Chapter 3
Starting the Journey
It’s hard to believe in yourself. When I do poorly on a test or get into a fight with my mom, I really struggle to remember that I’m enough just as I am. That’s when I try to tell myself that everyone makes mistakes, and everyone struggles. I just need to keep trying. —Mia, age 18
With any journey, there are things we must take and actions we must do in order to start. In this chapter, we are exploring our foundation and the daily activities and habits we can engage in that will enhance our journey and give us the strength to pursue our dreams and find our inner voices. I said in the previous chapters that following your dreams and living an authentic life is one of the hardest things anyone will ever do. It requires strength, faith, patience, determination, courage, and commitment. And these attributes are all enhanced when you lead a balanced life.
In this chapter, you will explore your everyday habits and cultivate a life of balance and harmony. To start, work through the opening scenario.
What Would You Do?
You have big dreams and amazing goals. You’ve taken the time to picture your dreams in detail and work through some goals to lead you in the right direction. Now the unexpected has happened—your family is moving clear across country. None of your support systems will be with you, none of the teachers and programs that you had lined up to support your dreams. Nothing.
What do you do? Tell your parents you want to stay and live with a relative or friend? Suck it up and deal; after all, the promotion your dad got is a good thing? Give up on some of the goals? Adjust your goals? Put everything on hold for 5 years until you can move out?
Take a moment and write down what you would do when faced with a sudden change in plans.
Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle
As I mentioned in the opening of this chapter, following your dreams is hard work. It takes a serious amount of dedication to stay the course on the path of your dreams when life begins to throw curveballs your way. In the upcoming chapters, I will specifically talk about ways to deal with those curveballs. For now, it’s important to have a strong foundation of healthy habits as you cultivate your authentic self.
Healthy habits include things like getting enough sleep, making healthy food choices, and learning to relax. It also includes building your resiliency and learning to be flexible with life’s ups and downs.
Any journey can be fraught with peril. Inner journeys force us to look at the aspects of ourselves we may not like. They also force us to change—and no one really likes change. Finding the energy to cope with whatever life throws your way may be difficult when you’re tired, hungry, stressed, or anxious. That is where healthy habits come into play. By making a conscious decision to make you a priority in your life, you are committing to a pattern of behavior that enables you to better cope with anything that comes your way. And the stronger your coping mechanisms, the better your resiliency. That leads to the attributes I mentioned earlier—strength, faith, patience, determination, courage, and commitment. Take time for yourself every day, keeping in mind the game plan in Tool #2.
Taking Care of Me
Get plenty of rest. Most teens require 8–10 hours of sleep a night. Getting enough sleep is essential to everything from proper brain functioning, to stabilizing your moods, to everything else. Developing a bedtime routine can help if you have a hard time getting to sleep at night and can include the following:
» Turn off all electronics by a specified time each night.
» Stay away from caffeine and sugar late at night.
» Practice deep breathing, meditation, or yoga before bed to settle your thoughts.
» Read or listen to relaxing music before bed.
Eat healthy foods. This means getting a good balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat in every meal. It also means eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and taking a good multivitamin. Commit to learning how to make good food choices and eating healthy every day.
Stay active. Exercise is an essential part of taking care of you. Spend a part of every day being active. Dance around your room, jump rope, walk to a friend’s house, play ball—all of these forms of exercise will keep you healthy, and make it easier to get to sleep at night. It will also serve as a fabulous stress reliever on the road to you.
Relax. We live in a very busy and noisy world. Learning to relax a little every day can help rejuvenate our minds and our bodies. Try deep breathing, yoga, or prayer as a way to relax.
Playing. Life isn’t just about working toward your goals. It’s easy to get too busy with school and your extra activities to remember to play. But playing is an essential part of any healthy lifestyle—as is laughing. Find a way to carve out a few minutes of playtime into your busy schedule. Include a friend, a pet, or your family—they need playtime too.
