12 Lifestyle Factors That Make You Feel Depressed

1. Isolation

Of all the research out there, social connection is one of the most proven ways to prevent and cure depression. However, the problem is that depression will often tell us we’re no fun and nobody wants to hang out with us, leading us back to isolation. Acknowledge that the thought does not serve you and, given your current state, and reach out. Join a Meetup group, a team, or call an old friend.

2. Grief

Ever been through a breakup, lost a job, experienced the loss of a family member or pet, or found yourself out of school for the first time? All of these situations are thick with grief. If you’ve experienced a major transition or loss in the past year (or longer if you’ve suppressed your grief), chances are your depression might be tied to that. Grief mimics depression, so feeling unmotivated, low, irritable, disinterested in things you used to enjoy, disconnected, unable to focus, and experiencing disturbances in your sleep and diet are likely related to your adjustment to the transition or loss.

3. Sleep-deprivation

Ever noticed how much more fragile and lethargic you are after a bad sleep? Exhaustion affects our mood, our energy levels, and our cognitive functioning. The problem is, depression can cause sleep disturbances, so it can become a vicious cycle. Speak with your therapist about ensuring proper sleep hygiene, learning cognitive behavioral strategies for managing insomnia, and, if you believe you might have a sleep disorder, consider getting a referral to a sleep specialist. Some sleep disorders are highly-correlated with depression.

4. Missing meaning

From an existential perspective, we require meaning in our lives for happiness. According to Viktor Frankl, we can find this meaning through work, relationships (romantic and otherwise), helping others, learning, creative endeavors (e.g. writing, music, art/design), and spirituality, to name a few. If you’re in a career you despise, or feel “lost” in life, depression has likely come about to tell you that the way you’re living your life does not align with your values and desires. Take it as a positive sign that change needs to happen, and consider how your life would look if you felt fulfilled in some (or all) of the aforementioned areas.

5. A critical inner voice

Imagine how worthless you’d feel if you had a verbally-abusive friend, partner, or parent beside you at all times. Well, this is how it is for many people who are highly self-critical. Pay attention to your internal voice. What’s its flavor? If you find you’re saying things to yourself that you would never say to a friend, it’s time to make a change. Several studies have shown that learning self-compassion can be an effective intervention in treating depression. Therapy can be a wonderful place to learn this language of healthy striving.

6. A lack of exercise

Along with social connection, exercise is another variable that is highly supported in its relationship to depression. There’s no need to join a CrossFit gym or to sign up for a marathon (although you can do that, too), but you’re likely to notice a difference in your mood from doing 20 minutes of yoga on your lunch hour, or getting out for a walk around the block after work. No time? Combine it with #1 and ask a friend to go for a walk.

7. Not enough nature

Recently, several studies have supported the benefits of “ecotherapy” or “green therapy” in treating depression. It fosters mindfulness and feelings of calm. When’s the last time you got outside and were surrounded by green? Try to fit this into your daily routine—even if it’s for only five minutes! If you live in a big city, make a point to hit up a park or shoreline.

8. Poor diet

More and more research is emerging that suggests nutrient deficiencies and food allergies are linked to depression. For example, studies have shown vitamins B and D are negatively correlated with depressed mood, while gluten is positively correlated (in those who suffer from intolerance). Every individual is different, but getting a blood test and seeing a naturopath, dietician, or holistic nutritionist might benefit you.

9. Stress

Studies have shown that chronic stress can lead to depression. Some stress is good, but when it outweighs coping, it might be a factor in why you’re feeling depressed. If you can’t cut some of your responsibilities, consider assessing where the expectations you feel are coming from (i.e. someone else, or yourself), and take some of the pressure off. Permit yourself to lower your expectations for performance, make mistakes, quit, and ask for help. In other words, stop treating yourself like a machine and let yourself be a human being.

10. All work & no play

Many people are under the (false) impression that once we reach adulthood we no longer need or deserve “fun.” Or that we’re only allowed to have “fun” once our work is done. Well, given the fact that there will ALWAYS be something more to do—another bill to pay, another project to complete, or another load of laundry to do—chances are you’re setting yourself up for a life that’s not very enjoyable. Allow yourself to carve some time out of your daily schedule to do something you enjoy. This could be an activity, or it could be lying on the couch watching Netflix.

11. Imbalanced hormones

Imbalances or deficiencies in estrogen, progesterone, and cortisol are all correlated with depression. Consider checking out these areas to ensure the depression you’re experiencing is not related to one of these!

12. Not dealing with emotions

We have primary and secondary feelings. Primary feelings are the ones that we feel at the core—for example, sadness or anger, anxiety or loneliness. Secondary feelings what we feel when we judge ourselves for having the primary feelings. Imagine you’re feeling depressed, but then you beat yourself up for feeling depressed and tell yourself you’re broken and need to stop feeling depressed. Now you’re not just feeling depressed; you’re also feeling shameful, pressured, and frustrated. By giving yourself permission to feel the feelings that come up (whatever they may be) with compassion and without judgment, you may notice a weight lifted off your shoulders.

AWESOME FIND TODAY

Research by Dr. Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the field, suggests that people who have more self-compassion lead healthier, more productive lives than those who are self-critical. Plus, the feelings of security and self-worth provided by self-compassion are highly stable.

