Fun to be featured on TrackingHappiness.com’s Instagram!

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Some ideas to achieve freedom from addiction. You do not have to suffer alone!

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Latest article in Thrive Global about letting go. See https://thriveglobal.com/stories/attorney-maria-leonard-olsen-let-go-of-things-you-cannot-control/

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Ways to increase positivity in your life

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Approaching her 50’s, Nicole Cutts, a psychologist and author based in the Washington D.C. area, knew her opportunities would have changed with regard to those traditional milestones related to the female lifecycle. “I grew up with the expectation that, by a certain age, I’d be married and have kids – she says-. I didn’t question if I wanted that. But when I got older the possibility for that lessened“. However, that turning point resulted as a way to reinforce her mission: to create a legacy to inspire and empower women and girls (especially women and girls of colour) to thrive. “I wanted them to know that there’s no wasted time – she explains- and they should pay attention to every moment of their life while they are embodied on this planet“.

As a master facilitator and Success Coach, Nicole helps people create an exceptional life by honouring their mind, body, and spirit so they can experience joy, passion, meaning, and ultimate success in their work.

https://www.crunchytales.com/nicole-cutts-seeing-my-life-as-a-heroines-quest-is-empowering/

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“Spiritual wellbeing can be achieved via meditation and living mindfully. When I practice the pause before speaking, for example, whatever I say is more thoughtful. I ask myself if something needs to be said, needs to be said by me, or needs to be said at all. Such restraint has improved all of my relationships.”

https://medium.com/authority-magazine/total-health-attorney-maria-leonard-olsen-on-how-we-can-optimize-our-mental-physical-emotional-f9fe94a185a2

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Maria ~ Wellness

“As odd as it is to say, the pandemic helped me reset my life. And today, I'm actually in a much better place."

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Using Self-Care to Become Your Best Version at Home and In the Workplace
Presenter: Maria Leonard Olsen, attorney, author, radio talk show host, mentor and coach

When you care for yourself, you can approach your work with more centeredness and confidence. Recharge and tap into your strongest, most powerful and effective self. Participants will learn how to shed what no longer serves them and to protect their well-being. Attorney, recovery mentor, radio show host and author of 50 After 50: Reframing the Next Chapter of Your Life, Maria Olsen will share her experience overcoming alcoholism, trauma, addiction to busy-ness and the pain of her divorce by using spiritual, mental, physical, social and emotional self-care strategies. Participants will engage in group exercises to enhance well-being and thereby increase productiveness and effectiveness. Barriers to self-care will be explored. Strategies include:

• de-stressing tactics for busy people

• breaking the cycle of negative self-talk

• reframing techniques

• cultivating contentment

• emotional regulation skills

• healthy social relationships

• boundary-setting

• intentionality about how you spend your time

• building connection

• responding instead of reacting, for sound decision-making

• injecting purpose and joy back into one’s life

Learning Objectives

1. After participating in this session, the learner will be able to identify and incorporate physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual self-care strategies that will allow her to operate at her most effective level.

2. After participating in this session, the learner will be able to identify and overcome barriers to self-care.

3. After participating in this session, the learner will be able to manage stress both inside the workplace and at home.

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Maintaining physical health is crucial. The need for exercise should be stressed for all attorneys. It helps to alleviate stress and affects all areas of one’s life. An early mentor could have prodded me more in the direction of caring for my physical health. We did not have a gym in my office building, but it would be helpful if law firms prioritized physical health by providing such things (and maybe even meditation rooms!).

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/maria-leonard-olsen-maintaining-physical-health-is-crucial/

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The Health Benefits of Meditation

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Free inscribing and shipping offer with purchase! Contact me at fiftyafter50@gmail.com.

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The Pandemic’s Silver Lining

• Oct 26, 2020

• Maria Olsen

• WellBeing

3 min read

Amidst the suffering that the Covid-19 virus has brought upon so many of us, I have been quietly grateful for the gifts this time has given me. I feel something akin to survivor’s guilt because neither I nor my loved ones have contracted Coronavirus or lost our jobs. The toll indeed has been steep for our world. The news reports’ death toll statistics and shuttered storefronts are sad evidence of this. Yet some benefits have also arisen.

All of us have been forced to slow down. There simply are not as many things open during the pandemic. For most of us, our workflow has slowed, at least somewhat. I am an attorney, and the courts were closed for weeks. Now, most hearings are conducted online. Clients were hesitant to spend money, so all but essential work projects were suspended. Any work that could be conducted remotely was allowed by most employers to be done at home. I did not have to go into the office or to client meetings. I have less commuting time and more downtime. In fact, I go out of my house, for any reason, a lot less right now.

As a result of doing less, perhaps FOMO has diminished for many of us. And we are saving money because there are fewer opportunities to spend it on travel, eating out or other activities. I had no need to fill my gas tank for weeks.

Anything we do with other people during this time increases our exposure risk. So I am much more intentional about how and with whom I spend my time. If I am going to see anyone, I realize that my time is best spent with those who lift me up and help me to become my best version. Otherwise, why take the health risk?

With increased risk when going out of our homes, we are noticing how many fewer things we really need. Most people limited trips to the grocery or other stores. I have become more creative with pantry ingredients I have on hand because I prefer to make fewer grocery shopping trips.

We have learned new skills. How many of us had ever heard of Zoom pre-pandemic? Who was able to work at home before quarantining began? How many of us tried new recipes? Who tried baking bread, preserving or canning for the first time? Many parents had to learn how to home school their children. Home improvement stores enjoyed huge booms in sales. Long-neglected home projects received attention. Closets got organized. Home offices were built or carved from existing space. We all found new and creative ways of doing what we needed to do.

SEE ALSO: Anxiety & Weight Gain: Why Shiatsu Massage May Help

I so enjoyed hearing about new ways people learned to keep in touch with their family members. Zoom meetings mushroomed among geographically dispersed family members. Online game nights took off. I started a weekly Zoom meeting with my best friends who lived across the country from me. We had not been in as close and regular touch with one another since the 1980s! It has been lovely being in close touch once again with my favourite people in the world.

Many more people took up walking. Never have I seen so many of my neighbours outside. Perhaps it was due to cabin fever. Perhaps we all took to walking because all the gyms were closed. In any event, it fostered more of a community feeling and encouraged people to join the walking trend. Although some people gained weight while quarantined, others lost weight as the result of taking up walking. I discovered so many lovely things in my neighbourhood, like beautiful gardens, when on walks. I checked in with neighbours who live alone.

There emerged a widespread feeling that we were all in this fight together. No country was unscathed by this virus. Everyone got masks. Many people made masks for others. Masks became a way of expressing personality, humour, creativity, and even political and other messages.

So this roller coaster of 2020 has not been all bad. People helped each other. We got on with less. The environment showed signs of recovery. We noticed what mattered most to us. Maybe now we all will appreciate what we have instead of focusing on what we do not have. Let’s reframe this year as the year our gratitude awakened for our many blessings that we previously may have taken for granted starting with, perhaps, our health.

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About The Author

Maria Leonard Olsen

Maria is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and author of “50 After 50: Reframing the Next Chapter of Your Life” (Rowman & Littlefield, June 2018). She is an attorney, radio talk show host of the Washington, D.C. show “Inside Out,” writing and women’s empowerment retreat instructor, editor, and public speaker on diversity issues and living a life authentic to one’s values. Her work has been published by The Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Bethesda Magazine, among others. She also served in the Clinton Justice Department prior to having children, and recently returned to practising law now that she is an empty-nester.

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https://www.crunchytales.com/the-pandemics-silver-lining/

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