Category: Health

Seize the day

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Good time management can help most of us avoid a lot of stress. Setting goals, planning out the day ahead of time, and working during our most high-energy hours can lead to greater productivity, less time pressure and a calmer life. Sometimes, though, it’s best to let serendipity win out over planning.

Case in point: yesterday was a gorgeous day. It was one of those days where the sky is a completely cloudless, brilliant blue. The day was warm, but the humidity was low. It was the best day we had had, or were going to have, this entire week.

So when my friend said to me after a morning yoga class, “What are you doing today? Let’s get something to eat and then take a long walk – it’s so beautiful today!” I barely hesitated. It’s true that thoughts of my to-do list, and the vague commitments I had for the day did cross my mind. But I quickly realized that there was nothing so pressing that it couldn’t be done later in the day, or even the next day.

The word “serendipity” is a difficult one to define and translate, but it essentially means discovering something by accident while looking for something else, or finding something wonderful when we weren’t looking for it at all.  It’s possible to let serendipity play a role in daily time management, just by being aware of, and open to, the opportunities and beautiful moments that might turn up in the course of the day. Michael Olpin and Margie Hesson, in their text on stress management, suggest ‘split-page scheduling’ – dividing your planner page with a line down the middle, listing your plans, activities and appointments down the left side, and leaving the right side blank until the end of the day. Then you use the right side to record the unpredicted moments that arose during the day, such as “a new acquaintance, a fresh idea, a child’s question, an unexpected opportunity, a friend’s need, a chance meeting, a beautiful sunset.”

By opening ourselves to a certain amount of spontaneity in the day, we have the possibility of becoming more creative, experiencing life more fully, and even choosing to take new directions. We allow ourselves to enjoy the journey more, while not losing sight of the destination.

Yesterday, I spent a few lovely hours with my friend, walking and talking. We learned more about each other, enjoyed the fresh air and exercise, and came home hungry and tired. Even with my sore feet (lesson learned: don’t walk 4 miles in flip-flops), I still felt invigorated when I got home. I was able to get some of my work done, I enjoyed the process of preparing dinner more than usual, and I slept well. It felt like a day well-lived.

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth;

The glory of action;

The splendor of achievement;

For yesterday is but a dream,

And tomorrow is only a vision;

But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day!

“Kalidasa,” ancient Sanskrit poem

Cicada vs chain saw

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Sounds I hear while meditating:

Cicadas

The hum of something – traffic? A lawnmower?

Yipping of a small dog

A hammer

A chain saw

My breath

There’s something incredibly comforting about the sounds I hear on an average day in my neighborhood: the insects, the birds, construction on a neighbor’s house, the sound of children playing. Like a baby who becomes accustomed to its mother’s voice while in her womb, these are the sounds that tell me everything is “normal”, life goes on.

But when I sit down to meditate, these sounds can also serve as a focal point. Following the breath in mindfulness meditation is very popular, but sometimes I find it difficult to stay focused on the breath. So what I like to do is to just sit and experience the sounds in my environment, especially in the spring and summer. If the windows are open, I can hear a lot of sounds from outdoors, both natural and manmade. Today, with the windows closed and the air conditioning on, most of the sounds were distant and muffled. My house was silent; I couldn’t hear appliances, air conditioning or computers from where I was sitting. So I became very aware of what was happening outside.

Most of the time, we don’t focus on the sounds around us, unless they are exceptionally pleasant or irritating. Sound just becomes a background for whatever we are thinking or doing at the moment. But when I stop and listen to each sound separately, it’s easier to find the quiet spaces between them. Deepak Chopra has said that, “Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there.” Although it seems counterintuitive, paying attention to sound helps me find silence.

While there aren’t many rules for meditating, having a passive attitude (nonjudging) is recommended. One way to achieve this is by becoming the observer rather than the thinker: I am not my thoughts, so I can note them and watch them pass with a sense of detachment. Observing the sounds around me helps with this, because they seem so remote and apart from me. The sound of the chain saw is no worse or better than the sound of the cicada; they both merely exist.

Heightening my awareness of sound, and observing it passively, can lead, I hope, to becoming a less judgmental observer of myself and others. Can I apply that kind of awareness to my own emotions and attitudes, learning to see and identify them before I act on them? The Dalai Lama says that “It is really a matter of habit…the more habituated you are to this awareness of the rising of emotion, the awareness in itself creates a separation between you and the emotion…”

So I listen to the sounds of my neighborhood, and hope to create a habit.

Living with uncertainty

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“Stress levels increased since 1983,” read the headline in USA Today last week. Not surprised? What’s interesting is why stress is higher for some people than others.

