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5 Ways to Recharge When You’re too Stressed

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How to Build Resilience and Recharge When Stressed in Less Than 1-Hour

Why is recharging when stressed so important and why is it even a thing? Because we’re living through a period of extraordinary change. We’re experiencing more change, more often than ever before in human history.

It’s a Change Storm, and this storm is constantly beating us down. From the little drops of rain to big hailstones, we’re constantly being pelted with adverse events and experiences, changing circumstances and environmental stress.

Even before COVID-19 came knocking on our doors, globalisation and technological changes were completely transforming companies, industries, countries and societies.

More than that, they were leading to uncertain, volatile ways of living and working. We’ve all heard it before, the only constant is change, and there’s no escaping change in our lives.

But this unrelenting change can bring stress, and even though stress can be good for us, it can also be bad. If you’ve been experiencing too much negative stress for too long now, or you can feel that you’re close to burnout, but you don’t have the luxury of taking a holiday, here are some quick ways to recharge.

But remember, eventually everything catches up to you. It is really important to recharge from periods of high stress. Being stressed for too long without any breaks or recharging can lead to illness, burnout and heart disease.

OK, enough of the heavy stuff. Because we know that you have no time, here are some ways to recharge when stressed, all in less than an hour.

5 Ways to Recharge When You’re too Stressed

1. Take a Quiet Bath

Run the bath, put some nice salts or bubbles in, but leave all distractions outside. This means leaving music, screens and books behind. Instead, spend some time reconnecting with yourself. Once you’re in the bath, close your eyes, and take some deep breaths. Then focus on releasing the tension in your body. Start at your head and work your way down to your feet. Focus on one muscle or group of muscles at a time, feel them relax and let the tension go.

2. Have a Laugh

Laughter is contagious, so one of the best ways to bring some laughter into your life is to be around people who are laughing. Laughter is also more often experienced and enjoyed with someone else, so find a friend and do something together to bring about laughter.

If you can’t get to a comedy show or your friends are all too serious, you can get onto Google or YouTube and look up the “Skype laughter chain.” It currently has 32 million views on YouTube. The ideas is that a person being filmed starts laughing, and someone else watches that person laughing and starts laughing at the first person. Then you film a third person watching the second person and they start laughing and on and on. So, you end up with series of people laughing, one after the other, and I dare you not to laugh too.

3. Take Your Lunchbreak

If you regularly skip your lunchbreak, you’re not alone. Almost one in three Australians (28 per cent) habitually eat at their desk and 33 per cent skip lunch entirely more than once a week. The problem is that sitting for such a long time is really bad for your physical health, in fact many people say that sitting is the new smoking. It’s also really bad for your mental health to not take that break. Taking as little as 20 minutes for a break has been shown to increase your productivity for the entire day. So, if you can’t do anything else, take a 20-minute lunch break. Trust me, it might feel tough to find the time to do it, but it’s worth it in the end.

Listen to our podcast on Taking a Lunch Break for more research into why it’s important and tips for what to do during your break.

4. Spoil Yourself

OK, so if you need to recharge because you’re too stressed, ask yourself, “what is the one thing that makes you go “ahhhhhhh” and relax?” Whatever it is, go do that. Get a massage, or facial, or get your nails done, or whatever floats your boat. When things are crazy and stressful, there’s nothing like being a bit indulgent and having some ‘me time.’ That might mean going to the movies by yourself, or with a friend; or meeting a friend at the pub away from the children; or going for a swim at the beach. The point is to schedule some ‘me time’ and do something that brings you joy.

5. Find Some Green Space (and sun)

Studies show that spending time outdoors makes you happier — preferably in a non-urban environment, but hey, we’ll take what we can get! Go for a walk and find some green space near you. Then calm your mind and focus on your surrounding environment. Research also shows that observing nature — wherever you may be — will make you feel happier. Notice the grass, the wind, the sky. Get some sun on your face too.

Tell us in the comments below, when it all gets too much, how do you recharge when stressed?

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The Good and the Bad of Stress (E33)

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Happiness for Cynics

In this week’s episode, Marie and Pete discuss some studies on stress, uncovering that stress can be both good and bad, but it’s all in how you perceive it.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on resilience and change.

P: And I am Peter Furness, a bringer of bingo, lover of lingo and a passer of Pinot Grigio.

M: Ew.

P: [Laugh] Yeah, ew… Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if alcohol is no longer numbing your pain.

P: Or you want to laugh, love and live like a voracious beast.

M: Or you just want to know what all the fuss is about.

P: [Singing] Then this is the place to be.

M: Because this week we’re talking about…

P: Stress!

[Dun, Dun, Duunnnn!]

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Alright, we’re talking about stress, and in particular… and the reason we talk about stress is because it is the complete opposite of happiness, really.

P: Oh, is it?

M: Well, not the opposite. You’ve got all these negative things, and stress is one of them. And they really do impact your ability to be happy.

P: Yes, I’ll agree.

M: So that’s why we’re talking about happiness, ah we’re not talking about happiness-

P: Stress?

M: – we’re talking about stress. Yes, and there are two talks that have shaped my thinking for this episode. So, one of them is by Kell… One of them is by Kelly Mc. [Stumbling over words.]

P: [Laughter and clapping]

M: Damn it. This is just not happening. One of them is by Kelly McGonigal, and she’s a health psychologist, and her 2013 Ted Global Talk is called How to Make Stress Your Friend. And I highly recommend that one and the other one. And again, I just feel bad that I know I’m butchering these people’s name.

P: [Laugh.]

M: I don’t know any way around this.

P: Well unless you’re going to research linguistics. Then you’re just gonna, you know have a bash?

M: Yep. So, Madhumita Murgia is a journalist, editor and speaker with expertise in the fields of science, health and technology, and her 2015 Ted talk [How Stress Affects Your Brain] was all about how stress affects the brain. So..

P: Science, science, science.

M: Yes. Do you expect anything less from me Pete?

P: No definitely not.

M: So they’ve both got different ways of looking at stress in the brain and there’s two things I wanted to talk about. Madhumita talks about how stress isn’t always a bad thing. It could be handy for a burst of energy and focus like when you’re playing sport, there’s people cheering for you and it’s the final or when you’ve got a deadline looming at work and you’ve got to get this done right?

P: Yep.

M: And stress can be a real motivator. I don’t know if you’ve felt that.

P: It’s a lever. It’s a definite lever.

M: Yep.

P: It pushes you forward.

M: Absolutely. So stress can be a really good thing, right?

P: Mm Hmm.

M: Or have you ever had to speak in public? And you’re not quite comfortable speaking in public.

P: Yes.

M: Your capillaries open up, your heart beats faster and you just feel alive, right. So stress can be an amazingly good thing, right?

