A major challenge for woman is in learning and implementing ways to care for themselves whilst caring for the people around them.
It requires a delicate balance of understanding that if you don’t care for yourself then you will not be able to care for others.
I began learning in my late teens skills to support me with caring for myself. Coming to the realization, now throughout my life, that by putting these skills of positive self-care into practice everyday has been the most important aspect of living a healthy, happy and vital life.
If you allow the programming of self-sacrifice to rule your life this will undoubtly lead to health-destroying habits and soul destroying emotions of guilt, resentment and anger. Thus depleting you of the natural joy and happiness that gravitates within the your very core, wanting to be nurtured and loved.
This is why self-sacrifice ultimately will make you sick, keeping you stuck unable to feel happiness and joy in your life. Self-sacrifice isn’t about not helping others it is about denying yourself of the embracing your self-care first at your detriment.
How you care for yourself as a woman will have either a positive or detrimental effect upon the people whom share your life.
There is no better person to care for you, than you. Yes from time to time you will need the support and guidance of those special people in your life. But ultimately you are the one, whom before you can even take up that support and guidance needs to understand and care for yourself first. This is your responsibility is to learn how to optimally care for yourself.
That’s why self-sacrifice ultimately makes us sick and keeps us stuck in dead-end situations—and why its opposite, self-care, is so essential to living a happy, healthy life. How well we care for ourselves as adult women is determined in part by how well our mothers cared for us (and themselves).
Ultimately, however, it’s your responsibility to learn how to optimally care for yourself, so here I have some powerful and easy steps that you can put into place
8 Powerful Steps to Achieving Balance with your Mental and Emotional Health
This is the first step to achieving not only optimal health but a life that we are able to manage and cope with, therefore allowing us to be happy – working toward achieving our lifetime dreams, goals and aspirations.
1. Taking Ownership of your Brain and your Mind
This is about understanding that you may not always have control over the thoughts that come into your mind, but that you do have control over what you do with those thoughts. Our first level of happiness comes when we realize that we have the ability to change our thoughts.
So if it a thought that has come from an upsetting childhood experience for example for me it was lucky legs (lucky they don’t break because they were so skinny) or when I commenced work there were coloured pantyhose, so I was called lolly legs.
So in order to change this I had to stop and learn to appreciate my legs, so rather than allowing those negative thoughts to stay there I would deliberately change the thought to – how fortunate I was that I had legs. I could walk, run so they provided me with everything legs were meant to do. As we know the list can go on but I am sure you understand what I mean.
2.Clarify
Keeping in mind the thoughts we decide to keep are going to be for the use of your own good.
These thoughts are going to allow you to value yourself: knowing that you have the ability to constantly improve the quality of your life.
3.Confirmation
your thoughts need to allow you the confirmation that you have a purpose, talents and special gifts to share with the world.
That your happiness in life comes about from you learning, growing and developing every aspect of YOU. Your Body, Mind and Spirit.
As you tap into your internal spirit, this will give you, your inner core and your strength to overcome obstacles presented to your mind and body.
4. Your Spirit, your Inner Core
We are all born with an internal programmer, not unlike your computer’s hard drive.
You are wired with all the necessary components to live your life. There is just one problem you have to learn how to use them.
For most of us this begins with drinking, eating then crawling going on to walking.
Basically as our spirit, inner core decides that it is time to learn these things most of us do.
We then go on to learn to talk, ride a bike and many other things in our life. As we are a child how we learn these things:
For the most part we unconsciously tap into this inner core, our spirit and decide to do it. You would have heard people say –
“Oh he or she is a spirited child”. What does this mean for most we will think that have a lot of energy, determination and strong will to accomplish the things they want. So this is your Spirit, your Inner Core.
5. Understanding your Mind
Within you mind are your conscious thoughts, unconscious thoughts, memory this is the cause of our impulses or reactions.
You also have your super-conscious or transcendent mind; your emotions.
This is all elaborately interwoven into every function of your body via nerve pathways, chemical messengers know as endorphins, neuropeptides and hormones.
There is a hormone – nerve relationship that exists between your endocrine glands, via the pituitary (this being your master gland regulating the actions of all your other glands).
Your adrenal glands are the glands that deal with stress and the hypothalamus.
This pathway is known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis.
This links your thoughts and emotions with your physical responses.
Explaining this to you, is to show you how what you think, that then leads –
To how you feel powerfully influences the intricate and correct functioning of all of your bodily functions.
So by understanding and taking control of your mind this will slow down your aging process, assist you with following a healthy living regime, assist you with resisting ill health and disease.
