CHAPTER 1
You Need an Oasis
It is crucial to your well-being for your home to be your oasis. You need to have a place where you can recharge your batteries, regain your sanity, and feel safe to be yourself. Your home needs to be a place you always look forward to being, a place where you can feel excited about life. Everyone needs an oasis. It's not a luxury; it's a necessity. In this hectic world we live in, an oasis is crucial for gaining the energy we need to face the jungle of the outside world.
The outside world can be a jungle because you are dealing with different people and different personalities. Sometimes they carry their own issues with them to unload onto others. We have to deal with things like work, and for some, work alone can be draining. To help you deal with all this without feeling like you're drained or going crazy, create a home that can become your oasis.
The consequences of not doing this are great. When your home is a source of chaos and stress, you'll want to be anywhere but home. This can lead to a sense of loss, because in essence, you are lost. It can be challenging to find yourself away from home, because of all the noise of the outside world. By noise, I mean other people's thoughts, ideas, and agendas; society's agenda; your own community; and other outside forces. When that noise does not resonate with your true essence, you cannot be your own true self. You cannot become what you were designed to be. You cannot grow as a person, and growth is very much a part of your well-being.
To figure out your true happiness, you must look within, and you must do this without all the noise and influence of others. You need to feel safe. I believe our true essence is always trying to talk to us, but it cannot communicate in the midst of noise. We need that quiet oasis.
In order to function in life, you need to be able to vibrate at a high energy level. Wake up every morning expecting good from life, knowing that life is always by your side and that you are loved. Anything less than this is misery. If your home is a cause of misery, and if you would rather sleep more just because you don't want to deal with day-to-day things, then you have a big problem. I'm telling you, you can't function in a home like this. It will lead to you getting to work stressed and dealing with everything in a miserable way. You won't have much to offer to others, and they will sense that. You will carry negative energy with you everywhere you go and attract more negative things to you. One way to break from this is by making your home an oasis.
You have to create this home oasis yourself; you can't wait for someone else to do it for you. A house is just the physical brick and cement, but a home — and particularly a peaceful home — is something that you create. Make sure that it is clean and organized. Have things on display that are meaningful to you. Decorate in a way that represents who you are. Use colors that trigger a sense of happiness and calm. This is critical.
Apart from the way your home looks, if you live with someone or have your own family, it is important to create an environment of love. Make sure you express love to your loved ones. Make sure that they know they are loved in a way that makes them feel loved. To learn more, I suggest you read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It provides insight about how each and every one of us feels loved differently.
If you work outside the home, find some time and energy to dedicate to your family. View that time and energy as an investment, not work. Family time should never feel like work, and you should never even think of it as work. View your family and loved ones as complementing your life and adding to your life.
We humans are social beings, and we have a need for love and attention, a need to feel needed. Make sure you provide your family with that love and attention. Trust me — it will pay you dividends. There are many investments that we should be making, and this is one of them. A broken home can be a source of anxiety for everyone, and this can happen so easily. A common cause of a broken home is neglecting one's family. No matter how stressed you are, how busy you are, or how tired you are, always make time for your family. You will be so glad you did.
Check in with yourself to see what state you are in emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. If you are not right in these three aspects, you won't have much to offer your family. To offer the best to your family, you have to be at your best. Make sure you take care of your spiritual needs. I discuss this more in the chapter "Nurture Your Soul."
Make sure you are also nurturing yourself and making time for yourself. This is crucial for your mental, emotional, and spiritual sanity. If all you are doing is taking care of others, it is only a matter of time before you feel worn out. Tending to your own needs is healthy and necessary; it's not a luxury. Even within a family, you have to retain your own individuality and nurture yourself, not just others.
One of the paths to health is checking in with yourself and making sure that you're all right. Then you will have more than enough to offer to others and be able to provide your best to your loved ones. This is the state you want to be in; it will help you create a home oasis.
