I know you read "happy place" and began picturing that spot you love. For me it's a warm sunny place lined with miles of white sandy beach. Every so often a light refreshing breeze wisps by and my favorite adult beverage is in hand. While this may be a happy place you can travel to let's explore a happy place you can experience daily.

If you are like millions of people you grind out your workweek day after day unfulfilled. Perhaps you have a job, maybe it's even a good job, but it lacks purpose and meaning. Even worse some of you reading this probably have a dunce for a supervisor and could easily do your job and his.

While I was spared the dunce supervisor this was me. Like my mom, I went to college to be a teacher. I graduated, passed my Praxis exam and before long landed a position within the school system. It was a great job with great benefits including a pension but somewhere around the fifth or sixth year I started to wonder was this really what "I" wanted?

What if I told you the grind is not necessary? You don’t have to go on day in and day out unfulfilled. You can experience your happy place daily; and it's easier that you think to achieve.

Experiencing your happy place is as simple as breathing. Breathing comes naturally right? So will your happy place. But first, to find it, you're going to have to strip away the learned layers and get down to yourself.

We all know stress is bad for us. Stress can be physical, emotional or mental, and frequently our bodies deal with more than one type of stress at a time. The danger of living with stress is that you don’t see the damage it’s doing to your body. The aches, the pain, or just plain feeling badly can become your new normal. Its immediate effects on the body range from rapid, shallow breathing, clinching of the jaw, headaches, insomnia, stomachaches, irritability, and tension in the body (usually the upper shoulders and neck).

People that have been under stress for long periods of time may not even realize their body is in this distressed state.

Stop for a moment and turn your attention inward. Is your breath shallow or rapid? How about your teeth or jaw; are they clenched? Do you have frequent head/neck aches or pain? The problem with chronic stressful conditions is that your body begins to adapt and thinks this is the way it should function. Except it is not, and over time serious damage can be done. Long-term stress manifests itself into depression, overeating, heart-related diseases, and more.

I am here to tell you something that may surprise you. Your body was meant to feel good!

It's a big world brimming full of people with varying hobbies and interests. With a quick Internet search, I discovered a site that listed three hundred and eight different hobbies. Three hundred and eight! Everything from amateur radio to pigeon racing to woodworking to Zumba. Pigeon racing? Really?

People need people. I get it, and what a joy to be gathered around a common cause. Even strange hobbies like pigeon racing can bring people with similar interests together.

For me, and for most business owners, especially those that bootstrap, having the time to engage in hobbies and connect with others in such a way is just not an option. It can be a lonely place. I was not only building a business from the ground up without capital, I was a graduate student and a mom. I'm not sure what I was thinking and don't recommend it at least not all at once. Intense 12-14 hour days were the norm. Broken sleep was also common. I would usually wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about something else that needed to be done, and wind up back at my work desk to work some more.

Something needed to change.

I knew it was important for a company to have a core set of values and beliefs. Like many companies, Starz had established just that; a mission statement, values and purpose. What I didn't know was that once I started hiring, preaching and living those values the change I desperately needed would soon follow. When your core values become more than just words on paper a magical shift will occur!

My husband recently started an engineering company, Systematic Engineering. He meets all kinds of interesting people from homeowners to designers and architects to construction company managers.

Last week my husband met a man whose goal was to create a company that would provide for his family long after he was gone. He owns a construction company that specializes in a few niche markets. One such specialty is installing elevators in homes, another is fence and deck installation.

This business owner knew he needed to generate more work. He decided to go to the local Home Depot and ask about getting on their approved vendor list. Day after day he got the run around. He could have given up but he didn’t; he was set on getting his company on that list. He knew doing so would provide a steady stream of work. He went to that Home Depot three days a week for almost four months until he got the contact information he needed. Today, because of his stubborn perseverance and persistence to his purpose his company generates $700,000.00 a year just from fences and desks.

Many people have this notion that meditation is a spiritual practice; something that you’d want to do if you’re attempting to achieve enlightenment, or to quiet your mind for the ultimate spiritual development. However, in truth meditation increases mindfulness which is mental exercise. In short, training for the mind that is backed by scientific research. Since the idea of meditation hit the mainstream populace, researchers and scientists have been working on facilitating more studies about meditation and how it affects people’s brains.

There are different kinds of meditations, and there are many avenues you can use to have guidance through the process. There is a type of meditation where the challenge lies in following your breath for the duration of the practice, but the type of meditation we will be talking about today is mindfulness based meditation. This type of meditation has a focus on quieting the mind, and it has been shown to have drastic positive effects on our brain.

Even a few minutes of mindfulness meditation each day can improve our overall mental health significantly. Meditating to quiet the mind has been shown to relieve anxiety, improve depression symptoms, decrease stress, help fight addiction, and increase focus and concentration in our daily lives. Studies have shown that short meditations throughout the school day can even help children deal with their emotions and concentrate better in school.

