Why is it more challenging and stressful to be with family during holiday periods or extended family vacations? Because you go in to those periods with high expectations rather than approaching holidays more realistically. To make this time more enjoyable, you can:
People who are anxious or worry a lot tend not to take their worries out to a logical end point, so they continue to worry about the same concern(s) over and over without resolving the worry. Worriers exhibit a lack of belief and trust in their capacity to handle tasks, logistics and feelings associated with each worry.
To Resolve:
Walk your anxiety and worry out to its logical end point by using the “Resourcefulness Reset”. With each worry ask yourself two questions:
1) what’s the worst that could happen? and 2) what if it did, then what. Visualize the resources you’ll need (logistics, people, emotional), then take action based on knowing those resources are available to you for each aspect of your concern.
Check out ‘Ease Your Anxiety’ on Amazon as an additional resource.
Perhaps you engage in habits of thinking, feeling or behaving that quietly become obstacles to your desired self-confidence and success. Awareness is the first step to developing new and more productive habits, so take note of the ones you might be using.
They include close-mindedness, an absence of self-reflection, staying disconnected or distracted from yourself, refusing to stay in touch with your moment to moment experience, disliking change, negative thinking, harsh self-criticism, fearing failure, having difficulty speaking up, isolating yourself and no sense of mission or purpose or an absence of activity that is meaningful to you.
Enhancing your awareness means you are on the path to break these self-sabotage habits, and that there is a roadmap to follow to your confidence and success.
Perhaps you live in an entirely different situation and manner than what you experienced during your youth. Yet it is quite common to react with a similar emotional pattern to the one you once used for survival when you were young.
Key Points To Remember:
Emotional flexibility is the goal. As the environment or context changes, then your coping strategies will ideally change as well.
Tip: Increase your awareness by writing down your own safety and danger signals. Write down how you used to function in the past and how those behaviors may no longer relate to your current situation.
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Learn how you are constantly assessing for safety or for the risk of danger or life threat and how your energy resources can only be available for protection or growth. The experience of safety promotes connection and creativity. What is happening in your life?
You are programmed for growth and protection through Safety vs. Fear:
For more from Dr Joan Rosenberg go to http://drjoanrosenberg.com
Think of what it takes to face fires, floods, earthquakes or tornadoes, or an unexpected tragedy.Anything can change in a matter of seconds and your ability to be resilient and bounce back involves how you handle the constancy of change, not routine or stability. Accepting periods of calm and quiet with grace and gratitude and adopting curiosity as an overall attitude towards life can help you develop greater emotional strength, resilience and inner peace.
What does it mean to have a healthy functioning brain, emotional health and a sense of well-being? When you are at your best, well-being brings a sense of inner peace, contentment, harmony, balance, emotional flexibility and the combined feeling of being well-connected to your moment-to-moment experience and well connected to others through friendship and love.
This podcast draws from neuroscience or newer findings about the brain, and highlights Dr. Daniel Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology concept of integration. Integration means that different parts of the brain link and function well with other parts of the brain, leading to emotional self-regulation, and an internal sense of harmony. New learning can help you reshape your brain so you can use your mind to change your brain and your brain to change your mind.
Well being involves the combined experience of having enough order and routine in your life that it creates a sense of stability, predictability and continuity and having enough emotional flexibility so you can handle change and the unpredictability or uncertainties in life without being overwhelmed by anxiety and without living chaotically.
It also involves interdependence. Think of it as the combined experience of being able to engage in your own individual pursuits AND asking for help when you need it. The extremes of fierce independence (never asking for nor relying on help from others) to clingy indecisiveness or dependence (fear of being alone, afraid to pursue things on your own, afraid to fail) are reflective of less emotional health.
This podcast takes a deep dive into one particular negative thought pattern – that of worry about what others think of you. Ending this particular worry involves reframing how you think about the problem itself so you can develop self-confidence and shift to positive thinking about yourself.
If you: think others are thinking about you; tend to be overly concerned with what others think of you (or more accurately what you think others think of you); are afraid of making mistakes in front of others; are afraid of being ridiculed or laughed at or thought stupid; are afraid to take risks; are shy; hate public speaking; can’t stand using the phone; or are afraid of social gatherings, then this podcast is for you. Listen closely so you can make this important mental shift.
Whether you are aware of it or not, you are always assessing risk in whatever environment you are in to determine whether the experience will be safe or dangerous. Even though we have this built in capacity as human beings, many people increase their personal stress level by staying in relationships where they feel diminished or devalued. The relationship itself then becomes one that is hurtful or damaging.
The one quality a great and enduring friendship, intimate relationship or marriage exhibits is the experience of feeling safe. Understanding and connection is the goal. The experience of feeling safe is the foundation of loyalty and trust. How will you promote safety to make your relationship a safe haven?
This podcast provides health tips to improve and sustain great brain health. It starts with the understanding that your body is the outward expression of your brain, such that the care, or lack of care of your body is in essence how you are caring for your brain. The choices that affect your body are the same ones that affect your brain.
Highlighted are six key areas, which include: protecting your head from injury to preserve brain health and help decrease or prevent anxiety and depression (e.g. minimizing possibilities of concussions, staying away from toxic substances and decreasing your stress level); getting adequate sleep to prevent associated sleep problems; daily exercise; maintaining good nutrition habits (e.g. Mediterranean diet); engaging in new learning daily (to help stave off dementia); and having a few close friends and social support.