Search Results for: practice

On our podcast, Live Happy Now, we bring you ideas and research on how to live a happier and more meaningful life. You’ll find dozens of interviews with positive psychology and well-being thought leaders as well as media personalities like veteran newsman and bestselling author Dan Harris, whose talk we’ve excerpted below. How do you ­find the time to meditate? I prioritize a few things. I make sure I get enough sleep, enough exercise, that I get to spend time with my family, and I make sure to meditate. I try to not get overly worked up over any one thing at any one moment. I do my best to get it all done, and sometimes things fall by the wayside and I try to pick it up tomorrow. This is where meditation is very helpful. I think in some ways, counterintuitively, making a little bit of time to do mental hygiene actually makes you more effective because you spend less time engaged in useless rumination and worry. We spend a lot of time working on our home décor, our stock portfolios, our hair, our bodies, but most of us spend no time working on the one ­filter we experience everything through and that’s our mind. And it’s just common sense to tune the thing up. What advice do you have for people who are hesitant to get inside their own heads? First of all, you’re not alone. It’s not a strange concern to have. A lot of people are worried that if they look into their own mind they might not like what they see. It’s there anyway and it is having an impact on you whether you choose to see it or not. So your options are whether to be yanked around by it unconsciously or to deal with it forthrightly. What is a good starting practice to jump into meditation? I’m a Type A person and when I do things I expect a certain result. I expect a win, but you don’t really win at meditation. It’s not that kind of endeavor. You have to go in expecting that you’re going to be distracted. In most forms of meditation you’re focusing on your breath and you’re going to get lost a million times. People think that if you’re getting lost you’re doing it wrong, but in fact the act of meditation is simply to notice when you’ve become distracted and to start over again. And that act of failure is success. It’s like a bicep curl for your brain. Every time you notice you’re worrying and you start again that is a bicep curl. It changes your brain. It may feel like failure, but it isn’t.

52 Small Changes for the Mind: Improve Memory. Minimize Stress. Increase Productivity. Boost Happiness. by Brett Blumenthal    By making one small change a week all year long, we can feel much less stressed and more fulfilled, writes author Brett Blumenthal. Read 20 minutes a day. Choose books and articles you actually want to (rather than should) read. When you read what you love, your interest in reading grows. Reading keeps your brain healthy and protects against memory loss. Go on a screen diet. How much of your day is spent in front of a screen? Brett reports that some Americans spend up to 10 hours a day online, on mobile devices and in front of the TV. Try to reduce digital time by an hour a day. Attend a lecture in person instead of online or go to a concert instead of watching YouTube videos. Too much screen time can result in stress and sleeping problems, research shows. Deal with demons. Holding on to regret for past mistakes can hurt your potential and your future. Ask yourself: What past mistakes still upset you? Acknowledge your regrets and ask yourself what lessons you have learned. Start viewing your mistakes as “invaluable blessings,” Brett says. The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success by Emma Seppala, Ph.D. In her book, The Happiness Track, Emma Seppala, Ph.D., writes that working in a stressed-out overdrive mode isn’t the best or only pathway to success. With the latest findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, she shows us how happiness has a profound effect on our professional lives by increasing our productivity as well as our emotional and social intelligence. Tap into your natural resilience. Do something restorative to shore up your resilience like taking a hike in nature or getting a massage. Emma says that the best way to immediately gain resilience in a difficult situation is to focus on your breath, a “rapid and reliable pathway to your nervous system dedicated to helping you regain your optimal state.” Succeed through compassion. A compassionate culture at work results in improved employee productivity and well-being. Inspire each other at work, look out for one another, emphasize the meaningfulness of the work and treat each other with respect and gratitude. Manage your energy well. Letting your emotions rule you can be exhausting. Instead, cultivate calm.  “When you are calm, you are better able to manage your thoughts and feelings,” writes Emma. Being calm allows you to be more observant, listen better, communicate more skillfully and make better decisions. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage, writes author Brené Brown. When we try to prevent ourselves from feeling vulnerable, we also are shutting out experiences that can bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Let go of perfectionism. Perfectionism is the belief that if we do things perfectly we can avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame. Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Instead, she advises to move toward healthy striving, which is self-focused: How can I improve? Practice being seen. Share a product, article or piece of art you have created. To become more courageous, we have to risk being vulnerable. You can want people to like what you share without attaching your self-worth to how it is received. Without your self-worth on the line, you are more likely to risk sharing your raw talent and gifts. Connect. True belonging can only happen when we are self-accepting and present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world. Want to live a connected life? Spend less time and energy winning over people who don’t matter, and see the value of cultivating your true relationships. With vulnerability, you can welcome more love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation and creativity into your life. The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work by Christine Carter, Ph.D. Do you ever feel like you are in a rut of busyness? With her expertise on happiness, productivity and elite performance, author Christine Carter shows you how to step off the merry-go-round of busy and find your sweet spot. Start a new happy habit. The brain starts to wire itself for greater automaticity the first time we repeat a behavior, so you can make huge strides in forming a new habit in just a day or so. Select a new habit that would make you happy if you did it every day—one that has the greatest built-in reward for you. It could be taking a walk at dusk or starting a gratitude journal. Show compassion for strangers. It’s easy to do nice things for people you love, but you can become an Olympic-level giver by giving your time, money or love to strangers. Acts of compassion can help you shift from self-preoccupation to true connection and community. Gain mastery. Mastery is the purest example of finding your sweet spot, where strength and ease intersect. When you master an activity, you have great power with little strain. Gaining mastery often means facing difficulty, persisting and practicing. Christine writes that we should stop trying so hard to do everything right and gain the freedom that comes from doing the right things instead.

“Humans are my favorite animal.” This quote came from a graduate student during one of my recent workshops at the University of Pennsylvania. It captures the priorities of a person high in social intelligence. These individuals want to be around other people, interacting and connecting. They may not always agree with each person but they can appear to be just as comfortable with a CEO, a teacher, a young child or a homeless person. They’re quick to see the common humanity that is part of all of us. How about you? Do you have a sense of what makes other people tick? Do you feel you can easily fit into most social situations? Are you closely attuned to your own feelings as well as to the emotions of others? One of the quickest ways to begin expressing your social intelligence is to practice seeing and naming the strengths in people around you. You can use the “learning to SEA” method of strengths-spotting: Spot a character strength: “I see kindness in you…” Explain what you saw: “…because you were giving extra time helping that student after the meeting.” Appreciate and validate the person for the strength: “I appreciated seeing your kindness in action. It was inspiring for how I will try to interact with my employees.” This SEA method is your social intelligence-in-action because you’re observing others, understanding a core part of them and using your social savvy to communicate this with the person. Consider the impact of bringing your social intelligence and strengths-spotting to people in your life. Use it with those you love the most and with those whom you have differences in opinions and beliefs. Social intelligence means to look deeper. Taking time to understand and empathize can have a significant impact. Here are three additional ways you can build your social intelligence in different situations: In one of your relationships, when you find yourself in a relational argument you have been in before, attempt to find at least one positive element in the other person’s comments and opinions. Find a way to bring this into the conversation. At work, make a point to empathize with one of your co-workers who seems to be upset, stressed, or having difficulty with something in their life. Gently ask some questions and check in to see whether they are comfortable sharing with you. Be sure to spend more time listening than speaking and, if appropriate, offer emotional support. At a community outing or just walking around a local park, take notice of someone who seems alone, unhappy, excluded, or cast aside. Use your social intelligence to approach them and start a conversation.