Our fitness community has under-valued and underestimated the importance of stretching and developing flexibility, alongside developing the other 4 facets of fitness. Developing flexibility in our bodies through dedication to stretching each day will produce healthy muscles and joints, keep your body limber, and make you less prone to exercise-induced muscle injuries. There are many ways to utilize flexibility training, but whatever stretches are used, it must be done consistently and diligently to see results. With flexibility comes the ability to bend, and with the ability to bend, your body becomes much more adaptable to the physical training we put it through.

Our minds and our bodies reflect one another, and as you develop flexibility in your body, you can also develop flexibility in your mind. Our lives have no place for rigidity. When we react to life’s stresses with rigid expectations and an unwillingness to adapt, we make our lives much harder. Trees are seemingly tough and solid, but if the branches are too inflexible, they will snap and break with the wind. Instead, trees have a natural give to their structure, so that the branches can bend and sway in the wind without breaking.

We’ve all heard the age-old adage: “You are what you eat.” – but what does that really mean? To put it simply, the food you consume literally becomes a part of you. What food we ingest gets broken down and utilized on a cellular level, and those broken-down nutrients become the building blocks of organic matter in the body. So, while eating a cookie might not turn you into a cookie, the cookie’s properties do get broken down and absorbed into the body’s blood, muscles, fat, and organs. What kind of foods do you want your body to be made up of?

While food is broken down and absorbed into the body, we also have other ways of consumption that shapes our mind. “You are what you eat” also applies to what we take in through all of our senses: what we hear, taste, smell, touch, and see. Our mind begins to absorb mental nutrients and forms ideas and thoughts around what we expose ourselves to. There are many different kinds of mental nutrients such as music, dialogue, entertainment, community, places, and news. Each of these forms of mental stimulation can be enriching or draining our mind. What kind of mental food do you want your mind to be made up of?

There really isn’t a right or wrong way to go about feeding your mind and body. The takeaway is to be aware there are always consequences to the choices we make. With eating unhealthy foods, we may experience the consequence of not feeling well afterwards. With allowing yourself to be in toxic environments, watching violence, and/or listening to negativity, or engaging in gossip, you may experience the consequence of feeling depressed, uneasy, and/or anxious. We, of course, have the most control over what foods we eat, and we have a significant amount of control over what we take in with our minds. It all starts with awareness, then comes exercising your choice. The self-control and discipline to be discerning with what we allow ourselves to consume, mentally and physically. We are ultimately in control!

Before we learn how to use the tools of empathic communication, let’s explore what empathy is. Empathy is the ability to provide understanding through active listening. This simplified definition of empathy can be described as someone having the communication tools to listen to another, while attempting to fully understand the needs and feelings of the person – without reflecting or mirroring their emotions.

Empathy is the root of healthy, clear, and fluid communication between romantic partners, family members, co-workers and even customers and/or clients. Empathy enriches the emotional intimacy and bonding within all aspects of our relationships. As you can see, empathy is an important and essential communication skill, aiding in conflict resolution, and even conflict prevention.

The tools to use empathy are simple, yet, these tools take practice and conscious intent to defeat our instinctual responses that further irritate tensions or conflicts. The two main tools of empathy are active listening and understanding the person’s emotions and needs.

First, with active listening, it is imperative to truly listen to the other person without trying to form a response or advice simultaneously.

Integrity: Say What You Mean

Do you remember being a teenager and your parents were “cramping your style”. Did you ever say things like “I hate you!” “I’m going to run away!” – If you never went through the phase of disliking your parents I applaud you – but many of us did and we remember just how mean we were back then when we “knew everything.” Even when we were saying those hurtful things, deep down we loved our parents immensely. We were created to love our parents from the moment we were conceived, and that love grows and morphs in various ways as we age. As adults, thankfully most of us have a much better relationship with our parents. You may have even apologized for your teenage behavior, and came to learn your parents, in their wisdom and understanding, already forgave you.

We didn’t understand it then, even though the anger we felt towards our parents was real, we didn’t actually hate them. We learned somewhere along the way to say things that didn’t quite line up with how we TRULY felt.

Integrity has multiple applications within our adult lives. One of the aspects of integrity is mentioned in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book “The Four Agreements”: Be Impeccable with Your Word. In other words: Say what you mean. This applies mostly to our negative emotional outbursts as we are severely prone to succumbing to verbal outbursts and impulses in emotional moments. Rather than the calm, collected and rational self, in our pain we lash out sometimes hurting the ones we love most, all by accident. This ultimately leaves us having to do some damage control afterwards. We feel badly for what was said, we reiterate that we didn’t mean it and apologize. If this sounds like a familiar cycle to you, let’s look at how we can possibly break that cycle.

