Category: Turn Towards the things that matter

Scientists from various fields of research have long noted an association between social relationships and health.

Over six decades ago, John Bowlby’s revolutionary research on attachment was one of the first to bring to light the high mortality rates in infants who had no social contact.

Since then, a wealth of studies has provided robust evidence that the lack of strong social support should be added to the list of significant risk factors to health.
In fact, a 2010 study provided evidence that social isolation is more harmful than smoking, drinking six alcoholic drinks per day, and not exercising. And social isolation is twice as harmful as obesity!

A loneliness crisis is evident all around us. Statistics reflect that the number of close friendships that the average American has today is only one, with more than one quarter of Americans not having a single person to confide in.

We don’t have to reside in one of the noted Blue zones to incorporate the practice of doing small things daily towards the goal of building social relationships— one of the most critical influencers on positive health. What small things can you start doing daily to increase your social connections?

Know Thyself—What You Need to Know About Your Brain to Reduce Stress

STRESSED

A long time ago, when I first heard the famous aphorism “Know Thyself,” by a fellow Greek named Socrates, I had no idea what he was talking about.

Today, I realize that truly getting to know our selves from the inside out is a great path toward optimizing our physical, emotional, and mental health and performing at our best at work and in our personal life.

Do you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed, irritable, worrying, or having a hard time sleeping? What if I was to tell you that you already have the solution to all those troublesome states of being? You just have to learn how to collaborate with the best asset you will ever have at your disposal—your brain.

Meet your brain: Hello, gorgeous!

In the material world we currently reside in, we try so hard to find happiness. We measure our worth in relation to material things, like the size of our bank account, our house, or our car. Or we measure our worth by our external, physical appearance. In reality, our brain is truly the most gorgeous and valuable part of us, not to mention our best ally in finding happiness.

No physical improvements to our body can top what an incredible job our brain and nervous system do as they work tirelessly around the clock to process information in order to keep us as well as possible.

Beyond our cognitive awareness, our brain continuously connects the outside world with our amazing, interior wonderland to assign meaning to our experiences so that we can navigate through the obstacle course of life with as much ease and pleasure and as little pain as possible, and, of course, with the highest chance for survival.

Just like the intricate components of our home security system, our brain uses an amazing network of one hundred billion nerve cells, each one capable of connecting to up to 10,000 other nerve cells, to create an astonishing one hundred trillion pathways (synapses) that can take us to either happiness or misery!

Now, “How is that?” you may ask. Well, the synapses of our brain cells are essentially circuits of the path of least resistance that become our default way of thinking, feeling, and acting based on the meaning we have assigned to any experience.

But let’s look at a specific example to bring this closer to home.

Driving is a skill that involves risk. When we first learn how to drive, we associate elements with actions. For example, we associate a red light with the need to employ the action of stopping in order to stay safe.

Beyond our cognitive awareness of how our actions are driven by the color of a traffic light, mental activity induces neural activity that builds and reinforces connections between nerve cells.

These connections form freeways that we hop on when similar occasions present in our reality. Without much thought, we take the action of stopping when we see a red light time and time again.

Beyond skills like driving, synapses between neurons also build pathways to evoke certain feelings, like warmth and joy when someone buys us a gift, or disappointment when our spouse forgets our birthday. Although, in fact, the only person who ought to feel bad for forgetting our birthday is our spouse, we have formed a circuit that is linked to disappointment when someone forgets our special day.

On a larger scale, this is how certain regions of our brain become more developed than others. And different parts of our brain contribute to different characteristics that we possess. These characteristics can be strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes, or other elements of ourselves.

Professor Eleanor Maguire (University College London, UK) is well known for her research on the noted structural changes in the brains of London cab drivers due to the extraordinary demand they place on their brains to memorize an astonishing labyrinth of over 25,000 streets. The grey matter of the London cab drivers, in the part of their brain associated with memory and spatial navigation (hippocampus), was found to increase significantly following their training and an assessment of their memory retention.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, shrinkage of the hippocampus has been observed in those of us suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It seems like our brain is trying to protect us from having flashbacks of our traumas by atrophying certain structures to shield us from negative memories.