Sheldon Cohen and Denise Janicki-Deverts analyzed three national surveys (1983, 2006 and 2009) that used the same measure of stress. In all three, women’s stress was consistently higher than men’s, younger people had more stress than older people, people with less education reported higher stress than those with more, and people with lower incomes showed more stress than people with higher incomes.

What was different between 2006 and 2009 was that the increase in stress after the economic downturn was almost totally driven by middle-aged, college-educated, white men who were employed full-time. Cohen and Janicki-Deverts theorize that this finding could be related to the “threat of job loss, actual job loss, or loss of retirement funds.”

But what I see is that this could also be about loss of power and control. It’s not news that people who are lower in a hierarchy have more stress than those on top. And since it’s also still true that most of the power in our society is held by white middle-aged men with college degrees and full-time jobs, in some senses those people had the most to lose when the economy turned sour.

The stress levels of women, the young and the poor didn’t increase significantly because their position in the hierarchy didn’t change much. But for white, middle-aged men, the downturn may have been the first time they felt themselves to be on shaky ground. All of a sudden, there were no guarantees.

“The Company Men”, a film about the economic downturn, portrays this theme convincingly. The main characters, who thought they had it made, suddenly were experiencing the uncertainty that other groups have traditionally lived with. Depending on their access to coping strategies, they either weathered the storm or were destroyed by it.

Our new reality is that many of us will be living with uncertainty for a long time. So how do we inhabit that reality in a way that doesn’t wear us down and make us sick?

  • Recognize what you can control and what you cannot. The stock market is out of our control. So are the actions of other people. But we can control how we react to events. Focus on what’s present right now instead of worrying about what can’t be predicted or controlled.
  • Be careful of how you talk to yourself. Too often, we limit ourselves by having a negative narrative going on in our minds (I’m not good enough, I’m too old, I’ll be next to lose my job). Practice replacing those negative thoughts with positive statements.
  • Believe in yourself. Easier said than done, right? It takes practice to change how you think of yourself. But if you remind yourself of the way you’ve handled situations in the past, and all the things that you are capable of, your ability to believe and trust in yourself will increase.
  • Write about it. James Pennebaker and others have shown that people who write about their feelings every day for several days can improve their moods and feel better emotionally.
  • Have a sense of humor. It helps us change our perspective on life events and sometimes even turns a potential stressor into something less threatening. Know what kinds of jokes, movies or comics are sure to make you laugh, so that you can turn to them when necessary.
  • Consider the idea of change as opportunity. As Claude Bernard once said, “Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.”

 

Stories we tell

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Every family has stories – usually a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. Some stories are told over and over, and others get hidden away like skeletons in the closet. But all the stories shape us and our life stories.

Sometimes I stare at the old photos of my great-grandparents, or my dad with his army buddies, and try to figure out who they were. Were their lives mostly hard work and disappointment, or did they experience joy and possibility? How does the answer to that question explain who I am? Did I just inherit my blue eyes and brown hair from them, or does their legacy also include patterns of behavior and ways of looking at the world?

Carl Jung wrote that, “The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life.” In other words, our perspective can be profoundly shaped by our early experience.

People in my family have been farmers, miners, autoworkers, soldiers, teachers and cooks. One was a blacksmith, one a postmaster, and another a mayor. One person has a library named for him, while others lived and died in anonymity. Their stories include poverty, abandonment, infidelity and suicide, as well as pioneering spirit, public service, loyalty and courage.

While I want to embrace many of the values I inherited from them, such as a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility, I sometimes find myself stuck with some of the others, such as a tendency to think small and play it safe – characteristics that probably result from generations who always had to struggle. Can we change our lives enough as adults to establish a broader legacy for our own children? Is it possible to get past the negative self-talk, the family dysfunction, and the habitual patterns of behavior to grow into a more satisfying life while still building on the positive aspects of the past?

Just tuning in and becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings, then being able to label them, are good first steps. In their book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves define emotional intelligence as “your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”

Understanding emotions and managing behavior require us to pay attention to them. Sometimes we are so caught up in daily life that we act and react without thought. Keeping a journal (or writing a blog) can help focus the attention on what we are doing and feeling.  Formally practicing mindfulness can also help develop the ability to slow down and pay more attention to our emotional lives. A mindfulness practice can be as simple as sitting quietly and observing the breath for a little while each day. In his book, Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about mindfulness that it “enables us to be in touch with life, which is wonderful in the present moment.”

So perhaps that is the legacy I can give my children: a consciousness of my actions, a smile shared in joy, an awareness of how awesome life is right now. If I can do that for myself, and for them, what stories will they tell?

