Articles
Step Up Your Game by Perfecting Your Morning Routine
How we start a new day can significantly alter our next 24 hours. Although not all morning routines will look the same, it’s important to allocate some time for yourself before you jump into the hustle and bustle of life. Many people find that when they get into a habit of doing morning rituals, like journaling, meditating, and exercising, it impacts their productivity, creativity, and levels of wellbeing for the entire day.
Get the big things done first.
While our running to-do list may tempt us to check off the small errands first, it’s recommended to knock out the biggest and most important things first. For many, that’s a healthy workout routine, like a run, or working on a passion project that it always put off later in the day.
Prioritize based on your values.
Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs gave a powerful commencement address to Stanford University in 2005. Everyday, the entrepreneur and billionaire would remind himself of the life he wanted to live, helping him realign his actions with his purpose.
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
Get outside of the box.
If the traditional morning routine of writing, journaling and exercise doesn’t feel enticing to you, try shaking it up and making it your own.
Tony Robbins, the world’s most famous life coach, travels the world, hosts events, monitors the dozens of companies he’s invested and involved in, and consults some of the world’s most powerful leaders. Throughout it all, he stays true to his morning routine. That said, he's not just drinking your average cup of Joe.
According to Business Insider, Robbins wakes up between 7:00 and 9:00, running off three to five hours of sleep. He begins the day with a “adrenal support cocktail,” which includes greens powder, vitamin C, antioxidants, and capsules of other vitamins and nutrients.
After breakfast, Robbins does a 10-minute meditation he calls “priming,” which includes an intense breath-focused practice, giving gratitude, and visualization. He then performs a high-exertion 15 minute workout and jumps right into his sauna, followed by a cold plunge and ending with a stretch on his back inversion machine.
Remember, no size fits all.
If you are a night owl, no matter what anyone says, the 5AM club may not be the best option for you.
While people may boast about their morning routines, it’s crucial to remember that the best morning routine is one that makes you feel fulfilled, and that you can stick to.
How to Set Goals in Times of Uncertainty
Our everyday lives have been shifted and destabilized with the ongoing global pandemic. As we move forward in this time of uncertainty, a few experts offer their ideas on how to best make decisions and set goals.
Goal coach and speaker Jacki Carr recently wrote an article on Medium speaking directly to this common question: How do I set goals in times of uncertainty?
Here’s an excerpt:
“As we are entering a time in our lives we have never been before, some of us might be in waiting mode until things normalize until we normalize. Some of us might have a rule we set that goals can only be set when we are stable and sound in mind, body, and globe. (Author’s Notes:
We make up rules for ourselves to live by and often forget to check in to see if the rules still serve us or are even our own rules for living or someone else’s?). Some of us might feel fear and goals written in fear create more fear, they say. And some of us are relying on old goals, old ways in hope that it will all shake out.
Here is the deal, I never even wrote about the Coronavirus or COVID-19. I did not mention it up there. Because whenever someone is reading this, they are most definitely entering a time in their lives they have never been before.
Heraclitus said, “The only constant in life is change”.
We are always in a state of change, evolution, disruption, or expansion.
We don’t move backwards, time keeps on keepin’ on.
And so do we.
Therefore, when in our lives have we ever actually set goals in times of certainty?
I will tell you…
Never.
Never have we ever.
Because there is no. such. thing.
Take a moment to flip back in the book pages of your life. Tell me when you set a goal and had the exact road map to get there? When have you known every one of the moments that would lead to the finish line?”
A recent article in MindBodyGreen added to the conversation, recommending exchanging plans for present mindedness.
“Planning is important. It helps us organize our lives and create structures and goals for ourselves. That being said, as a society we have a habit of overplanning. We can all be guilty of this. We get focused on planning things down to a T. When we plan, we feel in control, which in turn makes us feel less vulnerable.
Moreover, sometimes the best things in life happen when we don't try to control them and instead let ourselves be vulnerable to the mysterious workings of the universe. I'm sure you can find dozens of examples of how chance and serendipity have led you to some of your happiest and most important connections in life.
So in this moment of unprecedented uncertainty, when all of your best-laid plans will likely seem foolish a year from now anyway, trying to live in the moment as much as possible is important. Let's help ourselves practice present-mindedness when we can and not take for granted the here and now by focusing too much on a planned future.”
Meditation Linked to Fewer Mistakes
If the prospect of a more peaceful, less reactive, and clearer state of being doesn’t get you to take a break and meditate, new research from Michigan State University linking mindfulness with fewer mistakes might persuade you.
A recent CNBC article outlined the recent study in which 212 undergraduate college students with no prior meditation experience listened to a guided meditation by Steven Hickman, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founding director of the University of California San Diego Center for Mindfulness.