Our feelings, sensations, and why we do what we do are interwoven inside the intricate connections between our nerve cells that connect based on our mental activity.

I lived in England for nine years, and I still remember how expensive London cabs are many years later.

But the high cost of taxis in London cannot compare to the price we pay every day by wasting our brains’ super powers, when we translate events as threats that are not actually threatening. (For example when our manager gives us a poor performance review). Using our brains power for defense for imaginary threats that are not here now, prevents our brain from performing well in keeping us in balance. (Homeostasis). (Employing our brain for defense at the rate that we do, also changes the structure of our our brain to be more prone to be ready to fight to flee or freeze in the future as well.)

I want to offer you a few, simple, everyday ways to reconnect with your long-lost asset—your brain. You can use these practices to induce synaptic activity to change your brain circuits in ways that promote well-being.

  1. Accept what is without resistance.

Adversity and change are absolute certainties in life. Sometimes we will handle them with grace, and sometimes we will fall flat on our face. But we will certainly not accomplish anything by resisting what is. Imagine swimming against the stream of a powerful river. How could we use our energy better, instead of in resisting an inevitable reality? We could be creating a list of all the lessons we have learned, or journaling about changes we will make. How much energy do we lose in the act of resisting?

  1. Establish a sense of curiosity and wonder.

No matter how bad a situation may seem in the moment, everything in life, including the greatest defeats and disappointments, are here to bring us a very specific gift, lesson, or pearl of wisdom. What if instead of spending several hours ruminating over our friends’ betrayal, we redirect our energy in answering the question: “What is the message this person/event is here to teach me?

  1. Stay present.

According to a Harvard study designed to assess habits and happiness, our mind takes off and thinks about things other than what we are doing 47% of the time. Isn’t it crazy to think that we are not present for about half of our life? The same study showed that a wandering mind is strongly linked to unhappiness. I know we have been trained to consider “multi-tasking” an invaluable skill. Can you challenge yourself to find a reason to stay present every time you catch your mind wandering away from you?

Despite my great admiration for the wisdom of Greek philosophers, I must admit that it has taken me a lifetime to make sense of the practical application of their wisdom for my happiness and well-being.

But if you find yourself navigating life with a degree of dissatisfaction that interferes with your well-being as I did, you can absolutely change that.

Although our Socrates is long gone, it is you who holds the key to how to be your own superhero. And it rests right between your temples.

Three Things I Am Letting Go of as I Say Good-bye to This Year.

Life is such a delicate balance between holding on and letting go, as Rumi once said.

Do you struggle with knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of?

More often than not, we tend to hold onto people, possessions, and habits that are draining away our energy.

The delightful Ms. Carolyn Myss, world-renowned medical intuitive and best-selling author of a number of books including, Anatomy of the Spirit, said it best: “We only have a specific amount of energy per day. If we have $100 worth of energy and we expend it all on things that do not return on our investment then we end up with an energetic debt. If we keep making this debt larger, eventually our own body tissues will have to cover the difference. This is how we end up getting sick.”

I have done a pretty good job throughout my life with balancing my bank account between deposits and withdrawals. But I have not been as good with energy deposits and withdrawals, so I did get sick.

As I have been building the bridge back to my healthy self, which was the genesis of Myndzen, I discovered that choosing to let go of some beliefs and attitudes that I held did wonders for my physical and emotional health. Over the course of my journey, I have experienced such beautiful warmth and joy from letting go of perfectionism, taking things personally, comparisons, the need for others’ approval, and other beliefs and actions that were eating away at my happiness and well-being.

However, there were three behaviors that have been very difficult for me to let go of because they camouflaged themselves in altruistic costumes. Not until this year did I realize their truly toxic nature.

As we are preparing to say good-bye to yet another year, I invite you to join me in letting go of the following:

  1. Putting up with people you cannot depend on

Nobody is perfect, by any means, and we should always be willing to give the ones we love the benefit of the doubt. However, there is a lot of negative energy connected to people in our lives who are chronically unreliable and never take responsibility for it. I used to think of myself as a kinder person for letting dear ones off the hook who forgot a commitment they had made to me, changed our plans at the last minute, or showed up a day late and a dollar short the one time I needed their support.

