Quality VS Quantity: The science of meaningful time

 We live in a world fixated on keeping track of time. We keep tabs on every minute that passes by on our smart watches, scribe down how long we work, and break our days into every possible tiny time block into our digital calendars. Yet even having these conveniences, we find ourselves finishing out a day of living feeling uncommonly hollow. We review hours we‘ve lived and can‘t help but think, “Where exactly did all that time go?

Here is where the problem is: we approach time as we do with money. We think we need to gather, spend, save this thing which constantly eludes us. We think that the more hours we have in a day, the more we will do or be happy. But your mind does not see time as dozens of ticking clocks. To your mind time is something that we sense, digest and recall.

But to really understand how to make life more fulfilling, we need to get into the science of how our minds experience moments and, in doing so, why quality trumps quantity.

The Illusion of “More Time”

In reality, an hour is always 60 minutes. In the mind, an hour can seem like a painful eternity or a V fast experience. The assumption that you will “do” better when you have more raw time with someone or on something is undermined by psychology.

If we consider our intimate relationships, parents can become preoccupied with precisely how long they are with their children and couples will associate their closeness with how much free time they spend together. Evidence suggests that sitting with a partner in distraction, for example staring at a phone while sitting on the lounge together, gets them almost none of the rewards of real togetherness.

It‘s not so much the body that matters, but whether the attachment system is attuned. The brain needs to focus, to look into someone else‘s eyes, to be emotionally responsive. Brief intervals of focused interaction (say 10 minutes) will create a more durable trace than 2 hours of passive co-presence with an intervening television set.

How Your Brain Creates Memories and Time Perception

What determines which memories your brain will select to savor and which it will discard? Your brain makes this selection based on an amazing collaboration between three regions: the prefrontal cortex (concentration), the amygdala (emotion), and the hippocampus (memory storage).

Your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for your overall attention, filters out the irrelevant details when you completely immerse yourself in an experience. If the experience is emotional or novel, your amygdala, the emotion center of your brain, tells your hippocampus, the place where your memories are stored, to prioritize the experience by spewing it full of sensory detail,

The psychologists have a name for this memory density. The length of time a period of time seems when you look back on it all depends on how many clear and vivid memories your brain generated.

Why summers during childhood always seemed to be so long: They were fresh, fun, and purpose- and wonder-filled. Your mind archived a multitude of memories, making those memories float by.

Why adult life passes so quickly.: When you‘re going through life on auto-pilot, constantly multitasking, and not really paying attention to what you‘re doing or what life is presenting to you, your brain ‘saves’ very little. Time simply begins to disappear and blend in with one another.

Deep Time vs. Fragmented Time

The most optimal form of deep concentration found in cognitive psychology is known as Flow. Flow is when you become so focused on an activity (from painting, to writing, to playing sport, to solving an intellectual problem), that you forget about yourself, the distractions of the world disappear, and time drifts by in a timeless manner.

The direct opposite of Flow is Fragmented Time. It‘s when your attention gets fractured all the time by alerts, switching between different tasks and every 3 minutes reaching for your mobile. This drains your mental energy and makes you extremely tired but barely leaves you with any long-term memories or genuine contentment.

Time divided: High amount of time spent, Low mental compensation received, High fatigue and sleep.

Deep Time: The mature of time focused, the large amount of time spent in, the long memory storage and deep soul and mind rebalance.

3 Simple Ways to Build Meaningful Time

From tracking greatness to experiencing greatness: If you are interested in moving your life from tracking greatness to experiencing greatness, you don‘t have to change your entire schedule. All you need to do is change how you approach each moment.

Micro-Presence Anchors: Before rushing into a conversation or beginning a task, take a five-second pause. Feel your feet on the ground and take a single deep breath. This brief grounding technique relaxes your nervous system and alerts your brain to the existing moment.

Design “Unplugged Islands”: Dedicate a total of 15-30 minutes each day in complete presence with family, friends, or a solo creative practice. Remove all phones and devices from the area. A short span of undivided Presence has deeper impact than hours of divided work.

Introduce small amounts of novelty: when life is monotonous, time seems to slip away. To stop this wheel, mix up your routines. Take a different way home in your car, learn a new skill or have an uncharacteristic discussion. Novelty activates your hippocampus to rouse itself and create new mental maps, leaving your life feeling much richer.

Reclaiming Your Life

No one is going to remember the number of hours we spent on our clock or how many we deleted from our mailbox by the time we die. We will compare our lives by the glares we received from our loved ones, the stories we remember and the feeling of living while we had the chance.