I am not a relationship expert, nor am I trying to be. I am a Wellness and Life Coach, and as an expert in this area, I understand how crucial our love lives are to our well-being. Please don't take your husband, wife, or companion for granted. One of the many reasons families break up is because one of the two parties feels taken for granted or that his or her needs are not being met. By taking your husband, wife, or companion for granted, you are neglecting your home, because a home is built by love, nurture, attention, and effort.
Make sure that every day, you are winning your partner's affection and love. Keep doing the things that made him or her fall in love with you. Make sure that your partner knows that you love, desire, and need him or her. Make time for your spouse or companion, and make him or her feel special. Turn off your phone when you are together. Do whatever it takes to make that person love you more. It is not just the other person's responsibility to make the relationship work; it is yours as well.
Do your part, and I guarantee it will have a ripple effect on everything in your life. Your husband, wife, or companion will not feel the need to look outside the relationship for what he or she needs because you are providing it, and home will be an oasis that your spouse or companion will want to come home to. We are emotional beings. If we can create this feeling in our spouses/companions, home will be the first and only place they think of when they need to recharge their batteries.
A home where there is chaos contributes to disease — mental, emotional, spiritual, and with time even physical disease. Stress is no joke, and the last thing you need is to have more stress at home. A home where there is chaos creates a sense of emptiness, and that sense of emptiness can lead to a sense of loss. Loss is not a good feeling, nor were you designed to feel this way. This feeling can make you look in all the wrong places for ways to fulfill your needs.
Looking outside will not be of much help. There is no place like home for fulfilling your needs. You must have a safe haven, and what better place for that than your home? Your home was designed to be your oasis. Anything less than an oasis is not a home; when this is the case, changes need to be made. Remember that you play a role in making those changes happen. Don't leave it all for the other person.
Making your home your oasis should be your priority. Your health depends on it. This is the last place you see at night and the first place you see in the morning, so make it a place you look forward to being.
Things to Think About
• Is your home currently an oasis for you?
• If not, what do you think is contributing to it not being an oasis?
• What can you do right now to make it the safe haven that you need it to be?
• If you live with your family, are you doing your part to dedicate time to them? Do you show them love in a way that makes them feel loved?
• Do you frequently check in with yourself to know the state you're in mentally, emotionally and spiritually?
• Are you nurturing yourself?
• Are you taking responsibility for making your home an oasis?
CHAPTER 2
Know What Your Needs Are
Mow I would like to discuss the importance of knowing what your needs are in terms of creating a lifetime of wellness. When you understand what your needs are, you have a road map for your life. It is crucial to understand who you are and what you're all about. When you have that level of understanding, you can finally attain the happiness that you need and crave.
Not knowing what your needs are can lead you to make choices that are not right for you. The choices you make may seem right at the moment, but you end up realizing that they were the wrong choices after all. For example, if you don't know what your needs are in terms of a relationship — and for this example, I mean relationship in a romantic sense — you may end up choosing anyone or settling for something less than what you need and deserve.
If you know you need attention, as I think every woman does — and by this I don't mean a guy dedicating himself to you 24/7, but simply letting you know that he cares, is present, and misses you when you're apart — and you notice that the guy you are seeing doesn't provide that, then you know that guy is not right for you. If this isn't so important to you, that's fine, as long as you and your partner are on the same page. Knowing what your needs are allows you to be upfront and clear about what you need, which in turn allows you to attract what you want.
When you know what your needs are, you know what you cannot compromise on. If there's one thing you don't ever want to compromise on — and I write this from personal experience — it's your well-being. The moment you feel drained, the moment you feel exhausted, the moment you feel sad, depressed, any of those negative feelings, you are already compromising your well-being. This is why it is important for you to know and understand what your needs are.
The same is true in your work life. Not every job is meant for everyone. There are certain jobs that some people can handle while others cannot. Understanding what you are willing to handle and what you are not willing to handle gives you a road map as to what kind of employment you can apply for. For instance, when I went for an interview to be a flight attendant, I knew from the moment I went to Atlanta for that interview that this job could very well be for me. I'm not the kind to get homesick. I love adventure, and I love the idea that one minute I'm in one place and the next I'm in another. On top of that, I like being around people, and I love airplanes. Because of all this, I knew I could handle that job — I just knew it. On the other hand, if you are someone who needs to be at your house every night and have a regular schedule, an inflight job would not be for you. Know what your needs are.