 

Knowing when to surrender

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While doing child’s pose yesterday in yoga, our teacher said that the pose is also called “wisdom pose”. I had never heard this before, but as I thought about it, it made sense. In child’s pose, we need to relax and surrender to gravity, to make ourselves vulnerable like children. And in life, it often requires a lot of wisdom for us to fully surrender and let things be.

Do you ever think about how much energy you use up fighting things? From the mundane fights (traffic, kids’ bedtimes, the cable company) to more important fights (interpersonal conflict, problems at work, health issues), so much of our time is taken up with struggling against things that we sometimes feel like we’re not moving to anything.

Part of what drives us is the need to have and keep control of things in our lives. A feeling of control is important to managing stress; but so is realizing when something is out of our control, or deciding that control just isn’t worth the price it requires. So there might be times when it’s appropriate to “give in”, such as when maintaining a relationship is more important than winning an argument, or when the outcome is clearly more important to the other person than it is to you.

Exercising control is often a response to fear as well. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of facing difficult emotions – all can lead us to fiercely hold onto positions that really aren’t serving us. Bertrand Russell said that “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” And sometimes surrendering control, allowing events to happen and feelings to rise, is the beginning of conquering fear.

Sometimes when we are over-efforting, micromanaging every detail, too focused on the outcome, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. If we take a step back to see things as they are, and just stop trying so hard, we might be more successful in reaching our goals. Soren Gordhamer writes that “we can often make more progress and with less stress not by trying harder but by trying softer. By doing so, there is an ease to our effort…”

Top athletes and other types of performers know how to try “softer”, although they may call it by a different name. They train and practice for hours, but when called upon to perform, they have to let go of thinking through every move, step, or note and just let things flow through them. They have the wisdom to surrender, and to trust what is inside of them.

I just read about a study of centenarians showing that the people who live longest are the most optimistic and carefree, relaxed and upbeat, and notably non-neurotic. They are the people who let go of their stress rather than internalizing it. I don’t know if they are practicing child’s pose, but something tells me that they are also people who have learned the value of surrendering.

In the zone

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Comfort zone, time zone, twilight zone, euro zone, green zone, in the zone? As we traverse in and out of various kinds of zones, how can we keep as balanced and true to ourselves as possible?

I just came back from a trip to three different countries in 11 days. While this trip sets no kind of record for whirlwind travel, it still demanded an expenditure of energy in both mind and body to find some kind of equilibrium each day. Stepping into another country takes me to the borders of my comfort zone, at least at first. Then I add crossing time zones, and life definitely takes on a twilight zone feel!

While the body can be helped by following good travel advice like refraining from caffeine and alcohol, drinking plenty of water, and exposing oneself to sunlight every day, how do we handle the mental stress?

I love having new experiences, seeing unfamiliar places, learning new things – but such growth doesn’t happen in my comfort zone. So I had to think about how best to navigate the challenges of meeting a lot of new people, learning my way around strange cities and communicating in places where I don’t speak the language.

On my trip, I happened to be reading Search Inside Yourself, a new book by Chade-Meng Tan about the mindfulness-based emotional intelligence curriculum he started at Google. In the book, Meng describes the emotional competencies that (according to Daniel Goleman) make up self-awareness: emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment and self-confidence.

Meng, who describes himself as a shy person, discussed how he prepared for a speech to a large audience by using these competencies of self-awareness. He made his ego “small enough that my ‘self’ did not matter,” and big enough that he “felt perfectly comfortable speaking alongside” the luminaries at the event. He also kept in mind his strengths and limitations so that he could focus “on adding value where [he] could contribute most.”

I realized that by bringing mindfulness and self-awareness to my experiences on my trip, I was better able to deal with the challenges and turn them into positive events. I’m not the bravest or most out-going person in the world, but by staying present and paying attention to people and situations, I was able to increase my self-confidence and to use my strengths to my advantage. For instance, as a spouse at a dinner with people in an industry in which I do not work, sometimes I might feel inadequate or not “high-powered” enough. But by focusing on my strengths in my own field of stress management, and being mindfully engaged with each person I met, I found that I had plenty to contribute to conversations.

In a similar way, as I navigated streets and neighborhoods, I relied on my strong sense of direction, my curiosity and my desire to see everything to give me the confidence to explore on my own. But I tried to stay emotionally aware so that I would know when I needed a break in the “comfort” zone of my hotel room.

The British writer Lawrence Durrell once said, “Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.” In that spirit, I’m still tapping into Search Inside Yourself at home now. I plan to use some of the book’s tools, such as journaling and body scanning, to build even greater self-awareness. After all, we never know when the next trip outside our comfort zone will happen.