Time is finite, but its value is from you. By deciding to choose depth rather than a distracted mind from the outside world, you discover the way to living a long and fulfilling life.

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How the family environment of our childhood affects our relationships as adults.

 It is easy to want to think, and it is tempting to think that by the time we grow up and depart from home, when we love,  when we fight,  when we make friends, we do so completely on our own by reason,  by development,  by the winds of our present times. But it is strangely precisely in the first environment that we find ourselves doing so.
Family “is our first social school.” Before we are even aware that we are supposed to be talking to someone else,  fighting with someone else,  giving love to someone else, we are watching the grownups.  We are watching and learning the invisible script, the internal model,  that we then carry around with us, shaping our expectations,  anxieties, and automatic responses to others as adults:
 The Architecture of the Early Plan
Childhood is where we learn the foundational rules of human contact. We learn from both the content of our caregivers' teaching and the way they model their behavior and respond to our emotional communication.
Communication styles-were feelings talked about in your family, or did your family sweep things under the rug?  If a family expressed conflict through silence, the children of those homes tend to grow up to see silence as a weapon or a form of abandonment.  If a child was raised in a high-conflict explosion, then those adults tend to be hypervigilant, waiting for the fallout.
Emotional Availability: Were your feelings of disappointment,  worry,  and rage acknowledged or ignored? Children whose emotions are denied tend to develop a stance of independence,  feeling that others are unsafe.  They tend to have difficulty establishing intimacy,  feeling that to open up is to be weak.
Attachment Styles: The Echoes of Early Caregiving
Developmental psychology demonstrates that the quality of our initial attachment to primary caregivers becomes the template for our eventual attachment style, the way we conceive of safety, intimacy,  and closeness in adult relationships.
Secure Attachment: it is a healthy attachment style that can occur during infancy. The infant is willing to be close to and comfortable around others and accepts comfort when needed. In a future relationships, it leads to healthy, warm, and trusting relationships.
Cumulative Child Root: Caregivers who were responsive, emotionally available, and dependable consistently and predictably.
Adult Manifestation: Secure adults can express and receive love,  work through conflicts effectively,  establish and maintain boundaries without fear of intimacy or loneliness.
Anxious Attachment: Individuals with an anxious attachment may have difficulty recognizing and identifying their own feelings, which may result in less information to compare with their partner's feelings. In addition, they are often concerned their partner will reject them, which could complicate the matching process.
 Childhood Root:  Unpredictable care and attention; affection was contingent on the mood or stress level of the individual providing care.
Adult Manifestation:  Anxiously attached adults long for intimacy but are afraid of losing love. They might scan for subtle changes in a partner's tone,  need excessive reassurance, and keep the peace at the expense of their own well-being.
Avoidant Attachment: This form of insecure attachment develops when a child learns to be independent and cannot trust anyone to respond to their needs.  The avoidant child sees himself/herself as self-reliant and their parent as disengaged and distant.
 Childhood Root: Caregivers who were neglectful,  hypercritical, or bombarding, such that the child was left to bottle up their needs and learn to comfort himself/herself.
Adult Manifestation: Avoidant adults are ruled by independence at one time. When their feelings become intense or if there is potential for conflict,  they begin the process of withdrawal, retreat, or shutdown to shield themselves from their pain. 
Insecure attachment style:  Disorganized attachment patterns are most common among people who experienced neglect or traumatic events during early childhood. Disorganized personalities often struggle to trust others after early exposure to negative treatment.
Childhood Root: Caregivers who evoke fear rather than safety (e.g., extreme unpredictability or trauma).
Adult Manifestation:  Adult patterns tend to reflect the child's experience. However, adults often desire intimacy but aren't comfortable with it, creating a pattern of “pulling away and coming closer” in one’s relationships.
Unconscious Roles We Bring into Adulthood
Families are interdependent systems where children take on certain fixed,  native,  unspoken roles to keep the system in order.  Unless we're consciously self-aware, we will continue to reproduce these very same roles in our adult relationships and work connections:
The Hero / Achiever.  The child that tried to gain attention by being good, responsible and high achieving.  As adults they feel constantly exhausted, responsible for the happiness of all others and just unable to ask for help.
The Caretaker / Peacemaker: The child who learned how to ease tension and focus on everyone else’s needs. As adults, peacemakers often become codependents, learn to have difficulty saying “no,” and bury their own anger and resentment because they never get their own needs met.
The Rescuer If an adult has been raised watching a “screwed-up” or defenseless relation, he or she is prewired to pursue intimate partners who also seem “broken,” attempting to “rescue” them,  and confusing helping out with love.
Breaking the Cycle: From Automatic Reactions to Conscious Choice
Aware that your past influences your life is not to blame your parents, your family history.  Actually,  parents are also living their own unhealed blueprints. The point of awareness of your family blueprints is to make an empowered choice to live different stories instead of repeating the automatic behaviors.
Find your triggers: Notice when you react inappropriately to a buddy or a partner.  Think: “Is what I am feeling right now mine or is it a holdover from my past?”
Write Your Hidden Rules:  Dabble on paper what you were brought up to believe about love relationships e.g.“When I get angry, people will leave me” or, “If I‘m useful, people will love me.” Once written out, consider if these rules still fit with who you are now. 
Do micro-practice: If your tendency is to leave (avoidant pattern) stay an additional 5 minutes in the room to express yourself. If your tendency is to rush to action and fix things (peacemaker pattern),  try stepping back and letting others take the reins.

