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Live Happy's Tips for Happy Healthy Summer

9 Ways to Stay Healthy and Happy This Summer

Summer is synonymous with happiness. How can you not be happy basking in the sunshine, relaxing on the beach, celebrating with a cookout, playing with your kids or lounging poolside? And while it all sounds heavenly, sometimes summer is spent figuring out how to entertain the kiddos from dawn to dusk so they don’t drive you wacko. If you really want a happy, healthy summer—one where you can bask in its long days without the kids driving you crazy—try these nine tips. (We recommend reading this in your hammock.) 1. Plan “me” time When life gets crazy, (when is it not?) the first thing that usually goes to the wayside is time just for you. Take turns with your spouse and make dates with yourself. Watch the kiddos while your spouse gets a little solitude, and then let your spouse give you that precious time, too. Hang out in a coffee shop, read a good book, meditate, take a long bike ride or catch an afternoon matinee—do something that allows you to think, reflect, relax or just unplug. 2. Make healthy eating fun Browse farmers markets and get some gorgeous seasonal produce. Teach your kids about the health benefits of real foods by experimenting with clean-eating recipes to make delicious, colorful meals and snacks. Learn the three easy steps to healthier eating. 3. Fill your calendar with joy You can have a lot of control and influence over how happy your summer is if you proactively plan weekends with your absolute favorite things to do, like hosting a cookout for your street, planning a weekend getaway or scheduling an outdoor adventure. Not only do you get the joy that comes from anticipation, but you also get a fun experience and a wonderful memory! (It’s a trio of happiness.) 4. Investigate your favorite exercise The key to exercising regularly isn’t about finding the time—it’s about finding an exercise you love. Because if you love it, you will do it. Summer is the ideal time to try out some new activities. Paddle-boarding anyone? Golf? (Skip the cart.) Take your kids on a family hike. Sign up to jog your first 5K. Go in search of an exercise to fall in love with, and you just might get hooked. 5. Remind yourself why sleep is wonderful Make your bedroom a place of serenity and calm by cleaning out any clutter that could be clogging you mentally. Get your favorite sheets and comforter. Open a window if it’s cool enough for gentle breezes. Fully embrace sleep as one of life’s great pleasures. 6. Know what recharges you When you’re feeling run down and frazzled, what restores you? What fills you up? Make a list of the top three activities that replenish your mind and body and then carve out time to do them. You’ll love life more when you feel full and mentally clear, instead of frazzled and depleted. 7. Seek a change of scenery Go on a vacation, drive to your neighboring town or just try a new restaurant. Changing up your normal environment can be uplifting and offer a new perspective. Read our 5 tips for an energy-boosting vacation. 8. Keep a journal Journaling helps with self-awareness, mental clarity and preserving memories, but keep the right journal for you. It could be a one-sentence journal about your day or maybe a travel journal where you record your summer adventures. You may even consider keeping a gratitude journal, where you jot down what you appreciate about your day. If it’s more your speed, use your journal to doodle or brainstorm your next big idea. Read more about journaling as a five-minute misery cure. 9. Go deeper with conversation If you’re having a dinner party, as you set the table, think about how you’d like to direct the conversation with your guests. Sometimes, with a little planning, you can cultivate meaningful conversations instead of surface chitchat. Bonus tip: Don’t start cleaning up when people are done eating, as that signals everyone that dinner is over. Sit and just enjoy your conversations—it’s good for your health and longevity! Make this your best summer yet by aligning it closer to what you value most. Happiness will follow. Click here to read about how to have a happy family roadtrip this summer. Sandra Bienkowski worked as the national columns editor for SUCCESS magazine for three years, and is widely published in print and on the web. See more about Sandra at The Media Concierge.