P: Yes.

M: But what Madhumita talks about is how, when it’s continuous, it actually begins to change your brain.

P: Ok, so our brain synapses and neurons change?

M: Yes. So if you are in a war zone, for instance, which is kind of the epitome of bad stress.

P: Well that’s the big end of it.

M: Right? Like, there is day to day first world, what you and I experience. And then there’s war. If you’re living in a war zone and you’re constantly worried about how to feed your family-  

P: How to survive.

M: – whether or not you’re going to live, whether or not you’ll be bombed with all of the horrible things that you and I can only guess at.

P: Yes.

M: That is a level of constant and deep stress, and that fundamentally changes the way your brain works. And there’s actually some really good research from a lot of the Holocaust survivors and people who lived through World War II.

P: I’m thinking World War II London straightaway, as soon as you said that.

M: About stress and how people react and how it changes the genetics and kids that were born from people who went through that level of stress. There is so much psychological, physiological and physical impact.

P: And change of behaviour, fundamental patterns that come about because you’ve lived through that experience.

M: Absolutely. There’s a great one that I’m thinking of from a physical point of view where people were starving, they were there, honestly, starving. They couldn’t get access to food. They were eating cardboard to just put something in their stomach and their children, children who are born around that time they were born with changes in their genes and make up that meant that they held onto any nutrient and any carbon and fat. And so they’ve all got obesity problems, so their parents were starving, and these people cannot lose weight. They cannot, because their bodies have been taught to hold on to everything.

P: Absolutely everything.

M: Yeah, and again the mind does the same sort of thing. So stress can be such a positive thing in short bursts, but when you experience it over a long period of time it can have the opposite effect.

P: Does it matter about the level of stress in terms of the perception of intensity? So you’re talking about the war zones and so forth, but are we talking about the day to day stuff.

M: Well, look I picked wars as an example, but the research and Madhumita is talking about what you and I experience as day to day stress.

P: So, first worlders?

M: Yeah, like commutes and crappy bosses, making rent and all of those day to day [stresses], making sure that you answer all the e-mails in your inbox in a time that is deemed socially acceptable. And all of that stuff is day to day pressure, and a lot of people have talked about burnout. And The World Health Organisation has definitely labeled that as a concern in the 21st century. But that level of stress is also having a negative impact on people’s brain.

P: Mm. OK. How much do we control that? How much can we take control of that interpretation of stress? Because I know where you’re heading with this. [Laugh]

M: I love that question, Pete. Why thank you.

P: [Laugh]

M: It’s like we discussed this episode beforehand.

[Laughter]

M: So, Kelly McGonigal, the person who was talking about beginning the episode she has done a whole bunch of research into how we need to start seeing stress as a good thing.

P: Exactly.

M: So she talks about a study which tracked 30,000 adults, that is a huge study. So when you normally talk about studies, there’s 100, 200, 500 maybe 1000 people that you’re looking at.

P: Yep, most study groups.

M: 30,000 adults in the United States, and they followed them for 8 years.

P: Wow.

M: Huge, huge study. And they started by asking people how much stress have you experienced in the last year? They also asked, do you believe that stress is harmful for your health? And then they use public death records to find out who died.

P: Oh, Wow.

M: Right? Let’s cut to the chase. If stress is going to impact your heart health your everything, your brain it’s going to change you at a fundamental level and lead to poor outcomes, we’re talking death here, right?

P: Yep.

M: Okay. And what they found was people who experience a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43% increased risk of dying. But, here’s the but.

P: [Laugh]

M: That was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.

P: So stress can be beneficial?

M: Only if you believe it is.

P: It’s about our perception.

M: Absolutely. This is the key!

P: [Laugh]

M: Now, obviously, we’re talking about a sample of 30,000 US people in a normal period.

P: Yes.

M: Now, I still, there’s no science to back this up, but I still believe that war is a whole other, you know kettle of fish.

P: It is. But..

M: There’s so much for us to learn. We’re not in war time in Australia here, and America isn’t either. There’s no more happening in America, so in a lot of first world countries where this research would apply, well you could say that it should apply, the way that you perceive stress will have an impact on whether or not it is negative.

P: Absolutely.

M: Or positive.

P: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more.

M: Yep.

P: And it’s really funny that I came across this through the teachings of the Dalai Lama.

M: Oh, we’re back on this again.

[Laughter]

M: Tell me more.

P: This is a Buddhist doctrine. It’s this capacity for human intelligence and to develop determination and use it in a positive way. It’s how we perceive our reactions to events. It’s not necessarily the event itself that is negative. It’s our perception of it, and if we can change the way that we react, we are reactionary beings and if we react in a certain way, that predicates stress and that predicates a whole series of biological and physiological changes.

M: Yes.

P: But if we change that perception, if we flip that switch and find some sort of way to create a positivity around it, see it as an opportunity to change, interpret it as a lever for intelligence, for education, then perhaps we can flip the switch on stress. Oh my God! That’s a, that’s a sound bite!

M: We can flip the switch on stress. OK, we’ll be quoting you on that.

P: Done.

M: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. There’s one thing even before I tripped over all this positive psychology stuff and when I truly was the cynic that we portray in all of our advertising, which I always believed the worry-ings of no one. If something was going to happen, it was going to happen.

P: Yes.

M: Stressing about it and worrying about it didn’t serve anyone.

P: I couldn’t agree more. Worry doesn’t serve anybody.

M: Don’t worry about breaking the egg. You deal with the broken egg, if it happens, right?

P: Yep. Or you take steps to prevent the egg from breaking.

M: Absolutely. But really, you just keep cooking.

P: [Laugh]

M: If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen right?

P: Yep.

M: And that has always been something that I’ve believed in. I maybe had too much of a lazy air.. and see what happens.

P: Approach?

M: Yeah, and nearly dying kind of makes you reassess how carefree you have been.

P: Yeah, true. But in some ways that that blissful, I’m going to say ignorance, but you’re going to say arrogance in that respect, it gives you a certain ability to deal with things in different way. If you’re not in a highly stressed, reactionary state, something bad happens and you’re like ‘Okay, all right, let’s go with this. Let’s see where this leads.’ You can actually deal.

M: ‘I can cope with it.’

P: Yeah. ‘I can cope with it.’

M: ‘I can cope.’ So, I think again, like we’ve spoken about in the past, it’s about feeling the pain and feeling the negative emotions that comes with bad things happen. But then, knowing that it’s a temporary state.

P: And understanding there’s a path out of it, if you can find it. And there are certain things that happen where the path is not obvious and we’re talking grief. We’re talking the loss of a loved one. You know you’re going to stay in that for a little while. We’ve talked about that before in other episodes.

