5 Reasons Why It’s Hard To Forgive

By Roz Jones

This is part of our April series for caregivers on spring cleaning – both physical and mental. Forgiveness or a lack thereof can make up a big part of our lives, so we wanted to make sure we addressed it.

Anything that betrays your trust and love in a person is hard to get over. More so, because the person who probably did that to you was someone close to you. You allowed them to come close and they caught you off guard.

Now, you’re left there with all those terrible memories. You’re hurt, you’re angry, and you’ve vowed to never, ever forgive them!

But the problem is not forgiving them isn’t going to teach them a lesson. It’s not going to rake them over the coals for what they did to you. Nor will it bring you justice or set things right once again. All it’s going to do is keep amassing your bitterness and anger. Pretty soon, it’ll be all you have left.

Nevertheless, forgiveness can’t be done overnight. It’s a process that takes time and a lot of effort. Here are five reasons why it’s so hard to forgive.

You Can’t Open Up About Your True Feelings

Opening up means being vulnerable and exposing raw wounds. So, what’s the alternative? Just stay quiet. Staying hushed up and keeping your emotions bottled up is many people’s go-to reaction.

The problem is that when you don’t open up about your feelings, you make it extremely hard to forgive whoever wronged you. You feel like you’ve been backed into a corner with no way out.

Because when you’re not talking about emotions, they don’t just go away! They’ll never disappear into thin air.

To get closure, you need to get a trusted buddy you can confide in. You can also seek therapy or counseling where you’ll get the support and help you need.

You Can’t Control Your Anger

This is the opposite of the first reason. If you feel you’re not able to forgive because you lack anger management, you’re not alone.

A lot of people are gripped by blinding anger. That makes forgiveness a hard thing to come by or accept. Then you allow anger and rage to take over, the only thing you want is revenge.

The problem with anger is that it distracts you from the real problems. It clouds your judgment and makes forgiving practically impossible.

You Don’t Want The Person To Get Off The Hook

Many times our grudges are meant to be a sort of punishment for the person who hurt us. It gives us the illusion of power and control over our feelings.

However, that punishment is rarely ever effective. The other person may not even be aware of your grudge, or even that they offended you in the first place. They’re just living their life, while you’re left with the heavy burden.

One of the hardest things about forgiveness is acknowledging that it’s not about the person at all! When you forgive someone, it’s about how you can finally move on with your life.

Forgiving doesn’t exonerate them and it doesn’t get them off the hook for what they did. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can take the first step towards healing.

You Don’t Want To Risk Disappointment Again

Perhaps you’re afraid that if you forgive, you’ll be vulnerable. No one wants to get hurt or disappointed a second time, even if it’s at the hands of a different person.

According to expert psychologists, this is a well-known defense mechanism. It’s aimed at keeping safe from future disappointments. Before you can learn to forgive, you have to realize that life is messy. It has its ups and downs with its fair share of happy days and not-so-happy days.

You Feel Misunderstood

How can you forgive if you feel you haven’t been heard? If you feel misunderstood, it’s often easier to justify holding on to your grudges and resentment.

You keep fencing yourself in more and more. The higher those walls go up, the angrier and more bitter you become. It’s a vicious cycle that goes on and on. And still, you don’t see any other way out. Letting go of what happened becomes harder and harder. And as long as you feel the need for them to hear you out, you’ll never be able to let go. After all, they didn’t treat you right, so why should you forgive them?

But, by holding onto all that rage and hurt, the only person you’re hurting is you.

Isn’t it time you started showing yourself the kindness and compassion you deserve? It all starts with forgiveness.

EXCITING NEWS!!

I am excited and thrilled to share with you my new adventure, “The Caregiver Café Podcast”. This podcast tackles and highlights the daily situations caregivers face with their aging loved ones. We also empower you to navigate the care and challenges of your loved one with relevant topics and through the voices of your peers and their life experiences.

We launched our first episode on April 4th, and you can learn all about it at this link.

Visit http://www.rozjonesent.com for more information on addressing issues that caregivers face on a daily basis, and check out my upcoming book!

Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Workspace

By Roz Jones

For April, we’re covering spring cleaning – getting your ducks in a row in your physical home, as well as clearing your mental space by practicing forgiveness. We hope you’ll be ready to charge into May with a new spring in your step!

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got an office job or if you work from home, keeping an organized desk and workspace is very important in order to work efficiently. It’s not always easy to pay attention to cleaning and organization when you’re worried about important deadlines along with the responsibilities of caring for your loved ones, which is why your space can quickly turn into a mess.

During spring cleaning time, take a day or two to concentrate on your workspace. You’ll thank yourself later when you’re able to find everything you need quickly and efficiently!

Consider some of the following cleaning tips for your workspace:

File away your paperwork. Paperwork can get out of hand fast. Spend some time sorting through your paperwork. File important papers away, and shred any personal documents that you won’t need anymore.