Fermented Foods: Where the good bacteria live

Actually seeing bacteria with our plain eyesight is impossible to do. Because of this, most of us end up living our whole lives without ever realizing we are being sustained by trillions and trillions of bacteria all around us and inside of us. Even though the thought of living with tiny crawlies we can’t see may be a bit weird, many of them are essential to keeping us alive and to help us thrive. Because we oftentimes don’t realize bacteria are working for us, we can forget how essential they are. Thus we end up unintentionally disrupting the delicate balance of our own bacterial army, called Probiotics.

The word ‘Probiotic’ has it’s root in Latin: Pro, meaning “For” and Biotic, or Bios, meaning “Life”. Contrasted with “Antibiotic” which means “Against Life”. On the bacterial level, antibiotics are used to destroy both good and bad bacteria within your body. So when mild to life threatening infection occurs, antibiotics can be life saving. While antibiotics have their place in medicine, they are not without sometimes serious and long-lasting side effects. This is all due to a disruption in the balance of probiotics within the body: the good guys and the infection get wiped out, but if the probiotics are not replenished, then the bad guys get a chance to take charge in the body.

Don’t be mean; eat your greens!

Ah, Popeye: the spinach-loving Sailor Man. Even after all the references towards building a strong healthy body powered by leafy greens, we still find excuses to keep greens off our plate. Americans have a love/hate relationship with leafy greens. Greens aren’t very tasty by themselves, and it’s easy to feel guilty when we add bacon, eggs, croutons and cheese on top of handful of chopped iceberg lettuce and call it “salad”. The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t learned to like the many different kinds of leafy greens early on in life, it can be hard to start incorporating them into your diet as an adult. However, with a little effort, even the pickiest of eaters can find a way to sneak those boring, but health-building greens onto their plate!

While there are hundreds of varieties of leafy greens and vegetables, with different nutritional contents, we can get too caught up in which variety is most beneficial. Fortunately, ALL the varieties of leafy greens are health-building foods. The most important part is finding a few leafy greens that are palatable to YOU. The key here is to try and reach the goal of eating a big plate of leafy greens at least a few times per week. It won’t matter whether or not the collard greens have more potassium if you can’t stomach the taste! Find some leafy greens that you could get used to and make a habit out of eating them daily. Once you have a base of greens that you can at least learn to enjoy, you can begin to branch out and add more variety to your diet.

Before we introduce the concepts of functional fitness, I want to first point out there is no real wrong way to exercise, or to increase your fitness. We all live different lifestyles that call for different fitness stimulus. While there is no “wrong” way to train, there can be instances in which people are training in such a way that is not right for them. There are a couple of factors to consider when determining if your training regime is right for you.

First, is your program moving you towards your personal goals? If your goal is to get better at rock climbing and all you do is run on the treadmill, that treadmill training is not going to help you to progress in reaching your goal.

Secondly, are you training pain free as well as maintaining proper technique to minimize risk of injury? The technique behind all movements in any training program should be over-emphasized and highly valued. After all, ideally, we should have fitness in our lives, for as long as we can walk and talk. We should always be working to improve our technique and when and if there is pain, we rest and recover accordingly.

Now, let’s take a look into functional fitness, and how this concept of training can improve your fitness and your life.

Entering the New Year - Reflect

With the year coming to a close and we face the holidays ahead, it’s easy to forget to reflect on the successes and failures in our lives over the past year. Honestly, the end of each year seems to fly by so quickly, who would have time to sit down and objectify the major events of the past year? The truth is, many self-help authors align with neuroscientists in many ways on this topic. They all strongly encourage people to write down their goals, and to look back and see if those goals were accomplished. They encourage this not as a way to feel like a failure when some of your goals don’t get accomplished, but rather as a way to objectify the results of your labor.

Your brain processes thousands of thoughts a day. That’s a lot of information! Most of the time these thought patterns stay consistent, and many times, our thoughts get stuck in a thinking loop. However, something different happens when you verbalize your thoughts, and even more profoundly when you write them down. When you write your goals down two things happen: 1. You create an external reminder of your goal, and 2. Putting a goal down on paper in detail helps your brain reprocess the thought in different ways. Writing down your goals is not only important to help remember them, but also as a way for the brain to let go of the thought pattern and begin thinking of ways to accomplish them. You allow yourself to move on and begin focusing on the important part: Action!

Entering the New Year – Time to act

In part 1 of this article series, we talked about the importance of reflection and how it plays a part in goal setting. We discussed how we can better identify successes and failures and grow from them if we sit down with our previous goals and reflect on the results. In part two of this article series, we’re going to introduce some simple goal setting techniques that can help you stay on track this next year! New Year’s resolutions may seem “overrated” but I promise, there is more to creating these resolutions than buying a gym membership you’ll never use after January.