Science of Happiness Research

5/28/13

One way to build up your savoring skill and boost your mood is to engage in techniques that distract you from your worries and help you avoid overthinking.

40% of your happiness is within your control!

The Matrix of the Mind

No matter what you’re struggling with – mastering your mind is the most important thing because without that you’ll get blown by the wind.

The mind affects everything.

Let me explain how you can control your life by understanding this most important concept in life: The Matrix.

If you don’t control your mind, you’ll regress after the first sign of either accomplishment or conflict.

I want to start you off with some mind tools needed so you control what’s happening on the inside to get what you want on the outside. Unfortunately, for most of us, neither our parents nor the public school education system has taught us about how our minds work.

This first mind tool is “The Matrix of the Mind” and how it affects you daily without you even realizing it.

How to control your life by controlling The Matrix

If you understand the Matrix that’s trying to control your life right now you can break out of it and manipulate the game of life to your advantage. Knowing this mind tool can make or break you.

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Does this mean we’re screwed? Absolutely not!

The bad news is that we can’t fully escape from these things completely. They’re beyond us.

The good news is that you can step back and pay attention to what’s happening in each matrix and manipulate it through your awareness.

In other words you can create new rules, objectives, and beliefs. You can jump in and out of matrices as you see fit and you can even create your own matrix with your own rules.

Here’s your homework

Answer these 3 questions to yourself first.
~What are your beliefs?
~What are your values?
~What are your assumptions about life?

Based on those answers, In the comments below describe the matrix you’re living in? Describe the rules and beliefs of the Matrix you’re living in.

Are these answers really serving your long term vision in life? And can you see how it’s controlling you?

Hack Your Brain to Wake Up Early & Effortlessly Every Day with the 3 Step Pavlov Method

America’s standard wake up method sucks. Ugly air raid alarms that slap you in the face can ruin every single morning for the rest of your life. Hitting the snooze for ten minutes only puts you through the mental scarring all over again.

If you can take 45 minutes to plan out a sleep method that pleasantly wakes you up when you want then spend thirty minutes setting it up, you could make every single morning for the rest of your life incredibly better. So you should. Take a Saturday and plan it out.

A place to start is my method. I created it based on what we know about the neuroscience of habit formation and the bits of information science has discovered about circadian rhythms and biological clocks. It’s not the absolute healthiest method of controlling sleep, but it’s the best way I know to sleep effectively and still live in a 9 to 5 work hard and play hard society.

The Pavlov Waking System

Step 1: Decide a reasonable time you could wake up every single day, even on weekends.

Most people immediately shoot for 4:30 am, but make sure you’re willing to go to sleep early enough to get 8 hours of sleep at least 4-5 nights of the week. I go with 7:30am.

Step 2: Pick a no-calorie cold drink you enjoy and leave it on your nightstand every night. Iced coffee, iced tea, and water all work great.

Step 3: Start setting your alarm for the same specific time every single day. When you get up on time, get up and chug down the beverage you left by your bed. If you hit the snooze, don't chug the drink. Since you’ve been sleeping you haven’t had anything to drink, and drinking a big amount of anything when your thirsty will give you a rush of endorphins.

This pleasure rush will lay the groundwork for a subconscious habit. After doing this for a week or two, your body will learn that pleasure is synonymous with waking up at 7:30, not sleeping in. You won’t have to fight yourself to get up any more, you may even have to fight yourself to sleep in.

When you get your “I want to accomplish everything” brain and your “I want to do everything that feels good right this second with no attention to consequences” brain going in the same direction, life gets a lot easier, and often a lot more awesome.

Steroids for the Pavlov Method (make it work faster, better, and stronger)

1. Train yourself outside of your regular sleep schedule. This will speed up the process and allow you to engineer the emotions and fine points of your waking habit more intentionally.

I did this initially to reinforce my habit and leave less room for failure. When you have some spare time during the day and you feel thirsty, you can take ten minutes to reinforce your waking habit. Recreate the environment in your bedroom as much as possible to when you wake up. Put on sleep clothes, turn off lights, get in bed, and set your alarm for three minutes. Close your eyes and rest, when the alarm goes off jump out of bed mimicking the type of mood (keep it realistic) you’d like to have every morning, and chug down your drink. The more you expose yourself to the sensory triggers of the morning, repeat the muscle movements of waking up, and then produce a chemical reward, the stronger and more subconscious your habit will become. Waking up with beaming hope and energy for the day will eventually be like backing your car out of the driveway. Happiness will be on autopilot and your set default.

To boost the chemical reward, fake a beaming smile right after you chug your drink, genuinely congratulate yourself (out loud if your brave enough), and massage your own shoulders and forearms for ten seconds.


2. Make your alarm pleasant and distinct from all other sounds.

Use your cell phone and get a customizable alarm app. There are tons that are all basically the same. I use “Alarm Clock Xtreme Free” for Android. You want several key functionalities. The first is to customize the sound of your alarm. Make it a recording of your mother yelling at you about getting your prostate checked, or the sound of a koala purring, it doesn’t matter as long as you never hear it regularly throughout the day. Making it the same as your ringtone or a song you enjoy or as an alarm you use for other things throughout the day will screw up the Pavlov Method.