 Your childhood family story may have written the first few chapters of your life, but this story doesn‘t need to hold the pen forever.  True healing happens when you‘re aware that the old ways that once protected you as a child are no longer suitable for who you‘re becoming as an adult. So you thank them for what they have done for you and compassionately begin integrating healthier ways of loving into your present life.

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What is Social Wellbeing and why does it matter?

 When talking about well-being, the first things that come to our minds are physical and psychological well-being. We are measuring our steps, sleeping hours, macros, and practicing mindfulness. But there is one important aspect of human well-being that often gets neglected – social well-being.

In the age when we are interconnected through the power of algorithms yet so disconnected due to loneliness, the importance of understanding our social well-being cannot be overstated.

Social Wellbeing Defined The essence of social wellbeing is all about the quality of the connections you have, the way you connect, and the ease with which you connect with those around you. It does not just entail popularity, an overflowing social schedule, and having thousands of followers on social networks. In fact, social wellbeing is made up of the quality of your connections, whereby you are surrounded by individuals who are emotionally supportive, empathic, and create a safe environment. A feeling of belongingness where you feel valued and accepted in a group be it family, workplace, or community. Relational competence, whereby you are capable of establishing boundaries, communicating well, dealing with conflicts appropriately, and helping out other people.

According to psychologist Corey Keyes, social well-being involves balancing five important dimensions, which include social integration, social acceptance, social contribution, social actualization, and social coherence. Essentially, social well-being is a measure of how well you thrive within your social environment. The Importance of Social Well-being: Four Core Reasons We humans are innately social creatures. For our ancient ancestors, being alone was equivalent to danger, whereas staying together ensured survival. This is still the case in today's age, as explained below:

1. It Makes an Enormous Difference to Physical Health Social relationships aren't only psychological needs but affect physical well-being too. Cardiac Function: Having strong connections with other people contributes to effective stress response and decreases blood pressure as well as inflammation within the body. Life Span: Studies prove that good relationships extend our lives. Social isolation is dangerous for health and is associated with the mortality rate that can be compared with smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day or being obese. Brain Functioning: Socialization stimulates cognitive processes and reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease. 

2. It Serves as a Buffer for Mental Health

When life hauls out those inevitable curveballs loss, work failure, or give-me-a-break personal tragedies a sturdy social safety net cushions the hit. Discussing worries lowers cortisol and reconnects with the emotional ground. Absent social wellbeing, normal stress rapidly cascades into chronic anxiety, burnout and depression.

3. It Shapes Workplace and Academic Success

In terms of working with others, social wellness is crucial. Extremely socially well individuals have increased skills of communication, emotional intelligence, and resilience during stressful situations. These individuals are more co-operative at work, less likely to suffer burn-out, and more likely to be satisfied with their careers.

4. It Builds Stronger, Safer Communities

At a macro level, individual social wellbeing contributes toward a communal wellbeing. Socially integrated communities tend to have greater levels of trust, lower levels of crime and more effective mutual support during local disasters.

The Modern Epidemic: The Social Isolation Trap

We are living in the most digitally connected period in human history and yet rates of loneliness are more prevalent than they ever have been.

