Interdisciplinary Psychology:

My idea of a beautiful day was to try and incorporate elements of the “Full Life” into my normal everyday life. I decided to do this because I really do enjoy my life but many times I go through it without being “mindful” of what I am doing.  I thought it would be a great idea to take my normal day and make sure I incorporated aspects of the “beautiful life” into my day.  I wanted to see if I could do it and I wanted to be able to use this daily instead of just a day I could only enjoy rarely.  I actually picked one of my most busy days.  I am not sure if that was wise since I really had no time to put in anything extra.

6am:  I woke up and spent a few minutes reading the bible and praying.

 Relates to the “Full Life”:   This incorporates the spiritual aspect into my day/life.  I usually “try” to do this everyday but this time I made sure I did.  Of course, it always helps me to focus on scripture and to pray. I almost always find something to think about for the day. Even though I begin my day in a more positive light by doing this, it is very hard for me to “make” myself do this.  I would like to be more consistent.

6:30am:  I practice for my BODYSTEP class.  This I also do everyday I teach. 

Relating to the “Full Life”:  This helps me to strive for “excellence” in my work. It also relates to my creative side and incorporates my “gifts” into my work.

7am:  I get ready for the day.

I can’t see how this relates to a full life except that I am taking care of myself physically.

7:40am: I drive Ashley to school.  I spend time connecting with her and asking about her day.

Relates to the “Full Life”:  Connecting with people who are important to me…my daughter. 

8am:  Go to Work and practice my BS on the way in the car. 

8:45-10:45am:  teach my class and connect with members before and after class.  I LOVE my work and I look forward to it almost every day I teach.  I also get a chance to connect with my members some whom have turned into friends.  I try to pray before every class that I can reach out to someone and also that God will help me change someone’s life, even in a small way.  I also get a lot out of the social interactions before and after class.  I love to exercise and have fun. On this day I especially tried to consciously think of ways I could connect.  While I was teaching I tried to make eye contact with each person who came and afterwards to stand at the door and say good-by and make conversation with them.  This was hard to do since my class was over 40 people.  But I felt that if I did this to even half of the participants I was doing well.   I also had a chance to talk deeper with a “friend” from class who had a problem she wanted advice on.  I was glad I could be of some help.  I was also surprised by a member who showed up to talk with me before class.  She was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and she wanted to give me an update of her condition in person.  We were able to have a great talk (since I was 30 minutes early) and she shared with me ways in which I could support her and specifically how I could be praying for her. This was an answer to my prayer since I had been missing her and wanting to see her and talk with her.  

 Relates to the “Full Life”:  Loving what I do for a living.  I also usually get in the “zone’ when I teach.  I feel I incorporate many of my gifts in teaching. I connect socially, belong to a group and I feel I am making a difference in others (my classmates) lives.  I also connect it to the spiritual aspect of my life.  Last but not least, I am having lots of fun and it is encouraging.  I found that remembering that this day was a “beautiful day”  really helped me to concentrate on doing the things above.  This would be a good thing to think about every time I go to work…or at least ½ the time…and it would make a difference. 

10:45-11:45am:  getting ready for my day…again.  I use this time to connect to people in the locker room and sometimes just to spend time thinking by myself and going over my schedule.  On this day I tried to connect with someone I hadn’t met before.  This was successful and fun to reach out to someone new.  She will probably come to class next week. 

Relates to the “Full Life”:  Probably by connecting socially but also makes me feel I am making a difference in someone’s life (small probably) by a kind word or action.  I am also getting encouraged by others.  It is surprising what can come up in a locker room.  I have had some pretty deep conversations while getting ready for my day.  Again, it helped to think of having a ‘beautiful day”.

Noon-4pm:  Amanda comes home from college and we talk some.  She does homework.  On days I work this is also the time I spend time home-schooling Courtney.  She does a lot of work on her own on these days.  On this day she had done half of it so that we could spend time having some fun together.  So at 1:30pm we all went to Starbucks and enjoyed some time together.  If I wasn’t planning a more meaningful day I probably would have let this time pass and I would have done a task around the home or my own homework.  Instead we spent some quality time together and connected in a different way…not just home-schooling. At 2:30 I pick up Ashley.  This is our time to talk about her day and work out any problems or talk about the fun stuff that happened.  At 3pm Courtney and I did some more school work.

 Relates to the “Full Life”:  Again by connecting with those I love.  Giving to someone else of my time and pleasures (fun).  Of course, I always gain when I connect with my kids too.  I feel refreshed and ready for the rest of my day. 