You may also want to look for the functionality of gradually increasing volume. I use this feature to wake me up more gently. Most full featured apps have the ability to slowly increase your volume from nothing to full blast over the course of a set period of time. I use 1 ½ minutes. This will wake me up more gently, but also not allow me to stay in bed for more than twenty seconds after I wake up.

3. Every single night, set your alarm far enough away from your bed so that your forced to get up to turn it off.

When you wake up in the morning, especially if you didn’t get enough sleep, your lizard brain is in control. Set yourself up with safeguards like these so that you can stick to your plans even if your half asleep and don’t understand the meaning of anything except crushing your alarm and going back to bed. (If I drink too much or stay up too late, I have this problem in a major way. My girlfriend has watched me get up out of bed, with only one eye half open, walk across the room to turn off my alarm, not understand how buttons work as a half asleep zombie, and just start pounding the phone against the wall until it stops, and then stumbling back into bed and going back to sleep. Set yourself up the night before like the person your waking up is not you. They definitely won’t be in the same motivated rationale mindset as you are in the moment.

4. Acknowledge that you’re not Superman and you need sleep.

Waking up at the same time everyday helps you manage your sleep much better if you do it responsibly. On nights that you only get four hours of sleep, you can still wake up on time, not screw up your work schedule or miss appointments, and then either take a nap or go to bed earlier the next night to make up for it. Perfect system. But if you start only getting four hours of sleep every night you’ll crash quickly. Don’t let your hubris allow you to believe you can still get things done without ample sleep. It’s as important to your brain in many ways as food and water. You lose intelligence, decision-making ability, mood control, and impulse control the longer your sleep deprived.

http://superhumanhappiness.blogspot.com/2013/04/hack-your-brain-to-wake-up-early.html

Love on the brain

Four areas of the brain became active, and one area noticeably inactive, when the students had love on their mind. The active areas include one responsible for 'gut' feelings and one that is known to respond to euphoria-inducing drugs. The lights go off however, in the prefrontal cortex, an area that is overactive in depressed patients.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/brain.shtml

The Art of Resilience

Research on resilience breaks down the myth that a troubled childhood leaves us emotionally crippled as an adult.

Think you're a prisoner of a troubled childhood? Think again. You need not go through the rest of your life as an emotional cripple. It is possible to bounce back from adversity and go on to live a healthy, fulfilling life. In fact, more people do it than you may think.

Resilience may be an art, the ultimate art of living, but is has recently been subjected to the scrutiny of science. This much is known so far. At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself—yet also a belief in something larger than oneself.

Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs.

Experts argue among themselves about how much of resilience is genetic. People do seem to differ in their inborn ability to handle life's stresses. But resilience can also be cultivated. It's possible to strengthen your inner self and your belief in yourself, to define yourself as capable and competent. It's possible to fortify your psyche. It's possible to develop a sense of mastery.

And it's definitely necessary to go back and reinterpret past events to find the strengths you have probably had within all along. Some evidence shows that it's not really until adulthood that people begin to surmount the difficulties of childhood and to rebuild their lives.

One problem is, there are elements of our culture that glorify frailty, says Washington, D.C. psychiatrist Steven Wolin, M.D. There is a whole industry that would turn you into a victim by having you dwell on thetraumas in your life. In reality you have considerable capacity for strength, although you might not be wholly aware of it.

Sometimes it is easier to be a victim; talking about how other people make you do what you do removes the obligation to change. And sympathy can feel sweet; talk of resilience can make some feel that no one is really appreciating exactly how much they have suffered.

Wolin defines resiliency as the capacity to rise above adversity—sometimes the terrible adversity of outright violence, molestation or war—and forge lasting strengths in the struggle. It is the means by which children of troubled families are not immobilized by hardship but rebound from it, learn to protect themselves and emerge as strong adults, able to lead gratifying lives.

Resilient people don't walk between the raindrops; they have scars to show for their experience. They struggle—but keep functioning anyway. Resilience is not the ability to escape unharmed. It is not about magic.

Most people mistakenly operate on what Wolin calls "the damage model," a false belief about the way disease is transmitted. It basically says that if your family is having trouble, the chances are high that you will suffer lasting emotional disturbances. It's a prophecy of doom.

Wolin offers survivors of troubled families a more balanced perspective about their past, based on 20 years of his own research on adult children of alcoholics. Most of them, he has found, do not repeat their parents' drinking patterns. The same is true of adults who have survived families troubled by mental illness, chronic marital disputes, racial discriminationand poverty.

The ground-breaking resilience research of sociologist Emmy Werner, Ph.D., of the University of California, showed that even at the time about a third of kids never seemed to be affected by the grinding poverty, alcoholism and abuse in the homes they grew up in. Of the remaining two-thirds, many were troubled as teens, typically turning to petty crime. But by the time they reached their 30s and 40s, they had pulled themselves together, determined to not repeat their parents' lives.

A troubled family can indeed inflict considerable harm on its children, but resilient people are challenged by such troubles to experiment and respond actively and creatively. Their pre-emptive responses to adversity, repeated over time, become incorporated into their inner selves as lasting strengths.

To the degree that it is learned, resilience seems to develop out of the challenge to maintain self-esteem. Troubled families make their children feel powerless and bad about themselves. Resilience is the capacity for a person to maintain self-esteem despite the powerful influence of theparents.

