Strategies to Improve Self-Management skills

 

To improve your self-management skills, you have to actively focus on ways you can direct, test, and enhance your daily activities. How to work smarter and not harder.

 Here are a few ways you can improve your self-management skills:

Self-Evaluation/Self-reflection- 

Assess your strengths to determine what you’re best at, and focus on ways to use your abilities in these areas. Understanding your strengths helps you manage your career and steer your life path in a way that is most beneficial.

Evaluate the progress you’ve made toward your goals by tracking your accomplishments to see if you’ve met them. Don’t be too hard on yourself and always acknowledge your successes, reward and praise yourself for your efforts and achievements.

Ask someone closest to you for help to assess your behaviour, and to get a well-rounded appraisal. you may not like what you hear, the truth hurts. So when you seek others' opinions, try to be calm and neutral, don’t go all defensive about what they say of your character rather use the feedback to improve and build your self-awareness. 

While self-evaluation is about appraising yourself, your strength, your experience and your performance to better improve your life.  Self-reflection is used to gain insight into your action, behaviour and values.

Self-reflection is key to self-awareness. It enables you to be aware of yourself and to look objectively at your thoughts, emotions, actions, and feelings. It can be a time to reflect on your mistakes and areas of improvement. 

It can also be time to acknowledge personal accomplishments and celebrate progress. Remember, if you don’t reflect on your past, you will have a harder time understanding where you are going.

Self-reflection will give you the time to step back and try to view things with an impartial eye. Avoid bottling up or repressing your feelings, but look for healthy ways to deal with what you are feeling, it will help you respond more effectively to your emotions. Things don’t always work out as planned, but with self-reflection, we can seek feedback, ask for help and get things back on track.

Self-motivation/Initiative

Self-motivation is the ability to start and finish a task or activity without external inducement. When you’re self-motivated, you plan for potential tasks because you’re driven by a desire to succeed and not by outside factors. 

Self-motivation is the side of self-management that pushes you forward to take initiative and succeed with your projects and activities. Self-motivation is one of the most powerful forces that drive people to do things and to achieve success in business and personal life. 

Initiative is the ability to plan, take action and make decisions without being told what to do. You can show initiative by thinking for yourself, planning and taking action when needed. It means using your head and having the drive to achieve something. Initiative requires self-belief because you need resilience and motivation to solve problems or do things without being reminded or asked.

Self-confidence/Self-Control  

To be self-confident means to like and respect yourself and believe in your own abilities and strengths. People that are self-confident have a positive mindset and can face their fears head-on.

Self-confident people are some of the most successful people in life and business, they trust and believe in their skills and abilities and have a sense of control

Self-control is the ability to remain stable when in difficult situations. When you lose self-control, you delegate control of your emotions to others. Self-control allows you to take charge of your thoughts, behaviour and impulses. Your ability to manage and control your needs, desires, actions, and emotions is vital to achieving success in life and business. Self-control is also about discipline and restraint, if you are disciplined you will control the controllable's in life. Being disciplined goes a long way to enhancing every aspect of your life, including your health and wellness.

Take care of your health and wellness. 

When your health falls apart, every other aspect of your life follows suit. It’s important to keep both the mind and the body healthy. Engage in physical activity like exercise. Regular exercise keeps you physically fit and is also great for the mind. It relaxes the mind and helps your brain to recharge and improves your ability to focus. You also have to observe personal hygiene and eat nutritious meals that will nourish your body,   

You should have adequate sleep, at least seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Getting better sleep will help your mind become more alert, focused, and balanced.  

You should learn to relax and take your mind off your stress, Have fun, laugh as often as your can and rest as regularly as possible, Take holidays and go on vacations, engage in a hobby and take time to do things you love the most. All these will help to improve your physical and mental health.

Your physical health. The essence of good sleep and regular exercise is to bring stress under control. If you’re unable to manage your emotions, you are likely not in control of your stress level. Uncontrolled stress can lead to serious health problems like weight loss and high blood pressure, which can suppress the immune system and increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Uncontrolled stress can speed up the ageing process. 

When you exercise and do activities, your brain releases endorphins known as serotonin, which helps you feel good and fight negative emotions.

