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?

Energy Efficiency

It seems that there is a concerted effort to improve our energy efficiency, including by targeting more sustainable resources and by rewarding consumers with rebates, discounts, and tax credits. I have invested quite a bit of time myself identifying improvements in my energy usage and potential energy leaks in my house. I am updating my twenty-year-old attic insulation and my pool pump, and I am going solar.

But all of this work to improve my home’s energy efficiency got me thinking -Why aren’t we investing time in identifying the optimal flow of energy in our precious body, mind, and spirit?

I recently had an unexpected health scare that led me to an endless series of tests to rule out serious issues. My lack of personal energy efficiency has come with a big cost in my life. Hence, I decided to dedicate this week’s blog post to compiling the biggest energy efficiency lessons that I have gleaned through my successes and failures.

Here they are:

  1. We all have a finite amount of energy every day.

When we put our energy into people, places, and things that do not return at least the same amount of energy that we expend on them, we end up with an energetic deficit. In order to keep up with our daily activities, we then have to turn to our own body tissues for an overdraft to cover the energetic debt, which leads to a great amount of dis-ease in our bodies. Its not very different with the way we make deposits and withdrawals in our bank account. Prudence is required as to where we allow our energy to flow. It is part of life that we may sometimes lose energy, for example, when we nurture relationships with people who fail to show up for us when we need an energy boost ourselves. However, when we point out this energy imbalance to them, and we do not see a change in the energy exchange, it is time to reconsider if the investment in the relationship is worth it.

2. Energy is power.

Power is often defined, incorrectly, as having influence over others. When we look at the dictionary for the definition of power, we realize that power is also defined as our ability to do something effectively. If and when we find ourselves drained, a sure way to get our power back is to fine-tune how effective our approach is at arriving at our desired outcomes instead of worrying about others’ mishaps and ineffectiveness. Is there a part of your life that you feel that you need to become more effective at? You, and only you, have the power to change that aspect of your life. All it takes is mindset, commitment, and practice.

3. Negative emotions, situations, and people are big energy suckers!

In fact, it is scientifically proven that when we allow unhealthy and toxic habits, people, and behaviors into our life, our metabolic energy will be hi-jacked from our essential, higher structures and functions and redirected to our large muscle groups to address the threat posed to our internal integrity and balance. Furthermore, if we allow this emotional hi-jacking to go on for too long, we are subject to long-term damage to essential organs and functions, congruent with the impact of chronic stress. This is now well documented in scientific literature. The term, allostasis, coined in the mid- nineties by scientists, McEwan and Stellar, describes the long-term wear and tear on our body when we willingly expose it to chronic stress. This wear and tear is the ultimate price we pay for not practicing energy efficiency in our own body systems. Yet it is completely within our control to improve our energy efficiency. All we have to do is to look for the gold in unexpected situations and set firm boundaries to protect us from people and situations that cause us unnecessary stress.

4. One of the greatest energy leaks for each and every one of us happens when there are misalignments between thoughts, words, and actions.

Whether we are the ones that don’t have synergy between our words and actions, or whether important people in our life present us with differences between what they say they are going to do and what they actually do, the energy cost to our brain to reconcile these differences is great. It is important to recognize and take corrective action to ensure harmony in the flow of thoughts, words, and actions. Mahatma Gandhi defines this harmony as happiness. Neuroscience can certainly back up that claim!

5. We are the most profound source of energy and power for ourselves.

Although we have adopted the societal view that external things (money, titles, accomplishments, people) will give us power, if and when we get all of those things, we arrive at the most noble truth: Nothing can match the source of energy and power that only we can grant to ourselves through investing in our own self-actualization—healing anything that holds us back and cultivating a profound, deep-rooted sense of self-worth. Trust me. I know this very well from my own life story. What is it that you can do within your control that makes you feel whole? If you are waiting for someone to treat you how you deserve to be treated, how can you generate this love for yourself today?

6. Taking responsibility is one of the most immense sources of power we can ever claim!

We have been conditioned to blame external circumstances for anything that is not going according to plan in our life. We blame our parents and our humble beginnings, or the economy, or our boss, or our corporate culture, and the list goes on. What we overlook every time we blame others is how much power we are actually giving away when we essentially say we have no ability to change the outcome of a situation that we are not pleased with. Instead of blaming others, we can recognize that we are in charge of the reality we create, being accountable for when our actions do not match our desired outcome, and choosing what we will do different to get to the end result we want. When we do something differently, something magical happens: we get different results!

7. Becoming more energy efficient means getting a better sense of what is associated with us gaining or losing our personal power.