It is also possible to be hurt and to rebound at the same time. We human beings are complex enough psychologically to accommodate the two. What the resilient do is refrain from blaming themselves for what has gone wrong. In the language of psychology, they externalize blame. And they internalize success; they take responsibility for what goes right in their lives.

One way they do this, Wolin has found, is to maintain independence. Survivors draw boundaries between themselves and troubled parents; they keep their emotional distance while satisfying the demands ofconscience. Resilient children often hang out with families of untroubled peers. As adults, the resilient children of alcoholics marry into stable, loving families with whom they spend a great deal of time.

Survivors cultivate insight, the mental habit of asking themselves penetrating questions and giving honest answers. They also take the initiative. They take charge of problems, stretching and testing themselves.

But they don't do all the work alone. One of the cardinal findings of resilience research is that those who lacked strong family support systems growing up sought and received help from others—a teacher, a neighbor, the parents of peers or, eventually, a spouse. They were not afraid to talk about the hard times they were having to someone who cared for their well-being.

Relationships foster resilience, Wolin contends. Resilient people do the active give-and-take work necessary to derive emotional gratification from others.

Reframing is at the heart of resilience. It is a way of shifting focus from the cup half empty to the cup half full. Wolin accords it a central role in "survivor's pride." He tells the story of a patient, a woman who felt helpless. She had been whipped by her father throughout childhood any time he felt challenged. Wolin instead encouraged her to see herself as smart, an accomplished strategist. She had eventually learned to recognize her father's moods and respond to them.

There are lessons in her tale for everyone, Wolin insists. You re-examine your life story to see how heroic your acts were as a child. You go back to an incident, find the strengths, and build self-esteem from the achievement.

Psychologist Edith Grotberg, Ph.D., believes that everyone needs reminders of the strengths they have. She urges people to cultivate resilience by thinking along three lines:

I Have: strong relationships, structure, rules at home, role models; these are external supports that are provided;
I Am: a person who has hope and faith, cares about others, is proud of myself; these are inner strengths that can be developed;
I Can: communicate, solve problems, gauge the temperament of others, seek good relationships—all interpersonal and problem-solving skills that are acquired.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200305/the-art-resilience

Depression Chemical Imbalance Doesn’t Exist

Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, a mental health expert from the department of mental health services at University College in London is taking a quite non-politically-correct approach in characterizing anti-depressants and other mental health drugs as just another dependency.

She says that although doctors, the media, and society in general has latched on to the idea that depression and anxiety, for example, are just evidence of a “chemical imbalance” in the brain, there is no hard evidence to support this.

“Scientific research has not detected any reliable abnormalities of the serotonin system in people who are depressed.”

What if you went to a crime ridden street corner, suffering from depression, and were told that a certain drug could change how you felt about things? What if you went to your doctor and were told the same thing? While the corner drug dealer and your physician might have different drugs in mind, they are essentially offering a similar solution—putting you in a “drug-induced” state to minimize your negative symptoms. Doctors, the media, and society say there chemical imbalance which causes depression, but a depression chemical imbalance doesn’t exist.

It is frequently overlooked that drugs used in psychiatry are psychoactive drugs, like alcohol and cannabis. Psychoactive drugs make people feel different; they put people into an altered mental and physical state. They affect everyone, regardless of whether they have a mental disorder or not. Therefore, an alternative way of understanding how psychiatric drugs affect people is to look at the psychoactive effects they produce

She says that these drugs, like anti-depressants, often produce symptoms of other, illegal drugs. The difference—these are prescribed by medical professionals and marketed to the masses in a more acceptable way.

In decades past, there was a stigma associated with mental health drugs. While it’s debatable whether this stigma was justified, there’s little doubt that it did make people think twice about taking medication for depression.

Now, however, we are convinced that these drugs are correcting a defect in the brain. The drugs are correcting an “imbalance.” But the problem is, that imbalance has never been proven.

Sure, you can argue that your medication makes you feel better, but wouldn’t other psychoactive drugs make you feel better too?

Dr. Moncrieff isn’t suggesting that people take cheaper illegal drugs, since they may have similar effects, but instead wants people to really get real about their anti-depression or anti-anxiety medications– what are they really doing to themselves when they rise each morning and pop the same pill, occasionally having to up their dosage because their body has developed a tolerance.

And with the number of Americans on antidepressant medication estimated to be 1 in 10, perhaps a critical look at this drug trade is warranted.

http://truththeory.com/2012/07/17/depression-chemical-imbalance-doesnt-exist-experts-say/

depression and drugs - the power's inside you!

Don’t put your health in the hands of others, put it in your own.

Don’t let others grab a hold of you and try to increase your dependency on something that isn’t good for you, in this case medication.

Depression as a condition and the drugs to treat them have been severely over hyped and many negative effects have been suppressed. Many people believe they are depressed, and many medical practitioners believe in their diagnoses of depression not knowing that they have been subject to a very intelligent form of manipulation.

Depression is not a result of situations in your life in the external environment, it’s a result of you and your internal world and how you perceive your reality.

It seems as if the powers that be have grabbed a hold of human feelings, defined them to be of such a problematic nature that it requires chemical tweaking of the brain. Sure, depression might very well be the result of chemical deficits in the brain, but chemical deficits in the brain are caused by the being within the human body. Everything you feel is a result of your own creation, your brain shapes itself based on how you perceive reality, this is a scientific fact. It is you that changes your brain, don’t allow harmful medication to do it for you while ruining your mental health. I am not saying that depression doesn’t exist, but it is simple to see that medication is not required, does not help, and is extremely detrimental to our physical and mental well being. Any type of medication to treat depression should be highly questioned, research should go beyond science and medicine and into the corporations responsible for their manufacturing and the people behind the corporations.

