"Defining Personal Success and Finding Balance" Supplemental Content: Actionable Steps

1. Self-Care Challenge. This Self-Care Challenge comes from Katie Justesen ("Self-Care and Mindfulness). Choose five of the following exercises to put into practice. Make a plan of how you intend to implement the exercises into your daily schedule. For one week, record your progress and reflect on how the exercises have changed you. Report your findings to your instructor and/or your classmates either formally or informally. 
   1. List three things you like about yourself.
   2. Go for a walk alone. Notice your body system—your respiration, your skin, your body temperature, your movements. Record your experience. 
   3. Write in a journal every day for 2 weeks. Reread your journal and notice what you have learned.
   4. Write a short reflective essay about something you are proud of. 
   5. Start a new morning routine. Include things like stretching, journaling, praying/meditating, preparing a healthy breakfast, or exercising. 
   6. Incorporate a new food into your diet every day for a week. Record your experience and how it impacted your tastes and your nutritional goals. 
   7. Pay attention to your hygiene routine. Are you clean? Are you healthy? Are you excessively worried about your appearance? How can you improve? 
   8. Make an appointment to see a doctor or a dentist for a check-up. 
   9. Hold yourself accountable for how much screen time/phone time you spend each day. Set a goal to decrease your screen time or a goal to have a phone basket at social and family functions. 
2. Imaginary Lives. This prompt comes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and it helps you to look at the possibilities of your own life: "Imaginary lives: if you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, a cowhand, a physicist, a psychic, a monk. You might be a scuba diver, a cop, a writer of children's books, a football player, a belly dancer, a painter, a performance artist, a history teacher, a healer, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Peace Corps worker, a psychologist, a fisherman, a minister, an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a sculptor, a lawyer, a painter, a computer hacker, a soap-opera star, a country singer, a rock-and-roll drummer. Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not overthink this exercise. The point of these lives is to have fun in them—more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down country singer, can you pick up a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, what about some horseback riding? [Or watching a documentary or listening to some "cowboy poetry"?]" (Cameron). 
3. The golf ball jar. This concept is introduced in Andrew Bahlmann's "Figuring it Out: Self-Awareness and Goals." The concept of a golf ball jar metaphor and your "golf ball list" is that some tasks operate on a spectrum of necessary, urgent, fulfilling, and dire. Knowing which task lists (or values) are necessary can help you prioritize your life.

1A: Get out something to write with and something to write on. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Once you’ve started that timer, take that time to write down all the things that matter to you. Let the time run as you think. If you run out of things to write down, that’s not a problem; just sit and breathe for a few minutes.

1B: Now, give yourself space for three lists, ranked from most to least importance. sort every element from your 10-minute list into one of the three lists. Essentially, once you have a list of things that matter to you, it’s time to determine what on that list is a golf ball, what is a marble, and what is your sand.

2: Looking at those things on your golf ball list, consider one that you could improve on, something with which you’re not satisfied, and practice articulating a plan that fits the SMART model for goal setting. What can you do to set something up that will lead to developing a better relationship with that particular golf ball?

Resources: 

Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way: a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. 10th Anniversary ed., J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002.