We can start by paying attention to our thoughts and where we spend our energy. Instead of mourning our losses or failures, we can look at all of our life’s twists and turns as exactly what we needed to experience in order to be where we are today. Every single mishap, difficulty, and challenge has served its’ purpose as a guidepost to highlight new truths that we had to learn. Maintain an ongoing inventory of how your body feels based on what you do, when you do it, and who you do it with. Regardless of how intelligent or well-educated we may be, our humble biology—our own bodies—run amazing surveillance on what is good or bad to optimize our systems. All we have to do is be still enough to listen!

We go through life driven by internal forces that propel us to get closer to pleasure and stay away from pain. Yet we seem to overlook the fact that all of life’s experiences require energy that we often lose when we attempt to fill up our energy reserves through external sources. We are in charge of organizing our life in a way that works for us. It takes discipline to learn how to be in our own power and become our core source of love, approval, and acceptance. We may not know where to start to fine-tune our relationship with energy.

Working with an intuitive energy healer may be a great start to help you identify where you may be losing your energy and to help you create a road map on how to claim it back. My own work with Sarah Grace, sarahkgrace.com, was an invaluable beginning for me in learning how to take small steps daily that helped me heal my past missteps and become better at claiming and taming my own noble power. This work led me back to my true, authentic self.

There is never a better time than now to claim some of your power back. If you wish to change anything in your life that is not working for you contact me for a free check up. (tzeli@myndzen.com)

We can all place our energy on so many different things, but the one thing I can promise you is that committing and incorporating practices to improve your energy efficiency is one of the most profound changes you can make toward living the healthy, wholesome, and joyful life that you want.

The great big fall

Fall is my favorite season!

There is something special about the smell of the earth after the first raindrops of the season. I am enamored by the way the foliage gets washed away by the rain to make space for new beginnings. The temperature drops, inviting us to make a fire and snuggle up to our favorite person while eating slow-cooker delicacies.

But I also love fall because it reminds me of an undeniable part of our human experience: the regular and never-ending points in our journey when things “fall” apart in our life, and we experience a significant amount of discomfort and suffering. Our automatic response is to think that “when such and such a thing happens, when we arrive to a certain outcome, when we realize a specific goal, then we will no longer suffer.”

However, the truth is: we cannot go through life unless we experience a significant amount of suffering. After all, there are many things in life that we cannot control that impact the fiber of our life and experience.

The question then becomes, what do we do when things fall apart?

  1. What if we temporarily make friends with pain and let it tell us its’ secrets?

One of the human choices that often leads to things falling apart in life is betrayal. In its simplest form, as our dear Brene Brown says, betrayal is “to choose to not connect with someone when the opportunity is there.” The secret the pain of betrayal opens us up to is that betrayal is the mutual choice between two people to feed a lie. We humans can only behave based on our level of consciousness at a given time. It’s nothing personal. But we too, play an active role in any betrayal in our lives. If we focus on what is within our control, we can use a betrayal as an opportunity to address and question what it is deep down that we were afraid of. We can look at what it is that we wanted that compelled us to play a part in this story. Although betrayal leads us to doubt ourselves and our choices, it is a great opportunity to identify illusions. When we use painful experiences of betrayal to uncover what it is that we were truly afraid of, we slowly but surely learn to neutralize our fear, harvest its pearls of wisdom, and open up to the possibility of learning to trust in ourselves again.

2. Challenge yourself to identify the little things that give you comfort during difficult times.

When things fall apart, we tend to hide our pain in ways that are not conducive to our wellbeing. We tend to withdraw, get down on ourselves, maybe drink an extra glass of wine, or lose sleep by mulling over the specifics of the disaster we encountered. It is important to keep an ongoing list of things, situations, and people that provide us with a sense of goodness for when difficult times show up in our lives.

This could be a walk in nature; listening to a positive Ted Talk; cooking your favorite, wholesome meal; creating a little piece of art; or committing to a daily, loving kindness meditation.

But most importantly, during difficult times, we need to resist the urge to stay isolated, and instead connect with people that make us feel cared for. Social connection is one of the most compelling antidotes to the toxicity of discomfort and one that is abundantly available to us, as long as we are willing to nurture it.

  1. Focus on taking just the very next step.

When things fall apart, our automatic response is to feel helpless and let our internal resources be used toward imagining a catastrophe! We don’t consciously realize the power of our mind to hi-jack our nervous system and shut down our ability to access the executive part of our brain. For example, studies show that rejection and toothache both activate the exact same region of our brain (anterior cingulate). If we focus on simply determining what is the very next step we can take to turn a situation around, we can slowly but surely disengage from operating from a threatened, defensive state and turn on our executive part of our brain, activating the reward centers through action (pre-frontal cortex). Mastery is the result of consistent small steps daily. Don’t worry about the imaginary disasters that could come, but focus on the very one thing you can do now to move you toward the direction that will bring you back to balance.