Mainstream science is also starting to clue in as it begins to see the fraud with regards to the information we are told and what we are made to believe. It seems as if the powers that be have grabbed a hold of human feelings, defined them to be of such a problematic nature that it requires chemical tweaking of the brain. Sure, depression might very well be the result of chemical deficits in the brain, but chemical deficits in the brain are caused by the being within the human body. Everything you feel is a result of your own creation, your brain shapes itself based on how you perceive reality, this is a scientific fact. It is you that changes your brain, don’t allow harmful medication to do it for you while ruining your mental health. I am not saying that depression doesn’t exist, but it is simple to see that medication is not required, does not help, and is extremely detrimental to our physical and mental well being. Any type of medication to treat depression should be highly questioned, research should go beyond science and medicine and into the corporations responsible for their manufacturing and the people behind the corporations.

Prior to taking medication, the human brain and the chemical flows within it were naturally determined by the human being. Given our mood, our daily activities, what we think and how we perceive the environment around us, our brains and their chemical flows are determined by us. How medical practitioners are convinced of anti-depressant medication and their effectiveness is beyond me (along with vaccinations and a list of many other things). Given what the medical field knows about our brain, and how our thoughts and emotions can effect it, souls who feel depressed usually just need to let certain concepts and belief systems go. It’s like holding onto weights while the water is rising around you, you can choose to let them go and float, or hang on to them and drown.


http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/01/29/depression-and-the-harmful-drugs-that-go-with-it/

Mindful Self Compassion

How do you typically react to difficulties in life—work stress, feeling rejected, physical problems, or financial hardship? As human beings, most of us instinctively fight negative experiences and find fault in ourselves when things go wrong: “This shouldn’t be happening!” “What’s the matter with me!?” Unfortunately, this tendency just adds stress to our lives and the critical self-talk defeats us before we know what’s happening. For example, the more we struggle to fall asleep, the harder it is to sleep; fighting with anxiety makes us feel worried all the time; and blaming ourselves for feeling bad just makes us depressed. But what would happen if, instead, you took a moment to calm and comfort yourself when you felt bad, just because you felt bad—much like you’d do for others? In other words, what if you learned the art of mindful self-compassion?

Self-compassion is a skill that can be learned by anyone, even those who didn’t receive enough affection in childhood or who find it embarrassing to be kind to themselves. Self-compassion is actually a courageous mental attitude that stands up to harm—the harm that we inflict on ourselves every day by overworking, overeating, overanalyzing, and overreacting. With mindful self-compassion, we’re better able to recognize when we’re under stress and face what’s happening in our lives (mindfulness) and to take a kinder and more sustainable approach to life’s challenges. Self-compassion gives emotional strength and resilience, allowing us to recover more quickly from bruised egos to admit our shortcomings, forgive ourselves, and respond to ourselves and others with care and respect. After all, making mistakes is part of being human. Self-compassion also provides the support and inspiration required to make necessary changes in our lives and reach our full potential.

Research has shown that self-compassion greatly enhances emotional well-being. It boosts happiness, reduces anxiety and depression, and can even help you stick to your diet and exercise routine. And it’s easier than you think. Most of us feel compassion when a close friend is struggling. What would it be like to receive the same caring attention whenever you needed it most? All that’s required is shift in the direction of our attention—recognizing that as a human being, you, too, are a worthy recipient of compassion.

Smile! 5 Reasons It Will Make You Happy

Smile first = be happy later!

Here are 5 reasons to smile:

1. Smiling reduces stress.

Psychological Science, one of the top 10 psychology journals worldwide, recently printed a study out of the University of Kansas showing that smiling, even under stress, actually reduces stress and helps us feel better.

“Peace begins with a smile.” — Mother Teresa

2. Smiling improves how you feel.

Ron Gutman, author of Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act writes, “Lots of smiling can actually make you healthier. Smiling can help reduce the level of stress-enhancing hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine; increase the level of mood-enhancing hormones like endorphin; and reduce overall blood pressure.”

“Just smiling goes a long way toward making you feel better about life. And when you feel better about life, your life is better.” —Art Linkletter

3. Smiling spreads joy, it is socially contagious.

The smile contagion has been studied since the 1980s and has been proven a number of times. A 1984 article in the journal Science showed that people mimic emotional expressions. We often read about the negative impact of social contagions but here is an easy way to make a positive difference.

Smiling at others inspires them to mimic your behavior and smile back at you. Try it at the grocery store. And remember, as Shinichi Suzuki explains, “Children learn to smile from their parents.” We have a responsibility to teach smiling first and foremost in our homes.

“The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower…, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.” — Leo Buscaglia

4. Smiling increases likability.

Psychologist Albert Mehrabian’s likability formula includes this fun fact: “Body language contributes more than 50 percent to our overall likability.” Your facial expression while talking is actually more important than the words you speak. At the very least, the two should be in alignment.

As Maya Angelous puts it, “People will forget what you said but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Guy Kawasaki’s book Enchantment relates that smiling is the very first thing you can do to get people to like you. In relationships and in business, people want to spend time with those they like. Smiling makes us more likable.