It is simple to substitute on-screen interactions for genuine social connectivity. The mindless scrolling through feeds, the mindless “likes” and the shallow group chats falsely engender social health because they lack the vulnerability, reciprocity, and eye contact that healthy sociality demands screens--not people--breed lonely people.

How to Cultivate Your Social Wellbeing

It takes a conscious effort over time to develop one‘s social health, just as it does to develop muscles or aerobic endurance.

Action Area Daily/Weekly Practice

Concentrate on quality. Avoid holding dozens of superficial acquaintances. Instead, develop a small number of close, trusting relationships.

Pray active listening: Turn screens off. Focus on listening to understand. Listen not interrupt.

Establish good limits. Your social wellness isn‘t about accepting each invitation. Learning to preserve your energy will make sure social interaction is genuine, not mask.

Participate in your local community Get involved with your local sports club, sign up for a group exercise class or volunteer in a community activity.

Schedule “Unplugged” Time Swap time on the computer for those face to face coffee dates, family meals and walks.

Conclusion

Health is not just about Physical and Mental Health, its about Social Wellbeing. It gets no mention when you are eating a fresh clean diet and meeting every hundred percent of your training goals but without some worthwhile interaction with others the wellness puzzle is missing a piece.

Making investments in your relationships, turning up for your community, and asking for help when you need it are all acts of self-care. Go ahead, make a small investment today by texting, by scheduling a coffee date, or by having a real conversation… and see how your body and your mind thank you.

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why do people disregarding rules when not observed?

 The ‘Psychology of impunity: 

Have you observed how traffic regulations evaporate the instant the traffic controller leaves the traffic junction? Or how swiftly the social fabric falls apart the moment a society considers its law enforcement to be feeble and unconcerned?

It‘s a remarkable aspect of human nature that when individuals think no one is watching, their regard for rules and often the most fundamental principles of ethics disappears.

This naturally leads us to an essential question of human psychology and sociology:  why do individuals commit immoral acts when they believe no consequences can be inflicted upon them?

1. The Impunity Complex and the Temptation of Power

Central to rule-breaking is the Impunity Complex:  the notion that one‘s behavior has no adverse outcomes. 

Prized words of 19 century historian and politician Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” seems as relevant as ever. Power is not necessarily the highest position in politics, but the knowledge that nobody is watching.

When someone discovers there is no authority to check them, a false sense of superiority accumulates.  As there is no penalty for restraint, and what would need restraining feels unnecessary.  Small infractions,  such as cutting queues or double parking expand into a grave breach of morality because there is no redress.

2. Social Conformity and the “Broken Windows” Effect

The Broken Windows Theory for explaining how disorder in a city breeds crime was popularized by sociologists George L. Kelling and James Q.  Wilson.  If an individual window is broken and left unrepaired,  pedestrians passing by assume that nobody cares and nobody is in charge.  Eventually all the windows are broken.

The same principle governs social behavior:

Social proof - We naturally look to our fellow human beings for cues as to what is acceptable behavior.  As future offenders observe other offenders breaking the law right in front of them with no preventative or punitive consequences,  the brain, effectively, is saying there is a change in social normality,

 The ‘Why Me?’ Fallacy:  As soon as lawlessness becomes apparent, those who do right have to look like idiots. They think, “everyone else is cheating and winning,  so why shouldn‘t I?”

Therefore a failure of law enforcement doesn‘t only provide an incentive for criminals to break the law, but also to law-abiding citizens not to do so.

3. The Dual Compass: External Fear vs. Internal Morality

What makes some individuals behave like angels, refraining from running red lights at 3:00 AM on deserted highways,  while others act like devils, even in broad daylight?  It‘s because of where each person‘s moral anchor is fixed.

Psychologists divide behavioral control into two distinct mechanisms:

HUMAN MORAL CONTROLS 

Significance: Where is the significance in this? The money is thrown to the bag on the right, because otherwise it would hit the glass on the left.

EXTERNAL CONTROLS and INTERNAL CONTROLS 

Effort-directed If there is uncertainty about the outcomes of actions and the goal is most efficiently achieved by choosing among multiple options, the search is effort-directed. In other words, the learner tries to determine which response is currently the most rewarding.

As society leans almost entirely on external forms of regulation, civic behavior is essentially transactional.  As soon as cameras shut down or the law breaks down, the external barrier disappears. For the individual whose compass rests solely on the fear of being caught, there is nothing left.

4. The Path of Least Resistance

The human default state of affairs is the pursuit of self-interest and the conserve of energy. Psychologists refer to this as the Path of Least Resistance.