So what is goal setting? And how does one start with the right goals? Well, hopefully your moments of reflection in the last month helped you form ideas of where you want to be a year from now. Goal setting is fairly subjective. The process in writing goals down is universal, but the goals themselves, well those will change drastically from person to person! Let’s start with breaking goals down into three categories: Duration (short term, or long term goals), Personal (goals set revolving around growth of self and relationships), and Material (goals set towards career, financial, material growth). With these three categories, you can begin to apply the time-frame to the different material and personal goals you set for yourself. For the sake of this article we are going to talk about long-term goals: goals we wish to accomplish in one year.

Changing the conversation from what we eat to how we eat

Diet is such an important aspect to building health. A clean diet does ultimately lead to increased vitality, vigor and overall well being. However, what if I told you that your clean diet can only take your health up to a limited point? What if I told you that its not what you’re eating, but how you’re eating that could be contributing to lingering problems? Humans have a natural and inherent affinity for food. We have a closely interlinked relationship with what we eat. Yet, so many of us have dealt or are dealing with issues surrounding food: what to eat, when and how much; developing or breaking down personal love/hate perceptions around our favorite foods; constant self-bargaining over exercise and calories/types of foods; etc etc. The truth is, developing a healthy relationship to your diet can have a greater impact on your health than simply and mindlessly eating the right foods.

Let’s take one meal in two different scenarios for an example. In both examples, the food choices will be the same – but you will see how our relationship to our diet can play a huge role in building optimal health. In the first scenario, you get up and get ready for work in the morning. You rush to get your breakfast smoothie made and grab it and go. You drink the the smoothie and let it pass through your mouth without chewing, while driving in rush hour traffic. You’re stressed thinking about what your morning meeting is going to look like – and within 10 minutes your smoothie is gone and that’s the end of your breakfast.

A hug a day keeps the doctor away!

​In our western society, technology and urban sprawls have grown so quickly that our hearts and minds can barely keep up. Big cities grow taller and increase in population year after year; our big cities have gotten so dense that creating a small, supportive community in a large city is almost unachievable, especially if you’re the shy type. It can be hard to connect with others when everyone else is stuck in their own personal bubbles. We live in a time where cities have been maxing outpopulation growth, and technology brings us all “together” at the touch of our fingertips, yet we have never been lonelier. How can it be a thousand people can live in the same building, and many of them live in perpetual loneliness? Simply being around many people in a dense city is not the antidote to feeling like you belong. We crave heart to heart connections with others, and this daily human contact is what quells our loneliness.

​The irony behind feeling alone and lonely in a big city, is that no one is alone in that experience. There are many who struggle to develop a true connection with others that result in bonding, guidance, and human contact such as the friendly and comforting hug. The problem is we get so lonely and desperate for someone to reach out to us, that we forget that sometimes WE are the ones who need to reach out to others. There’s a saying that suggests we get back what we put out into the world. If we reach out to others, we may find the same returned to us.

Self-love and vanity have always been seen as similar states of being. We’re taught that no one should love themselves “too much” for fear of becoming, or being seen as conceited and vain. While our society supports “loving yourself” we find ourselves lost in the ambiguity of the concept: What kind of love exactly, and to what part of my “self” do I apply that love? So many of us think that loving ourselves, is loving how productive we can be, or the status that we’ve earned either at a job or within the community. In this article, we’re going to explore how different vanity and authentic self-love can be.

The first definition of vanity is this: excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements. The second definition has a more obvious negative connotation: the quality of being worthless or futile. There is a lot of irony in the two definitions. Being vain causes people to not only attempt to cover up their flaws, but grossly enhance their assets for all the world to see. They are concerned about what people think of their looks, achievements and/or status. They pursue what makes them happy, even if it means hurting others. Vanity is a form of loving all the best parts of oneself, while simultaneously attempting to make the worst parts of oneself disappear. Vanity is an insult and a barrier to humility and self-acceptance. In all honesty, being vain can only be described as a futile attempt at loving oneself.

There are some people who simply LOVE Autumn; Pumpkin-flavored everything, the excitement over holiday planning, and the cooler, but not TOO cool, temperatures bringing out the best of our wardrobes. Fall lovers make it known that “their favorite season” is here, and they revel in the energy that this season gives them! However, there is a group of us, who quietly and secretly, mourn the slow dissipation of Summer. It’s not an overwhelming sensation, most of the time, as we naturally retreat back indoors, reminiscing about beach days and sun-tans. Yet, the depth of experiences we create when we feel our freest, during the hottest months of the year are all too real, and frankly, hard to move away from. We see Fall coming, and we don’t mind it all too much, man but do we prefer Summer.

Different as these two perspectives are, I am sure you can relate to either one. While some people are experiencing excitement and feeling lively heading towards the Fall season, there are others who are fighting slight bouts of depression as the best parts of the year have passed on by. If you are one of those people who struggle to feel as good during the rest of the year as you do in the Summer, I have found that simple perspective shifts can help change one’s heart to peace from a sense of loss as we focus on the joys in Autumn.