“If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

5. Smiling builds relationships.

Smiling connects us with others. Our humanness interprets smiling as a gesture of trustworthiness and friendliness. Science tells us it makes us more approachable.

"Too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." — Leo F. Buscaglia

Sometimes, the answers are easy. Smiling is one of those simple things you can do to impact your quality of life and the lives of those around you. Why not make things better for one another? And according to research in Psychological Science, even reading this article today with words like smile, grin, laugh can improve the way we feel, because it activates our facial muscles.

Are you smiling right now?

Try it for a week: smile even if you don’t have a reason.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7693/smile-5-reasons-it-will-make-you-happy.html

Getting out of my own way

Who Am I?

This question - asked so often - suggests that there is actually a plausible answer. Almost as if our being were a fixed thing. People who ask this sort of question are typically struggling with their identity and are searching for a core sense of themselves. The irony is that the more you seek to identify who you are, the more fragile you are likely to feel about yourself. There may be an inverse correlation between the question being asked and the ease with which you experience your life. The emphasis shouldn't be on discovering who you are (what is buried beneath) but on facilitating the emergence of what you'd like to experience.

Our identity should be seen as an ongoing process. Rather than a static snapshot, we should embrace a flowing sense of self, whereby we are perpetually re-framing, re-organizing, re-thinking and re-considering ourselves. How different would life be if rather than asking who am I, we contemplated how we'd like to engage life?

A sense of inadequacy often informs the question around "Who am I?" As people engage the deepening complexity of understanding themselves, they would fare much better to devote themselves to the unfolding process of life. Witnessing our thoughts, not reacting out of old habit, and becoming present enable us to better craft our lives. As such, the identity that we seek fires the wave of life, enriched by the flow.

Imagine that you've been in prison for twenty years, incarcerated since the age of eighteen. You literally have no adult life experience outside of the penitentiary. Your sense of self is tragically limited. You might ask yourself, "Who am I? This would likely provoke a fragile sense of self that paradoxically might leave you most apprehensive about your imminent release. You'd hardly choose to remain imprisoned until you could find your identity. You'd have to permit that new sense of self to flow from your new experiences.

I have worked with people who have been married more or less for their entire adult lives. Upon divorce they are often confronted with a distressing thought. They claim that they don't know who they are. More to the point, they may not know who they are as a single, autonomous adult, not partnered. After all, how could they? Rather than remaining mired in fear, you'd need to summon up a sense of wonder and adventure. There is a new sense of self waiting to be born. You get to re-craft yourself along the way.

At the other end of the identity continuum are those who claim to know themselves so well. This other extreme also signifies a fragility about one's identity. To know yourself so well leaves no room for growth. Even more, it suggests a deep vulnerability that is being defended against - as if it were too dangerous to take a closer look.

It makes perfect sense to seek a deeper sense of self. To become intimately aware of your thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears is obviously advisable. The key is to engage your sense of self as malleable, more like a willow tree than a sturdy oak. The willow is flexible and survives the storm as it bends with the wind, whereas the more rigid oak is more likely to crack.

The universe purportedly exists in a state of flowing potential. And it is essential to understand that we are indeed part of that universe. The goal then is to access that potential, keeping the parts of our identity that continue to serve us well and shedding the old, habitual pieces that constrain us. This process is known as positive disintegration. This permits us to find balance between the extremes previously discussed and enter into a relationship with self that commits to our personal evolution.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shift-mind/201006/who-am-i

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a form of depth psychology, the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. In this way, it is similar to psychoanalysis. It also relies on the interpersonal relationship between client and therapist more than other forms of depth psychology. In terms of approach, this form of therapy also tends to be more eclectic than others, taking techniques from a variety of sources, rather than relying on a single system of intervention. It is a focus that has been used in individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, family therapy, and to understand and work with institutional and organizational contexts.

Core Principles and Characteristics

Although psychodynamic psychotherapy can take many forms, commonalities include:

An emphasis on the centrality of intrapsychic and unconscious conflicts, and their relation to development.
Seeing defenses as developing in internal psychic structures in order to avoid unpleasant consequences of conflict.
A belief that psychopathology develops especially from early childhood experiences.
A view that internal representations of experiences are organized around interpersonal relations.
A conviction that life issues and dynamics will re-emerge in the context of the client-therapist relationship as transference and counter-transference.
Use of free association as a major method for exploration of internal conflicts and problems.
Focusing on interpretations of transference, defense mechanisms, and current symptoms and the working through of these present problems.
Trust in insight as critically important for success in therapy.

Spirituality and stress relief: Make the connection

Spirituality and stress relief: Make the connection
Taking the path less traveled by exploring your spirituality can lead to a clearer life purpose, better personal relationships and enhanced stress management skills.

By Mayo Clinic staff
Some stress relief tools are very tangible: exercising more, eating healthy foods and talking with friends. A less tangible — but no less useful — way to find stress relief is through spirituality.

What is spirituality?

Spirituality has many definitions, but at its core spirituality helps to give our lives context. It's not necessarily connected to a specific belief system or even religious worship. Instead, it arises from your connection with yourself and with others, the development of your personal value system, and your search for meaning in life.