Rules and laws are there specifically to limit self-interest so that society can work as fairly as possible.  To contain this selfishness involves conscious brain power and willpower. When the border enforcement goes to zero, self-interest will subjugate duty in an instant, making immoral choices appear to be the ‘easier’ or the ‘more intelligent’ path.

Rebalancing: What We Need to Do to Fix It.

 Reversing a culture of impunity requires a two-pronged strategy:

Consistent enforcement of the law: Justice cannot be about severity. no matter how cruel his rule, a ruler‘s power is dependent on the certainty of consequence. When people have no illusion that the rule of law is followed without fear or favour,  as and when deemed necessary. 

Creating Internal Accountability:  Long-term, sustainable development. When there is early creation of values of civic responsibility in the family,  schools and in the general culture, society prospers. Culture blossoms when rules are respected not because there is a rod in the closet, but because there is a social contract to respect.

Final Thoughts

All people conduct themselves in a certain way when sitting in a crowded room with heavy supervision; the real indicator of one‘s integrity is how they conduct themselves when they are sure no one else is looking.

When law enforcement breaks down the social outer rails are lost.  When a person develops a robust internal moral compass the victim is upright even in darkness.

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Stress Management, Simple Grounding Techniques for Everyday Anxiety

Each of us has experienced it at some time or another: that pounding in your chest before a presentation, that inescapable thought spiraling through your mind after an awkwardly worded email, that rising tide of breathless panic smack dab in the middle of grocery.

If your normal anxiety starts operating, your “alarm system” in the brain takes over your central nervous system to fight against a perceived threat even in a completely safe room. During those experiences, a simple “think positive” or “relax” approach is unlikely to have any impact because your logical part of the brain is disabled temporarily. 

That’s when grounding techniques come into play. Grounding is like a mental emergency brake. It pulls your attention away from worry thoughts and brings it to the here and now physical present.

1. The 5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Method

One of the most popular coping methods suggested by health professionals is the 5-4-3-2-1. It turns on your brain. It requires your brain to interact with your surrounding environment in a sensory modality that breaks the loop of internal agonizing.

When anxiety hits, pause and identify:

5 things you can see: Observe things you might miss the design of a carpet, the glint on a glass, or a tiny piece of dust floating through the room.

4 grounds to be aware of in touch: Observe the presence of touch sensations that surround you. Experience the feel of your denim, your skin on the sweet tasting licking ice, or even the pressure of your heel pressing onto the floor.

3 things you can hear: Tune into what ambient noises you‘re not normally aware of perhaps the hum of the refrigerator, the road outside or birds far away.

2 smells you may notice: Pay attention to the places you are: the stale smell of the coffee shop, the smell of the paracetamol and perfume, or the smell of the fresh air from the open window. 

And 1 thing you can taste: Drink some water, eat a mint or just notice the tastes that are currently in your mouth.

Why it works: actively labeling actual physical stimuli draws your mind‘s resources away from worrying and anchors your awareness more firmly in the real world.

3. Physical Grounding: The 30-Second Body Anchors

When you‘re too overwhelmed to count or identify other sounds in the environment, physical sensations can be even faster.

The Temperature Shock

Splash cold water on your face, or to your hand: hold an ice cube for fifteen seconds. Rapid cooling of the skin activates the mammalian dive reflex, a response that decreases heart rate and shunts circulating oxygen away from the extremities directly to the core of the body, immediately stopping a panic attack.

The “Feet on the Floor” Push

The “Feet on the Floor” Push consists of Pushing one‘s feet down into the floor, as if trying to push the floor away from oneself.

Sit, have both feet firmly on the floor and exert maximum force through the heels. Focus laboriously on the progress of the soles of your socks against the shoe and of your shoes against the floor.

4. Mental Grounding: Cognitive Distraction Exercises

If you try body-focused techniques and they become too much, you can introduce playfulness to reduce anxiety. For example, by engaging your analytical mind with simple mental games.

The Category Game: Choose any category of dog breeds, movies featuring Tom Hanks, places beginning with ‘c’) and name 10 examples as quickly as possible.

Reverse Counting: (100, 93, 86, 79…) count backwards by 7 from 100. Just brain power is enough to dismiss panic.

How to Build a Grounding Habit

There are advanced warning signals that your body is not coping: identify your own tell-tale signs (clenching jaw, shallow breathing, making V signals to the team).