6. Conscious and Subconscious
Here we are going to look at the two areas of your mind that you have direct control over.
Your conscious thoughts, these thoughts are the very thoughts that we are aware of coming into our mind.
Conscious thoughts are the ones we can differentiate between whether they are positive, negative: good or bad: true or untrue:
These are what affect our knowing or our thinking. It is your conscious mind that is critical, focused and for the most part rationale.
7. Changing Your  Subconscious Thoughts
Our subconscious is that like a sponge it absorbs everything without differentiating. It believes us no matter what.
This is when you would have heard it said “Whatever you say is Right” your subconscious will believe it.
This is the area of the brain that you are tapping into when you are changing your conscious thinking to how you want your thoughts and thinking to become.
This is where affirmations or your self-talk have the effect. For example “I find life difficult:” You can deliberately change this to “I handle life with ease”.
So all of your past experiences be that good or bad are in your subconscious. This is the area of the brain that we live each day from.
Hence why sometimes this can be a real struggle and a nuisance when we are experiencing our own negative events from the past.
Say when you were a child you once fell of a high bed or out of a tree breaking an arm or a leg.
The leg or arm has healed but the experience still sits somewhere in your unconscious so that each time you come across a similar event you will become to feel uneasy.
So this is the downside, but however the upside is remembering that your subconscious mind doesn’t recognize whether this is real or imaginary. So this is where you put your conscious mind into action. I want to say that this works for even the most traumatic and painful experiences.
It may just take a little more what they call mind work to put the positive thought changes into place. In recent times the capacity to change the unconscious to bring it into whatever it is we are wanting to succeed with, is so powerful that it is used by sports coaches to improve the performance of athletes.
Actors, singers and other performers to overcome stress anxiety to be able to do the work they so love. These techniques are used to help people to manage blood pressure, addictions, pain control and as mentioned many other areas of their lives that they either want to change or implement new things
8. Bringing about Changes to the Unconscious
The first step here is that you have to provide the subconscious with vibrant images of what you want to create or change. Images such as visual pictures, words, dreams or even vague pictures of what you are longing for. It is important for these images, affirmations (specific phrases) to be positive, fun, some level of excitement that is going to have a positive outcome for you. Next you must allow your mind to play with these images, so rest, don’t think so what is known as a meditative or daydreaming state. Then to repeat this process daily, even throughout the day for as long as it takes for you to feel in a more positive, confident and relatively relaxed state about the area of your life that you want to alter. When we take control of our unconscious mind in this way. We are able to clear limiting beliefs, emotional pain and trauma: false beliefs and emotional shadows that will stifle us from the person whom we want to become and the life we want to live. Personally I have used this every day, well most days of my life to help me with every area of my life from how I feel about myself, to how I want to be, raising my family, studying, my life long work such as this for now being able to share with you the wonders of transforming your mind to how you want it to be.
Further Support:
Are you wanting to eliminate Negative Habits such as Smoking,
Then you will learn the hidden elements behind this addiction as well as how to eliminate it the habit or any other substance addiction from your life
With my EBook: “Why Can’t I give up Smoking” you can download your copy directly from this link
Or are you wanting to find Simple, Effective Solutions to Care for Yourself in order to feel, look and be Your Best You
Then my EBook: “Optimal Health the Key to Ageless Aging” is for you. Once again follow the link and download your copy.

Author's Bio: 

Julie Doherty is acknowledged as Worldwide Leader in Naturopathic Medicine by The Leading Physicians of the world.
Julie is an exceptionally experienced Naturopathic Practitioner with vast expertise in Traditional medicine, Herbal & Homeopathic medicine: Massage & Beauty Therapy
Julie being the sole practitioner and owner of - Julie's Naturopathic Health Care Services – Established since 1990
Julie's private practice is located in Hackham, South Australia, Australia
Julie has an extensive Herbal & Homeopathic dispensary: Enabling her to prescribe & formulate at the time of consultation a medicine that is as individual for each client as are their health concerns.
Julie remains loyal & true to the very core Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine to bring back health, balance & harmony with all body systems working in unison together. Treatments, Medicines & Therapies that will "Do No Harm"
Providing support bringing about improved Lifestyle and Living habits.
Julie graduated with distinctions from S.A. College of Botanical Medicine and Natural Therapies & is an accredited member of the Australian Traditional Medicine Society.
Julie’s Professional qualifications include Diplomas in Naturopathic, Herbal Homeopathic Medicines: Nutrition, Remedial & Therapeutic Massage Therapy
Julie credits her success to determination to want to provide significant changes to people's lives. Especially with providing a strong foundation for her family.