But the ultimate act of kindness is to be true and respectful to ourselves first in order to be able to extend the same courtesy to others. Ultimately, if I cannot rely on you, that means that I cannot trust you and that is not conducive to creating safety between us. And a lack of safety in relationships is a significant risk factor for our health.

So, if you are holding on to any relationships in your life with people you cannot depend on, I invite you to love them, hug them, kiss them good-bye, and let them go!

  1. Being the Mother Teresa of wounded souls

Somewhere in between my being “anxiously attached” in childhood and being enamored with the “high” of external approval, I found myself making an energetically draining choice over and over again in my life: I embraced and extended refuge and love to fellow humans who as adults still carried unresolved wounds from their past.

It is truly heartbreaking to imagine that any child suffers traumas inflicted by people they depend on.

I have chosen to work as a Court-Appointed Child Advocate to serve as a voice for abused children. But there is a vast difference between volunteering to protect the rights of innocent child victims of abuse and putting up with absolutely unacceptable behavior from adults because they still carry wounds from their past, which they are not willing to own up to and let go.

Empathy and compassion are wonderful virtues, but there is a fine line between empathizing about someone’s unfortunate past and letting them get away with entitlement, exploitation, empathy impairment, or projecting their pain on you. (These are the hallmarks of Narcisistic personality disorder-the ultimate manifestation of unresolved wounds!)

The bottom line is this—hurt people hurt other people. So, if you still have people in your life that often behave in unkind ways and are not accountable for their behavior because of how they were treated in their past—do yourself a massive favor and let them go.

  1. Living with illusions and lies

Human nature is such that, at times, we like to believe in fairy tales, mostly to protect ourselves from facing realities that we do not really want to face.

We create a story that nurtures and justifies an illusion, living in denial about how we actually play a big part in betraying ourselves.

But deep down we know when we are telling ourselves a lie—like sticking to a relationship that is not honoring our spirit, or working at a company or in an industry that is not aligned with our values.

Why is it hard to identify illusions? Because we are scared!

If we did not grow up in an environment conducive to developing a healthy sense of self-worth, we keep one eye closed so we can get what we think we need, settling for crumbs and endeavors that are offensive to our soul.

Many statistics reflect our challenge with identifying illusions: The percent of infidelity in relationships and the incidence of alcoholism and other escape tactics are just a few.

Trust me, I know how hard it is to let go of the lies we tell ourselves and how uncomfortable it feels to be in free fall, detached from the stories that were part of us for so long.

But here are a couple of reminders to aid you in this magical act of letting go out of kindness for yourself.

  • Fear is also an illusion—95% of the things we worry about never actually happen.
  • We can increase our self-worth by the choices we make. When we start treating ourselves like we are worthy of all things great in life and no longer settle for fairy tales that drain our soul, we increase our self-worth, one nerve connection at a time.

If a person, a job, a friend, or a situation does not contribute to your values and your mission in life, and you realize that you are keeping them in your life because of a fairy tale you have been telling yourself, offer them a beautiful bunch of flowers and let them go.

We are about to enter a new beginning, a brand new year.

This new year can be amazing for you.

This could be the year that you make your dreams come true!

Or this new year could be disappointing.

The one certainty is that it is you who will determine how the year goes. You are worthy of love and belonging and goodwill and acts of kindness and all great experiences that allow your nervous system to remain in optimal balance supporting your health and well-being.

But choosing carefully and following through with whom and what you need to let go of is critical for the trajectory of your happiness in this new year and beyond.

Happy New Year!

Tzeli

A Different Perspective on the Holidays: Is It the Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

Have you noticed how amazing the holidays look in commercials?

We see visions of perfection—“Martha Stewart” tables filled with fabulous, cooked food and matching napkins; people laughing and getting along; crackling fires and soothing music in the background; perfectly decorated homes and the image of the perfect family.

We would all love to be the protagonists in these holiday commercials.

But the truth is, that for many of us, the holidays are not as wonderful as the commercials show.