Maintaining our healthy, long-developed habits are particularly challenging during the holiday season. Not only do our travel itineraries and busy schedules get in the way of our normal diet and fitness routine, but the constraints of family time and their differing lifestyles can take its toll on us as well. I’ve compiled a list of 6 simple tips that have helped me in navigating the holiday season. It’s important to note that once you decide that you will maintain your healthy lifestyle no matter what, we are to be the adaptable ones, rather than expecting others to adapt around our lifestyle. These steps will help us understand exactly how to adapt our lifestyle within the holiday environment.

#1: Know your holiday schedule ahead of time

As November begins to grace us with her presence, make a calendar of your upcoming events, travel dates, and family time. You will be able to better plan your fitness routine and your meals when you know in advance what’s going on.

#2: Be Adaptable

The holiday season is like no other time of year. It’s the time of year where nature begins her slumber whereas civilization is at it’s busiest! You may have to make changes in your normal fitness schedule to fit the hectic holiday season. Maybe that means getting up a little bit earlier to fit in your time at the gym. Maybe it means going out of your way to find gyms in your areas of travel. Or it could mean prepping a few extra meals through the week for a quick grab and go… Whatever it is, be prepared to make changes to keep maintaining your healthy habits!

We’re having constant conversations with ourselves everyday. We go back and forth in our minds making decisions, solving problems, and laying out plans. We also pass judgments of ourselves and others, analyze our environment, and form opinions based on these conclusions. From the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, we have an internal dialogue that never stops. More often than not, this internal dialogue is on repeat. We’re not always fully conscious or in control of this feedback loop. Especially when we keep ourselves busy, what is going on in our minds is lost on us. When we lose track of our self talk, we end up losing control over our most powerful tool: What it is you say to yourself. Sure it’s easy to hear self-praise when we are feeling prideful in an accomplishment; but what do we say to ourselves when we’ve hit a brick wall?

Internal dialogue doesn’t have to be a continuous feedback loop that we have no control over. When we feel incompetent, or have failed in an accomplishment, we are quick to self-deprecate. When we are on top of our game, and feeling like we’re coming out on top, we are quick to boast in our minds. For many of us, it’s easy to encourage others when they are struggling. Why is it so difficult for us to have encouraging self talk when we, ourselves, are struggling? I truly don’t have an answer as to why, but I can show you how to take control of this inner dialogue.

The New Year is upon us and winter is officially here! Whether you like the cold or not, there’s a point for everyone when it’s just too darn cold to do anything outside. While we probably feel our best during the summer months, getting out in the cold can have health benefits too. In this article I will talk about a few surprising ways cold weather is actually good for your body, in moderation. In fact, one of the reasons why people get sick is not because it’s cold, but rather because people spend too much time indoors. When it’s cold out, it’s important to fight your sense of comfort, wanting to stay inside, and instead, get outdoors! Here are a few ways that cold weather improves our health:

1. Getting outside in the cold helps to burn more calories. Just a brisk walk outside in the cold burns almost twice the calories as the same walk in the summer. Your body works a bit harder to keep it warm, and that extra energy means extra fat is being burned. Who can say no to that?!

2. Cold weather can boost brain activity. A 2017 Stanford Study found that people performed some cognitive tasks with more control as the temperature dropped. The science behind this points to the brain’s use of glucose for cognitive function – and in the summer more glucose is being used to keep our bodies cool, rather than for cognitive functions. So truthfully, winter time is the best time to tackle more complex projects. Or even a brisk walk outside before a big meeting or presentation can help improve brain function and focus!

Our breath is the most important and immediate necessity in life. Without the ability to breathe, we would be alive for mere minutes. We can survive 30-40 days without food, two-weeks without water, and 10 days without sleep, but we probably think about those necessities much more than our most urgent and precious breath of life. While we may not put much thought into our breath, taking control of one’s breathing patterns can have a great positive effect on the body, mind, and spirit.

Breath not only keeps us alive, but proper breathing patterns aids in keeping us calm, balanced, and can be shown to improve our health. Although we can have almost full control of our breathing, we are typically unconscious of our breathing patterns and simply unawares that different breathing patterns exist. While western science is relatively new to the application of breathing techniques to improve lung functionality, there have been techniques from all over the world that have been shown to improve function of the lungs and produce relaxation. Let’s discover a couple of ways we can improve our breathing through a few different practices.

One important way to improve the expansion and movement of the diaphragm, lungs, and chest is proper posture. When we slouch, we are inadvertently constricting our lung capacity through our entire torso. Sitting upright, engaging your core (to include the abdominals and the back muscles), and rolling your shoulders back can help expand the belly and the chest for improved inhalation of air.

