Mother Nature Always Speaks to Us
As a friend was going through the feelings of a parent being sick in the hospital, she took a walk in nature. She always swears by it. To her, it is her meditative walk that helps her open up her mind. On this particular walk, she texted me what came to her. That is when she said, “I love Mother Nature. She always speaks to me.”
Take a Nature Walk
Of course we have all heard that a walk can truly be the answer to our uneasiness or a way to break up the tension in our minds. The walk presented her with four important aspects of life that we all need to hear. That’s why she was very happy for me to share them in my blog for all.
4 Qualities of Life
When I read the four qualities that she feels helps us maintain a balanced life, I connected them to the chapters I wrote about in my book, Becoming an Empty Nester. The download came as such; Four things that affect your quality of life are: #1 Health, #2 Social, #3 Goals, and #4 Learning.
#1 Health
Her heart received an important message in relationship to #1, Health. The message is to eat whole foods and exercise daily. By eating whole foods, your body will get back on track with proper lipid test numbers.
Everyone who hates going to the doctor, raise your hand. I must admit, I was definitely that person. However, something kept telling me to get to the doctor and get my numbers back on track. When I say numbers, I mean our cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Of course these will also show our HDL, our good cholesterol level, and our LDL, our bad cholesterol levels. Eating proper whole foods and exercise have a big impact on these levels. These are important because they are indications of how healthy our heart and blood are in relationship to our lifestyles.
Be a Smart Empty Nester
Let’s get real; eating like we’re 20 at our empty nester age is dangerous. This is the perfect time to start making a habit of eating whole foods one step or one meal at a time. A secret to this is to select whole fruits and vegetables that are your favorites. Stay away from some diets online telling you to eat plenty of broccoli if you don’t like it. A second secret is once you begin eating whole oatmeal, and not the portions in envelopes full of sugar, you body starts actually craving the good whole foods even more.
Do the Exercise You Like
As for exercise, think about the fun things you did as a kid, and do those. I loved riding my bike, easy hiking, and swimming. Maybe try new things like yoga or stretching that can make an impact on your overall health since stretching is probably the best thing an empty nester can do. Ease into these activities being sure not to overdo it. By creating sore muscles, we may be creating excuses to stop exercising all together. Slow and steady wins the race. Remember, we’re not training for the Olympics.
By working on both your eating of whole foods and starting to do fun exercise, you will have an impact on your important lipid numbers. Seek out your doctor or find one you connect with and start monitoring your levels. This keeps you from having a stroke or heart attack in the future.
(Chapter 39- Get Back in Shape, Chapter 40- Eating and Drinking Healthy Foods that Taste Good)
#2 Social
#2 Social relates to maintaining relationships with family and friends. Now that we’re empty nesters having more time, we can fill it with quality time of close friends and family. By realizing that our children are now adults, it’s important to reach out and connect with them. #4 Learning is essential here. At this stage, it’s important to begin learning and understanding your new relationship with your adult children. They run their own lives so it is important to begin treating them as a friend and eliminating any control we felt we needed to help raise them. (Chapter 35-Understanding Your Adult Children)
Reconnect with Family & Friends
In my book, Chapter 23 Reconnect with Family and Friends speaks to #2 of being social about doing actual letter writing. Since texts are so quick and don’t always have our heart in them, we can also do something for our mental and physical health by increasing happiness along with reducing stress. It also creates a chain of kindness that starts covering those we love.
Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what your said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In my book, Chapter 47, They Will Only Remember How You Made Them Feel, speaks to this very quote.
Everything Affects Us Emotionally
Based on a speaker and author Brian Tracey’s, statement, “People decide emotionally and then justify it logically.” He goes on to tell us that when it comes to our emotions everything counts. Tracey reminds us that everything that happens in our life affects us emotionally in some way. In addition, he goes on to say that everything that affects us makes us happy or sad, motivated or unmotivated, loving or angry, fearful or confident.
They Only Remember How You Made Them Feel
When Mother’s Day approached during the pandemic, I asked my girls for a simple letter with a few special memories. I remembered being blown away by the things they recalled. I was in tears as I read how I made them happy and all the fun we had from flying a dollar store kite on the beach to having a cut day lunch at the local zoo while running into their previous teachers. No one brought up home much something cost. All they remembered was how special I made them feel.
A special friend always told me that the only way to have a friend is to be one. I make sure I stop around each holiday and send a card or simple gift to those who have always been there for me.
#3 Goals
Her third message was #3 Goals. She felt she was reminded to continuously set goals. Once on is reached, set another. As empty nesters, we notice we have more time to fill in our days and weekends. This is the perfect time to set goals and go after our dreams now.
Three chapters from my book that can help in this area are Chapter 29-Declutter Your Nest, Chapter 31- Reexamine Your Finances, and Chapter 42- Find Your Passion and Turn it into Your Job. Because we want to continuously set goals, looking at our future and what we want to achieve can be a great starting point.
Set Up Goals
Start by setting goals in the rooms of your home taking small steps to work on decluttering. In each room you can begin with certain areas like closets and dressers. Setting attainable goals will have you de-cluttered in no time.
Examining your finances will help with your later achievements you always wanted to try. Be sure to set easy goals with looking at paperwork by creating steps to make on a calendar. By going easy will keep you interested in finishing. Figuring out your finances can later help in the money needed to work on your passion.
#4 Learning
On her walk, the last point downloaded was #4 Learning. With all this time to work on what interests you, there is a lot of time to learn a variety of things to help you move forward with your passion one day becoming your job. For example, when I started writing my first book, I had to read up on all the different items needed to self-publish like interior book designing, editing, purchasing ISBN numbers, and cover designs. As I accomplished each mini goal, I would figure out what was needed next.
Learning new things is a great way to keep your mind fit. As stated in Chapter 25-Learn Something New, every time we learn something new, our brain changes in a significant way. We can actually improve our memory, verbal and language skills, as well as develop a productive failure skill. This is where we are encouraged to fail knowing we are learning. Of course with technology improving daily, it is important to stay up to date.
Mother Nature Has All the Answers
By taking walks when we are feeling tension can actually open up space in our mind for important messages to flow into us from Mother Nature herself. Before you know it, we’re combating our stress and actually receiving the messages we so dearly need to live a well-balanced life. So, get out there and walk away some stress and await some wonder downloads yourself that will better your future.