M: But there is an out, and that’s not if you can find it, it’s when, when it happens.

and you might need help.

P: Definitely, and that’s the case of human nature we are reactionary beings and we react in a certain way. If we can control that reaction or look at the different possibilities of that reaction. Then perhaps we can lessen the effects of stress.

M: Absolutely yep, absolutely. So to circle back to that study. So they found that people who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. I really want to circle back to that the physical effects of how you perceive the world.

P: Oh the world.

M: How you perceive being victimised, being not able to cope, being passive. It’s like seeing yourself as a leaf in the wind versus in control and..

P: Being able to ride the wind?

M: Right. That perception fundamentally changes you physically to the point that you do or don’t die.

P: I could see why it would change the way that your brain works, how your synapses work the access of pathways of thought processes and so forth.

M: For a cynic, this is such a big leap.

P: Yeah, right.

M: Such a big leap.

P: What is it that stops you from being able to make that jump?

M: How I perceive the world is going to make me die, younger or not. [Psht.]

P: You just don’t believe it? Fundamentally don’t believe it?

M: Well, yeah.

P: Wow.

M: It’s all.. yes.

P: [Laugh] and then it isn’t.

M: It isn’t the science shows [it]. 30,000 people over eight years, that’s huge.

P: That’s a decent study.

M: That is a good study, that is, yeah, that passes.

P: It’s not anecdotal.

M: Yep, and it’s not so qualitative that three people were interviewed in depth, over 8 years.

P: And there were these differentiating factors.

M: Yeah, absolutely. So, the lowest risk of dying of anyone in this study, including people who had little stress, was people who believe stress is positive. So this is actually the next big thing. So stress is bad, is what we’re saying. If you think it’s bad.

P: Yep. If you can[‘t] flip that switch.

M: If you think stress is good, it has no impact on you whatsoever, even if it’s prolonged, repeated year after year, ongoing stress.

P: And I’m thinking of a personal story here of my lovely adopted Nan McSweeney, who was 103 when she died. Dear old Nan McSweeney, she –

M: – Tell me her secret!

P: [Laugh]

M: 103! My grandma’s 95 and I’m cheering for her.

P: Yeah?

M: Yep.

P: So Nan McSweeney. She was a very devout Catholic woman. Incredibly devout, she was actually the last known survivor to have personally met Mother Mary MacKillop in Australia. So she had this amazing faith and she clung to it, and she let that drive her life in many ways so that when stress did come up think bad things happened. This wasn’t a wealthy woman. [She] wasn’t a woman who had an easy life. She was a cattle farmer in Glenn Innes for most of her life. She would give it up to God. She would give it up to a higher power and have her trust that I’m meant to endure, whatever the challenge is but I know I can come out the other side of it and it was one of things that she gave to me. Now I, I was an anti-religious person when I was young, 21 year old in college and having every Sunday dinner with Nan McSweeney.

M: You still are. Both of us. Both of us are. That’s the premise behind our book, Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers.

P: [Laugh]

M: You can buy it from October.

P: [Laugh] Available on iTunes!

M: No, not iTunes. Amazon. Available on Amazon.

P: [Laugh] Getting back to the point. She had this wonderful resilience of like, ‘oh well, on we go’ and that reminds me of the attitude of the blitz in London and why the English are so stoic and they still to this day, they believe that a cup of tea will solve every problem.

M: It does.

P: It does because there’s a certain –

M: If you believe then it does.

P: There’s a control. There’s an element of control there. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about it’ and everyone buys into that. Imagine you’ve had this massive argument with your husband and you’re ready to kill each other. The French don’t do it, they actually go through it with knives and pistols and things and then have sex afterwards but that’s all fine.

M: Oh, South Americans, that’s a whole different.

P: Oh, yeah, whole other thing. But the British they go ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea’, and it’s this weird, wonderful sort of ‘I can control the tea’ and we’re going to sit down and we’ll have tea and through the tea we’ll find a solution because we’ll take that moment and there’s a belief in the process that I have control over one little element.

M: It’s all in how you perceive. And in a way, I think it’s kind of a shame that we’ve had such a good run.

P: Yeah, we’re victims of, victims of our own opulence.

M: Since WWII.

P: Yes.

M: Because we don’t have resilience. We don’t and we’re then tripping over normal, everyday life.

P: Influences.

M: People have injuries and disappointments and things that happened in their life that aren’t how they planned or wanted and we’re so not equipped for it.

P: Thrown by it.

M: So not equipped to deal with that, because where we’ve given this false sense of control over life nowadays.

P: Yes and then we go see them with their hands going ‘Oh, I can’t control anything!’

M: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a few really good books, Homo Deus [by Yuval Noah Harari], and what is it? Guns… [Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond]. Anyway, [books] that show that there’s this false sense that we can control the randomness of life nowadays that we all have.

P: Yeah.

M: And so it really takes by surprise when it’s not actually something we can control.

P: But that’s the whole point and that’s what I go back to the ancient teachings are like it’s not about control.

M: Yes.

P: It’s about you have to give yourself over to these elements and go with them. But learn to find some control in the elements that you can. So you know a Buddhist monk would go to their meditation or a Catholic would go to their prayer. An English mum would go to her pot of tea. I cook.

M: And in the 21st century you would argue meditation and mindfulness have a place to combat stress when against too much?

P: Absolutely, Yeah, definitely.

M: Yeah, and I haven’t really bought into the meditation stuff.

P: We keep pushing this point.

M: Yeah, yeah. So maybe one day I’ll tip over the edge.

P: I’m going to sit you down and chain you up.

M: For me, it’s exercise.

P: Oh, yep.

M: I just need a good exercise, like a 30 minute run or a gym session and it re-centres me and I sleep well that night as a result. Like if I’m mentally stressed the physical exhortation balances me out.

P: That also comes down to a physiological [response], because it’s getting rid of your cortisol levels. It’s using up your adrenaline that’s in your body. It’s helping to dissipate those switched on elements and take you to a place of more calm. ‘OK, now I can switch off let go’, which is the essence of meditation.

M: Yep, what-evs. Right, we’re out of time.

P: [Laugh] Here we go with that one. We’ve got English tea parties.

[Laughter]

M: Okay, so stress is good but bad is the –

P: – it’s all about your perception. How you perceive stress is the key.

M: Look, I think that a lot of this again I’m going to summarise a lot of what we’ve talked about, we’re up to Episode 30 something or other and again what I keep learning from this fabulous science of positive psychology is that I have so much control.

P: Yes, we do have control.

M: We do have control.

P: We have the tools we need to wake up and use them.

M: Yep and sometimes you might want to burrow down and just let the emotion rule.

P: Yep, I agree.

M: But then again, you don’t have to always be in that place, right?

P: No.