Before we discuss the importance of play and its invaluable relationship to our wellbeing, lets explore what play actually is. Play is a verb and consists of activities performed for self amusement that naturally have behavioral, social, and psychomotor benefits. Play is seen as enjoyable and spontaneous. The best kind of play is one that is unstructured and personalized to your interests and abilities. Play includes any and all activities that stimulate the mind, body, or both simultaneously! We find that young animals and children spend most of their time at play. Scientists have only recently discovered how important play is for social and physical development. Play inherently teaches social constructs and aids in developing social bonds; Play introduces bodily awareness and the discovery of physical abilities; Play gives us room to make error without judgment or danger being present. Adult animals and humans considerably decrease their playtime naturally, however there are many adults that don’t even consider play to be important, let alone essential for life. So how essential is play?

Play is 100% essential to life. Without play, most animals would fail at forming bonds with others, have poor social skills, lack feelings of joy and excitement, have poor locomotor skills, lack strength and agility, and in the end, life would come to a screeching halt. Every single animal, on land and on sea, use play as an essential part of life as important as food, water, and sleep. So why don’t humans see play as essential to our wellbeing? Our culture and our educational system reward hard work and sacrifice, while condemning unstructured activities that stimulate our creativity. In essence, our society sets us up early in life to see play as a luxury, or even worse, as a waste of time. Only recently have we been restructuring our educational system to allow children more time to spend with creative and physical activities such as art, music, performance, dance, recess, etc. This is because scientists have discovered that the more a child plays, the better they retain and learn information while their listening skills improve and behavioral issues decrease.

While most of us are hunkered down in our homes, you probably know by now that millions of people all around the globe are feeling the economic and physical effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. We are feeling isolated and uncertain of the future, but we are not alone in feeling that way. We are being financially impacted by the response to the pandemic, in our attempt to slow it down. These things alone are enough to instill stress, anxiety, worry, confusion, and depression as we are put out of work, lacking social interactions, and feeling cooped up. I want to explore some activities and mental attitudes we can practice during this extremely unique time, and hopefully develop habits we can continue to practice as things start to calm down.

The first and most important attitude to practice, especially for those of us who are out of work, is to practice looking on the bright side. There are many downsides to being out of work; it’s stress inducing to keep replaying the lack-mentality thought loop. Keep in mind that while some of these thoughts might be based in reality, many of these thoughts are actually based in doubt, uncertainty, and worry. When we experience fear, we’re paralyzed and easily discouraged. When we can look at our situation with objectivity and with a feeling of confidence, we are able to make important decisions based on what is realistically happening. To keep a “bright side” attitude, it’s important to look at our newly released free time as an opportunity to improve ourselves, our work load, and/or start a new project.

Most of us are fairly aware of how music sets the mood. We have playlists stacked up for all sorts of occasions. We’ve got a playlist for our gym time, a playlist for a romantic evening, a playlist for the time to party, and even a playlist for breakups. The incredible diversity in music produced all over the globe fulfills our need for variety and the choices are endless. Most of us listen to music for pleasure, to either provide relaxation or to pump us up, but how many of us understand the healing properties of music? Music not only affects our mood, but as our mood is improved, music affects our physical health as well.

To fully understand how music could increase our physical well-being, we have to discuss briefly how music affects the brain. Much of how music affects us has to do with our experiences associated with certain genres or songs. I.E. A song that came on during your first kiss, or songs that your parents used to play when you were younger. However, you can listen to a new song and It will still have major positive effects on the brain. When we listen to music we get a surge of dopamine, which helps give us feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, the same chemical that gets released when we eat foods we crave. Different genres of music do actually affect the brain in different ways. Classical music can improve synaptic function, learning, and memory. Pop/rock improves endurance and physical performance. Rap/Hip Hop stimulates emotion, language, and motivation. While Jazz music literally soothes the mind and body. All of these genres, plus many more, play a roll in our mood and ultimately our health.

We’ve all heard that old cliché “Fake it until you make it”. Probably most used in a condescending manner to encourage going through the motions even though your heart has no oomph left. I would guess that many of us who are emotional beings, find it difficult to “fake it until we make it” and that we would rather be authentic in how we feel. However, there is a smidgen of truth to the statement; while we may not have much control over our circumstances or our responsibilities, we do have control over our emotions and feelings. We can, to a degree, fake a smile and produce an improvement in our mood. While it seems silly, it all has to do with how our brain sometimes processes imagination as reality.

What came first? The chicken or the egg? We might be able to make educated guesses, but none of us have ever observed which came first. When it comes to facial expressions and mood, most of us are intuitively inclined to believe that our facial expressions are a direct result of our mood. In other words, that our mood came first, and our facial expressions are the result of our emotions. However, psychologists have realized that despite the amazing power of our brain, it can’t always tell between a real experience from an imaginary one. Meaning, when you smile using your mouth and eye muscles to do so, the neurons that your muscles are sending to the brain can produce a response of positive emotions. This can occur even though there is no other input to signal a change in mood. Even our posture, including the rest of body language, can provide changes to our mood.