Practice

6 Steps to Mindfulness Meditation

1. Get Comfortable Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Ideally this would be a room in your house where you can be alone and at peace. 2. Get in position You might try sitting cross-legged on a low cushion on the floor, or upright in a chair. Some people prefer to meditate lying down. 3. Get relaxed Close your eyes, set a timer for five minutes if you are just starting out, and begin by taking a few deep, cleansing breaths. Breath in deeply (but naturally) through your nose, and out through either your nose or mouth—whichever feels more comfortable to you. Let the breaths flow all the way down into your abdomen. 4. Focus on your breaths Become aware of the sound of your breaths as you inhale and exhale. As you inhale, you breathe in all the peaceful and joyful things around you. As you exhale, you rid your mind and body of all the stress and toxins that have been bothering you. Let your mind become mesmerized by the rhythmic pattern of your breathing. 5. Bring your thoughts back to center Your mind will wander. When you notice your thoughts wandering off from your breath, don't chastise yourself—it's totally normal. Simply acknowledge it and bring your focus back to the center, back to your breaths. Take in your immediate surroundings. What do you hear? What do you feel right now, at this moment? Try not to ruminate on the past or worry about the future, but be present in this pure moment. 6. Make a commitment Like exercise, meditation takes practice. And the more we practice, the better we get and the stronger that mindfulness muscle becomes. Even just five to ten minutes per day has been shown to make an enormous difference to well-being after just eight weeks of meditation practice. Let us know about your own mindfulness practice in the Comments section, below.

Self-Care

5 Strategies to Make You More Productive

Whether we love or hate our jobs, the amount of work most of us have to do each day has reached unsustainable levels. We start a typical workday anxious about how we will get it all done, who we might let down and which important tasks we will sacrifice—again—so we can keep our heads above water. As we grab our first cups of coffee, we check our e-mail in-boxes on our handheld devices, scanning to see who has added a new task to our to-do list. The stress builds as we read e-mail after e-mail, each containing a request that we know can’t be dealt with quickly. We mark these e-mails as unread and save them for . . . “later.” We mentally add them to the piles of work left undone the night before (when we left our offices much too late). More e-mails to answer, more phone calls to return, more paperwork to fill out. And everything needs our immediate attention. Attention deficit In fact, too many things need our attention before we can even get to the tasks that really matter—and too many things matter. We frequently work all day long—at the office and then at home, taking care of our families, cleaning up, paying bills—sometimes only stopping to sleep. There simply isn’t enough time, but so much always needs to be done. Work with your biology, not against it The key to achieving fantastic levels of effectiveness is to work with our biology. We may all be capable of impressive feats of comprehension, motivation, emotional control, problem solving, creativity and decision-making when our biological systems are functioning optimally. But we can be terrible at those very same things when our biological systems are suboptimal. The amount of exercise and sleep we get and the food we eat can greatly influence these mental functions in the short term—even within hours. The mental functions we engage in just prior to tackling a task can also have a powerful effect on whether we accomplish that task. Follow the science Research findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience are revealing a great deal about when and how we can set up periods of highly effective mental functioning. In my book, Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work DoneI share in detail five deceptively simple strategies that I have found are the most successful in helping busy people create the conditions for at least two hours of incredible productivity each day: 1. Recognize your decision points Once you start a task, you run largely on autopilot, which makes it hard to change course. Maximize the power of those moments in between tasks—that’s when you can choose what to take on next, and can therefore decide to tackle what matters most. 2. Manage your mental energy Tasks that need a lot of self-control or focused attention can be depleting, and tasks that make you highly emotional can throw you off your game. Schedule tasks based on their processing demand and recovery time. 3. Stop fighting distractions Learn to direct your attention. Your attention systems are designed to wander and refresh, not to focus indefinitely. Trying to fight that is like trying to fight the ocean tides. Understanding how your brain works will help you get back on track quickly and effectively when you get distracted. 4. Leverage your mind–body connection Move your body and eat in ways that set you up for success in the short term. (You can eat and physically do whatever you want on your downtime.) 5. Make your workspace work for you Learn what environmental factors help you be on top of your game—and how to adjust your environment accordingly. Once you know what distracts you or what primes your brain to be in creating or risk-taking modes, you can adjust your environment for productivity. Reap the rewards These strategies, derived from neuroscience and psychology, may sound simple; some may even seem like common sense. But we rarely employ them. Understanding the science behind them helps us know what’s worth acting on and how to do so within the constraints we have. We can all learn to deploy them regularly and consciously with powerful results. While I believe that you can accomplish great things under the right conditions, I’m not suggesting you’ll be able to get all your work done in just two awesome hours. I do think, however, that when you are mentally effective, you can accomplish whatever matters most to you at that moment, with pride in your work and inspiration to do more. Working in tandem with our biology—setting up the conditions for a couple of hours of peak productivity—allows us not only to focus on the tasks that are most important to us and our success but also to restore some sanity and balance to our lives.