Go slowly: Pick one method that seems most natural to you. Keep the others in mind but don‘t try to memorize all of them immediately. 

Utilize low-stakes situations: Practice box breathing while delayed in traffic. Or 5-4-3-2-1 just during a walk around the block.

Final Thoughts

Grounding isn‘t a magic bullet for your stressors nor will it answer life‘s biggest questions, and that isn‘t what it is for. It is merely there to bring your body baseline so that you can get back to a place of conscious control and choice. Next time you feel like the world‘s going crazy, stop, breathe, feel your feet on the ground, and return yourself to the present.

#wellbeing#selfcare#mindfulpareting

#selfeducation#selfgrowth#mindfulness

#mentalwellbeing#positivevibes#loveyourself

#familywellbeing

Stress Management, Simple Grounding Techniques for Everyday Anxiety
Each of us has experienced it at some time or another:  that pounding in your chest before a presentation,  that inescapable thought spiraling through your mind after an awkwardly worded email,  that rising tide of breathless panic smack dab in the middle of Trader Joe’s.

If your normal anxiety starts operating, your “alarm system” in the brain takes over your central nervous system to fight against a perceived threat even in a completely safe room.  During those experiences,  a simple “think positive” or “relax” approach is unlikely to have any impact because your logical part of the brain is disabled temporarily.

That’s when grounding techniques come into play. Grounding is like a mental emergency brake.  It pulls your attention away from worry thoughts and brings it to the here and now physical present.

1. The 5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Method
One of the most popular coping methods suggested by health professionals is the 5-4-3-2-1. It turns on your brain. It requires your brain to interact with your surrounding environment in a sensory modality that breaks the loop of internal agonizing.

When anxiety hits, pause and identify:
5 things you can see:  Observe things you might miss the design of a carpet,  the glint on a glass, or a tiny piece of dust floating through the room.

4 grounds to be aware of in touch:  Observe the presence of touch sensations that surround you.  Experience the feel of your denim,  your skin on the sweet tasting licking ice, or even the pressure of your heel pressing onto the floor.

3 things you can hear:  Tune into what ambient noises you‘re not normally aware of perhaps the hum of the refrigerator,  the road outside or birds far away.

2 smells you may notice:  Pay attention to the places you are:  the stale smell of the coffee shop,  the smell of the paracetamol and perfume, or the smell of the fresh air from the open window.

And 1 thing you can taste:  Drink some water,  eat a mint or just notice the tastes that are currently in your mouth.

Why it works: actively labeling actual physical stimuli draws your mind‘s resources away from worrying and anchors your awareness more firmly in the real world.

3. Physical Grounding: The 30-Second Body Anchors
When you‘re too overwhelmed to count or identify other sounds in the environment, physical sensations can be even faster.

The Temperature Shock
Splash cold water on your face, or to your hand:  hold an ice cube for fifteen seconds.  Rapid cooling of the skin activates the mammalian dive reflex, a response that decreases heart rate and shunts circulating oxygen away from the extremities directly to the core of the body,  immediately stopping a panic attack.

The “Feet on the Floor” Push

The “Feet on the Floor” Push consists of Pushing one‘s feet down into the floor,  as if trying to push the floor away from oneself.

Sit, have both feet firmly on the floor and exert maximum force through the heels.  Focus laboriously on the progress of the soles of your socks against the shoe and of your shoes against the floor.

4. Mental Grounding: Cognitive Distraction Exercises
If you try body-focused techniques and they become too much,  you can introduce playfulness to reduce anxiety. For example, by engaging your analytical mind with simple mental games.

The Category Game:  Choose any category of   dog breeds, movies featuring Tom Hanks,  places beginning with ‘c’) and name 10 examples as quickly as possible.

Reverse Counting: (100, 93, 86, 79…) count backwards by 7 from 100. Just brain power is enough to dismiss panic.

How to Build a Grounding Habit
There are advanced warning signals that your body is not coping: identify your own tell-tale signs (clenching jaw, shallow breathing,  making V signals to the team).

Go slowly: Pick one method that seems most natural to you.  Keep the others in mind but don‘t try to memorize all of them immediately.

Utilize low-stakes situations:  Practice box breathing while delayed in traffic.  Or 5-4-3-2-1 just during a walk around the block.

Final Thoughts
Grounding isn‘t a magic bullet for your stressors nor will it answer life‘s biggest questions,  and that isn‘t what it is for. It is merely there to bring your body baseline so that you can get back to a place of conscious control and choice.  Next time you feel like the world‘s going crazy, stop, breathe, feel your feet on the ground, and return yourself to the present.