Human language and communication is incredibly unique to our species. We have a diverse and complex verbal and non-verbal language system, that can vary drastically with region and culture. Early on, we can see that communicating with one another is inherent and natural. However, for something that comes so easily to humans, we tend to fail with the most basic concept of communication: Listening. Humans religiously choose to listen only enough to form a response. We are rarely eager to listen to someone else unless we’ve spoken our piece first. Unless we’ve been formally taught on the concepts and skills that surround our most precious connection tool (and let’s face it, who actually teaches us to communicate effectively?), we will fail to avoid conflict and our efforts will result in constant misunderstanding.

In order to understand the importance of listening and how it plays into communication, let us explore our first few months of life. When we first enter into this world, the only way we know how to draw attention to ourselves is by crying. Can you imagine? With hundreds of thousands of ways to communicate, yet we are born with only the ability to cry. We can glean some insights on the importance of listening and how it supports healthy communication from this experience. First, let’s explore the fact that an infant’s limited ability to communicate is not due to a lack of things to say. I am positive infants would say a lot more, if they could. It’s a reminder for when we have a lot to say but its not our place to say it, we can pretend as if we have lost the ability to speak. – A skill we all know someone could use. The second is to look at how much an infant observes/listens. In the most rapid growth cycles of a human’s life, we are forced to have maximum data input. We are to learn as much as we can, as fast as we can, in order to become functioning children into adulthood. An infant learns the most through having the most limited speech function. As adults, we absolutely learn in the same way: Through listening, and rarely through speaking.

https://www.snapology.com/post/the-importance-of-rebuilding-afterschool-enrichment

Technology and medical advances have pushed the limits of humanity through amazing discoveries and breakthroughs. American citizens with no training at all now can fly into outer space, for a hefty price tag, of course. We have the ability to remain connected to the entire world without ever leaving our homes. And we have grown dependent on “one day shipping” as we conveniently shop online from our couches. We will continue to see radical advances in technology that improve our lives, however, these changes do have negative consequences as well. One of the negative impacts on a growing technological society is the normalization of instant gratification. In reality, life in nature rarely provides instant reward. Instead, most of the best things in life require time and effort on our part before we experience the benefit and reward for our work. What does that mean for a world increasingly vying for instant reward?

It all starts with our brains. Our brains are designed to be adaptable to our environment. It also has the role of providing “feel good” hormones when we fulfill a need or want. We eventually train our brains to associate things that instantly reward us as good, and over time, a habit is formed. This ends up being a habit that is usually more difficult to break than to make, as instant gratification does not necessarily = good or healthy. Take the industry of fast food for example. It feeds our desire for instant gratification because we want food that would normally take a few hours to prepare to be prepared and served within minutes of ordering it. With that level of service decreasing the amount of time it takes to get a product to the customer, also comes a decrease in quality that restaurant can provide. So while a drive-through McDonalds burger might be convenient in how little time it takes out of our day, this becomes an eventual inconvenience to our physical health. Seeking instant gratification with food now, might mean severe health issues later.

The whole world practically revolves around food. No matter what culture or country you are from, there are countless different traditions and holidays where people value the community coming together over a meal. And if we eat, our bodies have to digest what we consume! This process of digestion, when working properly, should go practically unnoticed and be completely painless. However, in the United States, most of us actually experience a wide range and severity of digestive issues. Each year, something like 55-65 million people are diagnosed with some sort of digestive issue. Digestion is a process of the body breaking down food into their most basic nutrients, in forms that are easily absorbed and assimilated by the body. What most people don’t realize about digestion is that it is the single most energy draining process in the body.

Digestion actually takes up a whopping 40-60% (depending on what you eat) of our body’s energy just to breakdown our meals each day. When we stress out our system with not only poor food choices, but with improper timing of consumption, this can wreak havoc on our entire digestive system. When the body is struggling to digest food it wasn’t meant to, during times that it’s not designed to, it diverts energy away from other bodily processes, and into digestion. This causes a drainage of energy (lethargy) as well as slowing other important healing processes down, in favor for focusing on the food in the stomach. The reason why digestion takes such a huge part of our body’s energy is because of the large organs being utilized, and the thousands of constant processes that play into every step of digestion. There is another important reason why your body will quickly prioritize digestion and immediately begin to divert all the energy it needs to do so. This is because the longer food sits in the stomach or intestines (without being broken down) the more quickly this food will either ferment, rot, or purify and thus cause severe toxicity in the body. So the body must quickly attend to the food that is in the stomach, or risk poisoning itself!

Self-help, self-development, self-healing, self-discovery, self, self, self; have I made myself clear? We’re focusing on MYSELF, right now... just kidding. However, we’re not going to focus on YOU either; but rather, we’re going to shine a light on helping others and the effects it has on you. The irony is that there is an incredible thing that happens to us when we choose to serve others, we find deep inner healing and joy, along with generally improved mental and physical health. How about that for some self-help? So, we will inevitably talk about ourselves, but with the intention to shift that focus on how we can include helping others as part of how we live our lives.