Arianna Huffington: Balanced Media Mogul

People

Arianna Huffington is Redefining Success

Arianna Huffington is passionate about success. And while success has been a focal point throughout her life, she sees it much differently now than she did even a few years ago. Today, her view of success is tied closely to happy living: “Well-being is now going to be in the center of my life, not on the edges.”Speaking at the International Symposium of Contemplative Studies in Boston in November, Arianna shares how she has accomplished the far-reaching goals she set for herself and did it in a way that helped define many of the major topics of our lifetime: women’s roles in the workplace and the world, the changing nature of political leadership and 21st-century innovations in media. Now, she has turned her attention to living a good and happy life.Playing the game of life“We have, if we’re lucky, about 30,000 days to play the game of life,” Arianna says in a recent interview. “How we play it will be determined by what we value. A huge part of that is our relationship with time. So for me, a well-lived life is one where there is ample time for the people in my life who truly matter, time to pause and wonder at the world, and time to delight in the mysteries of the universe, as well as the everyday occurrences and small miracles that fill our lives.”In her 2014 best-selling book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, she asks us to consider redefining success beyond the timeworn standards of money and power: “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.”The value of failingArianna credits her mother with instilling optimism and resilience. “My mother taught us that failure is not the opposite of success, it is the stepping stone to success.”She lives that life philosophy firsthand. After graduating from Cambridge, she wrote a successful book, The Female Woman. But 36 publishers rejected her second book, and a seven-year relationship ended shortly after that.“By about rejection 25, you would have thought I might have said, ‘Hey, you know, there’s something wrong here. Maybe I should be looking at a different career.’ ” Instead she walked into a bank in London where she was living at the time and asked for a loan. “Even though I didn’t have any assets, the banker—whose name was Ian Bell—gave me a loan. It changed my life, because it meant I could keep things together for another 13 rejections and finally, an acceptance.Getting up one more time“In fairy tales there are helpful animals that come out of nowhere to help the hero or heroine through a dark and difficult time, often helping them find a way out of the forest. Well, in life, too, there are helpful animals disguised as human beings, as bank managers like Ian Bell, to whom I still send a Christmas card every year. So, very often, the difference between success and failure is perseverance. It’s how long we can keep going until success happens. It’s getting up one more time than we fall down.”Arianna moved to New York, where she continued writing books and magazine articles. After weathering ups and downs in love, career and even politics, Arianna co-founded The Huffington Post in 2005.The site was not an immediate success; it faced a storm of negative reviews, including one particularly harsh but memorable criticism from LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke, who called it “the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one.”Yet Arianna refused to be diverted by the criticism. Today, she says that backlash gave her the incentive to persevere. The truth is, we are always going toget bad reviews, she says. The answer is to rely on our personal resilience and continue our journey. In her case, the critics may remain, but the site has gained respect, credibility and worldwide recognition.The most powerful blog in the worldIn 2012, The Huffington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for a 10-part series on wounded veterans, becoming the first commercially run digital site in the United States to win the prize. It also has been ranked No. 1 on the Most Popular Political Sites by eBizMBA Rank, and The Observer, a British newspaper, named it the most powerful blog in the world.“At some point, I learned not to dread failure,” she says. “I strongly believe that we are not put on this earth just to accumulate victories and trophies and avoid failures but rather to be whittled and sand-papered down until what’s left is who we truly are.“My advice to those facing critics or challenging times is to refrain from adding our own self-criticism into the mix. This means dealing with the voice I call the obnoxious roommate living in our head, the voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.”Refocusing attentionArianna now uses her media platform to showcase her happiness discoveries. The Huffington Post regularly includes news on happiness and how to achieve it. It’s a journey she embarked on after receiving a serious wake-up call in 2007.Exhausted from the relentless hustle of running a booming media enterprise, Arianna collapsed while at her computer in her home office. As her head hit the desk, she injured her eye, broke her cheekbone and ultimately realized she needed to find a new approach to her hectic life. She returned to the meditation and yoga exercises her mother had shown her as a child. She says now, “I wish they had just told me, ‘You have civilization disease.’ ”That’s how she sees it today, she explained at the Boston symposium: If you are driven to focus only on wealth and power, you, too, might have civilization disease. “Our society is made of highly educated good people making bad decisions. It’s not that they’re not smart, it’s that they’re not wise. We all have that wisdom in us,” she says. “I would never again congratulate someone for working 24/7. It’s like coming to work drunk.”Arianna is using her resources—such as books, speaking engagements and her media company—to help others learn how to adopt a lifestyle that encompasses well-being and wonder, wisdom and giving. She sees mindfulness as an important element in redefining success, in slowing down or even stopping the busyness of our lives, if only for a few important moments to begin each day.“The fact that there is now so much scientific exploration that builds on ancient wisdom is cause for great optimism,” she says. “It doesn’t matter why we start on this journey…at some point we’ll all realize that we’re bigger than our jobs.“However great your job is, you are more marvelous! Getting in touch with that magnificence is part of your journey.”Jan Stanley is a writer, coach and speaker who has worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop leaders and with many people to help them find meaning and joy in work and life.

