August 06, 2019 at 01:09AM In 2019, burnout was officially recognized by the World Health Organization. My colleagues and I thought, “It’s about time!” But it was an important step in affirming that you’re neither weak nor alone if you’ve burnt out or are teetering on the brink. But one lingering fallacy that still remains: Most of us believe burning out is acceptable and expect to experience it repeatedly. In short, there’s no other way out. Here’s the problem with this fallacy: Burning out is not a badge of honor: We all know about the machismo of little sleep, where people compete on the number of hours they’ve slogged through and compare how they’ve barely slept. It’s as though chronic, overwhelming stress is a status symbol—if you haven’t burnt out, you aren’t working hard enough. That’s no way to live. It can lead to learned helplessness: We find new ways of coping as we emerge from the ashes of burnout—but these may not be healthy. Then there is the awful recovery period, endured to the familiar soundtrack of depression, anxiety, and self-doubt. Repeat this on a loop, and imagine how you’ll dread the next round of burning out. Put simply, we learn to become helpless and hopeless. What if I—a psychologist for Type-A perfectionists—told you there’s another way out? Specifically, a way that my friend and two-time Olympian Peter Shmock and I christen “The Jedi Way to Performance.” Coming from two very different life paths and disciplines, Peter and I
Tag: EP
Happy Solstice! 5 Rituals To Ring In The Longest Day Of The Year
June 21, 2019 at 02:02AM Mission of the day: Spend time surrounded by flowers. Continue Reading… The summer solstice is a celebration of the longest day of the year, and it marks the height of the waxing season: a time when nature is blooming. Summer is synonymous with love, romance, and joy. Even the month of June was named after the goddess Juno, whose domain was love. Since this marks the moment that the sun begins to wane, cultures around the world have celebrated it by lighting bonfires to guarantee the sun’s return next year. Often, as part of these rituals, celebrants picked prized summer flowers and herbs—mugwort, chamomile, geranium, St. John’s wort, thyme, and pennyroyal—to throw on their festive bonfires. They believed these fires would banish sickness from their livestock and their families. For good luck, they jumped across the fire and even walked on hot coals, precursor to fire-walking ceremonies practiced today. In North America, Native Americans celebrate with a Sun Dance: offering a healing prayer to the Great Spirit and one of thanksgiving for the gift of the buffalo and for life itself. It begins with a period of fasting and purification. The ritual can last four days, as the participants dance to unify with Spirit and harmonize with all life. Looking to do your own solstice ritual that celebrates the love and abundance of Mother Earth? Here are a few simple ones to try today that are inspired by ancient, time-honored tradition: 1. Share the love. There
The 4-step plan to relieve decision fatigue, because there’s no need to stress about dinner
June 17, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC One frustrating aspect of being a functioning adult human is that we always find new ways to be exhausted, whether it’s the all-encompassing strain of burnout, the unending scroll of social-media overload, or decision fatigue. Wait, you’ve heard of decision fatigue, right? If that one doesn’t ring a big old bell, then retrace your steps, because surely the problem has drained you before, whether or not you noticed it. Decision fatigue is a psychological phenomenon wherein those who are overloaded with choices they need to make tend to make worse and worse ones as time continues. Basically, that’s all of us since we’re all faced with myriad decisions from the moment we wake up: It starts with, “HUH, should I get out of bed?” and then after arguing with your snooze button for 30 minutes, the decisions ramp up. What do I wear? What do I eat? L train or G train? Should I pitch this idea in my morning meeting? Should I pitch that idea? Which article should I write first? What’s the best idea for an introduction? Okay, sure, that’s specific to my every single morning, but you get the idea. ad_intervals[‘397723_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’] = setInterval(function () { if (ads_ready) { clearTimeout(ad_intervals[‘397723_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’]); googletag.cmd.push(function(){googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’);}); } }, 100); Fast-forward a few hours, and your brain is fried but both your body and the time on the clock are urging you to have dinner. Suddenly you’re all, “I don’t know, Luke, it’s 8 p.m. on a
This One Practice Can Shut Down Any Fight In Your Relationship