Here’s a segment of the report: “The meditation instructed participants to notice the feelings, thoughts and physical sensations that arose in the moment and take note of them without judgment.
After meditating, participants completed a quiz on a computer that was intended to distract them and test their concentration. Throughout the experiment, participants were wearing electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, so researchers could measure their brain waves.
Researchers were looking for a specific neural signal that fires a half-second after you make a mistake, called ‘error positivity.’ They found that the strength of the ‘mistake’ signal was stronger in people who had meditated, meaning they were able to recognize and correct their slip-ups.
‘It makes us feel more confident in what mindfulness meditation might really be capable of for performance and daily functioning right there in the moment,’ Jason Moser, the co-study author said in a press release.”
What made the meditation in this study unique is that instead of focusing on the breath, research participants were instructed to pay close to attention to the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations that came up during the session.
“The goal is to sit quietly and pay close attention to where the mind travels without getting too caught up in the scenery,” said Jeff Lin, the co-author of the study.
Listen to the 20 minute seated meditation here.
New Study: Mindfulness Reduces Fearful and Anxious Emotions
With the prevalence and continued rise of anxiety and trauma-related disorders, it’s become more and more important to develop effective treatment strategies. This need is what sparked new research from the University of Southern Denmark exploring the effect of mindfulness training on participants’ ability to rid the body of negative emotions.
A recent report from MindBodyGreen outlined the study: “Researchers recruited 26 participants and placed them into either an experimental or control group. While the experimental group went through a four-week mindfulness training consisting of daily practices of short breathwork or meditation through a smartphone app, the control group did not. After the month-long training period, participants were brought into a lab to complete an experiment in emotions.
Researchers were able to condition-specific fear reactions linked to certain images by subjecting participants to a small shock after showing them the images. The association of the shock with the images created a physiological response of fear within the body. Typically, these learned fear reactions are acquired through any sort of trauma or psychological disorders and can be very difficult to forget.
The following day, participants were brought back to test their reactions to the same images. The researchers discovered that subjects who had been trained in mindfulness were able to completely extinguish the fear reactions from the previous day, showing no response when faced with the images. The results, therefore, established the link between mindfulness and eliminating fearful and anxious emotions, which is the first time a study has proved this with direct physical evidence.”
While most of us have a basic understanding of the power of mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation to alleviate stress and anxiety in the present and future, this particular research experiment shows how these practices can help those suffering from fear and anxiety due to past trauma. The research implies that things like guided meditation may be used in place of a typical psychological treatment to help alleviate trigger responses.
“We can show that mindfulness does not only have an effect on subjective experiences of negative emotions, as has been shown previously but that you can actually see clear effects on autonomic arousal responses, even with a limited amount of training,” said lead author Johannes Björkstrand. He added that the team hopes to replicate the study on a larger scale and learn more about what processes in the brain are involved.
Steps to Overcoming Burnout
Many times when we feel burnout, the last thing we want to do is combat the issue head-on. This is due to the fact that burnout typically comes from a high-stress situation in which we feel numbed from the amount of work that’s on our plate. Yet when we fail to view our health and wellbeing as the number one priority, burnout has the potential to send us into a downward spiral emotionally, physically and spiritually, and wreak havoc on key pillars of our lives like family, and community.
A recent MindBody article explains how we get burnt out:
“Ironically, for many of us, burnout starts with success. We get promotions. Our bank account numbers go up. We get a big following on social media. This success can be tricky because it causes us to do more and more to pursue greater success. In our attempt to constantly grow, we work harder.
For other people, burnout may stem from focusing solely on caring for family members—especially aging or ill parents—without caring for themselves.
As it turns out, the price for pushing yourself too hard—whether you're trying to achieve wealth, a promotion, social status, a happier family, or even a better world—is disconnecting from yourself. As you get more and more disconnected, you become more robotic and less aware of the choices you're making, and this accelerates your spiral into burnout.”
If you’re feeling stuck in autopilot, overwhelmed by your daily life, and disconnected from yourself and others, you are likely experiencing burnout. The good news is, there are steps that you can take right now to heal from burnout and turn things around.
First, working on changing your mindset with a morning ritual, meditation practice, or gentle movement routine like yoga can help you gain clarity and control.
Externally, surrounding yourself with uplifting, supportive people can protect you from burnout and re-energize you. On the other hand, toxic, depleting people will drain your battery even more.
Outdoor therapy, consisting of sunlight, greenery, and water, is known to increase not just vitamin D, but your body’s level of nitric oxide, which increases blood flow, optimizes the immune system and serves as a signaling molecule for the brain. Forest bathing, a practice of simply being outside and nature, is now gaining popularity as it is shown to positively affect our moods, and make us happier, more productive and healthier human beings.
Satisfying the innate human craving for touch is also a productive way to combat burnout, per MindBodyGreen.