Giving

Cool to be KIND

When Daniel Lubetzky founded KIND Snacks in 2004 he wanted to create a profitable company that sold good-for-you snack bars made with whole foods and no preservatives. He also wanted to help build a more compassionate world. He’s been successful on both fronts. The company has sold more than a billion snack bars and clusters while the KIND Movement has inspired kind acts that have touched more than a million people. Today, the movement donates $10,000 every month to a community cause, like the Women’s Debate Institute in Baltimore, which is dedicated to closing the gender gap in competitive debating; a New York program that rescues leftover food from restaurants and catering companies and redistributes it to people in need; and Sweet Cases, a California-based project that wants to provide duffel bags or suitcases to kids in foster care so they don’t need to carry their belongings, such as a treasured stuffed animal, in plastic trash bags when they move from home to home. Now Daniel is sharing his principles in a new book, Do the Kind Thing: Think Boundlessly, Work Purposefully, Live Passionately.Whether you’re founding a company or working for one, Daniel offers ways to find meaning in your work. We asked Daniel if he could give Live Happy readers a snack-sized summary of his advice. Here’s what he told us. You need to know what gives you purpose before you can translate it into business practice. Your purpose could be to make others happy. To take care of others. To keep this planet clean. It could be a big global problem, or one that affects your community. You may not have identified what force within drives you. This is why introspection is key. Talking with yourself often and deeply is not always an easy task but there are no shortcuts to understanding what makes you tick. You must take the time to ask yourself questions. Your answer most likely will not come overnight. And it may evolve as you gain other experiences. But that is why it is so important that you consciously invest the time to listen to your inner self along the way. Knowing what makes you happy is the first step to actually being happy. Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, and editor-at-large for Live Happy magazine.

The Life-Changing Power of Cleaning Out Your Closet

Giving

The Life-Changing Magic of Cleaning Your Closet

A personal shopper at Bloomingdale’s once told me your closet should be "like the walls of an art gallery: with lots of empty white space." I’ve always longed for that kind of order, but instead my closets are a jam-packed jumble: shoes piled on top of purses, garment bar sagging under the weight of hundreds of overloaded hangers. Trying to extract my black silk pumps is like attempting to get to the veggie burgers in an overpacked freezer—one wrong move, and you’re pummeled with falling objects (yes, those of us who have messy closets tend to have chaotic freezers, too). Happiness is a clean closet A slim new best-selling volume offers hope. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing was written by Marie Kondo, a 30-year-old organizational guru who’s a superstar in Japan, with a three-month waiting list for her services. Her book has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide with a promise that goes far beyond well-spaced hangers. Get your house in order, Marie says, and you will be free to “pour your time and passion into what brings you the most joy, your mission in life.” Here, in six steps, is what Marie and her followers call the “KonMarimethod" to decluttering your closet: 1. Empty your wardrobe—every dresser drawer and closet—in one place. That massive pile on your bed or floor will give you a clear-eyed view of just how much you own. 2. Pick up each piece of clothing and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” If it doesn’t, put it in the discard pile. This simple criterion doesn’t allow for the guilt of having overpaid for a garment, the excuse that you’ve never worn it or pondering whether it might come back into style. That’s why handling each dress, handbag and sweater is necessary. “When you touch a piece of clothing, your body reacts,” Marie writes. 3. Do your clutter clearing in solitude and in silence. “Tidying is a dialog with oneself,” Marie writes. “The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions.” Noise makes it harder to hear this internal dialog; if you feel you need some background music to relax, choose the kind of ambient music you’d hear in a spa. 4. Express gratitude for their service to the items that are getting tossed. This is especially important with pieces you’re finding difficult to place in the discard pile even though they don’t spark joy. Ask yourself why you have the item in the first place. Maybe it’s the cashmere tunic you’ve never worn that you thought looked great when you tried it on in Macy’s. If that’s the case, “it has fulfilled the function of giving you a thrill when you bought it,” Marie says. Then, consider why you’ve never worn the tunic. Is it because at home you realized the style isn’t flattering, after all? Now you’re free to say, “Thank you for teaching me what doesn’t suit me” as you let it go. 5. Resist the temptation to downgrade items to something you’ll just wear around the house. Pilled cardigans, stained T-shirts, out-of-date jeans—it’s easy to demote these items to loungewear. But, Marie says, that merely delays parting with clothes that don’t resonate with joy. “To me,” she says, “it doesn’t seem right to keep clothes we don’t enjoy for relaxing around the house. This time at home is still a precious part of living. Its value should not change just because nobody sees us.” Marie says when she completes a consultation, her client’s wardrobe has been reduced by at least half. I can’t claim that kind of success, yet—I’m still making my way through my piles (itself a violation of the KonMari method, which advocates doing all your tidying at once). But I’ve taken a half-dozen shopping bags filled with dormant and, for me, “unjoyful,” clothing to a thrift shop that supports a local relief agency. I’m committed, at my own pace, to tidying up. The payoff is huge because, as Marie writes, “being surrounded only by things that spark joy makes us happy.” Shelley Levitt is an Editor-at-Large for Live Happy magazine.