  1. Remember the impermanence of everything, and practice being comfortable in discomfort.

Whether you pay attention to the changes of colors in the trees around you, the challenges you have already overcome, or a memory from childhood, everything in life is a temporary perspective.

Nothing lasts forever. Regardless of how challenging an experience may be, simply remembering that nothing lasts forever can be just the ticket to calm our nervous system down and feel comfort at times of discomfort. A realistic outcome to shoot for to ensure that the trajectory of our life remains positive is looking for growth in discomfort. Breakdowns in life can be profound moments of breakthroughs, much like the seed that has to break through the earth to bring forth beautiful blossoms in spring.

  1. Accept that some days will be dreadful no matter what we do.

We can do all the right things, take all the right steps, incorporate powerful daily practices, and yet we will never be able to avoid experiencing moments of ultimate disappointment and dread. We could get laid off, lose someone we love, or experience an ultimate betrayal from someone who we thought was our number one confidant. Life is an incredible adventure of never-ending highs and lows. Embrace the fact that some days will be a complete disaster no matter what we do.

I can’t say that the series of victories and unfortunate events don’t leave a lasting mark on our life experience. Yet the miracle always happens.

Tomorrow morning, the sun will rise again, the school bus will show up in time to pick up the kids for school, and you will encounter your neighbor’s good morning wish as you take your dog for a walk.

Despite how bad a great fall may seem, every new day gives us the opportunity to start over and change our life—one decision, one choice, and one step at a time—bringing along fresh perspectives and ingredients: new leaves on the trees, new loves, new joys, new sensations.

Loneliness kills!

At a time when despite medical advances, we struggle to reach and maintain optimal health, could there be elements we overlook that would positively impact the trajectory for our health and quality of life?

The ancient Greeks said it best: “Balance is excellence”! However, as important as it is to have a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, with regular daily activity, (while minimizing obvious toxic substances), I think we seem to overlook a really important factor towards our health and wellbeing: Our social connections!

In fact, several decades of scientific data clearly reflect, that we could be killing our self at the gym every day, starving our self to loose those extra pounds and yet social isolation and insufficient social relationships, could be one of the most inconspicuous risk factors for our health and longevity!

Social relationships represent an incredible opportunity to enhance not only the quality of our life but also our survival!

THE PROBLEM

Despite increases in technology, that allow us to connect even with our high school friends we have not seen for decades at the click of a button, (that would presumably foster social connections), we are becoming increasingly isolated. We are experiencing a tremendous amount of loneliness and our level of social connection is extremely low. Research uncovered that 25% of Americans don’t have someone they feel comfortable opening up to about their woes. In fact, over the last two decades, there has been a three fold decrease in the number of Americans who report having a confidant. The lower our social connections are, the more prone we are to inflammation, anxiety, and depression, while people with high social connections, are shown to recover faster from disease and live longer.

THE EVIDENCE

In the late 80’s a review of 5 large prospective studies, concluded that social relationships predict mortality. As provocative as this hypothesis was at the time, it generated a tremendous amount of research on the impact of social relationships to health outcomes and mortality. (HouseJS, Landis KR, Umberson D (1988) Social relationships and health. Science 241: 540-545.)

The plethora of research that followed and a myriad of publications, clearly substantiated that social support is linked to improved immune function and inflammatory response mediation processes.

In 2010, a meta-analysis of 148 studies, involving 308,849 individuals followed for an average of 7.5 years, (Holt-Lunstad J, Smith T., Layton B., (2010), Social relationships and Mortality, PLoS Medicine, volume 7, issue 7, e1000316), provided empirical evidence nearly 30 times of what was reported by previous studies, to support the criteria for insufficient social relationships as a risk factor of mortality.

The data from this 2010 meta analysis is strong enough to suggest that social isolation needs to be added to the list of well documented risk factors, since the mortality risk of social isolation, has been shown to be comparable to smoking, drinking 6 alcoholic drinks per day, not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity!

The next steps in the research of these profound findings, is to further understand the mechanism of action and protective factors of social relationships. Current research, illuminates several different biological pathways, that can justify how social relationships influence disease end points and greatly impact health outcomes, for example in depression and stress mediation. One of the ways strong social relationships impact health is through a strong ability to buffer effects of stress. Social support appears to sustain the organism by promoting adopting behavior or neuroendocrine responses in the face of stress. In other words, despite the stressors one may face on a day to day basis, strong social relationships, have been proven to be a significant shield against the way our body responds to external stressors, neutralizing their impact and minimizing the symptoms of stress we experience.

Considering stress is the epidemic of the century and has now been proven to be linked to 90% of today’s disease, we could greatly benefit from improving our health through nurturing healthy attachments to other people.

THE SOLUTION

We now know that the quantity and quality of our social relationships is a significant predictor of psychological and physical health. This knowledge should be used to develop interventions and policies that can greatly improve public health and clinical practice. The question is what can we do at the individual level to improve our social connections?

Here are my top 5 ways we can take advantage of the science on our day to day life and enhance our health and happiness through the art of human connection:

1. Elevate human connection on your priority list.

Most of us, struggle to manage the little time we have against the overwhelming list of things we have to do every day. However, we can choose to replace solitary activities with ones that foster community. Is there an interest you have that involves collaboration with like minded souls? You could sign up to take a dance class, volunteer at a local non profit organization for a cause you are passionate about, or join a hiking group. The camaraderie that develops amongst people that have a common bond can lead to significant relationships that are based on healthy relational patterns.

2. Nurture the relationships you already have.

In this information overload modern life we live in, we sometimes take for granted what we already have. If we are lucky to have people in our life that love and support us, nurture those relationships! The research of John Gottman, Ph.D., has shown that doing the small things often is all it takes to build healthy long lasting relationships that can withstand the storms of life. Every day, take a few moments to recount what it is that you love about the important people in your life and express your fondness and admiration often. Whatever we put our attention to grows! Don’t let your demanding schedule dilute your focus on what seems to be the most important component to your health and wellbeing.

3. Nurture your own ability for empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel what another person is feeling. Although we are built to feel other people empathically, our fear based society has conditioned our mind to look for differences between us and others. We are all different and we can easily release our negative emotions by identifying and focusing on our differences with others. What if we switch our attention to having empathy for the woman that cut us off on the freeway? Chances are, she too had to get lunches ready and kids dropped off to school before she could catch her early morning flight. How does it help us to get mad at her? We have been conditioned to get frustrated with others as a way to discharge the stress we feel within. But we need to remember that our nervous system, is built much like a sounding board, not only reflecting and impacting the people around us, but also constantly changing depending on where we direct our energy and attention. When we see someone else in pain, our brain regions associated with pain get activated…we feel their pain. Equally, when you see someone smiling, the facial muscles in our face get activated… We can start being the change we want to see and increase the grey matter in the regions of our brain associated with empathy by simply having empathic experiences. I promise you, the results will be amazing!

4. Brave vulnerability!

We are often too scared to show our true colors and we prefer to play it safe by presenting the “facade of the invincible” to the outside world! We stay locked up in our “kingdoms of isolation”, never letting anyone see our true beauty. We seldom express any needs and even if our heart is aching, we say we are doing great! We don’t want to come across too “needy”, so we tippy-toe around issues and would rather put our energy into building an impression of perfection. Although undoubtedly, one has to earn the right to hear our story, there is so much power in being courageous enough to show our authentic self with no fear of being judged or not accepted. It seems that the great effort we make to fit in, is the exact obstacle to true connection. But most importantly, not being willing to be ourselves, reflects a lack of self acceptance.

The absolutely brilliant researcher Brene Brown Ph.D., whose outstanding research has uncovered that perfectionism is nothing other than a hidden fear of “not being good enough” said it best: “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

5. Savor human connection.

We make the mistake of expecting to find people who totally get us, with whom minimal effort is needed to enjoy connectedness. We therefore pull away when we identify the slightest difference between us and another, hoping that “some day” we will meet “the one” in love but also in friendships. In actual fact, “to relate” by the dictionary definition, means “to make a connection between two different things”. Even when someone behaves in a way that ruffles our feathers, it does not serve us to take it personally. Every single one of us, will behave according to our degree of evolution at that moment in time. He who breaks your heart dreams of having robust healthy relationships too, they just don’t know how yet!

However, the way we translate human interactions, promotes the development of neural connections in different parts of our brain. Our automatic, conditioned way of thinking establishes differences as threats and reinforces the development of brain regions that are associated with negative traits, (like hypervigilance) and ultimately this creates imbalances in our nervous system.

It is up to us, to direct our thoughts, state and actions to aid the development of brain regions that are associated with inner strengths instead. Once we recognize this truth, we will no longer feel threatened by the differences we may have with another and we can cherish others love and their different perspectives, as a way to enhance our human experience.

We live at an incredible time, with robust research outcomes that literally can hold our hand through living out a healthy and long life. We know one by one all the risk factors that can interfere with our optimal health and scientists have uncovered the exact mechanism of action that relate risk factors, to the path that leads us to the big killers of our time, cardiovascular disease and cancer. The truth is we cannot control many things in life that hi-jack our nervous system and deprive us of our valuable resources.

But if we really want to receive the biggest return on the investment of our time and effort, that is 100% within our control, the simple act of love and kindness towards our fellow human beings, may very well be the biggest opportunity to enhance our health and happiness!