#wellbeing#selfcare#mindfulpareting
#selfeducation#selfgrowth#mindfulness
#mentalwellbeing#positivevibes#loveyourself
#familywellbeing

Stop preaching, show the real mentorship

 Teaching discipline and respect in children is one of the most challenging yet rewarding tasks a parent can undertake. No matter how many times you tell your children “because I said so” or go on long winded tirades you will reach a point of minimal returns. Instead children learn these qualities from watching how the adults in their environments handle stress, authority, boundaries and errors. 

What follows are the ways to ingrain lasting discipline and true respect from your children in action rather than words:

1. Show Up with Self-Discipline First

Children are the best observers in the world and the worst interpreters. If you want your children to regulate their screen time, their emotional life or their tidying, you have to be role modeling effort regulation in your own.

Model emotional regulation: Say things out loud to yourself when you find yourself in a traffic snarl or a tech glitch that sends you into a rage. For instance, say and mean “I‘m really pissed off right now, so I‘m going to take three deep breaths before I respond.,” which is much more effective than a sermon about controlling your temper. 

Keep to your own family habits and rules if you set a rule for family say, no use of phones during dinner, then make sure you stick to it. Children start respecting the family elements when they see the rules apply to their parents as well.

2. Treat Respect as a Two-Way Street

Respect is not obedience. Respect is seeing another person as value, as above compliance, which can deceive. Children only know what respect is if they themselves have been treated with respect.

Listen without interrupting: When your child is mad or talking about something that happened, look at him and really listen. Tell him “I hear you. I want to know what you think.”

Respect their independence: Allow children to have feelings, even when you are instigating a boundary on behavior. For example, “You are allowed to be disappointed about leaving the park, but it is still time to go home.” The statement leaves room for children to have feelings but enforces consistency about an action.

3. Replace Preaching with Natural Consequences

Lectures set off a feeling of “defensive tuning-out”. If a child blows it or crosses a line, skip the ten minute lecture on responsibility and let the results teach the lesson. 

Make the connections between cause and effect. When they leave their dirty clothes on the floor, don‘t suggest or enforce the task of putting them in the laundry hamper. Let them suffer the slight discomfort of having a different shirt for school.

Neutral and gentle: Do not say, “I knew that would happen.” Instead say, “That‘s too bad your favorite shirt isn‘t finished, lets make sure to put it in the hamper tonight so it‘s clean next time.” This keeps the emphasis on the natural consequences instead of getting into a battle of control over them.

4. Frame Rules as Shared Family Values

Discipline seems meaningless when presented as a list of arbitrary rules imposed by authority. It has meaning if connected to community and concern for others. 

Changing from ‘No’ to‘How we care’: For example, rather than ‘Don‘t throw your shoes on the floor’, say ‘At our house, we all put our shoes in the closet so that no one can trip and so that we keep our house peaceful.’

Make them part of the solution “If mornings seem chaotic, the parent said, consider sitting down together, and asking, ‘What can the two of us do tonight to make tomorrow morning less hectic?’” Allowing kids to have some control helps foster an internal desire to do what they are told.

5. Master the Art of Repair

Respect is not shown only in the good times. It is greatest when the going gets tough. Parents have bad days when they get irritated, suddenly shout or impose unreasonable punishments. How you react to your own mistakes will help your children deal with theirs.

Apologize genuinely. When I said, I got angry with my tone earlier because I was under pressure, that was disrespectful. I‘m sorry. isn‘t a display of a weak head. It‘s all about accountability mastery. 

Show how to fix: Make sure the children see that when you mess up its okay admit it and fix the relationship and behavior is most important.

Daily Action Checklist

Discipline and respect are built through tiny everyday interactions. Raise these micro-habits often.

