Month: December 2023

The holiday season, with its glittering lights and joyful festivities, often brings a sense of excitement and anticipation. However, amid the hustle and bustle, it’s important to recognize the significance of creating space on your calendar.

Why Create Space on Your Calendar?

In the midst of shopping, decorating, and attending gatherings, carving out moments of tranquility can make a world of difference to your well-being.

A Holiday Schedule Mitigates Stress

One of the primary reasons to prioritize space on your holiday calendar is to mitigate stress. The pressure to meet expectations, both personal and societal, can be overwhelming. By deliberately leaving gaps in your schedule, you provide yourself the invaluable gift of time.

This time can be used for self-care, whether it’s a quiet evening at home, a leisurely stroll through a festive neighborhood, or simply enjoying a cup of cocoa by the fire. Creating these pockets of calm can significantly reduce stress levels and contribute to a more enjoyable holiday experience.

Being Spontaneous When Necessary

Having space on your calendar allows for flexibility and spontaneity. While planning is essential, leaving room for the unexpected can lead to magical moments and cherished memories. Whether it’s an impromptu visit from a friend or a last-minute decision to attend a community event, these unplanned experiences can often be the most meaningful.

Embracing spontaneity adds an element of joy and surprise to the holiday season, making it more memorable and fulfilling.

Allows for Times of Reflection and Gratitude

The holiday season is also an opportune time for reflection and gratitude. When our schedules are jam-packed, it’s easy to overlook the true essence of the season. By intentionally creating space, you give yourself the chance to reflect on the year gone by, express gratitude for the positive moments, and set intentions for the coming year. This reflective time can enhance your overall sense of well-being and bring a deeper meaning to the holiday season.

Gives Time to Strengthen Relationships

In addition to personal well-being, having space on your calendar fosters stronger connections with loved ones. Quality time with family and friends is at the heart of the holidays. By avoiding overcommitment, you can savor these moments and nurture the relationships that matter most.

Whether it’s a cozy family dinner or a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend, these connections are the true treasures of the season.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Creating Space

What Are My Priorities for This Holiday Season?

Identifying your key priorities allows you to allocate time to the activities and events that matter most to you, ensuring a more meaningful and focused celebration.

What Are My Limits and Boundaries?

Understand your capacity for commitments and be realistic about what you can comfortably handle. Setting boundaries helps prevent overcommitting and promotes a healthier balance between festivities and self-care.

Which Traditions Hold the Most Significance for Me and My Loved Ones?

Prioritize the traditions that bring the most joy and fulfillment, allowing you to fully engage in those meaningful moments without spreading yourself too thin.

Am I Leaving Room for Spontaneity and Unexpected Joys?

While planning is essential, leaving space for unplanned moments and spontaneous activities can add a delightful and surprising dimension to your holiday experience.

How to Successfully Create Space on Your Calendar:

Schedule “Me Time”

Block off specific periods on your calendar dedicated solely to self-care and relaxation. Whether it’s reading a book, taking a long bath, or practicing mindfulness, these moments contribute significantly to your overall well-being.

Use Time Blocking Techniques

Allocate specific blocks of time for different activities, ensuring that your schedule remains organized and manageable. This method helps prevent overcommitting and allows you to approach each task with focus and intention.

Learn to Say No

Politely decline invitations or commitments that do not align with your priorities or may add unnecessary stress. Saying no is a powerful tool for protecting your time and energy during the busy holiday season.

Delegate Tasks

Share responsibilities with family members or friends. Delegating tasks not only lightens your load but also fosters a sense of togetherness and shared responsibility.

Embrace Technology

Utilize calendar apps and reminders to stay organized and on track. Set alerts for important events and deadlines, allowing you to manage your time effectively and avoid last-minute stress.

Remember to gift yourself the luxury of space on your calendar. By asking thoughtful questions and implementing successful strategies for time management, you can create a holiday schedule that embraces both celebration and serenity. It’s not about doing more but about doing what matters most with presence and intention. Let the joy of the season be your guide as you embark on a balanced and fulfilling holiday experience.

Would you like to explore this further? Grab your free worksheet: How to Calm the Chaos this Holiday Season over on my website. Share below how you will be creating space for yourself this season!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How do you plan to create space for yourself this season? Do you schedule “me time”? What do you like to do in those personal time slots? Have you overcommitted your time?

Would you like to feel steadier on your feet when you’re out and about? Would you like to stand up taller and feel more confident when you’re taking a walk?

If you’re starting to feel unsteady, you’ll know how much this can affect your enjoyment of walking.

When you’re worried about tripping or falling you miss out on things. You aren’t so engaged in conversations with your companions, and you don’t notice your environment so much.

I’ve been a specialist exercise instructor for over 15 years, and I’ve helped hundreds of people to feel steadier on their feet and more confident with their walking.

In this series of articles and videos for Sixty and Me, I’m going to share some of what has helped them, and I hope it will also help you to feel more confident when walking.

Why Walking Well Matters

Walking well is so important. When we feel more confident walking, it’s easier to get places, run errands, and walk for pleasure.

We can enjoy our companions and keeping a conversation with them because we aren’t worrying about tripping or falling.

When we walk well, we can enjoy our surroundings, especially if we’re out walking in nature. We can notice the colours of the leaves on the trees, the flowers blooming, and the birds in the sky.

And, especially right now, walking just gets us out of the house. It helps to calm anxiety and reduce stress.

What can you do to improve your walking? Will anything help? Yes! There are many things you can do if you’re starting to struggle with your walking. Let’s explore them below.

Work on Your Walking Technique

It seems odd to think about ‘how’ we walk. It’s something we learnt how to do when we were small and, in most cases, haven’t given much thought to since.

If you’ve got this far in the article, then you probably want help with your walking. In that case, you will benefit from paying a little attention to how you walk.