For many, spirituality takes the form of religious observance, prayer, meditation or a belief in a higher power. For others, it can be found in nature, music, art or a secular community. Spirituality is different for everyone.

How can spirituality help with stress relief?

Spirituality has many benefits for stress relief and overall mental health. It can help you:

Feel a sense of purpose. Cultivating your spirituality may help uncover what's most meaningful in your life. By clarifying what's most important, you can focus less on the unimportant things and eliminate stress.
Connect to the world. The more you feel you have a purpose in the world, the less solitary you feel — even when you're alone. This can lead to a valuable inner peace during difficult times.
Release control. When you feel part of a greater whole, you realize that you aren't responsible for everything that happens in life. You can share the burden of tough times as well as the joys of life's blessings with those around you.
Expand your support network. Whether you find spirituality in a church, mosque or synagogue, in your family, or in walks with a friend through nature, this sharing of spiritual expression can help build relationships.
Lead a healthier life. People who consider themselves spiritual appear to be better able to cope with stress and heal from illness or addiction faster.
Discovering your spirituality

Uncovering your spirituality may take some self-discovery. Here are some questions to ask yourself to discover what experiences and values define you:

What are your important relationships?
What do you most value in your life?
What people give you a sense of community?
What inspires you and gives you hope?
What brings you joy?
What are your proudest achievements?
The answers to such questions help you identify the most important people and experiences in your life. With this information, you can focus your search for spirituality on the relationships and activities in life that have helped define you as a person and those that continue to inspire your personal growth.

Spirituality and stress relief: Make the connection

Cultivating your spirituality

Spirituality also involves getting in touch with your inner self. A key component is self-reflection. Try these tips:

Try prayer, meditation and relaxation techniques to help focus your thoughts and find peace of mind.
Keep a journal to help you express your feelings and record your progress.
Seek out a trusted adviser or friend who can help you discover what's important to you in life. Others may have insights that you haven't yet discovered.
Read inspirational stories or essays to help you evaluate different philosophies of life.
Talk to others whose spiritual lives you admire. Ask questions to learn how they found their way to a fulfilling spiritual life.
Nurturing your relationships

Spirituality is also nurtured by your relationships with others. Realizing this, it's essential to foster relationships with the people who are important to you. This can lead to a deepened sense of your place in life and in the greater good.

Make relationships with friends and family a priority. Give more than you receive.
See the good in people and in yourself. Accept others as they are, without judgment.
Contribute to your community by volunteering.
Pursuing a spiritual life

Staying connected to your inner spirit and the lives of those around you can enhance your quality of life, both mentally and physically. Your personal concept of spirituality may change with your age and life experiences, but it always forms the basis of your well-being, helps you cope with stressors large and small, and affirms your purpose in life.

Mayo Clinic

Positive thinking: Reduce stress by eliminating negative self-talk

Positive thinking: Reduce stress by eliminating negative self-talk
Positive thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health. Practice overcoming negative self-talk with examples provided.

By Mayo Clinic staff
Is your glass half-empty or half-full? How you answer this age-old question about positive thinking may reflect your outlook on life, your attitude toward yourself, and whether you're optimistic or pessimistic — and it may even affect your health.

Indeed, some studies show that personality traits like optimism and pessimism can affect many areas of your health and well-being. The positive thinking that typically comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress management. And effective stress management is associated with many health benefits. If you tend to be pessimistic, don't despair — you can learn positive thinking skills. Here's how.

Understanding positive thinking and self-talk

Positive thinking doesn't mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life's less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that you approach the unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. You think the best is going to happen, not the worst.

Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head every day. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information.

If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you're likely an optimist — someone who practices positive thinking.

The health benefits of positive thinking

Researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:

Increased life span
Lower rates of depression
Lower levels of distress
Greater resistance to the common cold
Better psychological and physical well-being
Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress
It's unclear why people who engage in positive thinking experience these health benefits. One theory is that having a positive outlook enables you to cope better with stressful situations, which reduces the harmful health effects of stress on your body. It's also thought that positive and optimistic people tend to live healthier lifestyles — they get more physical activity, follow a healthier diet, and don't smoke or drink alcohol in excess.

Identifying negative thinking

Not sure if your self-talk is positive or negative? Here are some common forms of negative self-talk:

Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones. For example, say you had a great day at work. You completed your tasks ahead of time and were complimented for doing a speedy and thorough job. But you forgot one minor step. That evening, you focus only on your oversight and forget about the compliments you received.
Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.
Catastrophizing. You automatically anticipate the worst. The drive-through coffee shop gets your order wrong and you automatically think that the rest of your day will be a disaster.
Polarizing. You see things only as either good or bad, black or white. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or that you're a total failure.
Focusing on positive thinking

You can learn to turn negative thinking into positive thinking. The process is simple, but it does take time and practice — you're creating a new habit, after all. Here are some ways to think and behave in a more positive and optimistic way:

Identify areas to change. If you want to become more optimistic and engage in more positive thinking, first identify areas of your life that you typically think negatively about, whether it's work, your daily commute or a relationship, for example. You can start small by focusing on one area to approach in a more positive way.
Check yourself. Periodically during the day, stop and evaluate what you're thinking. If you find that your thoughts are mainly negative, try to find a way to put a positive spin on them.
Be open to humor. Give yourself permission to smile or laugh, especially during difficult times. Seek humor in everyday happenings. When you can laugh at life, you feel less stressed.
Follow a healthy lifestyle. Exercise at least three times a week to positively affect mood and reduce stress. Follow a healthy diet to fuel your mind and body. And learn to manage stress.
Surround yourself with positive people. Make sure those in your life are positive, supportive people you can depend on to give helpful advice and feedback. Negative people may increase your stress level and make you doubt your ability to manage stress in healthy ways.
Practice positive self-talk. Start by following one simple rule: Don't say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to anyone else. Be gentle and encouraging with yourself. If a negative thought enters your mind, evaluate it rationally and respond with affirmations of what is good about you.
Here are some examples of negative self-talk and how you can apply a positive thinking twist to them.