As you add the components of healthy living to your daily routine, you may find it hard to fit everything you want to do into your schedule. That is where balance comes in. Different from the boundary setting I will talk about in the next section, being in balance refers to the “perfect” combination of rest, relaxation, and activity in your daily routine.
Balance isn’t always easy to achieve. Some days, it is impossible to fit in exercise. And other days, there is just no time to play. This will happen. Count on it. And strive for overall balance during the week.
Balance … it is such a hard thing for me to figure out. Just when I think I have a plan to deal with all of my activities and schoolwork, something happens to throw it all out of whack. I guess I just need to keep practicing at it. But I will; I know it’s important. —Trina, age 13
The next worksheet, Creating a Life of Balance, can help you figure out how you spend your time and where you may need to prioritize things differently in order to achieve better balance. This worksheet is a quick way to determine what areas you may need to focus on and incorporate more into your life. As a bonus activity, keep track of the time you spend in each area. Are you surprised by the results?
Healthy Boundaries
Another aspect of healthy living and the development of a good foundation from which to start your journey inward involves the development of healthy boundaries, both in terms of the boundaries you set with others and the way you act. A boundary is something that sets a limit. In this conversation, it refers to understanding the limits between you and another person or activity.
The first boundary I want to discuss has to do with what you can and cannot control in your life. You can control you. But you can’t control someone else, no matter how much you try. Sure, you can attempt to manipulate a situation to a specific outcome. But ultimately, you aren’t in control of that situation—only your reaction to the situation and your thoughts about it.
The Girl Guide
Worksheet #4: Creating a Life of Balance
Directions: Take a few minutes to answer the questions below and determine what your priorities are. Be sure to answer the questions at the end.
1. Rest
— Do I get at least 6 hours of sleep every night?
— Am I tired throughout the day?
— Do I use the weekends to “catch up” on sleeping?
— Is getting enough rest a priority for me?
2. Eating Healthy
— Do I know how to construct a healthy and well-balanced meal?
— Do I have a variety of food options available to me in my home?
— Do I take vitamins daily?
— If I don’t have access to healthy food at home, do I utilize the food options at school and make this a priority?
3. Exercise
— Do I make getting some form of physical exercise each day a priority?
— Am I involved in some sort of sport? How often?
— Do I feel “off” when I do not exercise?
— Is finding time for physical activities a priority for me?
4. Relaxation
— Do I think relaxing is important to my overall health?
— Do I find myself “on edge” or anxious throughout the day?
— Do I try to meditate, pray, or do yoga at least twice a week?
— Do I have planned moments of silence during my day?
5. Playtime
— Do I find time to play every day? My playtime activities include …
— Do I think playing is as important as doing my homework and other activities?
— Do I prefer playing alone to playing with a friend or a pet?
— I think playing is important because …
Once you are finished, reflect on your answers. Where do you place your priorities? Which items are you good at including? Which items need more of your attention? Take a moment to write down your thoughts on these aspects of healthy living and creating some balance in your life.
Although you may not have control over what other people do in your life, you do have 100% control over yourself and your thoughts. This is a hard fact to accept for many. In fact, you may have had a strong reaction when reading this, believing you can’t really control your thoughts. But you can. And you do. Every day. All of the self-talk and all of the ways you listen and respond to that self talk is taking control of it.
Now, I know it’s hard to acknowledge responsibility for your actions and beliefs. But the truth is, no one can tell you what to think and feel. Likewise, you can’t make someone else feel or act a certain way. You only have control over you.
The following activity is designed to help you remember that you control you. And only you. Nothing else. It is an important boundary to remember when you interact with the world.
Although you have no control over others, your actions can influence another’s actions. When you are mean to someone, that person will likely be mean to you. When you are generous, you will often receive generosity in return. Setting appropriate boundaries with others and living by the “Golden Rule” of treating others as you would like to be treated is a great way to enhance your commitment to living healthy and help you along the path toward yourself. Clear boundaries help ensure that everyone stays true to themselves, without negatively influencing others. Clear boundaries also help us stay on the path toward our dreams by enabling us to discern the things we can change and influence from the things we cannot.