Transition Time

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I’m getting ready to leave on a trip out of the country, and I find myself looking forward to the airplane flight. Is it perverse to look forward to 8 hours stuck on a plane, with uncomfortable seats, so-so food and potentially irritating fellow passengers? Maybe, but the reason I’m anticipating it is because of the time it will give me to shift my perspective from the hustle and bustle of home/work/pre-trip preparation to the rhythm of days spent seeing new things and mastering unfamiliar cities.

Skipping transition time can make it more difficult to change tasks. From the toddler who has a tantrum when a play date abruptly ends, to the adult who has to go from meeting to meeting all day, everyone needs space to process change. When we don’t leave enough time before and after each activity, stress is often the result, either because we can’t stick to our hectic schedules, or because we just don’t have time to think.

When we experience stress in the emotional center of the brain, other executive functions of the brain are affected almost immediately. It’s harder to focus, we have trouble making decisions, and our ability to engage in abstract thinking is compromised. Some people can recover more quickly if they are psychologically resilient, but that usually is a result of a temperament you’re born with, or practicing stress management.

That brings me back to transition time as part of a stress management plan. It provides a psychological break between one thing and another that can allow us to process what just happened and to organize our thinking for what’s about to happen. It can also nurture our creativity. The Japanese chef and restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisa travels all over the world regularly. He said in a recent interview that, “I actually prefer a longer flight to a short one. That way I have time to read a book, watch movies, and think about new dishes.” If he didn’t have that time to just relax and think, would his restaurants be as successful as they are?

In this era of 24/7 availability, it is also welcome to have time on planes to be quiet. Although the advent of WiFi on planes has made it easier (and perhaps expected) that people will work during a flight, at least there are still no ringing and buzzing cell phones. We can all have a short break from immediate access.

My time during the flight will be spent with a book, maybe a game of Sudoku, and I hope, some sleep. I will enjoy hearing the accents of the Scandinavian flight attendants, adjusting my ear to the voices I will hear when I arrive. I’ll have time to breathe, to re-set my brain, and get ready to discover what the days ahead hold for me.

Running with friends

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Yesterday I ran a 10k race, the longest I’ve run since my last 10k in November. I would not have done it without my running partner, Naomi.  I would say we keep each other motivated, but it’s more like we keep each other from being slackers. Neither of us loves running enough to do it consistently on our own. But knowing that we’re each depending on the other keeps us going.

Years of studies consistently show that social support is a significant factor in keeping people exercising, especially women. One recent study indicates that it is the esteem social support that is most significant – the positive feedback, encouragement and compliments we receive from others. On the other hand, companionship social support – having another person exercise with you – can actually keep people from exercising more strenuously.

I guess in some ways, that’s what’s happening with my friend and me. We keep each other running, but we don’t often push each other to work harder. We talk a lot while we run; a favorite question when the running gets difficult for one of us is, “Do you have a good story?” We don’t work together or live near each other, so hearing about each other’s lives is a great diversion. This doesn’t lend itself to doing speed work, but it has made us better friends over the years.

I could, and sometimes do, run with my husband. He’s good about keeping us on pace and running longer distances. But he sets a high standard for himself and that can sometimes carry over to me. Running with my friend, by comparison, is pretty much judgment-free. If one of us wants to walk, we walk. If one of us wants to run 3 miles instead of 4, that’s what we do. And if one of us suggests a 10k, the other one usually agrees.

The question, I guess, is what’s enough? While I know that challenging myself physically can prepare me for other challenges in life, I’m not the kind of person who needs to run a marathon to accomplish that. I have plenty of other opportunities in my life to prove myself, and to get that runner’s “high” feeling. Running is just one of the ways that I stay healthy. So even though it was a bit disheartening to see the fastest runners returning toward us when we were still two miles from the finish, I don’t feel too bad about our 10-1/2 minute miles yesterday. We ran 6.2 miles for the first time this year, and we felt pretty good at the end of it.

Olympian Wilma Rudolph, once the fastest woman in the world, said that she “… loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I’m competing with is me.” My wish for every run is to find that kind of freedom and to feel the lightness that can come from running unencumbered in the fresh air. I may not be setting records, but I’m still running, and I’m glad I’m not alone.

Earth Day 2012…

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…and it’s raining a steady, drenching rain. It is cold and miserable, yet nourishing to our plants and soil, which were snow-deprived all winter. It’s a good day to sit inside and think about what the day means and how I can do my part to make my piece of the Earth a healthier place.