News & Trends

Is Facebook Making Us Depressed?

Facebook and other social media have done a lot to bring the world closer together. We know when friends and even far-off acquaintances have life milestones, like a birth or a marriage. We also know more mundane things like what they had for breakfast and what their daughter wore to her first dance recital. Stay on the sunny side The problem comes when we see only the sunny, positive images and moments and none of the bad, depressing, the boring. We see the vacations, not cubicles. We see anniversary dinners, not mundane arguments. We are human, so of course we compare. And then, according to a study, we suffer for it. The study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology reveals a connection between depressive symptoms and time spent looking at Facebook for both genders. To many of us, this may not come as a huge surprise. The "highlight reel" “It doesn’t mean Facebook causes depression, but that depressed feelings and lots of time on Facebook and comparing oneself to others tend to go hand in hand,” said Mai-Ly Steers, the University of Houston researcher who led the study. As Mai-Ly states in a University of Houston press release, it’s important, if you are going to spend time on Facebook, to remember that what your friends are posting are essentially “highlight reels.” “Most of our Facebook friends tend to post about the good things that occur in their lives, while leaving out the bad … this may lead us to think their lives are better than they actually are and, conversely, make us feel worse about our own lives.” Dance like nobody's watching So keep things in perspective. No one’s daily life is filled with camera-ready smiles and impromptu dinner parties; Facebook just makes it feel that way sometimes. One solution? Turn off the computer, get out there and have some fun. Emily Wise Miller is the web editor at Live Happy.

Positive Psychology

Does Reading Fiction Make Us Nicer?