The Girl Guide Activity #4
My Boundaries
Directions: Using the steps below, discover what your healthy boundaries should be and what you can and can’t control.
1. Using a fresh page in your journal or a blank piece of paper, draw a large circle in the center of the page. Try to fill up at least half of the page with your circle.
2. In the center of the circle, write your name (or draw a picture of yourself). Using colored pencils or pictures, fill the circle with things that represent your thoughts, actions, and beliefs. Put only the things that represent your thoughts, actions, and beliefs inside the circle. These are the things in your life you can control—just your thoughts, actions, and beliefs.
3. Around the outside of the circle, list all of the things you can’t control, such as other people’s actions, the weather, what your parents do or think, and so on.
4. Decorate the outside of the circle with pictures to represent those things you cannot control.
5. Keep the picture some place handy and refer to it every time you find yourself trying to control another person or situation or any time you are upset about something.
Reaching Your Potential
You’ve spent a lot of time over the past three chapters clarifying your dreams, figuring out who you are right now and where you want to go, setting goals, discerning life’s rules, and setting boundaries. There is one more concept I want to introduce you to before we go deeper into this journey.
Resiliency.
As I mentioned in the introduction to this part of the book, resiliency refers to the ability to bounce back after a setback or adjust to change. There are several attributes that help someone become more resilient. These include having a sense of connectedness to others, believing in yourself and your problem-solving abilities, and understanding who you are as an emotional being. You will explore each of these areas in a lot of detail in the upcoming chapters. For now, I want you to think of resiliency as the driving force that will help you reach the dreams you set forth in Chapter 1, discern and take control of the rules you analyzed in Chapter 2, and enabled you to set clear boundaries in this chapter.
As you prepare to actually start your journey inward and go deeper into your strengths and areas in need of attention, take a moment to do the next activity, The Real Me. You are an amazing young woman just as you are. Realizing your potential means enhancing the you that already exists and bringing her to the forefront.
The Girl Guide Activity #5
The Real Me
Directions: Follow the steps below to help find the real you.
1. Go back to the Who Am I? worksheet from Chapter 1. Using that as a springboard, make a list of the character traits that define you.
2. Next, make another list of the positive adjectives people have used to describe you—think of the things said by friends, family, teachers, and others.
3. Now, list your goals and dreams for the future. Refer to your dream poster if you need to.
4. Make a list of the things you like to do and how you like to spend your time.
5. After making your lists, draw or find pictures that illustrate the things from your list. Make a collage in the journal or on a separate card for you to look back on anytime you forget the truth about you. Be creative with this. You can make the collage in the shape of a person, an object, or anything else that represents you. You could also decorate an old CD or DVD case, using the front cover to showcase your collage and the back cover to share the lists you made in steps 2–4. Set the case on a shelf slightly open so it will stand upright, and you’ll have a frequent reminder of the real you!
6. Take this to the next level by creating a video collage or Pinterest boards that represent all of the areas of your life.
Note to Self:
Plan Ahead or Go Behind
Proper planning can prevent a lot of heartache down the road. So, don’t leap ahead without first thinking about what you need for life’s little journeys. —Maria Tumilty
And now the journey begins. It will be one of the most exciting journeys you will ever take. And one of the hardest. But you have prepared yourself for the tasks that lay ahead. Now, you just need to start down the path.
Earlier, you wrote down what you would do if faced with a major roadblock to your dreams. I want you to think about that scenario and all of the things you’ve learned about setting boundaries and practicing healthy habits. Would any of that have helped you navigate through that difficult scenario differently?
Take a moment to reflect on the exercise below before beginning the next section.
My Voice
Keeping in mind the authentic you inside, answer the following:
What are some things I can do to stay on the path toward my dreams when life throws me a curveball?
What attributes of resiliency do I currently think I have?
How will remembering the boundary exercises and the healthy living tips help me stay on track?
Am I ready for the journey? Why or why not?