Self Help Daily

Inspirational and Self Help Blog with a Save the World Complex...

You are here: Home / Archives for Mental Fitness

Mental Fitness

The Health Benefits of Art Therapy

by Leave a Comment


Source: Partselect.com

Art Therapy takes the beautifully relaxing practice of “visualization” to a whole new level. There is simply something deliciously relaxing and destressing about art therapy, especially when colors are involved. That’s why adult coloring books (like the wonderful Whatever is Lovely, I recently reviewed on Out of Bounds) are so popular. After a stressful day or event, there’s something almost magical about curling up in your favorite chair and escaping into a world of colors and imagery.

This magic can also be experienced with an app (what can’t be these days, right?). Search for “Recolor” in the iTunes App Store (it’s free) – it’s AMAZING!

About a week ago…

  • I had an especially nasty bout with bronchitis.
  • A kitten in the family broke her leg and had to have surgery.
  • My favorite baseball team seemed to completely forget how to win.

…. each night, I would practically RUN to my chair (iPad in hand) and open my Recolor app. Whether it was a village, castle, or fat cat riding a moped, losing myself in colors and creativity restored my breathing (in spite of the bronchitis!), calm, and peace of mind.

Does Art Therapy solve all the problems in the “real world?” Of course not. What it DOES is better equip you to stay in the moment, breathe through the moment, and outlast the moment.

I hope you’ll explore adult coloring books, art therapy books, doodling on your own notebook, and/or the Recolor app. Relaxation is just a rainbow of colors away.

Adult Coloring Book Reviews on Self Help Daily:

Adult Coloring Book Review: “Wonderland”

Adult Coloring Books: Because Creativity Isn’t Just for Kids!

~ Joi (“Joy”)


More Than Butterflies: Overcoming Social Anxiety

by Leave a Comment

I’ve done a lot of research on anxiety and stress for Self Help Daily as well as my mental fitness blog, Out of Bounds. One thing that fascinates me with anxiety is there is no one size fits all type of hat you can place on everyone’s anxious head.  I think that people who approach anxiety that way are as dangerous as the ones who say, “Oh, just breath and get over it.”

Each individual has their own triggers, as well as their own manner of coping with their anxiety. Social anxiety is a huge deal for a lot of people. I often think that most of us, at least to some extent, have at least some degree of social anxiety. While I have zero problem dealing with people face-to-face or in e-mail… I get a knot in my stomach anytime I have to talk to someone outside of the family on the phone.

I have no idea why, but I simply do not like it. AT ALL. In fact, I will do just about everything to get out of the situation – and I’ve always been that way.

The infographic below does a beautiful job of explaining the signs and symptoms of social anxiety disorder. It also blows the lid off of a few myths surrounding this anxiety and, best of all, gives you some advice on coping with your own social anxiety.


Source: Fix.com Blog
Always keep in mind that you are not alone… you are SO not alone! Many people deal with the same anxiety or anxieties you do. In fact, many people in your own life probably have similar experiences. I hope you’ll keep searching until you find the solution you need to handle your social anxiety. Your happiness and peace of mind are worth it!

Make each moment count double,
~ Joi (Joy)

5 Ways our Psyche can Cause us Physical Pain and How to Combat Fix It

by Leave a Comment

We suffer from certain illnesses that are usually felt by the mind and body. They are also called psychosomatic diseases which came from the terms psyche and soma, meaning mind and body respectively. It means that your current mental state has adverse effects on your body. If you are too stressed out or if there are certain problems that are causing emotional trauma, it could eventually affect your body.

To some extent, all illnesses involved both mind and body. For instance, if you are heartbroken, you tend not to eat or take good care of yourself and it can lead to physical problems such as headache. However, there are certain illnesses that are made worse due to emotional problems. Here are some of the most common ways in which the psyche can cause physical pain. 

Stress triggers migraine

How often do you feel headache at the end of each day? Common migraine is actually triggered by the stress that you encounter on a daily basis. Take note that undue stress can lead to that thumping in your skull that is extremely painful. The best wat to sole this is to give yourself a chance to relax and let go of things that cause stress. Heading to the spa could also be a solution to this problem.

Guilt and Inability to Forgive may cause Neck Pain

According to experts, the neck is where you hold guilt. If you are unable to forgive yourself for what you have done or you hold too much grudge, it could cause neck pain. The best way to solve this problem is to forgive yourself. Stop feeling guilty about something by doing the right thing. Most of all, you have to learn to love yourself and don’t put too much pressure.