 Living a healthy lifestyle and eating a balanced diet is crucial to your overall health and will give you mental power and body energy 

Your mental health. Uncontrolled emotions and stress also affect your mental health and render you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. If you cannot understand, take control or manage your emotions, it will affect your self-confidence and your ability to form strong relationships. You become isolated and filled with negative thoughts that will eventually affect your mental health. Your emotional and social well-being also how you handle stress and relate to others, affect how you think, act and feel.

To stay mentally healthy, think positively, learn how to cope with stresses if life, connect with others, believe in yourself, be physically active, and get enough sleep. Above all, learn and put into practice all the self-management skills.

Learning it's a continuous process, it goes beyond formal education. If learning should end with the completion of a degree, you could not cope with today’s fast-changing and evolving world.

Keep learning to keep up with new ideas that will enable you to take proactive actions. Challenge yourself, move out of your comfort zones, and learn how to improve yourself to get the best out of life.

Laughter, Good Medicine

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.” — George Gordon Byron

I stood on my balcony one Sunday morning staring sightlessly at the outside world with a heart heavy with worries. Sounds of laughter drifted to my ear, I blinked and looked towards the next compound. I saw a group of young children laughing, and I watched them as they played mommy and daddy. The imitation of their parent’s mannerism was hilarious.

Playing comes naturally to children. They’re wonderful actors/ actresses without scripts. Unlike adults, they turn their problems into a game; they take life lightly and laugh at ordinary things that baffle them. No wonder the Bible tells us that we have to be like children to enter the kingdom of God. we have to pay attention to children and try to emulate them.

I joined in their laughter and laughed so much I forgot about my worries. Even when I left the scene, the worries were not so oppressive. Because I laughed, I was able to release a lot of tension and felt lighthearted.

It brought home once more the truism that laughter is the best medicine for me. We always forget this especially when we seem to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. No matter how heavy the load, how dark and long the night or how gloomy the day, we should learn to take a breath and laugh to release the tension. Laughter helps you stay mentally healthy.

At times, life brings challenges that can weigh you down but remember every cloud has a silver lining. Learn not to take things too seriously, When something negative happens, try to find the humorous side of it, humour lightens burdens and makes you feel lighthearted.

Laughter is an all-time stress management therapy, it's free, convenient, and beneficial in so many ways. Laughter provides a physical, emotional and mental release.

Laughter can take the focus away from anger, tension, and negative emotions making them less threatening.









Laugh at your stupidity
Laugh at your quirk
Laugh through your dreadful days
Laugh away your sorrow.
Laugh at situations rather than bemoan them.
laugh at your own mistakes and foibles.
Laugh at the absurdity of life.
Look for the humour in an unpleasant situation.


While some events in life come with an overwhelming sense of sadness and when you’re in a state of sadness, it blocks out opportunities for laughter. Admittedly, many things in life are beyond your control, but the power to laugh and be happy is within your palm, So laugh whenever you can and look at the brighter side of life.

If possible, count your blessings. Considering the good things in your life will help minimise your negative feelings. Approach life’s challenges with gaiety and you'll find you're less stressed about negative events. Don’t dwell on the negative for a prolonged time. it’s unhealthy.

Laughter triggers physical and emotional changes in the body. Nothing like a wonderful hearty laugh to bring your mind and body back into balance after a stressful day or moment. Stress releases chemicals into your body that decrease your immunity and make you prone to sickness. A pleasant laugh will help infuse your immune system with disease-fighting energy that recharges your body and help you stay healthy.

Consumption of Banana Maintains Normal Blood Pressure and More

Miss Yemisi Olowookere, a dietician at the Garki Hospital, Abuja says consumption of banana is ideal for the maintenance of normal blood pressure and heart function.

So try and increase your consumption of banana to derive its health benefits.

CANCER: Managing treatment and diet for cancer patient

Breast cancer is being dreaded and the scourge is on the increase. The detection of breast cancer on any woman is akin to pronouncement of death sentence. Most women live in constant fear of this menace, I included, and this is because the percentage of survival is low.

Within the past four years I have lost friends and relations to breast cancer, I was so griped by fear that I check my breasts hourly. However, last year I became directly involved with caring for a cancer patient when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer. The task of taking care of her was unavoidable; we all have to take our turn as she was far from home. The experience lessened my fear and made me more informed.