Negative self-talk Positive thinking
I've never done it before. It's an opportunity to learn something new.
It's too complicated. I'll tackle it from a different angle.
I don't have the resources. Necessity is the mother of invention.
I'm too lazy to get this done. I wasn't able to fit it into my schedule but can re-examine some priorities.
There's no way it will work. I can try to make it work.
It's too radical a change. Let's take a chance.
No one bothers to communicate with me. I'll see if I can open the channels of communication.
I'm not going to get any better at this. I'll give it another try.

Practicing positive thinking every day

If you tend to have a negative outlook, don't expect to become an optimist overnight. But with practice, eventually your self-talk will contain less self-criticism and more self-acceptance. You may also become less critical of the world around you. Plus, when you share your positive mood and positive experience, both you and those around you enjoy an emotional boost.

Practicing positive self-talk will improve your outlook. When your state of mind is generally optimistic, you're able to handle everyday stress in a more constructive way. That ability may contribute to the widely observed health benefits of positive thinking.

Mayo Clinic

There are few things in life more rewarding than finding someone you love, who loves you, who knows you and over the years, through all the difficult life experiences, is your ally and your friend and your sounding board and your lover. Those kind of relationships are hard to find.

Be you. Don't try to be anyone else.

Also, live your life with pleasure and do what you love and what is important to you. Work hard, play hard, don't be waiting for someone to complete you. Complete yourself.

A great marriage is really a dream for most. It takes honesty -- knowing and presenting who you really are. It isn't for everyone; it takes effort and a great deal of compromise and patience.

Dreams are for when you are asleep. Life is what happens when you are awake. It's never what you expect. Enjoy it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-amos-kahn/a-husband-a-house-a-mortg_b_1822619.html

What Scars Do You Let Define You?

What Scars Do You Let Define You?

Oftentimes, we don’t have control, but we can choose to react in a positive way to what life throws at us—to embrace the difficulties, to embrace the heartache, to embrace everything we face and learn and grow from it. I think that is when I began to appreciate what I have, whom I am becoming, and this beautiful world we live in. That is also when I realized that if there is something I don’t like about my life, I have the power to change it.

When I found that inner strength and began to come to these realizations and when I began to study myself and get to know myself, that’s when I stopped letting that one-inch scar define me, and that’s when I think it disappeared.

Loving Life No Matter What

Loving Life No Matter What

This was the beginning of what would become an earnest search for a place of peace, connectedness, and inner freedom that I could count on, even in the face of life’s greatest challenges. I now call this place “true refuge” because I’ve come to understand that it doesn’t depend on anything outside ourselves—a certain situation, person, cure, or even particular mood or emotion. The yearning for such refuge is not mine, personally; it’s universal. It’s what lies beneath all of our wants and fears. We long to know we can handle what’s coming. We want to trust ourselves, to trust and love this life.

In the Buddhist tradition, the Pali word “dukkha” is used to describe the emotional pain that runs through our lives. While it’s often translated as “suffering,” dukkha encompasses all our experiences of stress, dissatisfaction, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, and basic unease in living. But if we listen deeply, we will detect beneath the surface of all that troubles us an underlying sense that we are alone and unsafe, that something is wrong with our life.

The Buddha taught that this experience of insecurity, isolation, and basic “wrongness” is unavoidable. We humans, he said, are conditioned to feel separate and at odds with our changing and out-of-control life. And from this core feeling unfolds the whole array of our disruptive emotions—fear, anger, shame, grief, jealousy—all of our limiting stories, and the reactive behaviors that add to our pain.

Yet, the Buddha also offered a radical promise, one that Buddhism shares with many wisdom traditions: we can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds—right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-moment lives.

We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent, awake space of awareness behind all of our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. Presence, the immediacy and aliveness and warmth of our intrinsic awareness, creates a boundless sanctuary where there’s room for everything in our life.

That day in Cape Cod, I didn’t know if I could ever be happy living with a future of pain and physical limitation. While I was crying, Cheylah, one of our standard poodles, sat down beside me and began nudging me with concern. Her presence was comforting; it reconnected me to the here and now and to a deeply tender inner presence. After I stroked her for a while, we got up for a walk. She took the lead as we meandered along an easy path overlooking the bay.

In the aftermath of grieving, I was silent and open. My heart held everything—the soreness of my knees, the expanse of sparkling water, Cheylah, my unknown future, the sound of gulls. Nothing was missing, nothing was wrong. These moments of true refuge foreshadowed one of the great gifts of the Buddhist path—that we can be “happy for no reason.”

We can love life just as it is, recognizing that no matter how challenging the situation, there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence.