Creating the Life You Love: 3 Ways to Improve Emotional Health and Well-Being

These three ways to create the life you love will help you bounce back from disappointment and improve your emotional health and well-being.

Diane Glass and Debra Landwehr Engle's program of spiritual growth and creativity is called Tending Your Inner Garden®. They encourage women to discover their creative gifts and address their fears. They offer retreats, group study kits, and online newsletters.

Here, Glass and Engle share how to improve your emotional health and well-being by connecting with a higher power, investing in your own interests and gifts, and practicing random acts of courage.

3 Ways to Create the Life You Love

1. Connect with a higher power. Journaling, meditation and other spiritual practices help strengthen our connection to the voice within and our awareness of a greater spirit. Spiritual exercise is like physical exercise; it strengthens our selves and our relationship with God, and it improves our emotional health.

Nature can be an especially gentle and symbolic way of listening to the guidance of a higher power. For instance, Mary was in her early 30s when she came to our Tending Your Inner Garden® program. She had a four-year-old daughter and was still grieving the loss of her mother 25 years earlier, when she was about the same age as her daughter. She realized that her unresolved grief was interfering with the joy she wanted to experience in her relationship with her daughter, but she didn’t know what to do. At a winter workshop, with snow on the ground and in a barren landscape, she went for a mindfulness walk and saw a tree that still had its leaves from the previous fall. When she came back to the group, she said, “I realized that I’m like that tree...I’ve been holding on too long, and it’s time to let go.” With this acknowledgement, she was able to start healing her long-held feelings of sadness.

A desire to connect with God is key to creating the life you love. The sacred is all around and within us. When we express our intention to have a stronger connection, it begins.

2. Invest in your interests and gifts. The word “invest” suggests that you’ve identified something of value within you. Maybe you’ve discovered a talent, an interest, or a gift, and you want to validate it. Investing in it means you’ll put resources toward it with hope that it will blossom and grow - and you'll improve your emotional health.

Janet invests in herself and creates the life she loves by choosing one day each month for a personal retreat. She blocks out the whole day away from family and friends. She may go to a retreat center, walk a labyrinth, or spend time in an area of her home where she’s gathered art supplies for drawing and dreaming.

Women are great at investing in other people’s needs and desires, but spending time or money on themselves can seem like too much of a luxury. When Sarah paid for her ex-stepdaughter’s wedding but wouldn’t buy herself a new laptop computer, she realized her sense of self-worth was out of balance. Through an activity in which she could see how she valued other people above herself, she was able to make some changes. She bought herself the computer and set up a savings account for a new car, realizing that she could make incremental changes and honor herself along the way.

3. Practice random acts of courage. We all live within certain beliefs and behaviors that may limit us and keep us from creating our heart’s desire. Taking healthy risks allows us to step outside of those beliefs and behaviors, and helps us create the life we love. We can make decisions about whether or not our beliefs and behaviors support us in being who we want to be.

What looks courageous to one person may not look that way to another. Each of us gets to define that for ourselves. For example, when challenged to do something outside her comfort zone, Martha decided to call her estranged sister, who lives in another state. The two hadn’t spoken for several months, so Martha set herself up for success. With an intention to limit the phone call to about 15 minutes, she called in the middle of the day, when she could gracefully use work as an excuse to end the conversation. Also, she was realistic in her expectations; her desire was to establish a connection, not to completely heal the relationship. The phone call went reasonably well, and Martha ended the conversation not only a step closer to her sister, but aware she improved her emotional health!

For more information about Diane Glass and Debra Landwehr Engle’s program of spiritual growth and creativity, visit Tending Your Inner Garden®.

May 25, 2008 11:35 PM

Melody Wright Joseph :

I really enjoyed your reading and I can truily say you are right about the 3 steps. You need to get to know you and what you feel. We often times are afraid to feel because we wonder what others would think and how they would feel behind all of this, until we do not allow ourselves time to feel for ourselves. I spend most of my time trying to please people and do what people thought was right and not what I knew was right. We should live each day-one day at a time and enjoy life to the fullest. God will is for all of us to prosper and be in good health even as I soul shall prosper. I believe life is what we make out of it. We should not be afraid to take chances because the bible says to try the spirit by the spirit and see if it is of God. How would we know what's right or wrong if we never be told or experience it. I can't tell a person how to be drug free if I have never experience the use of drugs. Now this is not a act for someone to go out there and get on drugs, this is a act to let those who judge drug users to see how would they know the feels of a drug users if they never use drugs. Faith and patience or the two I need work on in my life. For the bible says Faith is the substance of things hope for and the evidence of things not seen. I had to learn to see things before I see them or believe I would never see them. Patience is one of the hardest. My wish is to learn how to wait, for the bible also says Wait I Say Upon the Lord. Waiting seems to be the hardest for many of us because we want it to come to pass right away. My plans for the life I want is to be a writer and write most of the time. I am also taking online classes at Rasmussen University where I am studing to be a medical transcriptionist and to work from home. I want to be there for my boys when they need me. I do not want to work all the time under someone and cannot get off when my children needs their mom. My plans after graduation is to work from home and write more. I love writing and it has inspired me to be where I am today. My writing has moved to another level and I plan to push it all the way. I just wrote my first book and trying to find someone legit to publish it. My book is to help those who struggle with low self-esteem and peer pressure. People could say many things about you and what they think but a quest comes to my mind and that question is, does what others think about me really matter. It also lets me realize that will I let that determine where I go or end up.