#wellbeing#selfcare#mindfulpareting#selfeducation#selfgrowth#mindfulness#mentalwellbeing#positivevibes#loveyourself#familywellbeing

Overcoming Barriers: a guide on how to deal with family values in a modern ag

 

Imagine a standard family meal. On one side of the table, you have parents or grandparents who defined themselves by the timeline of events: entry into a stable career fresh out of college, securing a mortgage to purchase the home you grew up in, settling down at a young age, and basing everything endurance. On the other side, you have the younger members of the family, trying to get by in a gig economy; working from home with ever-shifting career paths; challenging old standards of success; and coming to terms with unprecedented rates of depression and anxiety. Sooner or later, a simple question such as “So, when are you settling down?” or “Why don‘t you look for a nice, steady company job?” ceases to be ordinary chat and instead becomes interrogation. The chasm between the values of the long past and of the long present is more than just a matter of technology, or a matter of changing fashions. It is a matter of a profound difference in how various generations now define security, define purpose, define human worth. Yet dissonant views need not create emotional walls. Making peace with intergenerational differences is less about converting family perspectives to one’s own and less about losing one’s. Instead, it is about mastering the art of translation. 1. Decode the Intent Behind the Advice It is easy to interpret the offering of advice by an aging family member through a Western perspective as dismissive and overbearing. Much of the contemporary familial values evolved in a world and economy dissimilarly from our current one. Older generations have experienced turbulent economic conditions, rigid societal values, or rapid institutional change. For these people, predictability was equated with security. Examples of established measures of stability such as one career per lifetime suddenly seemed not so trivial. Find the root emotion. If a parent is concerned about your freelance career or irregular hours, chances are some part of them just desperately wants your budget to be safe and sound, rather than wanting to censor your creativity. Acknowledge the concern first: before defending your choices, address the real concern. A response such as “thank you for caring about my security and here is how I am working toward that” produces a more collaborative rather than defensive state. 2. Translate Modern Choices into Shared Language Language, however, shifts far more rapidly than do fundamental values. What is common parlance for the Millennial generation, such as burnout, work-life balance, and setting boundaries may sound downright bizarre, or feckless, to elders who grew up with self-denial, service and quiet perseverance. Once made you will need to translate them into the deep values that your family has already learned to appreciate. Perhaps about: I‘m giving myself a break today cause my job is killing me. Make: “I‘m taking a breather today so that I can maintain my performance over the long haul without burning out.”(Very convincing! Appeals to diligence and sustainability.) I don’t wish to settle for the standard 9-to-5 way of life. Attempt: “I love the flexibility, but working hard to create some stability on my own terms.” (Stresses working hard and self-sufficiency.) By relating present decisions to founding blocks such as responsibility, industry, and caring for the family you make your choices understandable for people who were raised on an entirely different playbook. 3. Set Boundaries with Softness, Not Stiffness Boundaries need to be an integral part of functioning relationships, but direct or rude boundary setting can quickly be misread as harshness, or as an emotional wall. Good intergenerational boundaries don‘t build fences, they establish soft guidelines for healthy connection. The Guiding Principle of Cheerful Boundaries: Combine a restriction with an invitation. If the relative persistently refers to sensitive issues like the relative‘s relationship status, income, relationship at home, health, health insurance, parent‘s health, parent‘s individual decisions, etc., you don‘t have to agree to the discussion or to abruptly end the discussion. Instead, attempt to steer his/her attention toward positive directions with kindness: I know you have good intentions, but that‘s a sensitive subject for me today. I‘d rather hear how your gardening project is progressing. I‘m still trying to figure that out on my own time, but I would appreciate some advice from you on [unrelated subject]. Indicates that although a certain topic is avoiding, the relation is still highly cherished. 4. Build Anchor Points Outside of Modern Debates Don‘t debate the high road with generational perspectives. Instead, connect through a common path on the lower road personal history and experience instead of intellectual acrimony. Strong family bonds cannot be formed through passionate disputations about cultural shifts over dinner; They are created from shared hours and silent realizations. Inquire about their past. Elder kin are walking genealogical records of family tales. Asking them about their childhood, initial obstacles, or fondest recollections respects their knowledge and develops understanding. Create low pressure rituals: Cook a familiar family recipe, take a nature walk, work on a home project or enjoy a daily cup of coffee together. If you have the foundation of shared experiences to your relationship, then you cannot have disagreements about contemporary living erode your bond. Connection Over Consensus In the end, I don‘t believe perfect intergenerational harmony is what is needed. It can never be there will always be discrimination. We will simply interpret the world differently, that is the natural coefficient of history. Umm. When we can step back from dismissing the way our family members lived before us as outdated roadblocks, and instead recognize those actions and values as what provides the historical context for our current reality, we can begin to bridge a gap that is full of care, interest and respect. It is their way of life, you do not have to lead it..

#wellbeing#selfcare#mindfulpareting#selfeducation#selfgrowth

#mindfulness#mentalwellbeing#positivevibes#loveyourself#familywellbeing