By Deborah Joy Block, Certified Life Coach, Back to Basics
Get 8 hours sleep. Wake up 3 hours before your work day Say a morning gratitude prayer and write in a gratitude journal and give charity. Make the bed Exercise – 6 days a week Hot & Cold Shower Dress – consider hiring a stylist to design a capsule wardrobe so you can efficiently shop your closet Breakfast – eat organic and homemade, avoid processed foods Daily commute – ride a bike or walk to work for extra exercise, listen to audio books or a podcast, create to do list, write thank you notes, write in a “push” journal, watch a documentary or read during your commute to work or work remotely to save time, money and energy Work Lunch break – eat, meditation, yoga stretches, power nap, network, go for a walk in nature Work Gratitude prayer and eat dinner – network or socialize with others Evenings and weekends – Take a break from technology an hour before bed, hobby, charity work, Side Hustle, Spirituality, Light Housework, Family Time, Soothing bath with dead sea salt or epsom salt. Hire a cleaning service to outsource heavy housework or do it yourself and invest the savings. Batch meals and freeze them on the weekends in advance, use a slow cooker or get meal kits to streamline meal preparation. Get weekly deep tissue massages. Take at least one day off from work each week. Bedtime – Read a book, meditate, yoga stretches, night time prayer
Love, lust and infatuation are NOT enough to sustain a marriage. There are MANY factors to consider when prescreening an ideal candidate for long term commitment or marriage. Our dating coaching program will mentor you to help you make healthy choices.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when you are dating someone to determine whether they are a good match for you:
Do you want to know more after every date?
Do you have more similarities than differences with both big and small issues?
How does this person relate to family and friends?
Do you feel safe when you are together?
Have you evaluated the red flags in your relationship and are you feeling confident to move ahead?
Physical: could you look at this face for the rest of your life, stare into those eyes, listen to that voice?
Can this person help you to grow in the areas where you are weak?
Do you understand where this person came from (their past)? Do you connect to where they are now, in the present moment? Are you looking to build a similar future?
Have you spoken about the big issues like building a family, where to live and what community to be a part of?
Has your mood shifted toward the positive since you started dating, or are you struggling daily to feel good about dating this person?
You only have one chance to make a great first date impression! Follow these tips for dating success. We wish you the best of luck in finding your soul mate!
Dating is for marriage not for fun - Don't waste your valuable time, money and energy endlessly dating casually. Carefully consider who you will agree to meet with and look for shared values and qualities that would make a good spouse. This is covered in detail in our previous blog article titled: "Qualities to look for in a potential spouse."
Choose the right place to meet - Select a quiet, neutral place convenient and accessible to both of you. Do not entertain a date in your home on the first date.
Stay focused on the other person - turn off your phone and really listen to your date. Be curious and ask followup questions.
Avoid monopolizing the conversation by talking about yourself too much. This is not a job interview.
Be flirtatious - If you are interested in someone show that you are receptive by making eye contact, smiling, and complimenting your date.
Focus on the present moment - Avoid talking about exes or depressing stories from the past. You don't want to come across as a gossip or someone with a victim mindset.
Be positive - the more upbeat and positive you feel, the more attractive ad magnetic you are. Even your greatest challenges should be couched with a positive life lesson about what you learned and how you grew from that experience. Demonstrate your resilience by sharing how you made lemonade out of lemons.
Don't kiss or get intimate on the first date - Showing romantic interest is acceptable but maintain modest boundaries, decorum and self respect by not getting physical with a stranger. Getting physical too soon just complicates and clouds your judgement. Get to know the person on a deeper level and forge an emotional bond first.
Take your time - Relax and get to know the person without rushing to judgement or committment. Develop a friendship first as attraction can develop later. Savor the courtship process.
Be honest - When you have made your final decision, don't play games. Be candid about your feelings and intentions.
Follow up - If you enjoyed spending time with your date and want to get together again follow up immediately.
Persistance pays - Learn from your experiences and stay optimistic. Know that you are special and that you will find someone special who will cherish you if you remain open to the possibility of finding love.
Source: Make Me a Match, by the Matchmaking Institute
by Deborah J Block, Certified Etiquette Consultant
Many people have a fear of public speaking. With a little practice it can become more natural. Here are a few fun ice breaker exercises that can make public speaking easier and more natural. These are particularly helpful for kids.
1. Make A Commercial
Get a bunch of things from your room or from your house, bring them in and you need to make a commercial about these items. Someone is giving a random product. It might be a deodorant, might be an iphone, it could be anything. And then they are required to give a 30 second to 1 minute commercial on this product and talk about why this is so awesome and why people should buy it. So that’s a really fun one as well.
2. Random Nouns You can do this by either putting nouns on key cards shuffling them up and picking 2 up at a time or you can use this random noun generator. You get 2 nouns and you then have to create a story that connects those 2 nouns. It might be ‘a sheep’ and ‘a mechanic’ or it could be ‘friend’ and ‘shoelace’. Then you have to create a story that connects those 2 nouns together.
3. Which Is a Lie?
This one is generally pretty easy to work out and a lot of fun as well. And you will find that some students do it really well, but then some students just fumble when they are trying to lie and its quite humorous to watch. A person gets up and tells 3 truths about themselves, but 2 of them need to be true and one of them needs to be a lie. So they get up and they tell 3 things about themselves and then the audience needs to choose which one was a lie and they see if they were correct.
4. Make Your Own Definitions Speaking Game Get really big words that nobody really knows what the meaning is. You can do this using this big word generator or another tool (just Google it). Or you can just go through the dictionary and pick some strange ones yourself. The speaker has to get up – they are given this strange word and they need to with confidence tell the class what this word means. Obviously they are making it up, but they need to do it confidently. https://www.wordgenerator.net/random-word-generator.php
5. A. Interview Introductions The exercise has them finding out about each other and then introducing the person they interviewed to the whole group. As it's a lot less threatening or scary to talk about someone else rather than yourself, you'll find people respond really positively as they're generally eager to represent the person they interviewed well. Divide your group into pairs. Each person interviews the other in turn. The information gained forms the basis of a brief introduction speech they'll give to the whole group when the interviewing process is complete. Allow 5 minutes per person.
Ask them to find out their partner's name, where they live/work, what hobbies they have, what their favorite book, film, song...is, what they're most proud of (an achievement perhaps), what they hope for from the class, something funny that happened in their childhood, where they go for holidays, what they think about the latest local issue, etc...
B. My Friend’s Fictional Life
In this activity, what you do is you get up in front of people and you take one of your friends and you introduce them. However, instead of introducing them in the normal way you make up a fictional life for them. So you say, hi this is Jane Smith, and she actually moonlights as a jazz pianist for the underground mafia. And you talk about her life, whatever it may be. So this is fun because it makes you been creative, it’s very easy to think of these things on the spot and just roll with it. It’s generally pretty funny as well.
6. Picture Prompts
Pick any picture, like the one above, and ask:
Who? (Who is this child? Who are her parents? Who is she running away from?)
What? (What is she doing? What's the name of the plush toy she's carrying?)
When? (When did this happen?)
Why? (Why is this child out on the road by herself with her toy?)
Where? (Where is this? Where are her parents?)
How? (How is this story likely to end? How does this child feel?)
Same picture. Different story: This time all the people in your group are going to use exactly the same picture. And each one will tell a different story.
