Are you feeling burnt out? Have you considered… taking a break?
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These books are not self-help books, explicitly, but they’ll encourage you to tune into yourself and the world around you. And they’re really, really good.
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The “New Year Season” is one that can be rife with mixed emotions, reactions, and approaches. Some may feel excitement at the chance to start with a fresh slate, some may find themselves engaging in self-criticism as they set their new year’s resolutions, and others may disregard the idea of the time construct and the marker of a new year entirely. Engaging in discourse with loved ones about their viewpoints, emotions, and plans for the new year can be an incredible way to connect more deeply. You’ll learn more about them and their perspective on life while getting the chance to reflect on what you want this next year to look like together, and how you may support each other in that. Conversations about the new year can be triggering for some - so approaching these conversations with meaningful questions that omit judgment and leave space for a range of experiences and thoughts is of the utmost importance. Try out the questions below, and see how much more connected you feel to your loved one going into the new year!
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As people emerge from their quarantine shells and start attending social gatherings again, a lot of us are feeling more socially awkward than usual. That’s totally normal to feel strange after not interacting with people in a social setting for a while!
So I wanted to offer a strategy for coping with social discomfort, whether it’s coming from post-quarantine awkwardness, chronic social anxiety, or something in between.
To be clear, though, it’s also fine if you DO lose your mind while grieving. Even if you’re feeling pressure to “hold it together” from loved ones, coworkers, or others, it is totally normal to not be able to live up to your usual obligations.
While it’s totally fine to not “have your life together,” you still deserve to feel supported and grounded as often as possible while you’re grieving. So here are some tips for lightening your burden.
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Modern mindfulness meditation practices often aren’t trauma-informed. So, it’s no wonder that a lot of people have trouble finding a practice that works for them.
And that’s unfortunate because when done well, mindfulness can offer so many benefits to your everyday experience of the world that research often has a tough time keeping up with all the wonderful things that mindfulness can do: it’s been shown to help smokers quit, reduce social anxiety, decrease chronic pain, improve memory, and so much more.
So here are some tips, from one person who used to absolutely hate meditation and all things mindfulness-related (and who now actually enjoys them), about how to make meditation and mindfulness work for you.
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If you’re feeling like you’re struggling a little more than usual right now, you’re not alone.
As of writing this article, a lot of us are feeling burnt out from about a year of masking up, social distancing, and avoiding social gatherings.
Fortunately, there’s actually a physiological shortcut to calming down when you’re feeling anxious or angry.
It’s called the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve helps bring your body back to homeostasis after it’s freaked out.
The nerve runs throughout your body and controls a ton of body functions, like digestion, blood vessel dilation/contraction, heart rate, breathing, and more.
So, when you activate your vagus nerve, you get your digestion to speed up and your heart rate to slow down.
The good news is that there are some neat (and possibly surprising) shortcuts to stimulating your vagus nerve!
This week, I’m thinking about the above quote I found via psychologist and author Nedra Tawwab.
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We're excited to either introduce you to or remind you about made-famous-by-Instagram-but-actually-because-of-talent-not-just-because-her-stuff-is-on-Instagram poet Nayyirah Waheed. Her books salt. and Nejma are brimming with unpretentious poems that capture human experiences we don't usually talk about in everyday life. So, obviously, she's very much our jam. Here are some of our favorite poems of hers that capture some of the ideas we've discussed in other blogposts or at our events.
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“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings,” said Stephen King, riffing off of a William Faulkner quote about writing. King and Faulkner were pointing out that the best writers are willing to erase portions of their writing that don't fit the larger story, even if the writing itself is good.
It’s the same with conversations. The best conversationalists are willing to go with the flow instead of trying to insert a thought from a few minutes ago wherever they can, even if that thought is clever, funny, or insightful. They're willing to give up contributing any given idea in order to be more present.
Whether you’re spending the holidays with family, with friends, or with yourself this year, your celebrations probably won’t live up to the impossibly wholesome fireside gatherings that the media depicts as the norm. Well, the good news is that no matter how many pictures of glistening ham you see on Instagram, nobody else’s holiday is going to be perfect, either. So, we’ve come up with some tips for making the most out of your holidays, whatever they look like.
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Has your anger ever led to an action you regretted? Maybe you sent a text you didn’t feel great about, maybe some words came out of your mouth more harshly than you’d intended, or maybe your anger came out sideways and you spent some time silently fuming and distracted from your everyday life. Since anger can compel you to take action before thinking, it can be useful to have some tools ready for the next time you’re feeling peeved.
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