husband finished putting up glass shelves above my desk. They are to  house my expanding Mickey Mouse collection in one place. We have planned this for about the last 5 years, so it is exciting. Now I just need to find everything and arrange them in a display.

This week also saw the completion of two other tasks we had planned since last year. On the public holiday Monday I did a Spring clean of all my kitchen pantry cupboards. I found things I didn’t know I had as well as made a lot of space by throwing out many bags of expired or no longer required food and containers.

Over the last two weeks we have had an opening and closing pergola build over our courtyard. On Friday after a week of rain the electrician was able to come and complete it. We are very happy with the result and look forward to using it now as an outdoor indoor living space.

In Australia we are now into February. I can’t believe how quickly this year is moving. January was a very unusual month. It was filled with many different things and many goals were completed—the question is will it continue from this week and month into this year. I hope so.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/playlist-of-the-week/

Fire Beware

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Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?

In the Sydney bush fires of 1994 I had to do consider this in real life. All main highways into Sydney were cut off by bush fires and we lived on the northern end of the city. We overlooked a major bush gully that hadn’t had a bush fire through in 30 years so officials were very worried about what would happen if it caught alight.

My life has changed greatly since 1994 so what I would pack today is different to what I packed them although core items are the same. In 2015 my choices are:

  1. Formal documents that are difficult/unable to be replaced including passports, insurances, special awards, medical information.
  2. Camera bag which includes the USB’s of digital photos.
  3. My handbag which contains mobile phone, wallet, keys and other everyday essentials.
  4. My prepacked overnight bag containing a change of clothes, toiletries and sleeping device to make a difficult situation easier.
  5. My laptop and associated hard drives which hopefully will give me access to everything I want.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/burning-down-the-house/

Embrace The Ick

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Think of something that truly repulses you. Hold that thought until your skin squirms. Now, write a glowing puff piece about its amazing merits.

Fortunately for me I don’t have anything that truly repulses me. The closest I come to is anything requiring or pertaining to surgery. I am a mental health nurse not a general nurse, so anything greater than a bit of blood or a few stitches required, needs to be managed quickly. Then I hand the problem over to someone who knows what they are doing quickly and watch. Medical shows on television are usually always on at my dinner time and they are the worst— as for some reason, they like to show the gory details. I am brave however, and force myself to watch so I can learn something.

When I do need to deal with something icky, I breathe deeply and l keep in the present moment. By being mindful, I  get the job done quickly. I put on my professional hat and even if it is at home, I use the experience to improve my knowledge and embrace the ick—even if the knowledge I want to improve is a fascinating icky story to tell at a later date around a camp fire.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/embrace-the-ick/

Working The Soil

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Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

I have lived in many homes with poor to medium quality soil. And while rain makes things grow it is not the only element required. Without care and nutrients, the soil is not fertilised and plants don’t grow. When we have live in  the property long enough, we are usually able to work the soil adding mulch, worms, fertiliser, nutrients and better quality soil, to make the original soil grow plants.

The other option with poor soil is to change the type of plants required. When we lived in country New South Wales, the soil held a lot of salt, so we needed to plant salt-resistant plants—Australian natives—there was no choice. Everything else would die. They also don’t need a lot of rain, which is another problem out west. However, as there are many Australian natives to choose from, outsiders never knew there was a problem with the soil. All the gardens looked beautiful, despite the problems.

When we aren’t happy with the soil of our life or home—we have options.

  • Adapt
  • Change
  • Work

Whatever we choose—nothing will improve, if we choose to do nothing.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/free-association/

Rideau Canal

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What was the last picture you took? Tell us the story behind it. (No story behind the photo? Make one up, or choose the last picture you took that had one.)

We have just returned from six weeks in Canada, where we took literally thousands of photos. It was a fun time. However a little disappointing as the lack of snow meant many of the things we had planned were not doable. Our last planned event was to skate on the Rideau Canal—the world’s longest skateway. It opened 4 days after we left, so we only got to see the preparation and dream.

 

Oh and experience our coldest temperatures ever, -18 feels like -29. The other problem we had to content with was the frostbite warning. We were attempting to take photos but had to limit them because our fingers were going numb and the cameras couldn’t cope with the cold.  One passerby heard our accents as we were taking our last photos and stopped to advise us get inside as quickly as possible. Our solution as it was a bright sunny day despite the cold, was to stop taking photos regularly and as long as we were warm to continue exploring what Ottawa had to show us.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/moment-in-time/