It's important to know what your needs are even when it comes to friendship. Ask yourself what you're looking for in a friend. I know that I need people who are ambitious and have great things going for themselves, because people like that motivate me to want to be better. You may have loyalty at the top of your list. We all need people who love themselves, and this is a big one; people who cannot love themselves and who are full of jealousy and envy, they don't have much to offer you in the way of spiritual, mental, and emotional energy. We're all just energy at the end of the day, and it benefits you to be around people who are operating on a high energy level and want great things out of life.
I'm a believer that we become like the people we hang around with and talk to. This is why being careful who you surround yourself with is so important. Knowing what you need from your social circle is going to help you understand the kind of person you must become. If you want to surround yourself with positive people, if you want to be around people who are ambitious and have things going for them, you have to be the first one to be positive. You have to be the first one with things going for you. You can't have one thing without the other. You can't have the life you want and need without that deep understanding of yourself.
Once again, I believe that each and every one of us deserves a purposeful, fulfilling life. In order to have that life, you need to have a great understanding of who you are. Having that great understanding means that you know what your needs are and don't compromise those needs.
How can you find out what your needs are? You really have to dig within yourself, because you're the only one who knows. Don't allow anyone else to tell you what your needs are, because the moment you start listening to other people's voices, you lose your true self. The way to be your true self is by listening to your true essence, which is your soul. You have to ask yourself the following:
• What are the things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I need?
• Why do I need these things?
• Why are these things so important to me?
• What is it about these things that if I don't have them, I feel empty or lost or as though something is missing?
Your answers will solidify your understanding of your why. It's what drives you to do the things you want to do, so figure out why it is that you can't be without that need. What is it that makes it a need? What does that need represent for you?
I'll use myself as an example. In terms of a romantic relationship, I need attention, not because I'm needy, but because it is a way for me to feel loved by the guy. When the guy takes the time to be there for me and let me know that he misses me, that is a form of love to me. It's a sign that I am loved.
One thing I would like to clarify is that your needs and the reasons behind them don't have to make sense to anyone else. They just have to make sense to you. That's what matters. I write this because you need to give yourself the power to say to yourself, "This is how I am, this is what I need, this is why I need it, and so be it." Whether other people are accepting or understanding is irrelevant.
You have more power than you think. At the end of the day, you go to sleep and wake up to yourself, not to someone else. Think about it this way: Are other people paying your bills? Are other people providing for you? No. You are providing for yourself. You are paying your own bills. You have to sleep and wake up to yourself. So the only person who has to understand you, the only person who has to be accepting of who you are, what your needs are, and what you are all about is you. The more you look for other people's approval of who you are and what you need, the more lost you're going to feel. Nobody has the answers to your life but you.
Take several pieces of paper or a journal and write down some of the following things:
• From a romantic relationship I need ...
• For me to have that fabulous job, I need ...
• For my social circle, I need ...
• In my home, I need ...
• In my life, I need ...
Be as specific as you need to be. Then, right next to the needs that you have for the different categories, write why you have those needs. What is it that make those needs important for you? Why is it that you cannot be without those needs? What is it that makes you feel that something is missing without that need? Why is that? Be as specific as possible.
I find writing things down very helpful; it makes your thoughts and ideas more real when you see them in writing. There is no right or wrong way of doing this; it is for your eyes only. If you want, you can share your list with someone you trust.
While you're asking these questions, be sure to ask yourself what you need from yourself. Answers might include love, compassion, attention, or putting yourself as a priority. So many of us, especially women, are so good at giving to others and being attentive to others' needs that we forget ourselves in the process. This is not healthy. If it continues for too long, you will end up feeling resentful, and that resentment can build until you are almost the opposite of what you were. Rather than having a balance between giving to yourself and to others, you may end up wanting to give to yourself only, because you feel you have given enough. Establish a balance now before you get to that point. Understand what you need from yourself and start meeting those needs.