I’m covering five tips for walking well in this Sixty and Me series. In a previous article and video, I shared my suggestions for how to improve your posture and feel more confident when walking.

As well as posture (and very much linked to it), we want to start thinking about where we look when we walk.

The temptation, as we start to feel unsteady, is to look down when we walk. It feels like it will keep us safer and help us to avoid trips and falls. In this video, I explain how this is not actually the case and why we should be looking straight ahead when we walk.

Walking Well: Look Ahead

Practice this now (yes, right now!), even if you only have space to take a few steps back and forth!

Then, when you’re next out for a walk, make a point of trying to look ahead more than down.

When You Should Ignore This Advice

Looking ahead when you walk does improve your posture, it does change your centre of gravity, and makes you less likely to fall.

However, there are times when we do recommend you to look down.

For example, if you’re walking on particularly uneven ground, or there are many obstacles or trip hazards on the ground.

Also, if you’re wearing a mask, as many of us are right now, then you might need to actively look down a bit more. You may have noticed that wearing a mask affects your peripheral downward vision. So you need to take extra care when navigating kerbs, steps, or uneven ground.

When you do need to look down, try to look with your eyes first, then tilt your head as needed. The more you round your upper back and adjust your posture, the more you will change your centre of gravity. This makes you more vulnerable to trips and falls.

You Can Train Your Balance

Many people assume that deteriorating balance is just a normal part of ageing. As a result, they accept it and don’t work to maintain or improve their balance.

In fact, you can improve your balance at any age. One of the best ways to do this is with regular balance training exercises.

Here’s an example of one of the most popular balance training exercises from our online exercise Studio.

Tandem Stand with Head Turns

The Tandem Stand is a popular balance training exercise, so you may have done it before. Adding in head turns provides an additional challenge.

If you aren’t sure how balance training should feel (it’s different from other types of exercises), take a look at this article where I explain how it should feel when you do balance exercises.

When you’re doing this exercise, think about standing up tall and looking straight ahead. Stand next to a support which you could hold onto if you start to feel unsteady.

If the tandem position is too challenging for you, move from a ‘tightrope’ position (one foot directly in front of the other) to a wider stance (one foot in front and slightly to the side).

I hope this will help you to enjoy walking well and the pleasure and freedom it gives you!

If you would like more exercises to improve your balance, the Vida Wellness Studio now offers a FREE 14-day trial.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you find yourself looking at the ground more than you used to? Do you feel you are walking more slowly or more cautiously than before? Please join the conversation below!

Do you remember the terrible AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s? Were you directly affected by it? We are all old enough to remember. But for some, it may have passed by as an awful situation that happened to other people, with little impact on their family or friends.

And for others – more than is often recognised – it had a dreadful import. Many were reluctant to talk about it to anyone. It was a time of great stigma and shame.

AIDS and Women

Because HIV was most rife in the gay community, it was often thought that it did not have a big impact on women. Yet, there were some women who acquired HIV through other routes, such as needle-sharing or partners who brought it home to them.

But to limit discussion to these women is to misunderstand the nature of human relationships. Whether or not we had HIV ourselves, we were also mothers, sisters and friends. Some of us worked in professions, such as dance or theatre that were heavily implicated. Many of us were deeply affected.

Wise Before Their Time

In the late 1980s, I met – and became close friends with – a young man who had been living with AIDS for a long time and was very active in the HIV/AIDS community.

In 1991, he was organising an international conference in London of people with HIV and AIDS, and we decided to write a book based on interviews with some of the participants. In all, we interviewed over 20 people from 15 different countries about their lives.

These mostly young men and women described their efforts to cope with the stigma, blame and guilt associated with the disease. They talked about their difficulties in telling their parents, partners and friends. Not to mention coming to terms with a very early death.

The book, Wise Before Their Time, was published in 1992 and republished in paperback and as ebook in 2017. Sir Ian McKellen wrote a Foreword in which he said, “this collection of true stories is as powerful as any great classic of fiction.” My friend did not live to see its publication.

Bringing the Significance Home

I always saw a major audience for this book to be the ‘hidden’ mothers all over the world. Some might be too ashamed to tell their friends or neighbours about their son with HIV, while others might be grieving for a son who died too early.

The significance of HIV for all sorts of women was brought home to me on one very memorable occasion.

My parents were living in a retirement community, which sometimes invited residents’ children to give public talks, based on their expertise. My father was keen for me to give a talk based on this book.

Since AIDS was not a disease discussed much by ‘respectable’ people, I suspected this was not likely to be a very popular event! But my father was very well liked, and he told everyone that they had to come. The hall was therefore packed.

Silence

I did readings from the book for half an hour or so. At the end, there was a short silence before any applause. One friend of my parents told me afterwards, “We were all stunned.” But there was enormous response, with active questions and discussion.

Afterwards, I was swamped with women wanting to talk to me about their own situation. They wanted to talk about their sons, their brothers, their friends.

One woman asked me to come to visit her, because her son had died of AIDS, and she had never told anyone at all. Another left some cash in my parents’ mailbox with a request that it be given to an AIDS charity.

It showed how many women were affected by the disease, yet were suffering in silence, perhaps not realising how many other people were in the same situation.

AIDS is no longer a fatal disease, and people diagnosed with HIV can expect to live a normal life span. But I recently decided that Wise Before Their Time would have historical interest and I have now reissued it.

If you were affected by AIDS – or even if you weren’t – I hope you will find it very powerful indeed.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Were you affected by the AIDS epidemic years ago? If so, were you able to talk about it with friends or others? Please share your experience below.

Originally posted at: Taylor Ann Green’s White Floral Skirt Set

1st Photo: @levabonaparte

Originally posted at: Leva Bonaparte’s Purple Tweed Jacket