M: You’ve got control over whether you choose –

P: Take action people.

M: – Choose happiness. I hate to say it cause it’s a T shirt slogan. But there’s so much behind that.

P: I agree.

M: Yeah.

P: That’s why we say it.

M: Yep. All right, So..

P: if you like this podcast, then please subscribe and like us on your favourite platform and remember that we have all our information on www.marieskelton.com. Org?

M: .com Pete obviously doesn’t go there ever…

P: It’s written in the website browser thingy that I click and goes ‘Yes, straight to’.

[Laughter]

P: Where we publish all our research and articles and links from our podcast episodes.

M: Thank you for joining us.

P: Choose Happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article How to Build Your Resilience With Mindfulness and Meditation, listen to our Podcast: The Power of Meditation (E9)

Three Quick Ways to Improve Your Mood

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Feeling Down? Need a Quick Pick-Me-Up to Improve Your Mood? We’ve got you Covered.

Understandably, many people nowadays are feeling anxious and stressed, but if you’re sick of feeling down, there is something you can do about it. A recent study found that 89 per cent of people think that their happiness can be controlled— which means most people’s beliefs align with the latest research in positive psychology.

To back this up, researchers went one step further and assessed respondents’ subjective wellbeing level. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people who believe they have control over their happiness were 32 per cent happier than those who didn’t think that happiness can be controlled. The average happiness rating given by participants who think happiness was controllable was 7.39, as opposed to 5.61.

As happiness and its benefits are something we could all use right now, here are some quick ways to circuit break a bad day.

3 Ways to Improve Your Mood

Here are 3 ways to improve your mood in less than 10-minutes.

1. Have Some fun

It’s time to channel your inner child, cut loose, and be silly.

As we get older, we get caught up in being productive and successful.  We become more self-conscious, and playing feels silly, unproductive and time-wasting. Play is delegated to something that’s only for kids.

However, play has many benefits, including improved stress management and wellbeing, and helping to improve your mood. One study found that people who engaged in leisure activities were 34 per cent less stressed and 18 per cent less sad than those who did not. Even more interestingly, the activity didn’t matter, as long as it was something the subject found pleasure in doing.

Here’s how

There are many ways you can bring play and silliness into your life. Here’s one that might work for you. Explain the science to your friends or family and ask them to join you in a silly dance-off. Put on some fun music (throw caution to the wind and make it loud too) and take turns doing dance moves. The people in the group have to guess which decade the dance move is from. Whoever guesses right goes next.

Here’s some inspiration (you could put these on pieces of paper and draw from a hat):

  • 50s – Hand Jive, Cha Cha
  • 60s – The Twist, The Swim, The Mash Potato
  • 70s – YMCA, Funky Chicken, The Nutbush, Lawnmower, Sprinkler
  • 80s – Moonwalk, Electric Slide, The Worm, Breakdancing, The Robot
  • 90s – Running Man, Hammer Time, Macarena, Vogue
  • 2000s – Single Ladies (Beyonce), Krump, The Dougie, Cha Cha Slide
  • 2010s – Gangnam style, Harlem Shake, The Floss, The Stanky Leg

If you want to up to up the difficulty level, make people guess the name of the dance, not the decade.

2. Put a Pen in Your Mouth

Research from the University of South Australia shows that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive. In the study, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile. The researchers discovered that the facial muscular activity led to positive emotions.

“When your muscles say you’re happy, you’re more likely to see the world around you in a positive way,” said Lead researcher and Human and Artificial Cognition expert, Dr. Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos.

“In our research we found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. For mental health, this has interesting implications. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as ‘happy’, then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health,” said Marmolejo-Ramos.

Here’s How

Like a dog with a bone, put a pen or pencil between your teeth and then pull back your lips to show your top and bottom teeth. Hold this for 30 seconds. That’s it!

If you’re feeling like being social, do this with friends. It becomes even funnier, often making you truly smile, and of course, helping to improve your mood.

3. The 5-Minute Exercise Intervention

We all know that exercise is good for us physically, but it’s also really good for our brains, releasing feel-good chemicals and helping us to get rid of the stress chemicals. A recent study also showed that exercise helps fuel positive emotions, even during these uncertain times.

“The tie between time spent on these sorts of activities and positive states was particularly strong for people who felt more of the negatives states,” she continued. “So, the more stressed, anxious, lonely or depressed you are, the more it matters that you take the time to exercise and care for yourself,” said Barbara L. Frederickson, the Kenan Distinguished Professor in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the PEP lab.

Here’s how

The point here is to get your heart beating faster, even if it’s just for a few minutes. So rather than trying to boil the ocean, start small – you’re also more likely to do an activity if it’s relatively quick and easy.

STEP 1: Set a timer for 5 minutes.

STEP 2: See how many times you can get through the below series of exercises.

  • 10 jumping jacks
  • 10 lunges (5 each leg)
  • 20 calf-raises
  • 10 squats
  • 10 push-ups (you can do these on your knees, or against the wall)
  • 5 knee-high jumps
  • 30 seconds of rest

STEP 3: Congratulate yourself on getting in some exercise and boosting your mood!

If you’re feeling up for a bit more exercise (only 20 minutes), you can try The ‘No Excuses’ Beginners Exercise Plan.

Related reading: The Secret to Surviving Isolation

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How to Build Your Resilience With Mindfulness and Meditation

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How to Take Control of Your Emotions During COVID – the Link Between Resilience and Meditation

The pandemic has had a negative impact on the mental health and resilience of many people around the world. It has brought uncertainty and fear that has understandably led to higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress and more low moods.

A recent Webster University study unsurprisingly showed that “Even the people who reported high subjective happiness and little stress and low moods were struggling during the lockdown.”

However, this study showed (yet again) that some people were weathering the pandemic better than others; and these people are practicing positive psychology interventions. Although participants who completed the positive psychology interventions did not report an increase in happiness levels, they were more likely to avoid the depression, anxiety and low moods that others felt due to the pandemic.

If you’re experiencing mild depression or low moods, and want to boost your resilience, then introducing positive psychology interventions — such as mindfulness and meditation — into your routine might be what you need.

NOTE: Studies show that positive psychology interventions can help you stay in a better mood and feel happier overall. However, positive psychology interventions will not replace professional support for people who have clinical issues.

What are Mindfulness and Meditation?

Let’s start at the beginning. There is a link between resilience and meditation and mindfulness, but what do they all mean?

Mindfulness is about slowing down, being present and having greater awareness and intention in the moment. Mindfulness is often confused with the practice of meditation – which is a deeper version of mindfulness. Meditation is more than a moment or state of mind, it’s an action that takes time and is more formal, often requiring sitting down for a length of time.