When Earth Day started 40 years ago, it was in response to an an oil spill, and it ignited a new focus on environmental activism and political action. Much of the Earth Day messaging has been about energy use, clean air and water, and more recently, climate change. The theme for Earth Day last year was “A Billion Acts of Green”, and currently the counter on the EDN web site shows over 999 million acts of green submitted by visitors to the site.

The theme for the Earth Day Network this year is “Mobilize the Earth”, calling on people worldwide to unite their words and actions to create a sustainable future. “A Billion Acts of Green” and “Mobilize the Earth” speak to the idea that small actions can add up to a large impact, and that it will take all of us together to make the world a better place to live and grow.

So I’ve been thinking about what acts of green I can add to my life. I already recycle as much of my trash as I can, freecycle some unwanted items and donate others, try to use gadgets as long as possible before buying new ones, responsibly recycle my electronics, use an electric lawn mower, combine errands in the car when possible, and respond to appeals from Clean Water Action and other environmental groups. What’s left?

  • Being more mindful of water use. My local water company says that 70 gallons is the typical daily per person water usage in our area. My household is a little lower than that, but it’s still vastly greater than people use in other countries. Millions of people in the world don’t have access to a reliable source of clean water at all.
  • Riding my bike instead of driving. Last summer I bought a pannier for my bicycle, determined that I was going to start riding to the grocery store. I did it exactly once before the weather got cold. (I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to riding in cold weather). I am going to set a goal of substituting the bike for the car once a week this spring and summer. This has the added benefit of being exercise too!
  • Making “meatless Mondays” a habit. We’ve been gradually incorporating this idea in our house and 2012 could be the year to solidify it. The meatless Monday trend has the benefit of being good for the environment (lots of CO2 comes from cattle), saving water (it takes a lot more water to raise animals for meat than it does to grow plants) and making us healthier too. The Meatless Mondays web site has lots of great recipe ideas and other tips on how to incorporate this idea into your life.
  • Volunteering. Yes, I belong to environmental organizations, write letters occasionally, and send them money sometimes. But I used to do more, such as cleaning up my local stream and volunteering for environmental organizations. I can do that again.

I read back over the steps I’m proposing to take, and I see how intertwined my well-being is with that of the Earth. Eating less meat, exercising more and being connected to my community will all benefit me while I am getting “greener”. My individual future is inextricably linked to the future of my world. As Aldo Leopold once said, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Words: Handle with care

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Wandering around the Library of Congress last week, my eyes gravitated to a quote high on the wall. It said, “Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”   At the time, I didn’t know who had said it (Ralph Waldo Emerson), but it stuck in my head for days.

As I was growing up, I often heard adults say, “Actions speak louder than words.” Emerson seems to be saying that words and actions are equal, that while our actions speak for us, our words have the capacity to sting or caress as surely as if we were using our hands.

This couldn’t be truer than it is today. In this age of digital communication, people tend to throw words around carelessly. With email and texting, we don’t have to worry about wasting paper or ink; we don’t have to take the time to put a letter in an envelope, stamp it and mail it in order to send someone a message. So we don’t think as carefully about the things we say. Words have become a cheap commodity, often chosen without a lot of thought as to their meaning or effect.

If we stop and think about how much of our stress is coming from interactions with other people, we can see that a lot of it is a result of the blunt force of these mindless communications. Emails and texts deprive us of tone of voice, facial expression and body language, so their messages are often misinterpreted. Sometimes offense is taken when none was intended. Speaking face to face is not always better; often people speak at each other rather than to each other. We wait for our turn to speak, rather than listening so that we can respond with understanding.

Headlines are made when celebrities are forced to close their Twitter accounts or politicians are driven from office due to ill-advised words. For the rest of us, the results of miscommunication can be just as painful and devastating: someone doesn’t speak to you anymore, relationships are strained, or business is lost.

How can we practice communicating more clearly, more carefully and more compassionately?

  • Do take the time to be sure that saying something serves a useful purpose. Soren Gordhamer makes the point that sometimes our comments (on-line or in person) are just a form of one-upmanship: “When we are caught in what we may call the judging mind, we continually look for people and actions to criticize. Instead of a critique that seeks to help, we do so to build up our own sense of superiority.”
  • Do pay attention to what others are saying non-verbally, with eye contact, body language and even silences.
  • Do listen reflectively to other people. Repeat or rephrase what they have said to you to be sure you understand it.
  • Don’t communicate difficult messages (like breaking up with someone) via email or text. Give the other person the respect of a face-to-face meeting.
  • Don’t hit the “send” button so quickly, especially if your message is complicated or unwelcome. Wait 10 minutes and read it again to be sure it conveys what you really want the other person to hear.

How would it feel to be on the receiving end of your words? Should that be our standard for better communication? As the Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.”