4-7pm:  Practice and teach my BODYPUMP and Amazing Abs class and get dressed for class.  My daughters also came to take class.  I left before them so I can get there early to connect with members.  On this day since I was especially concerned with making it a more meaningful day so I tried hard to reach out (again praying for my class), teach the best class I could so members would go away feeling stronger, happier, healthier and hopefully,  feel that I am grateful for them and that I care about them.  I once heard at the beginning of my career in fitness that often the instructor is the only person that a member may connect with…maybe the only one who gives them a kind word or smile all day.  I don’t know how true this is but I have tried whenever I teach to look for ways to connect/reach out to each member of class. I actually try to do this to all my members.  I am very grateful that they have chosen to come to my class and I don’t want to just take them for granted.  This helps me probably more then it helps them.  It makes me feel so good to have them all in class and to be able to make a difference in their health and happiness.  I had a lot of fun teaching and again I had a big class…about 50 members so it was harder to connect but I did my best.     

I also think it is fun to have my daughters in class and working out with me.   I am very proud of them.

Relates to the “Full Life”:  Just as the above BS related.  Belonging to a group, reaching out to connect with others, exercising, spiritual, in the “zone”, pleasure, and  I feel as if I have a purpose in teaching.  Again, not just helping others physically but in others ways (emotionally) too.

7-8:30pm:  shower (once again) get ready for evening. Dinner together as a family.  This night is our late night since it is the only night I work.  This night I especially worked on us having a family dinner and all sitting down.  Sometimes it is just too easy to grab a quick snack.   We all talked around the dinner table and discussed our days.  We (Jeff, me, kids) really love this time to connect.  I think I need to make sure this happens more often.

8:30-9:30pm:  time with the family watching a favorite show.  This is relaxing and fun for all of us. Then bedtime for the younger kids.  10pm:  time for Jeff and I to connect, talk etc. 

Relates to the “Full Life”:  Once again, this is time to connect, have fun and relax and just enjoy life with my family.  Having time with Jeff and working on the aspects of marriage that make it great can relate to the full life by having a great marriage and partner to share all aspects of my life with.  Part of the full life for me is the intimate time with Jeff.  I believe this is an important part of marriage and is very important to me.  So in my “beautiful day” I made sure to make time for this.  This relates to the full life through life pleasures and connecting. 

Conclusion:  It was an interesting day and one which I would definitely try to do again.  I think next time I will create my perfect day from “scratch” on a day off instead of trying to incorporate it in to an existing day.  I would like to see if I would feel better, worse or the same as I did this day.  At the end of this day I felt happy and satisfied…but tired.  I felt that I made a difference, connected with others, felt as if I belonged, felt needed, felt loved, used my gifts, exercised, got into the “zone’, enjoyed work, strived for excellence, sought out spirituality, experienced pleasures and felt I had a purpose and goals that I achieved.   As I was writing this conclusion I realized that I did not make time for “noticing beauty”.  I love to go on walks and just notice the color of trees, flowers, grass, the landscape against the sky and be quiet and appreciate nature.  If I truly designed my “Full Life” day I would have included this.  Although, I find it interesting that I didn’t think of it until I was writing the conclusion!  I think this part of my life has been pushed out by other areas but it is an area where I could benefit by adding back in. I used to “draw” and this may be a time when I could add it in. Negatives are that I tend to be too busy so when I have time free I just want to space out.  If I wouldn’t have had this activity of creating a “beautiful day” I would have probably used the “free” time to do tasks, which is not wrong, but I think I do too much of that.  I think I can work on scaling back a little in order to find energy to be with those I love.  I think this exercise showed me to work on being “mindful” of my day.  In other words to really try to plan what I want to do, where I want to end up at the end of the day and the goals I want to accomplish for that day.  This activity will be especially good to follow up on and try again and again.  I would like to make sure that my life goals match up with my daily goals more often.  This activity also really showed me (since I had to write down how my activities throughout the day related to the “Full Life”) why I really love some of the things I do each day.  A great example is teaching my group exercise classes. Exercise encompassed very many of the things that make a life “full”, “beautiful” and “meaningful”,  at least for me.  I was surprised that my list for my exercise classes (basically my job) was much longer than any other.  That must be why I get so much out of it and why I tend to feel better on the days that I teach than other days.  That is not to say it is the most important thing to me, but it just encompasses much more of the aspects of the “Full Life” and my gifts than any other single activity I do.