May 23, 2019 at 01:02AM This word gets thrown around a LOT, but the truth is, it’s extremely effective. Continue Reading… Mindfulness seems to be popping up everywhere these days. In therapy, it can be used as a technique to help patients be aware of what is going on around them as well as what they are experiencing internally in the present moment to help them achieve a state of calm as well as to be less critical of themselves. In relationships, then, what would happen if couples were more mindful too—that is, aware of what is going on around them with their partner as well as within themselves, being more aware of their physical, mental, and emotional experiences? Well, a lot, in fact. Especially when it comes to shutting down fights. Physical awareness Oftentimes, unfortunately, fighting between couples escalates to the point where one or both reach the level of anger. And once someone reaches that physiological state, they react and say things based on that emotional state that they cannot take back, usually making things worse. While some people truly believe they just go from a state of calm to anger, mindfulness can actually clue you into the subtle cues that occur leading up to reaching a state of anger. There are physical, emotional, and behavioral cues that can let someone know they are heading toward anger. Some of these include clenching jaws, grinding teeth, pacing, or becoming sarcastic, just to name a few. So, let’s say a couple tends to have horrible fights where one of them ends up saying horribly awful things
This One Practice Can Shut Down Any Fight In Your Relationship
May 23, 2019 at 01:02AM This word gets thrown around a LOT, but the truth is, it’s extremely effective. Continue Reading… Mindfulness seems to be popping up everywhere these days. In therapy, it can be used as a technique to help patients be aware of what is going on around them as well as what they are experiencing internally in the present moment to help them achieve a state of calm as well as to be less critical of themselves. In relationships, then, what would happen if couples were more mindful too—that is, aware of what is going on around them with their partner as well as within themselves, being more aware of their physical, mental, and emotional experiences? Well, a lot, in fact. Especially when it comes to shutting down fights. Physical awareness Oftentimes, unfortunately, fighting between couples escalates to the point where one or both reach the level of anger. And once someone reaches that physiological state, they react and say things based on that emotional state that they cannot take back, usually making things worse. While some people truly believe they just go from a state of calm to anger, mindfulness can actually clue you into the subtle cues that occur leading up to reaching a state of anger. There are physical, emotional, and behavioral cues that can let someone know they are heading toward anger. Some of these include clenching jaws, grinding teeth, pacing, or becoming sarcastic, just to name a few. So, let’s say a couple tends to have horrible fights where one of them ends up saying horribly awful things
It took doctors 20 years to diagnose my Lyme disease—here’s what I wish I knew during that time
April 30, 2019 at 02:00AM by CWC I used to brag that I was the only person in my family who’d never had Lyme disease. Turns out I should have been bragging that I was the only one never diagnosed with it. Because I had Lyme disease, alright. Symptoms like pain and tingling, digestive problems, anxiety and fatigue followed me like a shadow for 20 years before I got a proper diagnosis. Even as a 5-year-old, I knew something wasn’t right. After spending the summer romping around in my favorite brambly woods, I experienced leg pain that left me unable to walk. My pediatrician tested me for a number of ailments, including Lyme, and all the results came back negative.The diagnosis was growing pains, and two weeks later, as suddenly as it arrived, the pain disappeared as suddenly as it arrived. Throughout the next two decades, I’d undergo this same song and dance a handful more times: blood test, negative results, rinse, repeat. When I was 9, something was wrong again, and I visited specialists for chronic headaches, vertigo, and motion sickness only to be told, again, that nothing’s wrong. By the time I was a teenager, regularly sick to my stomach, anxious, and weighed down by chronic fatigue, I was lost the zeal to advocate for myself to a doctor who considered me a hypochondriac. Whatever was wrong with me could only be my fault, and it was my job to muscle through it. And since no one outside
5 Eco-Fashion Trends To Watch Out For During NYFW
February 07, 2019 at 11:18PM Look out for them on the runway this year. Continue Reading… The fashion industry as we know it isn’t doing the planet any favors. Clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2016 to keep up with shoppers buying higher volumes of cheaper clothes. If we keep going at this rate, the fashion industry could eat up 26 percent of the carbon budget the world needs to stick to in order to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. But change could be coming. The Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit that aggregates and analyzes wellness research, just pegged “Well Fashion” as one of its 2019 trends, claiming all signs point to a new era of sustainable, ethically made, and inclusive clothing: “We think 2019 will be a watershed year where more people will trade in the addictive endorphins of manic fashion consumption for the serotonin (true peace and happiness) of buying slower and choosing clothes with values and meaning,” the trend report reads. Last week, world leaders in fashion and beyond gathered at the United Nations to discuss how to get these types of clothes into people’s hands. Hosted by ethical clothing company Slow Factory, the summit explored how the fashion industry can help support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to forge a healthier world by 2030. It was no coincidence that it took place just days before NYC’s most stylish flocked to the hallowed runways of Fashion Week. Keep your eye on
