Actualize Archives - Holly Boxenhorn

Your New BFF

by Holly Boxenhorn | Dec 2, 2021 | Blog

Dear Future Me…

Want to boost your mood, improve your outlook on life, pinpoint where your greatest efforts might be served, and create some accountability along the way. Imagine your future self! Picture yourself, thriving and living a full, happy life. Researchers call this your BPS-Best Possible Self and study after study say it packs a powerful punch.

Personally, I’m a big fan of this exercise. For so many of us in midlife who question what’s next and where to go from here, it’s a simple yet highly informative way to start fleshing out a new path leading the way into the second half of our lives.

Getting To Know Your Future Self

Carve out undistracted time – find a place where you’ll have limited to no interruptions.
Select a time in your future – anywhere between one year from now to no more than five.
Spend a few moments visualizing your best future self, consider your –
Personal Life including your interests, hobbies, health preferences, and any accomplishments you’d like to go after. Professional Success this includes your career and job, what brings you a sense of purpose, any educational pursuits, your income bracket, and what you’d like for your retirement. Social Life your romantic or dating life, the friends you seek and keep, your relationship with your family, and any regular social activities.
Describe your future self at that time – imagine you’ve invested the time and energy to actualize your best self. What does your life look like? What are you doing personally, professionally, and socially? How do you feel? Think? Experience Life?

Note: It’s important to remember that the purpose of this exercise is not to visualize your greatest fantasy, but rather your best possible, attainable future.

From this identity you can then start to take action. Asking yourself what would my future best self do right now in this moment. This way of thinking can help you restructure your priorities and serve as a roadmap. So that when you wake up first thing in the morning and throughout your day your BPS can now be your BFF encouraging you to align with those actions that you know support your end game.

With the new year around the corner, this is a perfect exercise to take advantage of so you can hit the ground running in 2022!

Wishing You The Best Of Success

-Holly-

Discover A Superpower

by Holly Boxenhorn | Jun 1, 2021 | Blog

Know Your Why

Lending further to last months post on the value of using “reminders” to cultivate a consistent commitment to those things we desire most in our lives, along with a common theme I hear from many women regarding either a petering out or a lack of “oomph” to aggressively pursue their more challenging aspirations, I want to take this month’s post to share a powerful exercise on Knowing Your Why.

Trust me when I say this, it is not you! You don’t per se lack the willpower or capability to obtain those things you want more of in your life. Truth is, reaching our goals and then sustaining them is more about putting habits into place that will support them. We all know anything worth having doesn’t happen overnight and requires extra attention and effort to attain. This is where the power of knowing and having a strong “why” comes into play.

Life is crazy distracting, filled with many curveballs, making it so easy to fall off our path to raise our game. If we don’t get super clear about the value of our pursuits, we undoubtably will run short in obtaining them. Why would we ever push threw the discomfort of a hard conversation with our partner, wake up early to fit in a workout, or chalk up a loss of a client to a lesson learned? Knowing both the positive things we will experience when reaching for our ideal self verse the negative consequences that will result should we abandon our goals is the superpower we all need to take ourselves to the next level.

“Knowing My Why”

Reflection Exercise

Brief Description of Your Aspiration:

List:

-Positive Things I Will Experience As A Result –Negative Consequences Should I Give Up

_____________________________________________ __________________________________________

_____________________________________________ _________________________________________

Ask Yourself:

-How is my life going to change if I follow through, most immediately and in the long run?

-Consider the impact actualizing your goal will have on every aspect of your life: health/wellbeing, relationships, finances, personal & professional development.

Now, get your mind right, you know the the famous expression “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Growth is not a linear path, we zig up and we zig down. Of course it won’t be easy, be patient and compassionate with yourself as you would with a dear friend or your child. There’s no shaming nor should we let ourselves off the hook. We keep at it and always, always remember our WHY!

P.S. On a side note, this exercise is also a great tool to determine whether or not the goals you are pursuing are truly worthwhile to you. So often we fall prey to setting goals that we think we “should” be acquiring when in actuality they aren’t really all that important to us nor do they align with who we genuinely are and what lights us up.

Wishing You Always The Best Of Success

-Holly-

Out For Recess!

by Holly Boxenhorn | Apr 1, 2021 | Blog

Time To Take Play Seriously

Want to actualize your potential? Well, go out and play! More and more research is showing that the power of play is just as valuable for adults as it is for kids, opening us up to optimizing our potential in every area of our life. We give kids recess time to run around, blow off stem, and just be themselves, why don’t we treat ourselves the same way? There’s the obvious benefits of adding more fun in our lives, releasing stress and enhancing our relationships as often when we play we participate in games or fun activities with friends and family bringing us closer together. But the power of play goes well beyond that, stimulating our brain functioning, expanding our energy, promoting better sleep, boosting our confidence and creativity, all setting the stage for us to set more ambitious goals for ourselves. You see, play has a major ripple effect in our lives, having less to do with how we choose to play and more about it being a state of mind that encourages presence in the moment, a suspension of self-consciousness, and opening us up to new experiences.

Take it from a recovering serious minded adult, making more time for playfulness in my life has been a game changer. Gone are the days of feeling guilty for using my time only to check one more thing off my to do list. Truth is when I include more play in my life, I’m more inclined to get things done. I feel lighter and like myself more, feeling inspired to live my life more fully. With all that being said, as simple as the concept of play is, it’s actually really hard for most adults to practice. But once you get in the habit of it, it’s just like riding a bike…

5 Pathways To Create More Play In Your Life

Simple Delights: These are the little things we can do throughout our day that add a little boost of levity to it. Maybe having a private dance party listening to your favorite song, playing with your pet(s), watching a heart warming video, sharing a laugh with a friend, spouse, family member, or just getting outside to feel the sun on your face. What ever floats your boat, I highly suggest indulging in a minimum of two simple delights daily.
Purposeful Play: Here we actually schedule play on the calendar. Whether you join a weekly tennis league, attend a monthly bookclub, sign up for a cooking class, it’s a commitment you make to ensure you are getting out to play. Remember it’s not so much about the activity as it is your state of mind. Play can be anything that provides a sense of enjoyment, it’s self-motivating and makes you want to do it again.
Chore Play: This is where we try to bring some fun to those everyday tasks that need to get done. Dancing while we do the dishes, blasting some feel good music while we fold the laundry, creating some friendly competition around the house where family members can earn a “prize” for helping out, or building in our own special reward when at last that closet is cleaned out.
Play Space: Let’s face it, they’ll be tons of reasons and excuses to back burner our fun so creating an environment that supports more play in our life will be key. Whether that be a wide open space where we can dance, roll out our yoga mat, hang a hammock in the sun, set up a crafting corner, or simply find a visible place where we can be keep our play gear easily accessible making it all that more easy to go out and play.
Change It Up: Little or big, it’s about doing something radically different to embody a sense of playfulness in your life. On the smallest level it might be wearing that bold colored lipstick, eating lunch with your left hand if your right handed, or painting your nails different colors. On a bigger level, maybe you cut your hair short, register for an improv class, or go sky diving. Again it’s not about what you do as long as it’s something you normally wouldn’t do.

Best place to start would be to craft your own playlist. What makes you come alive, fill you up, make your heart sing? From reading a book to running a marathon, write it all down. Spring has sprung, summer is on its way, create a list and build more play time into your life. As it turns out, playing is way more than just fun and games, making it an important part of optimizing our growth.