Both mindfulness and meditation are proven to reduce stress, and both focus on calming your mind down. They both teach us not to eliminate thoughts, but to recognise them. Give weight to them. Acknowledge them and finally to let them go. In fact, letting go is one of the hardest things for a mind to do, but it is also fundamental to the practice of mindfulness.

Both these practices have become far more mainstream in the last couple of decades. According to Bill Gates, “For years, I was a sceptic about meditation. Now I do it as often as I can—three times a week if time allows. At a time when we all could use a few minutes to de-stress and re-focus each day, this [Headspace app] is a great place to start.”

Yet, even today there remain a lot of sceptics (myself included!). So, here is the science…

Build Resilience With Meditation and Mindfulness

The research all supports the premise that you can build your resilience with mediations and mindfulness.

There is a large body of research from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs at the University of Massachusetts. It shows that people who practice mindfulness increase the size and function of their pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain where we do decision making and long-term planning. Quite simply, this means mindfulness is great for your brain. Increases in the density of grey matter lead to better mind agility and help with memory, attention skills and decision making.

Research has found that it only takes eight weeks of mindfulness meditation to boost your immune system. Additional physical health benefits include improved sleep quality, and mindful eating has been shown to help fight obesity. It is great at improving positive emotions, while reducing negative emotions and helping to fight stress, depression, anxiety and burnout.

If you’re still not convinced, then consider that the research is so overwhelmingly definitive that over the past decade, mindfulness has permeated the domain of the sceptic: the corporate office. Many ‘suits’ now use mindfulness to help deal with the day to day demands of today’s hectic office environment and prevent burnout.

Mindfulness is also now being taught in schools around the world to help kids improve their mental strength, resilience, emotional control and concentration. In 2019, England announced one of the largest trials in the world. They have up to 370 schools teaching techniques to promote good mental health, such as mindfulness exercises, relaxation techniques and breathing exercises. Recently studies have shown that learning to teach mindfulness to kids helps teachers reduce their own stress, which also benefits the kids.

Practicing Mindfulness and Meditation

There are countless ways to bring mindfulness or meditation into your life and build resilience. As with all things, it’s about finding the right fit for you. Here are some ways to practice mindfulness or meditation.

Being mindful is about stopping and being in the moment. You can do it in many ways, such as:

  • Mindful Eating: This has gained popularity with weight loss experts in recent years. It amounts to ensuring that you focus on and savour every mouthful of food. Put away all distractions during meals — no phone or TV — and take small bites of food, one at a time. Focus on the taste and texture of the food, and savour it.
  • Enjoy Nature: Go for a walk through your neighbourhood. Truly take the time to appreciate even the smallest blade of grass. Look all around you and explore your surroundings with fresh eyes. Sit on a bench and focus on the sights, sounds and smells around you.
  • Being Grateful: Every evening before bed, grab a notebook and write down three things you’re grateful for from the day. Spend time thinking about why you’re grateful and how it makes you feel.

As mentioned earlier, mediation is a bit more structured, but there are many types of meditation you can try, such as:

  • Breathing: This is the most well-known and focuses on taking deep breaths in and out.
  • Body Scanning: This is where you focus on each body part starting at the top and working your way down.
  • Loving-Kindness: This is where you focus on cultivating feelings of goodwill, kindness and compassion.

The Greater Good Science Center has a range of tips and resources to help you understand all the various practices and research and can help you find the right fit with the right benefits you’re after. Or you can take a look at the below apps or books to get you started on your mediation journey.

Top Meditation Apps for Beginners

If you’ve still got questions and aren’t sure where to start, then an app might be the best start for you.

Headspace: Headspace is a guided meditation and mindfulness app for stress, anxiety, sleep, focus, fitness, and more. The app provides hundreds of guided meditations, on several different topics, with new topics every day. The app also features sleep sounds; tutorial animations; a meditation progress tracker; and exercises that are designed for children.

Calm: This leading app for meditation and sleep promises better sleep, lower stress, and less anxiety. The app provides guided sessions on topics ranging from calming anxiety to gratitude to mindfulness at work—as well as sleep sounds, nature sounds, and breathing exercises.

10% Happier: The Ten Percent Happier app helps you discover guided meditations and practical teachings you can carry anywhere. Designed specifically for sceptics, this app has expert teachers walk you through the basics, one breath at a time

Great Books on Meditation

The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, by Andy Puddicombe. Andy’s book and the app he created, Headspace, are what made Bill Gates a convert. Andy is a former Buddhist monk and his book offers lots of helpful metaphors to explain potentially tricky concepts in meditation.

10% Happier, by Dan Harris. After a panic attack on live TV, ABC news anchor Dan Harris had to make some changes. Harris recounts his journey from sceptic to meditator in his #1 New York Times bestselling book.

Remember that a positive psychology intervention is only going to work if it’s the right fit for you, so why not find something that works for you and give it a go!

Related reading: The Secret to Surviving Isolation

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The Secret to Surviving Isolation

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Who are the Ones Surviving the Corona-coaster of Emotions?

They’re out there… the resilient. The ones who are not only surviving but thriving during isolation. So, who are they and what can we learn from the people who are thriving during isolation?

For many of us, emotions are running high as people around Australia face a second lock-down and more forced isolation. This time around, it’s really dealt a blow to a lot of people’s psyches. We thought we were about to step off the Corona-coaster, it looked like it was rolling back to the start. We dared to hope. Despite all the ups and downs, the good times and the scary times, we made it through. But 2020 had other ideas. And instead, we’re all strapped in for a second ride that no one wanted to take. Here we go again.

Not only that, but the rhetoric has shifted recently too adding more stress and worry to our daily lives. It didn’t take long to move from an unprecedented unified front between State and Federal governments to the usual blame game. Media commentators and talk-back radio soon followed with far more negative talk and frustrations being vented this time around. People are mad and they’re not holding back this time.

It’s like everyone forgot to take their afternoon nap, and all that “community-first” good behaviour has gone out the window. Whereas before, everyone held their tongue, now they feel justified in having a tanty. And who can blame anyone? We’re all just tired and fed-up.

The Resilient

Yet despite it all, there are some, a special few, who are doing just fine. For them, this is just another day in 2020, filled with hope and promise. They haven’t had bad days or bad weeks. They haven’t felt periods of mild depression or moments of anger and tears. In fact, rather than feeling an increase in anxiety or loneliness, they’re feeling more grateful, more positive and more satisfied with their lives. They’re happy.

These are the resilient ones.

It’s not that the resilient don’t feel any frustration, worry, anxiety or any of the other negative emotions that are completely normal in the midst of a global pandemic (what’s normal in this situation anyway!?). No. It’s just that these resilient people have found a way to power through with barely a bump on their emotional rollercoaster, and certainly not the 90-degree climbs and falls everyone else is experiencing.