What Every Woman Needs To Know About Perimenopause
January 28, 2019 at 01:00AM What you need to know about perimenopause, including signs and symptoms—and why it’s been neglected. Continue Reading… Here, we’re all about women’s hormone health. We strongly believe that our hormones benefit from a healthy lifestyle and that every green smoothie, yoga class, and minute of meditation matters. But there’s a time in every woman’s hormonal life—called perimenopause—that’s long been overlooked. This era is marked by big hormonal shifts that can greatly affect quality of life, causing a lot of anxiety and discomfort. So this week, we’re shining the light on this next frontier of hormone health, so that we’re all more informed, and empowered. If you ask a room of 20- or 30-something year old women about their periods, chances are good these days that they can tell you where they are in their cycle, what that means for their hormones, and they might even be adjusting their diets or activity based on that. But if you ask that same question about perimenopause, you’re likely to be met with a sea of somewhat confused faces. Many women have an idea what it is and when it occurs, but they don’t have the exact details down. It’s such a big time in a woman’s life, yet many of us are relatively uninformed and unprepared and it does raise the question: Why don’t we know more about perimenopause? Why We’re All Confused About Perimenopause For starters, many of us are confused about when this time in a
Why Doctors In Canada Are Prescribing Museum Visits For Stress & Chronic Pain
January 27, 2019 at 11:00PM Meet the art Rx. Continue Reading… When you complain to your doctor, chances are they’ll come back to you with medicine or diet and exercise advice. Unless you’re in Montreal, Canada, that is, where a small cohort of docs are now prescribing visits to the local museum. In November, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) teamed up with a group of family doctors to launch a pilot “museum prescription” program that tests how access to visual art can help patients cope with mental and physical illnesses. “We know from the research we’re doing that art—looking at art, making art, and participating in museum culture—has positive effects on people’s lives,” Stephen Legari, the museum’s coordinator of art therapy, tells mindbodygreen of the first-of-its-kind partnership. The MMFA, which welcomes about a million visitors a year, has been studying the healing power of art for two decades now. Today, if you stop by the museum’s Art Hive, you’ll find 12 studio spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds can gather to craft side-by-side. In the galleries, you might catch Legari, a trained art therapist himself, guiding a group of women living with breast cancer, young adults with high-functioning autism, or victims of crime, through the exhibits, armed with questions and prompts meant to help them feel supported, entertained, and less alone. “We want to welcome them, connect them with the artwork in the galleries, and build creative projects together,” he says. “We want visitors to find
This Ayurvedic Beverage Packs A Serious Anti-Inflammatory Punch
January 22, 2019 at 01:02PM You’ll feel golden after this drink! Continue Reading… Author Elsbeth Riley | Life by Daily Burn Selected by iversue Step into nearly any trendy coffee shop, and you’re almost guaranteed to see it listed right there near the vegan matcha latte: golden milk (aka turmeric latte or turmeric tea). But what exactly is this colorful drink that’s been taking urban cafes by storm these past few years? And is it really worth it? Here, we dive into what actually lies within golden milk, why adding it to your daily diet could have lasting positive effects, and how to make your own at home on the cheap. What is golden milk? In its most basic iteration, golden milk is a hot or cold beverage that’s made by combining either turmeric powder or fresh turmeric root with the milk of your choosing (cow, almond, coconut, cashew, etc.). Often, several more flavor-boosting ingredients are added to the recipe such as black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and honey. Black pepper, specifically, is said to boost the body’s ability to absorb curcumin, the main bioactive compound within turmeric. While new-ish to many of us, the origins of golden milk can be traced back to ancient India, where it was (and still is) used in ayurvedic medicine to help with insomnia, coughs, and colds. 7 health benefits of golden milk. While golden milk itself hasn’t been the subject of scientific studies, turmeric root has been found to possess potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant