To free up time and get more done, stop indulging in these completely futile mental activities.
All of us seem to feel as though we don't have enough time, but few of us consider that we're indulging in behaviors that suck up our time for no possible purpose. Here are 10 common time wasters that we can all live without: 1. Wondering what other people are thinking.Until such time as we invent mind-reading machines, you'll never really know what other people are thinking, so why bother wondering? And even if you could read minds, it's none of your business anyway. 2. Speculating how life would be different if only you had ...Since time-travel is impossible (other than forward at the usual pace), constructing alternate timelines is wasting the time you still have left. Learn from your mistakes, yes, but keep your attention on where you are now and where you're currently headed. 3. Imagining the worst that could happen.The worst probably won't happen, so imagining it is wasted effort. If the worst did happen, it would probably be a lot worse that you're capable of imagining, so trying to imagine it is still wasted time. Continue reading. Originally posted on Inc.com.
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“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” ~James Allen
When I was eighteen I went through a very stressful period, which led to the onset of panic attacks. I often remember how in bed one night I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of terror. I’d never experienced such fear before. Sure, I was scared of lots of things, but this new feeling was unique. The most accurate way I can describe it is a kind of animal-like horror. It seemed to have come from the deepest, darkest recesses of my subconscious mind, caused by primeval, bestial mechanisms. The feeling was so deep and all encompassing that it was as if nothing else existed, just this fear coursing through my body as I writhed about, sweaty and tense. The most unfamiliar and therefore terrifying aspect of the fear was that it didn’t have an object: it wasn’t clear what I was actually afraid of. From the very start, it was simply fear—unconnected to any tangible thing. Continue reading. Originally posted on Tiny Buddha. Positive thinking sounds useful on the surface. (Most of us would prefer to be positive rather than negative.) But "positive thinking" is also a soft and fluffy term that is easy to dismiss. In the real world, it rarely carries the same weight as words like "work ethic" or "persistence."
But those views may be changing. Research is beginning to reveal that positive thinking is about much more than just being happy or displaying an upbeat attitude. Positive thoughts can actually create real value in your life and help you build skills that last much longer than a smile. The impact of positive thinking on your work, your health, and your life is being studied by people who are much smarter than me. One of these people is Barbara Fredrickson. Fredrickson is a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, and she published a landmark paper that provides surprising insights about positive thinking and its impact on your skills. Her work is among the most referenced and cited in her field, and it is surprisingly useful in everyday life. Let's talk about Fredrickson's discovery and what it means for you... Continue reading. Originally posted on HuffPost Healthy Living. This weekend we celebrated the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. One of the clergy scheduled an hour-long healing session sandwiched between the full day of prayers on this fast day. Fifty people showed up, some willing to share the pain they were feeling from recent diagnoses of cancer, loss of loved ones, or family traumas, and others remained silent.
When it was my turn, I brought up the challenge I felt trying to stay positive in a negative world. Cruelty, brutality and insecurity seem to me more palpable than in the past, perhaps due to 24/7 connectivity with reports of wars, tragedies and beheadings. I described steps I use to emphasize the positive during the day while still being grounded in the events occurring in the world. Here are 12 of the techniques I use to maintain a positive outlook when the world seems so incredibly negative: Continue reading. Originally posted on Mind,Body,Green. “People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.” – Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now”
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anxiety as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” Pretty much all of us can resonate with having had a bout of anxiety… maybe even within the last 24 hours. Anxiety is incredibly common; especially in this crazy, tuned-in (but not really), smartphone carrying, ultra-competitive society that we find ourselves in. To be perfectly clear, having occasional anxiety is completely normal. All of us get overwhelmed from time to time, with the demands and stressors of life an almost daily occurrence. Here are 7 effective, practical ways to deal with anxiety in your life: Continue reading. Originally posted on Power of Positivity. “When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~Henry Ford
We all have this image of how depression looks. It’s a person looking all sullen and grim. Rain is usually involved. It’s dark. It’s cloudy. It’s depressing. But what about the sunny depression, the one that almost never shows its face in public, the one that looks just…normal. I’m a naturally happy person. I wake up smiling. I go to bed smiling. I even smile in my sleep, or so I’ve been told. Yet I’ve been depressed, depressed to the point where I was struggling to find reasons to go on, knowing in my rational mind that I need to find them, yet unable to get there emotionally. I was never diagnosed with depression, partly because I refused to actually see a professional about it and partly because I wanted to believe I could somehow find my way out without medication, since it wasn’t induced by a chemical imbalance. Continue reading. Originally posted on Tiny Buddha. In today's fast-paced, deadline-driven times, relaxation seems more of a fantasy or unnecessary luxury that only the lazy covet. However, research shows that relaxation is far from a way to put off work or disengage from society forever; it's necessary for maintaining physical and mental health. Not relaxing enough has been linked to health complications ranging from increased dementia risks to heart problems.