“These days, many of us are ‘touch-deprived.’ This contributes to burnout because stimulating our touch receptors calms us, lowers our blood pressure, and reduces our levels of the stress hormone cortisol. In addition, it raises our levels of oxytocin, a hormone that helps us to bond with other people.”
Lastly, nourishing yourself with healthy foods, more sleep, and essential nutrients, will help boost your immune system, reduce stress, optimize your brain functioning, and as a result, heal you from burnout. Ultimately, it’s important to go easy on yourself and avoid strict diets, harsh cleanses, or challenging workouts.
Most importantly, be kind to yourself and pay attention to what you need, instead of numbing yourself with things that do not serve you. You’ll be back to your thriving self before you know it.
Self-Care Practices to Relieve Post-Holiday Stress
In a world where many of us have been programmed to believe that more is always better and that rest is for the weak, it’s often difficult to get started on a self-care routine.
Recently, however, our levels of stress and anxiety have gotten so out of control, that the sheer amount of people looking for easy ways to unwind and find some peace in their lives has led to the boom of the “self-care industry.”
After the holidays, when many of us are feeling the sugar and alcohol hangover, as well as a desire for some quiet time after reunions with family and friends, self-care feels particularly incredible.
For those that aren’t quite ready to invest in a monthly yoga membership, sign-up for a meditation retreat, or go get a massage, and want to start with simple, easy practices, there are many free ways to start caring for yourself at home.
Kelsey J. Patel, reiki master, and empowerment coach, shared a few tips to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself in a recent article on Livestrong.
"Do a daily check-in with yourself each morning to see what you need, just for you, that day," she says. "It could be the simplest thing like your morning coffee alone, a 30-minute walk with your favorite music, or drinking a green juice to fuel your body."
Strengthening your ability to speak your truth, particularly the ability to say no to certain engagements and conversations, is also important.
"Honor yourself and your desires and share it lovingly and openly,” Patel added.
Remember that movement can be the best medicine. Whether it’s dancing, running, skiing, boxing, yoga, or anything in between, prioritizing exercise and expressing yourself through movement will help release stagnant energy, energize you, and help you feel good in your own skin.
True self-care is knowing what works for you as an individual. This means exercising in a way that is enjoyable for you, and not pushing yourself into any regimen out of fear of not being enough, or fitting into someone else’s standard of success.
Finally, be your own best friend -- and take his or her advice to heart.
Trouble Sleeping? Try This.
Whether it’s chronic insomnia or tossing and turning before bed once in a while, sleep deprivation can become a big domino that negatively impacts other aspects of our lives. Lack of sleep can lead to emotional disease, loss of productivity and energy, and other health issues.
When we can’t fall asleep, many of us turn to a distraction like a phone or a laptop screen. However, this blue light is often the worst thing we can do to signal our bodies to sleep. In fact, light will stop the natural production of melatonin, a natural hormone your body secretes that helps to maintain your wake-sleep cycle and can increase cortisol levels.
Read.
Swap the screen for a Kindle. Reading gets your mind of “trying” to sleep and puts you in a restful state. Plus, if you can’t sleep anyway, you might as well be enjoying your time and possibly learning something in the process.
Listen to music or a podcast.
Another way to help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system is to listen to music. According to the Sleep Foundation, "Music has the power to slow your heart rate and breathing, lower your blood pressure, and it may even trigger your muscles to relax. These biological changes mirror some of the same changes that your body undergoes when you're falling asleep,” per Livestrong.
If you’re not in the mood for music, you can find a podcast on almost every topic that can help reign in your mind and focus. Podcasts can be like bedtime stories for adults.
Meditate.
Chances are, you’re awake because of a busy mind. Integrating a mindfulness practice into your day will help alleviate stress and calm the mind when you are ready for bed. That said, if you are still feeling anxious at night, accept what is happening and come back to those tools.
Try a body scan, from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head, and imagine releasing tension in each little part of the body. If your own meditation doesn’t work for you, consider downloading an app like Calm or Insight Timer, which have many meditations specifically for bedtime.
Breathe.
Focus on the constant inhale and exhale. Notice how the air moves in through your nose, and out through your mouth, and how it feels in the body.
Then, you can practice lengthening the breath.
According to Livestrong, deep breathing “stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for activities that occur when our body is at rest.”
Michelle Drerup, PsyD, director of behavioral sleep medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center explains that the parasympathetic nervous system functions oppositely to the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates activities associated with the fight-or-flight response. She recommends trying the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise.
How to Perform the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise:
- Sit up straight and breathe in silently through your nose to the count of four.
Hold your breath to the count of seven.
Exhale through your mouth to the count of eight, making an audible "woosh" sound.
Repeat the cycle for four breaths, gradually working your way up to eight full cycles.