We thank God for her survival, it wasn’t easy but with unshaken faith in God, she’s alive to tell the story. And also for me, it reduced the fear of hopelessness about the disease, if she could survive it at her age, then there is hope for others, once we denude ourselves of fear.

Information is very necessary, the patient and relations need to be well informed about the treatment’s cause and effect, for proper management. I discovered one of the reasons most cancer patient in Nigeria don’t survive is lack of adequate information on how to manage the patient as well as the side effects of cancer treatment.

I am writing this based on my mother-in-law’s treatment and the experience I gained from how we handled her. Her first chemotherapy treatment was nerve wrenching for her as well as those taking care of her. Though we were told what to expect, it wasn’t easy managing it that first time, however, we learnt and was able to handle subsequent ones.

CHEMOTHERAPY: it’s a big word that induces fear in cancer patients and their families with good reason too. However, chemo as I have come to discover is not the problem but the side effect and the management of it, is the big issue here.

Chemotherapy is a group of drugs giving orally or intravenously to cancer patients to disrupt the way cancer cells grow and divide. Also it is meant to shrink large cancer cells to a size safe enough to be removed surgically. Incidentally, these drugs also affect normal cells in the body.

The cells affected by chemo treatment are those in the bone marrow, the lining of the mouth and intestines, the hair follicles, reduction in white blood cell counts and red blood cell counts. These give rise to lots of changes in the body which results in the several side effects the patient suffers.

SIDE EFFECTS OF CHEMOTHERAPY

 Mouth sore
Loss of appetite
Nausea and vomiting
Increased chance of infection(from low white blood cell counts)
Easy bruising and bleeding(from low blood platelet counts)
Diarrhea

Hair loss.

No drugs are given for these excerpts on severe cases.

The chemo drugs were given in form of drip (infusion) which lasted for a few hours, and then three weeks rest period would be given to the patient in which she was expected to rebuild her blood cells counts. The side effects may last four to seven days at most. During this period what the patient eats is of paramount importance, because there will be a blood test before the next session of chemo to make sure the white blood cells have recovered if not chemo will not be administered.

DIET FOR CANCER PATIENT: the challenge was trying to assemble and prepare the right food with all the right nutrients to boost her blood count as well as manage the side effects using our own local foods. We went into research, the internet did not offer much in terms of our local food, and so we made use of our initiative. When the blood test before the second chemo was taken, she came up as the patient with the highest blood counts and the doctor were impressed, so we knew we’re on the right track and so kept to the diet until the end of her treatments.

THE FOODS

SNAILS: Snails contains cancer fighting properties and also help in boosting the immune system, Snails also are a great source of iron for healthy red blood cells. It also provides other essential minerals such as potassium, phosphorus, minerals and vitamin B-12 and magnesium.

VEGETABLES: We used ugu, i.e. Pumpkin leaf and Scent leaf for mineral and vitamins, the scent leaf for its antibiotic properties. These we pound to pulp before we add to every food she eats like beans and unripe plantain, as well as make soup with snail and dried fish.

CRAYFISH AND SHRIMPS: added in every of her meals. The crayfish is pounded, but the shrimps are cut into tiny chewable bits.

BEANS AND UNRIPE PLANTAIN. Cooked with enough vegetables, crayfish and shrimps. At times only beans, or sometimes mixed with unripe plantain or unripe plantain alone with vegetables pounded for easy digestion.

PAP (akamu, ogi) with soya beans powder, she takes it often especially when her appetite is low, it keeps fluid in her system, as well as fight constipation.

FRUITS: fruits like apple, water melon, cucumber and pawpaw are cut in small chunks and use to make fruit salad which she takes daily. It helps in constipation or diarrhea. She might have one or the other at a time.

All in all avoid greasy fried foods. Avoid too much red oil and vegetable oil when preparing meals for a chemo patient. Avoid too much salt, and use of seasonings and spices. Also avoid giving them acidic foods. Every food has to be prepared fresh to derive the nutritional value of it. She ate rice and yam as well even fufu, after her fourth chemo, but it has to go with lots of vegetable.

This is not exhaustive, but that's what we used and it worked for us and to God be the glory.