Clean your work surfaces. Since you’ll be able to finally see the bottom of your desk, you need to take advantage of the opportunity to clean the surfaces underneath the old clutter. Also take time to clean all of your desk items such as staplers, pens, and paper trays.

Make your business contacts digital. Start a list of all your business contacts somewhere on your computer, such as your address book in your email. Keep track of their business name, photos, phone number, mailing address, and email addresses. This way you can toss out their old business cards that may be piling up on your desk.

Deal with old reminder notes. If you have post-it notes all around the office, sift through them and throw out the ones that no longer apply. Reorganize them by priority, or make digital files to keep track of them. Post-its can get disorganized fast, so if you have something on a post-it that’s a long-term project, it’s better to keep your notes on your computer.

Deal with digital clutter. Cleaning your workspace doesn’t apply only to your physical workspace. Is anything cluttering up your computer’s hard drive? How about your desktop? Go through your e-mail inbox and delete those you don’t need or file them away.

Organize your supplies. Gather your work supplies into one area of your desk. Keep them in that space or a specific drawer. This will give them a permanent place so they’re not left out and scattered around your desk at all times.

Clean the areas around the room. Vacuum the room around your desk and wash the windows, baseboards, and more. It’s probably not an area that you often think about, which is why it’s likely due for a cleaning.

Make a future cleaning schedule. If spring cleaning for your workspace was a burden on you, it probably means that you let things get out of hand this year. You can prevent it from happening again by doing periodic cleaning of your workspace.

Once you have an organizational system in place, you can spend maybe 30 minutes per week keeping everything clean and organized.

It’s always a good idea to keep your workspace nice and clean. It helps you be more efficient, productive, and less stressed. Plus, a clean office environment is more inviting to you, your clients, and anyone you work with.

EXCITING NEWS!!

We’re launching our first episode last week on April 4th, and you can learn all about it at this link.

Visit http://www.rozjonesent.com for more information issues that come up in the daily life of a caregiver and check out my upcoming book!

5 Reasons to Forgive Yourself

By Roz Jones

In life, there will probably come a time when you fail and disappoint yourself. Maybe you set a goal to graduate this semester, but now you need to add one more. Perhaps you promised yourself that you would master the art of caregiving, but work keeps you too busy to keep yourself organized.

There could be countless times when you find yourself upset, frustrated, or disappointed in yourself. When this happens, the next step to moving on is forgiving yourself. Here are five reasons that you should forgive yourself.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

You are not the only person to get into an accident, tell a lie, yell at someone, or turn on the wrong burner. Everyone makes mistakes. Thankfully for you, you will not make every mistake possible, but you won’t come out clean either.

We are human and this work is messy. It is impossible to not make mistakes. That doesn’t mean that you should stop trying to keep yourself from making mistakes. It just means that you should forgive yourself and move on. Someone else has done what you have and you should find comfort in that. You now need to move on and forgive yourself. It was a mistake that you can learn from and move on from.

Trouble Trusting Yourself

If something happens and you are having a hard time forgiving yourself, that is going to carry over into other parts of your life. You might create trust problems with yourself. Because you already messed up one way, who’s to say that you won’t mess up in another?

But that’s not a good way to think about yourself. There are going to be a lot of people in this world who think poorly of you or talk down to you. Don’t join them. It is okay to admit that you made a mistake and work to fix it. But then let it go, let yourself off the hook so that you can believe in yourself once more.

Health Problems

By not forgiving yourself, you could cause health problems. Being at peace allows your body to feel good. When there is chaos within, that can cause a lot of strain on your heart and your mind. This amount of stress is not healthy to carry around. You do not need to hold on to all that baggage. All it does is destroy you, mentally, physically and emotionally. You do not need to hold on to that, forgive yourself and set it aside.

Future Success

If you don’t forgive yourself, you are going to have a harder time succeeding in the future. Either you’ll be too stressed about making a mistake that you won’t do anything at all or you will live too cautiously because you are afraid of messing up.

Neither of these options are good ways to live. By forgiving yourself, you can move past the failure and be able to work towards future successes without that fear and stress.

You Deserve It

You deserve to be happy. You deserve to enjoy your life. You deserve to not hold a mistake over your own head forever. Forgive yourself because you deserve it. Yes, you made a mistake and let yourself down, we all do that. It is a part of life. You fell down.

After you have enough time to sit on the ground, pick yourself back up again. You deserve to continue climbing and moving forward.

Falling down doesn’t change that. You deserve to be forgiven by the person whose opinion matters the most: yours. That doesn’t mean that you forget about the mistake or don’t learn from it. It means that you care about yourself enough to move on.

EXCITING NEWS!!

Monday April 4th we launched our first episode, and you can learn all about it at this link.

Visit http://www.rozjonesent.com for more information on addressing issues that caregivers face on a daily basis, and check out my upcoming book!

Seven Ways to Get Your House in Shape During Spring Cleaning

By Roz Jones

It’s always a good idea to stay organized throughout the year (as a caregiver this can be particularly crucial!), but things don’t always go according to plan. During springtime, it’s popular to use the opportunity to whip your house into shape.