So, what are these people doing differently to the rest of us? What’s the secret?

Who are the Ones Surviving and Thriving in Isolation?

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab have been looking into who is fairing best during these unprecedented times.

In their research, they found a group of people who are coping better than most, and even better, they’ve worked out what activities these people do to help them be positive and resilient. It’s worth mentioning again that these people aren’t perfect, they feel negative emotions too, they’re just not paralysed by their emotions and they bounce back faster.

The Secret to Surviving Isolation

So, what are the commonalities among this group of resilient people? What are the things they’re doing that lead to these positive emotions and keep the negative ones at bay?

The research shows that exercise, hobbies and self-care activities like meditation, kindness, gratitude and prayer are among the most common ways to maintain resilience during COVID.

“So the more stressed, anxious, lonely or depressed you are, the more it matters that you take time to exercise and care for yourself. We have found it useful to put repeating events in our calendars. That way, we’ve always got blocks of time dedicated to these things, and also reminders,” say researchers Barbara Fredrickson and Michael M. Prinzing.

On the flip side, the one thing that hurts your resiliency: scrolling through social media. The researchers showed that passively browsing and scrolling through social media is one of the worst things you can do – I’m sure in part due to all that negativity that we mentioned earlier.

Lastly, the research showed that people who spend more time actively interacting with others experience more positive and fewer negative emotions. So, doing the activities with someone is a double whammy. Or, if you can’t (isolation means isolation after all) then make sure you’re proactively making time to speak to people on the phone or on video chat. Text messages just won’t cut it.

Related reading:

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Are you Making These 3 Happiness Mistakes?

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Could you be Subconsciously Hurting Your Happiness Levels With These 3 Happiness Mistakes?

Arguably, everyone wants to be happy. Yet it’s not something we teach in school or around the dinner table. There’s no easy fix and no pill (that’s legal or sustainable anyway). But, don’t fret, there is good news. The relatively new field of positive psychology teaches us that it’s possible to positively affect your own happiness through self-care habits and a positive mindset.

But what if you’re doing all that and you’re still not happy, what if you’re accidentally sabotaging your own happiness? Check out these three happiness mistakes you’re making that could be hurting your happiness levels.

Three Common Happiness Mistakes

1. Comparing Yourself to Others

There’s an idea called social comparison theory that goes something like this: we are all biologically wired to try to understand ourselves and how we fit within the world around us.

How this plays out in real life is that you might feel that others around you are less successful, less accomplished, less pretty or they have fewer friends. On the flip side, you might be thinking everyone around you is prettier, smarter, richer, happier, has more friends, better health or better jobs.

Making comparisons to others is natural and normal, but the problem occurs when you compare up. This can lead to negative feelings, such as envy, poor self-esteem or unhappiness – which is the opposite of what you want to feel if you’re trying to be happier.

In the 21st century, the biggest and easiest trap is comparing your life to others’ lives on social media. A friend’s one moment of happiness can become a trigger for everything that is missing in your life. It’s a trap many of us have fallen into, thinking that others’ perfect-looking Insta lives are an actual representation of their real lives, and then feeling like our lives don’t match up.

The simple lesson here is to stop comparing your life to others. It’s easier said than done, I know, but half the battle is being aware of your behaviour. Remember, you have different values and have made different choices from other people (and that one Facebook moment you’re coveting because you think is perfect probably wasn’t so good anyway!).

A great tip to remember: if you see something on social media that makes you feel ‘less than,’ just stop and think about what matters to you. Then use that as motivation and to provide hope. Set or reaffirm your goals, then get to work on a project or tasks to meet those goals.

2. Spending too Much Time on Social Media

Social media can bring us together. It helps people to feel connected and share in laughs and good times. However, many, many studies, including this recent one, have found that passively scrolling through social media can have negative effects on people. In fact, for this reason, I wrote about how to do a social media detox not too long ago.

The simple truth is that social connection is really important to our happiness levels. This means interacting with people – real people – particularly in a face to face setting. This doesn’t mean mindlessly watching other people’s posts or reading random articles on social media.

You might feel like you’re being social – it’s called ‘social media’ after all – but it’s a lie. Scrolling through social media is something else altogether. In fact, if you’re intending on being social, even text messages and emails won’t cut it.

So, even though it’s more effort to get off the couch at the end of a busy day, make sure you schedule in some time to see and interact with real people – even if it’s at a 1.5m distance. Put down your phone and grab a drink after work, meet someone for coffee in the park, or jump on a video call with friends from out of state. Your happiness levels will thank you for it.

3. Not Prioritising Your Happiness

Another classic happiness mistake many people make is when work or family life gets really busy, they skip a gym session or cancel plans with friends. Yet, a recent study showed that the most resilient people during COVID have been those who practice self-care activities such as meditation, exercise and prayer. These people have weathered the storm and been the most positive and upbeat.

The irony is that we need our resiliency and happiness the most during times of stress, yet we cut out the activities that bring us resiliency and happiness in a misguided attempt to reduce our stress levels. It’s time to stop!

So, when things get busy and you’re stressing out, make sure that you push back on the right things, not the wrong things. Or if you just have to pitch in during a particularly busy time of year, make sure it doesn’t become a habit (a few weeks max!) and that you negotiate for some time off or shorter work weeks following the busy period.

Remember, you get one life on this planet, and it goes quickly… why would you want to be unhappy for it if you could choose otherwise? Take control and stop doing these happiness mistakes today!

Related reading: Why You Need A Social Media Detox Now

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5 Ways to Overcome the COVID Blues

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Sick of the COVID Uncertainty and Emotional Roller-Coaster?

Since COVID, nothing is certain, and it’s thrown a lot of us through a loop. For some of us, our emotions are all over the place, up some days and really low the next. For others, we’re just sick of it all and we’re just not feeling like being happy right now. Others are feeling sad, or even angry.

These mood changes are completely normal reactions to change. But you might be wondering why some people seem to be unaffected by all this uncertainty and change.

A lot of the time, those people who are thriving through COVID are the resilient ones, and resiliency is all about habits. It’s about setting up good habits when things are going well, so they maintain your physical and mental health (your resilience) for when things are going bad.

I’m sure I can hear you thinking, “well that’s all well and good, but what if things are crappy now but I never quite got around to setting up habits before?”

The good news is that although you might be feeling low now (or just going through a roller coaster of COVID emotions), there’s never a wrong time to start some good health habits — habits that can help you overcome the COVID blues.

These proven habits are all science-backed and will have a positive impact on your overall mood. Over time, these also help build resiliency, so you’re better equipped to cope with the uncertainty that goes with this new post-COVID world or anything else that 2020 decides to throw our way.

