MSI Press Blog

  When times get tough and everyone has to look out for everyone else -- helping children, older parents, neighbors, and others, the most forgotten person is the self. Yet, taking care of the self can be the single most important thing you do in order to be able to care for all the others who need your help, regardless of your role in their lives or relationship to them. So, start out the week being good to yourself. Here are some books that can help.     Mama, do you find yourself too busy to take good care of yourself? Whatever your situation, you deserve spectacular health and wellness. With Julie M. Gentile as your personal wellness mentor, this book coaches you along your own authentic self-care path. Using 108 writing prompts and self-care practices, including yoga poses, meditations, and breathing exercises, Julie shows you practical ways to live well that only a mama modern would understand. Become the self-care goddess you truly want to be—you’re worth it! A Woma...

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Self-Guidance Self-guidance, self-talk, self-regulation is communication with ourselves and has been observed even in young children (Vygotsky, 1978). Self-guidance can be used to shore ourselves up or tear ourselves down. As they letter, self-guidance is a form of affective dissonance. In language learning, self-guidance can be positive and promote our soaring to success. Or, it can be negative and push us into flailing into failure. Once recognized, the proper kind of self-guidance can replace debilitating self-guidance.   Defining self-guidance Self-guidance that is disabling uses such cognitive distortions as filtering and personalizing—to the point of catastrophizing. Negative self-guidance is a powerful tool of self-destruction: motivation, self-esteem, and self-confidence all tumble. (Positive self-talk, on the other hand, brings up significant increases in motivation, self-esteem...

  The MSI Press study guide series is a set of documents/posts prepared by authors to help readers take a deeper dive into and personal look at various MSI books.  Today's study guide is meant to accompany A Woman's Guide to Self-Nurturing by Joanna Romer. Book Description: A Woman's Guide to Self-Nurturing offers a new perspective on how to comfort yourself while bolstering self-esteem. Using Bible stories as well as creative techniques for self-nurturing, the book will help you determine exactly what pleases you and nourishes your self-esteem, expand your repertoire of self-nurturing techniques by adding love and gratitude, and show you how self-nurturing can work toward building a new identity. Combining specific guidelines with inspiring examples of self-nurturing, this book will help you recover lost self-esteem and embrace a new mission for a more fulfilling life. Keywords: self-nurturing for women, Christian self-care, faith-based self-esteem, Bible study for heali...

  Excerpt from 108 Yoga and Self-Care Practices for Busy Mamas by Julie Gentile -  Introduction  I wrote what you are about to read at the center of my very full life as a mom of two young children, working full-time as a marketing and communications professional, and leading yoga classes as a certified and registered yoga teacher. At that time, my husband was also working and going to school full time. “Full” is the key word here. With full hearts and full plates, we were bursting with busyness.   Many days pushed me beyond my limits, bringing me to tears of exhaustion and left me wondering if I was living life to my maximum potential. I was overcome with responsibilities that pulled me in multiple directions, but in me remained my ultimate duty to take care of myself. How did I do that as a working mama in an era where I was available via text message, phone, email, and social media?  I called upon my yoga and meditation background to help. It res...

For Transformation Tuesday, here is a nugget of transformation from A Woman's Guide to Self-Nurturing by Joanna Romer. " The art of self-nurturing encompasses a broad range of activities from the simplest to the most complex. In its most elementary form, it can refer merely to pleasures such as indulging in a bottle of perfume or buying a bouquet of flowers on our way home from work. On a more advanced level, self-nurturing can entail consciously expressing gratitude throughout the day for everything from the food on our table to a new job promotion. Making lists of items we are grateful for, along with recognizing activities that fill our soul with joy, can have a tremendous impact on our psyche. By acknowledging beauty, abundance and joy, we add them to our lives. A natural concomitant to gratitude is prayer, which then works to enhance our feelings of worth. Acknowledging God’s role in our lives is a powerful aid to self-esteem. " Book description: A Woman's Guide...