"There are studies to show that stress is comparable to other risk factors that we traditionally think of as major, like hypertension, poor diet and lack of exercise," said Kathi Heffner, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Rochester Center for Mind-Body Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. Relaxing fights stress and works to help people manage situations better, yet it's often put off in order to engage in more pressing activities, which, ironically, typically leads to more stress. Continue reading. Originally posted on Natural News. I’ve been there. It starts with a handful of carrots, moves to a few pieces of cheese, and the next thing you know, you’re elbow deep in a pint of ice cream.
You go to bed exhausted and sick, feeling out of control and like you’re sabotaging yourself. Can you relate? It’s called emotional eating, and it happens more often than you might think. You don’t always have to clean out your fridge in one night to fall victim to emotional eating, either. This phenomenon can strike at any time, when you find yourself eating for reasons other than satisfying actual physical hunger. When I worked in marketing, it wasn't long before I discovered that food companies constantly strive to make a connection between food and emotion. In order to create appeal, food marketing promises an emotional benefit beyond the food itself— such as comfort, excitement, belonging, etc. My job as a marketer was to make these connections even more compelling and convincing, by fueling our collective belief that eating certain foods provides us with emotional satisfaction. Continue reading. Originally posted on Mind,Body,Green. New research shows that exercise really does combat the ill effects of workplace stress.
Most people intuitively understand that exercise can improve your mood, but it was only last week that scientists figured out how it works. Their findings are of enormous importance to everybody who experiences stress at work. According to a recent article in the New York Times, exercising causes your muscles to release a set of chemicals that block other chemicals the body releases in response to frequent stress. In other words, constant stress brings you down, but consistent exercise lifts you up. Many great entrepreneurs are famous for their ability to tolerate the stress and pressures of work. On the other side of the coin, there are plenty of people who'd like to be more successful but can't "go the extra mile" because they can't tolerate more stress. If you exercise regularly, though, you can actually increase the amount of stress that you can tolerate without feeling its ill effects. Put another way, if you work out a lot, you can work a lot harder. Hey, there's a reason so many high-tech offices have in-house gyms. Continue reading. Originally posted on Inc.com. Sometimes, we know what's making us anxious and can negotiate calm. Other times, our anxiety is caused by hormones or too much caffeine or something more out of our control, and we just have to ride it out.
Other times, still, we feel anxiety but doing what it tells us to do is unserving, so we want to try to weather the anxiety storm. For example, anxiety is telling you to go home from work even though you have to get a project done; or it's telling you to leave the theater even though you really want to see your son's dance performance; or it's telling you to pull your head out of the water even though you really want to learn how to scuba-dive (been there). So, whether you're riding it out (or, as Pema Chodron says, "staying" with it) to perform or to survive, here are seven tips for making sitting with anxiety less torturous: Continue reading. Originally posted on Mind,Body,Green. |
Please Note:All postings on the NEWS page are made purely for information and interest. I do not endorse or denounce any of them but find them all very interesting. I leave it up to you to decide if what you read will work for you. Archives
June 2023
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