Here Are 5 Ways to Overcome the COVID Blues

You don’t have to practice all of these, just picking a couple that you can work on making into habits in your daily or weekly schedule will give you a huge boost.

1. Start a new hobby or develop a passion

Look for something to get deeply involved in or an activity for you to accomplish over time. Psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s research shows that people who experience a state of flow not only enjoy performing the task more, but they also have increased productivity and satisfaction, and reduced stress while increasing the quality of the output. And now that you’re all grown up, you don’t have to stick with anything if you don’t like it. So, try a social soccer league or learn the piano and the banjo at the same time. Or take a pottery or painting class or learn how to code. And throw them all out if they don’t spark that passion and try something else!

2. Sleep

Sleep and mood are so closely intertwined. We all know that when we get a bad night’s sleep, we can be grumpy the next day. But regularly get sub-optimal sleep also chips away at mood and resilience. So whether you are regularly getting less than 8 hours of sleep, or you go to bed and wake up at different times every night, the impacts are all adding up. The science is clear: the effects of regular, consistent good sleep are hugely beneficial to our happiness and well-being. If you want to focus on your sleep habits, a great app to try is the Sleep Cycle app. Sleep Cycle tracks and analyses your sleep phases, waking you up at the optimal time to help you feel well-rested and ready to tackle the day. It also provides some great insight into how you’re sleeping so you can make improvements.

3. Exercise

Getting just 20 minutes of exercise in your day can boost your mood, and it doesn’t have to be a gruelling marathon run or embarrassing gym class rope climb that leaves you feeling useless. Yes, you can actually enjoy doing exercise! Grab a loved one or put on headphones and call a friend while you do a brisk walk around the neighbourhood. You get brownie points for getting a bit of sun while you’re out too.

4. Offer to help someone else

Performing acts of kindness releases the feel-good chemicals (oxytocin and serotonin), leading to increased happiness, energy, pleasure and creativity. Studies have even shown that being kind increases your lifespan. So reach out to an organisation that you believe in or with which you might have a good skill match and spend some time giving back.

5. Start a gratitude journal

UC Berkeley’s Summer Allen writes that grateful people are happier, more satisfied, less materialistic and have better mental and physical health.  And it doesn’t have to be hard. One study showed that participants who kept a gratitude journal weekly for 10 weeks or daily for two weeks experienced more positive moods, optimism about the future, and better sleep.

Share your tips below for how you overcome the COVID blues!

Related reading: Practicing Gratitude: Why and How You Should do it

9 Small Ways To Add Exercise Into Your Day Without Exercising

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The health benefits of regular exercise are numerous, from boosting your immune system, improving sleep and boosting your mood, to reducing cardio-vascular diseases and even reducing the effects of ageing!

Yet, in today’s busy world, it can be hard to find the time to exercise. Sometimes we have good intentions, but with competing priorities, exercise just keeps getting cut, week after week.

Going to the gym or playing sports means finding time in a busy schedule to get changed, get there and back, take another shower and change again. Who has all that extra time in a day?!

Plus, for many people, it’s all just a bit daunting and not easy to get started. To be honest, a lot of people just don’t really like exercising in the first place.

“Don’t worry. Burpees don’t like you either.”

So, how can you reap the benefits of exercise without adding more stress to your week? In short, how can you exercise without exercising?

Here are 9 ways to add more exercise into your day without exercising

  1. Get off one stop before your train/bus stop and walk a little bit further.
  2. Park at the back of the car park when you go shopping.
  3. Take the stairs at work, or in your apartment (or friend’s apartment).
  4. If you sit at a desk for most of the day, try standing for all your meetings.
  5. Walk to your local shops instead of driving and carry the groceries back.
  6. Help others. Why not volunteer somewhere that you might have to stand a lot, such as a local pound or Salvation Army retail store.
  7. Offer to walk and play with your friends’ dogs for them. Take them to the park, throw a ball and have some fun.
  8. Go out for lunch. Walk to your favourite café or food court. Even better if you put on comfy shoes and power walk!
  9. Make it a point to vacuum, sweep or mop more often.

Remember that every minute of intentional movement adds up!

Related content: Read Moving On article The ‘No Excuses’ Beginners Exercise Plan

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Resiliency Is About Recharging And Self-Care, But Are You Doing It Wrong?

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Are You Doing Self-Care Wrong?

Are you stressed, overwhelmed or burned out? You’re not alone.

We’re all living in a Change Storm – experiencing more change, more often than ever before. So, we feel busy, all the time. It can feel like there’s never enough time. Between all the things we must do and all the things we should do, life can just be overwhelming.

The to-do list just keeps getting longer and longer, and with it, the stress just keeps piling up. There’s work (or looking for work), commute times, laundry, cooking, cleaning, car servicing, hairdresser appointments, doctor and dentist appointments, paying the bills, keeping up with family and friends, answering emails and texts and messages and pings, and posting, and for those who have them, let’s not forget all the responsibility that comes with kids and pets.

And that’s just the basics! For many people, there are so many more pressures and ‘must-dos’ in their daily lives, from looking after sick kids or elderly parents, to being a single parent or running a small business… let’s just say that first list was a starting point only.

But we’re not done yet. Then there are the things we feel we should do, and every time we don’t do them, we add another failure to the scorecard or more guilt into our lives. From cleaning the house better or more often, calling mum more often, cooking healthier meals, doing more (or any) exercise, or finding time to do your hair or make-up better or at all…  it all adds up to a crushing weight of inadequacy, adding more and more stress to our already stressful lives.

Life is so busy and so hectic that it’s no wonder the World Health Organisation labelled burnout an official medical diagnosis last year.

So what to do about it?

The Dangers of Doing Too Little

All too often a typical response to doing too much is to try to do too little. With all this stress, it’s no wonder that we’re spending more time just vegging. Binge watching is a thing now, as is ‘mindless scrolling’ on social media. But these responses to stress are also not helpful.

Social media can have very positive effects, as we’ve seen with the social distancing that COVID-19 brought us. It can help to maintain connectedness and relationships. However, mindless scrolling has been shown to be addictive, trigger sadness, make us compare our lives to others more (which is also unhealthy), and it can lead to jealousy.

Similarly, watching TV or playing video games might seem like a great way to unwind from a stressful day. But if you do it for hours on end, for days on end, it becomes something else altogether. Repeated binge-watching has a number of negative health effects, from not getting enough sleep and not getting any exercise to things that will kill you like deep vein thrombosis.

Just like Goldilocks taught us, it’s about finding a balance that’s just right.

Related reading: Why You Need A Social Media Detox Now

The Self-Care Revolution

The science is clear that we need to do a better job of balancing looking after ourselves with all the stressors of the modern world.