Doing the entire Job by yourself could Lead to Shoulder Pains

If you usually feel pain on your shoulders regularly, it could mean that you have the tendency to do everything by yourself instead of delegating the task to other people. You overwork yourself. You no longer have time to relax. This is why the best solution is to learn to delegate the task and trust other people. You can gradually feel the pain going away because you stop burdening yourself. You might want to re-evaluate your current career path to better understand where are the points in your career that you fail to let go of responsibility and delegate or de-stress.

Inability to reach out to others lead to Hand Problems

If you constantly feel problems with your hands, this could mean that you are a very closed person. You don’t spend time to reach out to others. You keep everything to yourself. You have to take some time to make new friends or welcome your neighbors to your place.

Depression Exacerbates Foot Ache

When you are depressed and there is too much negativity in your life, it could heighten your feet problems. According to experts, these two are interconnected. Therefore, you need to let go of what causes stress and start to mingle with others. As always, there is nothing wrong to feel the pain but don’t dwell in it and be depressed.

Other problems like ulcer, shaking, fast heart rate, chest pain and sweating are also considered psychosomatic disorders. The best way to solve them is to learn how to deal with your emotional issues and be a better person.

Credit: Photo

 

 

 

Mindfulness or Rage Room, Which is Better for Anger Management?

by Leave a Comment

mindfulness

by Lloyd Wells

Apparently, smashing up your office printer as a way to release stress and tension is now a thing. Since we all suffer from excessive anger, brought on by the chaos of our lives – traffic hold-ups, office tensions, relationship problems and so on – we should go right ahead and take a baseball bat to office equipment because it’ll help us feel better.

Bear with me.

Anger’s a perfectly reasonable emotion, the gurus tell us, so rather than keeping it bottled up, we should smash the living daylights out of old household items like printers, televisions, toasters, fridges and even washing machines, in order to restore our inner calm.

Let’s put this into perspective.

I suppose in a world that permits tennis players to grunt and scream to their heart’s content, where spectators can shout ‘get in the hole!’ at golf tournaments without being thrown out of the club, where parents allow their children to run amok in shops and restaurants but won’t allow their school teachers to tell them off, and where people are seriously considering the rules of sports games to that no-one loses, I suppose encouraging wanton destruction of innocent office machinery in the name of anger management is just the next logical step.

Whatever happened to taking a few deep breaths to calm down? To teach methods and techniques to keep anger in check? Too much to ask??

Now, I’m not an unreasonable guy, I’ve sometimes been known to curse and swear at my printer when she jams or malfunctions and I’m running late for a meeting. But I’d like to think that I can control myself sufficiently so as not to inflict terminal equipment damage.

rage room

However, there seem to be plenty of people who would disagree with me. Perhaps they’ve watched the slow-motion scene of the 1999 cult classic movie Office Space – where three office workers brutally destroy their malfunctioning printer with baseball bats – too many times?

A recent Wall Street Journal article on this printer bashing trend stated that they’d done extensive research to reveal that an average of 10 good whacks is all it takes to demolish a printer.

And in an article I read just the other day, readers are informed that because of rising stress levels at work, many companies are now investigating new and less harmful ways to help employees manage their anger. This kind of ‘let it all out’ anger management facilitation is gaining in popularity and there are now places knows as ‘Rage Rooms’ where people can pay for a smashing session! One rage room provider goes through more than 15 printers a week, saving their biggest and juiciest machines for corporate smash parties! Apparently, printers inspire more hate and loathing than any other machine.

So, is this expressive and explosive kind of anger management a good idea? Does smashing an inanimate object make people better at handling stress in a healthy way? Is it working? Sigmund Freud certainly thought so. He and his contemporaries believed that punching objects was a good way for patients to rid themselves of anger, and that they could then deal with the underlying issues causing the feelings in the first place.

Today, our knowledge of anger management and how to deal with it in the workplace has become somewhat more sophisticated – dare I say enlightened?

Concepts like mindfulness and meditation help people experience emotions including anger, sadness or jealousy and deal with them in a detached and calm way. The more detached we become from harmful emotions like anger, the more we’re able to reduce its impact on our lives, and on the lives of our loved ones. That’s a bit more like it!

And just to prove my case, scientific evidence suggests that venting anger makes things worse, not better. People who regularly express anger, even in controlled situations like a Rage Room, are more likely to suffer from heart disease. Letting out our anger actually increases our aggression towards others. Even when people feel better as a result of smashing something, they’re still more likely to be aggressive towards others. I rest my case.