It can be a tough job since there may be things you’ve been putting off all year long. But in the end, it’ll be worth it because you’ll have a great sense of accomplishment and your house will be looking its best.

Try some of the following ways to get your home into shape during spring cleaning:

Do the deep cleaning. Deep cleaning is clearly not something you can make a part of your everyday cleaning routine. During spring cleaning, however, you can take the opportunity to get down and dirty.

Vacuuming. During spring cleaning, take that extra step to vacuum everything. During regular cleaning, you likely do a quick job in a matter of minutes. However, with spring cleaning, it’s good to take time for the details, crevasses, and under the couch.

Time to use the ladder. Spring cleaning is also an opportunity to get to all those hard to reach places. Include ceiling fans, the tops of doors, and light fixtures. Do this dusting first so you can vacuum up the fallen dust later with the regular vacuuming.

Wash all surfaces. Take the time to wash every surface you can. There may be certain things that you don’t think need cleaning, but you really never know where dust has settled throughout the year. Grab a cloth and clean your walls, cabinets, and more.

Organization. Pay special attention to organization. If you’ve already been using an organization plan, you’ll only need to reorganize things that may have fallen out of place (check your “junk drawer” and clear it out!). If you don’t have organizational methods in place, perhaps it’s time to adopt some.

Sift through the clutter. Find the cluttered spots in your house and deal with those items. If you need them in the house, then find them a permanent home that’s out of the way.

Get your family involved. So much more can be accomplished when it’s a group effort. Have children take responsibility for their rooms. Then, divide up the other cleaning projects among every member of the family.

Remember to reward yourselves at the end of the day for a job well done! Perhaps you can throw a pizza party for the family!

Remember that getting your house into shape doesn’t need to be too difficult on you; just take everything one step at a time, do what you can, and it’ll all get done.

EXCITING NEWS!!

We’re launching our first episode today (April 4th), and you can learn all about it at this link.

Visit http://www.rozjonesent.com for more information issues that come up in the daily life of a caregiver and check out my upcoming book!

How to Stand Out Amongst Other Women Entrepreneurs

By Roz Jones

As more and more of the female population decides to start a business, it gets harder to stand out amongst other women entrepreneurs – particularly if you have a full home life that involves caring for loved ones. However, it can be done. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Utilize Social Media

Social media can be used for so much more than keeping in touch with loved ones. Create pages for both yourself and your business on multiple social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.). Then, share content that shows off the things that you have to offer.

Be sure to highlight ways that you are different from your competition. For example, if you’re the only daycare service in your town that also provides transportation, be sure to bring that up in your posts.

Keep Your Promises

Clients and customers alike will notice when you deliver on every aspect of a promise that you make to them. Make sure that you finish everything that you start, and that you get it done in a timely manner. People remember that you were true to your word, and keep that in mind when deciding who to do business with in the future.

Go the Extra Mile

Doing more than is expected of you when working with clients or customers is a sure way to set yourself and your business apart from competitors in your field. If you can offer an extra feature or service that your competitors don’t, that’s an excellent point to make when trying to “sell” yourself to potential customers.

Give Out Free Samples

People tend to get pretty excited about the idea of getting something for free. Consider investing in promotional objects like pens, mouse pads, t-shirts, or fridge magnets. It may not seem like much, but gifts like this with your logo on them can go a long way toward setting yourself apart from your peers.

Listen to Feedback

Even if you are successful when you launch your business, you won’t be able to keep up with the changing landscape if you aren’t able to adapt as a business owner. Take every opportunity that you can to collect feedback from customers and other businesses that you work with.

One way to do this is to provide customers with a satisfaction survey, either in person or via email. Make sure to include a section that lets the customer fill in suggestions on how you could improve your service. Not only will this give you an idea of how you can do better, it also lets your customers know that their opinion matters to you.

These are just a few ways to help to ensure that you stand out among the sea of female entrepreneurs. Yes, competition is fierce. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. With perseverance and due diligence, chances are you’ll realize continued growth along your well-deserved journey to success.

Congratulations, you want to start a business! Once you get over the initial excitement, it’s time to break down the process of launching your startup into manageable chunks. So do you feel overwhelmed with the items on your to-do list? Not to worry; I’ve divided this startup Essential Business Bundle Checklists into the primary tasks you need to do now, and those that you can defer until later. These documents will help you navigate, structure, and create systems specific to our business.

It’s here, I am so excited to share a new caregiver app called CircleOf….This app will allow you to surround yourself with resources and experts from your community including ME!!!! As you are looking through the app, you will see my familiar face. I’m excited about this partnership and new ways to support you as you support your loved one. Here’s the link so you can explore the app. I would love your feedback and spread the word by sharing the link to family and friends.

Visit http://www.rozjonesent.com for more information on addressing mental health as a caregiver and check out my upcoming book!