For lovers of fiction, reading is often an escape. It’s a chance to get outside of our own heads and move into someone else’s personal experience. We don’t just follow Scarlett O’Hara as she takes down her drapes to create a new dress and the façade of wealth, we identify with her pride and feel her determination in the pits of our stomachs. We empathize with her character.The empathetic leapThat heightened emotional connection moves beyond the page and into our real lives, according to social scientists at the New School in New York City. People who read literary fiction before a test to identify emotions in other people’s faces did better than subjects who read non-fiction or popular fiction, the researchers stated in a study published in the scientific journal Science.David Comer Kidd, who did the research, said this was likely because people reading literary fiction had to fill in gaps about the emotional content of characters in the stories.Theory of MindFiction is an exercise in what psychologists call Theory of Mind. This is our ability to understand other people’s emotions and reasoning and realize that they are different from our own. When we read fiction we understand what the characters know, how they are feeling at various points in the story, and what about their experiences are causing them to feel that way.“When you tell people to pay attention to other people’s subjective experiences, they do better at identifying emotions in other people,” Kidd said. Fiction is a shortcut to getting people to pay attention.Putting yourself in someone else’s shoesEmpathy is another way to think about Theory of Mind, but instead of just identifying emotions in others, we also feel a little bit of that emotion or a related one.Although one might think we use Theory of Mind constantly in our daily interactions, Kidd said that many of our social experiences are basically scripted by manners and social norms. We don’t need to recruit our knowledge of other people’s emotions to buy a jug of milk at the store, for example, or respond to most professional email.But in some circumstances it’s very important to consider what other people are thinking and feeling, especially when making decisions about morality and our deep personal relationships.“Theory of Mind plays a big role when we’re trying to decide if an action is going to hurt someone else’s feelings or if we’re trying to figure out why someone has hurt our feelings,” Kidd said. “Was that person trying to be a jerk, or was something else going on with them?”Fiction increases emotional intelligenceLiterary fiction probably increases people’s capacity for understanding what other people are thinking because there are gaps both in the story’s narrative and in the characters' emotional lives compared to non-fiction or some popular fiction, which is more explicit in laying out characters emotional life. You have to work harder to fill in those gaps yourself.Story lines force us to be active in our empathyKidd and his colleagues are working to home in on the specific qualities of a story, play or film that forces us to use our Theory of Mind and boosts our empathetic capabilities.“It seems like what really matters is an active versus passive approach,” Kidd said.Other research has shown that people who read fiction feel more socially connected and have larger social support systems than those who don’t, challenging the idea of the lonely bookworm. Increased empathy may be a cognitive and emotional link between fiction and social interactions.Read more about the social importance of book clubs.But, Kidd cautions, this does not mean that people who don’t read literary fiction have little empathy or are interpersonally deficient. Rather, that reading fiction can nudge one’s empathetic capability to be more active.So the next time you find yourself in a tricky interpersonal situation, it might be worth thinking through the point of view of others as if they were characters in your favorite novel before deciding on a course of action.What would Elizabeth Bennet do?Meredith Knight is a freelance science writer based in Austin, Texas.

work

6 Secrets to Creating Your Dream Job

I remember sitting at my desk a few years back in a dead-end job that didn’t challenge or fulfill me in the least. I spent those days dreaming about doing work that I loved and that would make a difference. I also wanted to be able to ditch my long commute, calmly see my kids off to school in the morning and have flexibility to work on projects that excited me. Dream on, I thought for a long time.But then I began learning everything I could about starting my own business. Because of new technologies in communications and marketing, there has never been a better time to start your own business on your terms. However, there are still many possible pitfalls to look out for. Here are a few suggestions for how to avoid them.1. Start smallIf you need income to survive, you can’t give up your day job without knowing your business is viable. One way to test the waters is to start dabbling in your dream job on the side.For instance, if your goal is to open a bakery, don’t quit your marketing position and go all-in on a storefront. Maybe start by letting coworkers know that you’re available to create confections for birthdays and weddings or talk to a local caterer that may want to outsource baked goods.2. Be flexibleYou may make the best cupcakes ever, but if everyone is clamoring for cake pops, you’ve got to give the people what they in order to stay in business. In my case, I am enthusiastic about educating people about how to make the best food choices for optimal mind and body wellness, and I had tested the market and found there was interest.However, the number of people willing to spend time and money on a guided cleanse were far outnumbered by the ones who were interested in simply buying healthy treats. I made the decision to focus on building my business and revenue through selling healthy desserts first, to allow me to then work on writing and speaking to reach more people.3. Surround yourself with the right peopleYou are giving your all, day in and day out, because this business is your passion. But not everyone is going to be as excited about what you’re doing.When choosing whom to work with, it is incredibly important to seek out people that are going to help drive your goals forward, and not drag you and everyone else on your team down. You must find people who share your vision.4. Continue learningNo matter how knowledgeable you are about your niche, there is always something new to learn. You might be the best graphic designer ever, but the nuts and bolts of getting the word out on new social media platforms or figuring out the logistics of getting your product to market might surprise you.To stay on top of your game, you have to be open to constantly learning new things. Whether that means a weekly mastermind group, finding a mentor in your field or online education, increasing your knowledge base is important to growing your business from passion to profit.5. Find balanceOne pitfall many eager entrepreneurs don’t anticipate is the loss of the passion that made them want to start their business in the first place! No matter how much you love what you do, if you want to keep loving it, you can’t work 24 hours a day. Make sure to take breaks to enjoy other activities, spend time with family and friends and take the time to take care of yourself through regular healthy meals and getting enough rest and exercise. Because if you’re not operating at your peak, neither will your business.Read more about work-life balance.6. Don’t give up You will find some daunting hurdles on your road to success—some so big that you may be tempted to quit. But if you love what you’re doing, it will always pay off. Remember, Colonel Sanders got turned down 1009 times before he found someone interested in his chicken recipe; Walt Disney had to hear “no” 302 times before getting the funds to create Disneyland, and Gone With the Wind was rejected by 38 publishers.So follow your dream, and bring along patience, persistence and perseverance for the ride to success!Read more about following your passion.