If your insomnia persists, there could be an underlying issue, and therefore you may seek out a medical professional.
A Better Way to Manage Loneliness
In an age where we’re more digitally connected than ever, our social media accounts look like vision boards rather than our real lives. Meanwhile, our levels of real-life social isolation are on the rise.
This is due to a variety of factors. Some look to smaller household sizes, with 10% of Americans now living alone. Two in five Americans report that they sometimes or always feel their social relationships are not meaningful, and one in five say they feel lonely or socially isolated. This feeling of loneliness can lead to chronic illness and inflammation on a cellular level. Research shows that loneliness and social isolation can be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
According to the 2016 VICELAND UK Census, loneliness is the number one fear of young people today—ranking ahead of losing a home or a job. The study found that 42% of Millennial women are more afraid of loneliness than a cancer diagnosis, by far the highest share of any generation.
Typically, when we feel lonely, we want to get rid of the feeling as quickly as possible and see it as a sign to do more in the external world. Yet perhaps this is exactly the opposite of what loneliness is asking of us.
Imagine your sense of connection and belonging as a building structure. It’s often standing on key pillars of our lives, like our romantic partners, friends, family relationships, creative projects, volunteer work, career (work friends), roommates, etc.
When one of these pillars falls, such as when we go through a breakup or live alone for the first time, or move to a new city and don’t have any friends yet, we see how fragile that building is.
We feel empty, like something is missing, a pillar of the foundation -- so we go about frantically trying to build it back up, or find a quick replacement because we can’t bear to feel lonely.
Yet if we just paused to focus on the foundation, we could form a long term strategy to dealing with loneliness instead of reaching for a band-aid. A sense of connection laid on solid, unbreakable, foundation, a deep relationship with yourself, a growing, compassionate, and patient relationship with yourself, is the most sustainable way to keep your structure standing.
In this view, when one of the structures falls, a better way to manage would be focusing on your relationship with you. Of course, seeking out connection and community in all those other ways, like supportive friendships and volunteering is important, but we overlook the most powerful tool of all.
Loneliness shows up to remind us to come back into alignment, starting with our inner self.
It asks us to sit with ourselves and work on building a thriving relationship from the inside out. We may decide to try new things and ask ourselves questions. To process trauma, celebrate wins, push ourselves to do the things we’ve put off forever, and start sharing authentically. Getting to know this new version of ourselves, refining our values and sticking up for them.
When the inner relationship is strong, when one or a few pillars fall, the entire structure does not tumble.
I love this Brene Brown quote from her book Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging.
“True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”
Maybe loneliness scares us because it forces us to feel deeply. To integrate our experiences, take off our masks and gaze inward at our truth. To simply breathe.
Loneliness isn’t something to push away, it’s something to befriend, to spend a night with having quality time, getting clear about your values, your intentions and the impact you want your life to have on those around you. It’s an emotion to cozy up with -- cup of tea in hand, book in the other, after a day of plenty of water, clean food and a stroll in the park with your friend.
See, it’s not so bad after all. Here’s to one less stranger! Loneliness doesn’t ask us for much.
New Study Finds High Intensity Exercise Is Best for Memory
The idea that the mind and the body are more connected than we previously believed is now being accepted by more and more people. We all know that staying active and treating our bodies right can help alleviate stress, promote wellbeing, increase our energy levels and promote longevity on many levels.
According to a new study, when it comes to the effect of aerobic exercise and brain health, the level of intensity of the workout really matters.
A report published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, examined the effect of aerobic exercise intensity on memory and general cognitive abilities. A group of healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 88 were analyzed during a 12-week period, in which they participated in three sessions per week. The participants were split evenly into three groups: one HIIT workout group, one moderate-intensity continuous training group, and one group that only stretched.
“The researchers tested the amount of each group's "newborn" neurons—this type of neuron has been previously shown to be more active than mature neurons and can better form new connections in the brain and create new memories,” per MindBodyGreen.
The researchers found that the participants in the HIIT group saw their memory performance increase by 30% after the three-month period, compared to no change for the moderate exercise group.
“These scientists found that the HIIT group specifically boosted their high-interference memory, which typically helps people distinguish between similar information (think differentiating cars from the same make or model),” per MBG.
Key takeaways from the study include:
- High-intensity interval training results in the greatest memory performance in inactive older adults compared to moderate continuous training or stretching
- Improvement in fitness correlates with improvement in memory performance
Overall, the new research supports the notion that exercise can help promote healthy aging and reduce the negative side effects of degenerative brain diseases like dementia.
"There is an urgent need for interventions that reduce dementia risk in healthy older adults. Only recently have we begun to appreciate the role that lifestyle plays, and the greatest modifying risk factor of all is physical activity," wrote Jennifer Heisz, Ph.D., lead author of the study.