In real life, in the US alone,

  • Many of our families are devastated by pain from the loss of a loved one—a pain that resurfaces as we approach the first holiday season without them. Heart attacks and cancer claim the lives of a million of our loved ones each year, car accidents a million and a half, and 35,000 of us every year experience the unfathomable grief of losing a loved one to suicide.
  • 6 million of us have to survive the holidays after the devastation of divorce, and an additional number of unmarried couples cope with the aftermath of breakups.
  • Have you considered that over 43 million foreign-born immigrants live in the US? Some of us who are immigrants have families who live thousands of miles away and we don’t have any family close by to sit around our tables.
  • And then there are people who lost their jobs in the last twelve months who live with fear and anxiety about how they will make ends meet.

I am not trying to be negative here, but real life includes all of those situations that impact many of us and it is really not like the “Martha Stewart” holiday commercials.

And here is the craziest thing about this: Although we all carry our fair share of pain and suffering, more times than not, we prefer to hide it from the rest of the world. We are ashamed to admit what is happening in our life and simply choose to write “blessed” on our Facebook wall.

Did you know that research is showing that shame triggers the stress response in the same way that being chased by a mountain lion would?

 

Let this be a gentle reminder that regardless of our circumstances, our socio-economic status, or any other of our unique characteristics, we all experience our fair share of sadness and loneliness, which can be increased by the conditioned way we view “the holidays.” Have you considered that if we shared our vulnerabilities, instead of keeping them to ourselves, our hearts might feel lighter?

I know we all have endless lists around the holidays—gifts to buy, things to do, places to be. However, I invite you to add a few additional items to your “to do” list this holiday season:

  1. Choose kindness and compassion.

We sometimes get so busy and lost in the never-ending lists of things we have to do, that we forget how simple it is to share kind words and actions and how much of a difference this choice makes in the world. In fact, a significant amount of science has taught us that kindness and compassion are natural anti-depressants. Forget about Prozac. There are so many more things we can do to beat the blues.

—Smile to people you meet! Did you know that a simple smile registers with others more than any other human expression and gives us a sense of connection?

—Give genuine compliments. Do you notice something that is worth acknowledging in another? What if while we are stuck in a long grocery line we use this time to talk about positive things with the people close to us in line?

—Give someone flowers for no reason and wish them happy holidays!

  1. Make time and space for mindfulness.

A decade ago, a Harvard professor and his team developed an app that tracked peoples’ happiness depending on what they were doing when the team randomly checked in with them. They found that 47% of the time their minds had wandered to things outside of the present moment. Can you imagine that we are not actually present for half of our lives? (You can participate yourself by going to trackyourhppiness.org.)

How can we infuse little reminders into our day to anchor us back to the present moment?

—It could be something as simple as committing to noticing when our mind starts wandering and taking a deep breath inviting our mind to come back to the present moment.

—We can start our day by taking a few breaths to savor the fact that we are able to still breathe, and we can set an intention for the day.

—We can spend a few minutes before retiring to sleep to breathe in a sense of gratitude for all the wonderful things we experienced that day, even if the day included a challenging “crucial” conversation with someone at work.

  1. Choose happiness.

No matter how difficult life may be at times, there are still a million things we can find to be happy about.

—Our resilience—how our heart is still beating regardless of the challenges and adversity we have had to face in our lives!

—The beauty of nature and the abundance of oxygen that the trees produce for us every day.

—The people that we have in our lives to love and be loved by.

—The sunshine on our face every day, no matter how much darkness we have to deal with at times.

There is ample evidence that reflects a myriad of benefits of choosing the positive perspective: We cultivate more hope and optimism; we are more open to connection; we experience bolstered immune function and increased positive emotions, as well as an increase in our nervous systems’ “vagal tone,” which is associated with feeling relaxed, healthy, and well.

The holidays can be a wonderful time of the year, as every day of our life can be.

An important component to making our life the most wonderful it can be is to make the choice to accept and share an undeniable part of our humanness: the pain and suffering that is part of life.

Our suffering can lead to abundant love and happiness if we let it guide us in reaching out and touching the hand of a fellow human being who has experienced a loss similar to one that we have experienced; if we choose to be extra kind and extend more compassion and patience and understanding; if we all just step outside of the costumes we wear and expose our vulnerabilities.

Maybe together we can make a better world for all of us to live in.

Because after all, what will “make the bells ring” is the carol that you sing right within your heart.