Self-Care

The 5-Minute Misery Cure

Do you lead what many believe to be a charmed life—some variation of: a successful, ladder-climbing career and a well-suited husband to match, a healthy diet, nice car, good friends, etc., and yet wonder why you feel so miserable when you have so much?The truth is, many women today are less happy than ever, and it’s because they’re living in an emotional stone age. This is what I call The Misery Epidemic, which I write about in my forthcoming book The Misery Cure. Millions of women suffer from a feeling of disconnection in their relationships, lack intimacy with spouses and don’t know how to talk about any of it.The problem? These women are living in a disempowered place and don’t know how to handle their Big 5 Female Emotions. These feelings are designed to send up red flags; however, we often misread them.Here’s what these emotions are trying to tell you:Fear: Many women have been taught from birth that there’s something wrong with them if they are too emotional, and that they need to keep their emotions in control. This creates a fear of letting your guard down and showing that you are vulnerable. You’re really afraid that speaking up about feelings will exacerbate the problem, but not talking about them is making it worse.Anger: Anger for women in today’s culture can be like the F-word—it is thought to be totally inappropriate and uncalled for. It’s particularly not okay for women to feel or express anger in too extreme of a fashion or they will be labeled 'bossy' or 'entitled.' Instead of expressing anger, you suppress it and feel stuck., forcing you into a state of sadness or even depression.Sadness: Your emotions are trying to serve you, but you are afraid of how they make you feel, so you stuff them deep down inside. By looking at your emotions as “Bad,” you feel like you should try to get rid of them. When they don’t go away (because the real problem hasn’t been addressed), you feel extreme sadness.Anxiety: Anxiety is a result of not trusting yourself, and the more we don’t listen to ourselves the more we’ll struggle with anxiety. It’s like an awful merry-go-round that just never stops until we have the courage to jump off.Frustration: There’s no emotion quite like frustration to make those wheels spin round and round. And you are, quite literally, stuck. Frustration, however, means you are viewing a situation too narrowly, based upon beliefs rooted in fear. Because you are buying into your fears rather than paying attention to your emotions, you are frustrated in feeling like you can’t bury your negative emotions.Guilt: Guilt is about making you feel bad about who you are as a person—about doubting your worth. However, it’s also there to support you in reclaiming the aspects of yourself that have split off. You need to stop second-guessing your guilt and honor what it’s telling you.In order to have the intimate emotional conversation your mind is trying to carry out, you need to use what I call the 5-Minute Misery Cure:1. Identify how you feelWrite down all the emotions that are coming up for you. Now see which of the Big 5 is most related to how you feel. If you are feeling more than one of the Big 5, pick the emotion that wants to be addressed first.2. Release your egoAllow the ego’s version of what you are feeling to come through you. Write down all of your fears, objections and doubts. You want to be able to clearly identify what your ego is telling you on paper, rather than let the ego’s messages continue to run amok in your head.3. Work from an empowered placeNow that your ego feels heard, there is space for your inner voice to come through. Write out what it means to you.4. Take actionIdentify one action step you can take to make an empowered action. Set a due date by which you will demonstrate that step through an actionable measure.Sadly, despite the many freedoms woman have achieved, we are still behind the curve in terms of emotional awareness. We are growing but we have to communicate our needs if we want the world to grow with us. When we come out of the shadows and overcome our fears, we’ll feel more connected to our emotional selves, our closest relationships (partners, children, friends, co-workers) and finally be able to bring our new empowered self to the world.Michelle Bersell, M.A., M.Ed., is an author, psychotherapist, and mother of three who teaches and speaks about emotional empowerment. Her forthcoming book, The 5-Minute Misery Cure: Solutions for Women Who Are Sad, Stressed, and Suffering in Silence, is due out in 2016. Download Michelle's Misery Epidemic Kit and find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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