Just one final thought on the issue. If your company’s printers are forever jamming and malfunctioning, making you as mad as a rattlesnake, don’t look for a hammer to smash them, rather get on the phone and outsource your print management.

Problem solved, by Lloyd Wells – a freelance writer in the tech world, working with the PBS Group  to avoid the Rage Room and remain mindful.

Why Mindfulness at Work Really Does Work

by Leave a Comment

mindfulness-1

Thanks to Lloyd Wells, a freelance writer and Mindful technique practitioner – working with Planday, a staff management software solution aiming to relieve stress from the workplace wherever possible.

Largely a concept of Eastern origin, here in the Western world, we are waking up to the benefits of mindfulness. It’s a hot topic. Not just on a personal level, but in the working environment too. While many still scoff at the idea, success stories akin to those of the Canadian Police Force (starting their day with a meditation session) are hard to ignore.

Over in the UK, Police in Manchester have followed suit. In the face of scepticism, the Greater Manchester Police Force is offering mindfulness classes to staff. It’s a bid to stem the growing level of anxiety and depression amongst their officers.

Police officers are being asked to cope with increasingly violent and stressful situations. It’s no surprise with the recent spate of Manchester’s gangland-style shootings, to hear that stress and sickness rates across the Greater Manchester Police Force have soared. While the world may be a far cry from offering mindfulness techniques to the gangs on the street (though not a bad idea if it could somehow be socially engineered), mindfulness it seems at the moment may be the constabulary’s best answer.

What is mindfulness?

Essentially mindfulness is practising the capacity to be fully conscious and aware. Mindfulness is often practised by paying full attention to your breath (mindfulness of breathing meditation). The concept is to try and observe and be aware without criticism. Mindfulness (or meditation) is not a religion and you don’t have to sit cross-legged on the floor to practise. It doesn’t take a lot of time and it’s not complicated.

How do you practise mindfulness?

You simply sit (on the floor or in a chair) and pay attention to your breathing. When thoughts arise and you find yourself drifting into a mental dialogue, bring your attention back to the breath. That’s it. Easy. Mindfulness practise can be used doing any task. When washing-up, for example, bring your focus to the feel of the water, the crockery, the smell and the sounds. It’s all about bringing awareness to the task in hand.

What’s the difference between mediation and mindfulness?

Not a lot essentially. Meditation is a practice, which uses the art of mindfulness of breathing. So meditation is actually a form of mindfulness.

Can we believe the hype?

Mindfulness is not just a Zumba-style craze. It’s an ancient tradition. It’s been part of Buddhist psychology and practice for 2,500 years. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, but to really feel the benefits it does take committed practice.

Who’s doing it?

More and more big corporates are bringing mindfulness to the business table. Innovative companies need focused innovative staff. In the last decade business has woken up to the importance of staff well-being. There’s been a sea change in the workplace, with employee satisfaction moving up the boardroom agenda. When answering the question, ‘what makes a business successful?’ employee well-being is gaining ground, with a much more sizeable chunk on the pie chart.

Many high-stress companies are catching on. They’re making mindfulness a part of their corporate mission. Well-being is definitely the new HR buzz word, and mindfulness it seems can take your business to the next level. Apple, Google and Nike get it. Some corporates are ahead of the crowd. In some innovative companies, mindfulness at work is in full sway and its proving successful.

Where’s the evidence?

Neuroscientists have found that meditators shift their brain activity to different areas of the brain (from the stress-prone right frontal cortex to the calmer left frontal cortex). Research shows that mindfulness works. It increases happiness and reduces stress.

Dr. Sara Lazar, who works at the Harvard Medical School, is a leading expert in the field of neuroscience and meditation. In her research, MRI neuroimaging techniques show an increase in gray matter of the brain in four different areas after periods of meditation. Her research concluded that these changes were in places associated with increased focus, empathy and compassion.

How does it help?

Over time mindfulness has shown to bring about long term changes in mood and happiness. It increases our childlike sense of curiosity, seeing things and people as they are without judging them. Mindfulness improves our ability to focus without the mind wandering. It enables greater clarity at work and in our personal lives. Mindfulness isn’t a trick to deaden your mind or turn you into a work zombie, it’s a means of waking you up and growing your potential.

Employee focused culture isn’t a new phenomenon in the business world. There’s a greater understanding of the importance of quality in employee productivity. How to get employees more focused is the new buzz about town, and mindfulness it seems for now is providing the answer.

mindfulness