Cue the self-care revolution! From mindfulness retreats to yoga and meditation classes, and CrossFit, veggie smoothies and #RandomActsOfKindness we’ve seen an explosion of new fads (mostly science backed).

There are experts from all walks of life, all around the world, telling us to make sure we:

  • Invest in family and friendships to stave off loneliness (another new 21st-century disease). Meet new people and cultivate supportive relationships to build your sense of belonging and connectedness.
  • Exercise more, but make sure it’s intense, but only sometimes, other times it needs to be gentle, but not too gentle or it’s no longer exercise
  • Sleep at least 8 hours every night, but sometimes 9 is better, but not too much sleep or you might be depressed.
  • Eat well, this means no sugar, no fat, no salt, no meat, no processed foods, no gluten, no alcohol. But make sure you get the right kind of fat, and protein is important, and some sugars are ok, and make sure your diet is balanced, and take vitamins to supplement your diet, but if you’re eating well you shouldn’t need vitamins.
  • Look after your mind because stress kills. So practice breathing and meditating, and take your vacations, and use your commute time to refocus your brain, but also to listen to podcasts because learning and having a growth mindset is just as critical. Never stop learning! And journal every night about things you’re grateful for, and practice kindness towards others.

You get my point here, right? Even self-care can feel like more things to add to that never-ending to-do list. So, this begs the question, are you doing self-care wrong?

Are You Doing Self-Care Wrong?

So, what is the goldilocks amount of self-care? And are you doing self-care wrong?

As Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan write in the Harvard Business Review: “resilience is about how you recharge.”

It’s about giving yourself time to do nothing, or time to do something, with no pressure and a lot of self-forgiveness and kindness about what you do, or don’t end up doing. It’s about doing something that you enjoy, something fun, not something that you feel you should do because some over-hyped expert told you to do it on a podcast.

“The key to resilience is trying really hard, then stopping, recovering, and then trying again. This conclusion is based on biology.”

Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan, Harvard Business Review.

To be resilient, we do need to have some basic body, mind and soul habits in place and that we maintain when times get particularly tough. The great news here is that there are so many options here, that we can pick what we want to do. And the minute it starts to feel like a chore, or we don’t enjoy it, we can move on to something else.

But we also have to stop overscheduling ourselves and make time to spoil and pamper ourselves.

So, for your own personal health and longevity, go ahead and book that massage, or pour that glass of wine and get in the bath, or grab that book you’ve been meaning to read for months and go lay outside in the sun and read it… whatever floats your boat. Do whatever you want to do to help you unwind, with no guilt and no pressure.

Or don’t.

It’s completely up to you.

Related content: Read Moving On article 11 Ideas For Your Next Mental Health Day, listen to our Podcast: Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers (E17)

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Comment below! Tell us what do you think! Are you doing self-care wrong? What’s your go-to stress buster for when things get too busy or you feel yourself approaching burn-out?

Want To Raise Successful Kids? Here’s What You Have To Know.

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Why We Need To Teach Kids About Happiness, Not Achievement

Everyone wants their kids to grow up and be successful in life. If you grew up in my generation, that meant our parents valued academic achievement at any cost.

The story goes that good grades will get you into a good university, which will get you into a good job at a good company, where you will meet other good people and marry one of them, eventually having a good house, good car and good kids. Then you will be happy. The moral of the story is ‘work hard and you will be rewarded.’

Many mid-life crises have proven that this model is broken. Yet it hasn’t been until recently that we’ve had another model to replace it with. It turns out that kids need happiness to succeed in life, and our focus on academic success has actually been taking us away from success in life!

Thanks to the field of positive psychology, we now know that the key to success in life is happiness. Research shows that people who are often in positive moods and have happy emotions do better in life. They get better grades at school; they get better jobs; they are more resilient; they are more successful and they are even richer.

Why? As cognitive scientist Dr. Art Markman says, “Overall, when people are happy, they put in more effort to create a better future for themselves than when they are not happy.”

So, if you want your kids to be successful in life, first you have to teach your kids to be happy. Just like with adults, this means teaching kids to enjoy the process, to be curious, hopeful and optimistic. Here are some great activities you can do with your kids to help build these life skills.

6 Ideas To Teach Your Kids How To Be Happy

1. Go outside

The research on this one is really clear, spending time outside makes people happier, so teach your kids to be happy by loving the outdoors. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, you can make family walks a habit during the week, take your kids to the park, walk the dog or go on a picnic, visit a lake or beach or a national park. Create a list of places and activities you can do as a family and let each member of the family choose an outing.  

2. Teach your kids a skill

This is especially good if it’s something that you are passionate about too. Teach them how to cook, garden, draw, sculpt or even change a tyre. Make sure you listen as much as you talk, ask questions about your kid’s thinking, ask them how they would do things. This is about learning to enjoy learning, about teaching your kids to have a growth mindset, which research shows impacts how you see the world and makes you more likely to thrive in life. So remember it’s not about actually mastering the skill (the end goal), instead focus on the process (the journey).

3. Create a photo album.

Together with the whole family, get out and about to take some photos together. Create an album of your favourite people, things and places. Make sure each family member has plenty of pages to contribute their photos. Place one photo per page and write under the photo why this photo is important to the family member who picked it. Watch this Greater Good Science Center video to see how this activity can create meaning and happiness in your kid’s lives.

4. Plan a family holiday together

Research shows that planning a holiday can bring just as much joy as going on holidays. Get a map. Lay out the ground rules (budget, time away etc…) and pick a place that you can all visit together. Once the location is sorted, each family member should go away and identify one activity they’d like to do while away, and has to present back to the family in one-weeks’ time their activity, what it is and why they think it is a good idea. Bonus points for creativity and resourcefulness!

5. Find or create moments of awe in your life

Studies show that experiencing moments of awe makes us more generous and patient, and helps you deal with stress better. According to the Collins dictionary, “Awe is the feeling of respect and amazement that you have when you are faced with something wonderful and often rather frightening.” It’s a thrill or a moment of wonder. It’s rare and special, and because of that, it is imprinted in your memory forever. Some people find awe and wonder regularly, in the small and big things around them, while others only experience awe occasionally. It is different for every person. Here are some ideas for activities to bring awe into your life.

6. Volunteer together

Research has shown that volunteering is rewarding in and of itself, and helping others is a way to higher individual wellbeing. Giving to others activates an area of the brain linked with contentment and the reward cycle. So, performing selfless acts makes you happier. You could volunteer at a soup kitchen or teach your kids how to fundraise for a worthy cause, whether that’s making something to sell to the neighbours (bracelets or lemonade) or doing a charity fundraising walk together.

Related content: Read Moving On article 5 ways to teach kids resiliency and happiness

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