Thinking back on 2020, it has become abundantly clear that lifestyle balance plays a big role in our ability to maintain not only our physical health, but also our mental and emotional wellness. During lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, we have learned how much it means to go outside, to …
Resiliency and Flexibility
When it comes to coping with life’s challenges, resiliency and flexibility have some things in common. One of the dictionary definitions of resilience is the ability of a material to return to its original shape and size after being compressed or deformed. Hard, inflexible material has little …
Better Ways of Thinking
We’ve talked about several ways of thinking that are not helpful—and even harmful, along with suggestions about how to counter each one. Let’s do a round-up of these: Black-and-white thinkingAsk questions to arrive at a more balanced viewpoint: “Really?” “What do you mean by…?”Use more nuanced …
Negative Filters
Have you been wearing dark glasses lately? Negative filtering is one way to get ourselves into a negative-feedback loop that can be challenging to get out of. This type of thinking keeps us aware of and dwelling on negative aspects of ourselves or our situation, and either discounting or entirely …
Thinking Skills
Our thinking patterns have a big impact on our emotions and our ability to act in positive ways. Becoming aware of how our thoughts affect us and developing helpful thinking patterns is a skill that can help us realize more positive outcomes in our career, our relationships, our health, and in our …
Flexible Thinking
Physical flexibility can help us reach places and do things that we couldn’t otherwise, keep us from getting hurt if we fall, and help us to make progress by getting over, around, or through obstacles. Mental flexibility is much the same. It can help us solve problems, reach conclusions, be safe …
Visualization
Visualization can be a powerful technique for ‘Living Better’ – achieving successes that are important to you. What is visualization, anyway? Visualization is “seeing in your mind’s eye”. In a word, imagination. It’s not just thinking. Visualizing includes imagining with true-to-life images and …
Setting Goals
Why goals? Goals give us direction – they’re like a roadmap. Goals help us focus our efforts on what matters to us, and avoid wasting time with “side roads” that don’t help us get to the desired result. Setting goals enables us to positively affect our future. There are many different areas …