Serving others in any capacity, whether it be with your time, money, skills and/or resources, has a tremendous effect on our mental and physical health. There are several striking effects on our mental health that I will make note of, as well as physical effects that are incredible! Our society has been so consumed with a tunnel vision of self-healing, that we’ve taken the focus completely off of others and onto ourselves and what we need to do for ourselves is to heal. By even the first mention of the fact that self-healing can indeed occur, in a significant way, by actually focusing on others, and not ourselves, seems counterintuitive. However, if we stop to think about what the scientists, counselors, and psychologists are saying about what the effects of serving others has on our health, we may begin to change our perspectives and make serving others a priority in our lives.

Relationships are at the epicenter of how we develop, who we are as individuals, and how we relate to society. No one survives completely alone; we all must form relationships to survive – yet not all relationships are created equal. Some relationships are detrimental to our health, while others help us thrive. As foundational to our existence as they are, relationships are incredibly complicated and more often than not, uncomfortable. Now, in this article I will speak to all kinds of relationships: Platonic, professional, familial, romantic, and even relationships that include animals and technology. We relate to many people and things, let’s take a moment to reflect on how we build these relationships.

Our need for relationships stem from our need to love and be loved. While that pursuit of loving and being loved is innocent in and of itself, we tend to bring so much baggage to most of our relationships. We bring past pain, and preconceived expectations, that the love we are willing to give someone or certain people, becomes conditional. And when you have one person who builds the relationship out of conditional love, while the other builds it out of unconditional love, you most often end up with a potentially destructive and abusive relationship. Most people don’t ever stop to think about the intentions behind their relationships. There is not usually a lot of foresight in people’s minds – except that two or more people had something in common and it starts from there. However, this is actually part of the problem of why so many relationships are broken and destructive today. Building healthy relationships are not common sense, as much as they should be. Many of us have to actively educate ourselves on how build healthy relationships.

With the coming new year, we tend to make all kinds of promises to ourselves about the things we will be changing in the coming weeks and months. We’re focused on what our lives look like on the outside, and how we can change our lifestyle to fit the expectations we have for ourselves. As an example, we see this manifest itself in a surge of gym memberships. Attendance begins to wane by February, and by March the majority of new memberships go unused. This seems prevalent in most of the new year’s resolutions we make. While many theories floated around to suggest why this might be the case, science has actually pin-pointed where humans go wrong in setting these lofty life-changing goals. The foundation for this disconnect begins with our unchanged perception within ourselves. If we do not have a foundational re-wiring of the mind, and our outlook on life and ourselves remains the same, our lifestyle cannot produce any drastic changes. We don’t change certain habits by changing our lifestyle, we change habits through a change of heart and mind.

We can plan out our goals to a perfect T: Making a specific goal, breaking the process down into short term and long term, and mapping out every step it takes to reach that goal – yet if we do not change our perception of instant gratification, what it takes to push through daily obstacles, and fail to see the fun in the process, we will ultimately falter. Think back to a time when you’ve made a habit stick, like washing your hands. Hopefully, this is a habit we’ve all made as adults especially during the pandemic. We created this habit because we were convinced and/or convicted to its importance in our hearts. A teacher can tell a child all day to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but until that child understands and accepts this truth for themselves, they won’t develop this habit. There are plenty of people, unfortunately, who don’t make it a habit to wash their hands. These people still believe in germs, and that germs spread, yet they simply don’t care. No amount of forcing someone to wash their hands, is going to change how they are feel in their hearts and minds about this habit. Only those who are convinced that this is the best course of action, will effectively make a habit out of hand-washing.

In previous articles, we’ve looked at different kinds of love such as conditional and unconditional love. In this article, we’re going to discuss the relationship between love and justice. Before we do this, let’s remind ourselves the definition of these two words. The oxford dictionary defines Love as this: A noun - “a very strong feeling of liking and caring for somebody/something, especially a member of your family or a friend”. And Justice in the same dictionary is defined as: A noun – “the fair treatment of people”. Already looking at the two definitions of these words, we can see how they begin to closely relate to one another. When we love someone or something, we automatically seek “the fair treatment of people” AKA justice.

We’ve seen what happens in the world when justice is carried out independent of care or love. Justice without love and care turns into the “unfair treatment of people” AKA injustice. Justice without love literally becomes the opposite of justice; justice without love turns into discrimination and inequity. In order to avoid this kind of treatment of others, we must turn to loving and caring for others. True justice, as the fair treatment of people, is naturally desired by everyone who has even an ounce of love in their hearts. Even though true justice is rarely seen in this world, we all desire it for ourselves and people we love in some way, shape or fashion. True justice cannot exist without love.