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Self-care

Some practical tips to optimize your life

1.  Get up just a little earlier and start the day with a good book, a magazine article,  or a book of affirmations.

2.  Savor your coffee.  Just takes a few minutes.  Even if you can only savor the first sip or two.  Take a few seconds to enjoy the taste, the warmth, the feel of the mug in your hands.

3. Speak up in meetings and relationships.  Listen actively and when the moment is right, express your thoughts or ideas.

4. Admit how you feel.  When something disturbing happens, give it a few minutes and then acknowledge your feeling, identify it and own it.  Usually this is enough to be able to let the feeling go and move on.

5.  Construct joy.  Use thoughts to steer yourself away from reflexive negative emotions and toward tranquility. Take a walk. Breathe.

6.  Praise yourself.   Every thought we have, including self-criticism, paves a neural pathway.  These pathways make it easier for us to have the same response the next time.  Eventually our brains go on autopilot.  So, if you are self-critical, this will become an automatic response.  But you can, over time, change your response by changing your thinking.  Tell yourself that you are doing a good job.  At first you will not believe it.  Do it day after day and you will eventually build new neural pathways.  Positive thoughts will become automatic.

7.  Stop striving for the ideal/perfect ending.  Good enough is good enough.

8.  Weeds or flowers?  When you have an anxious thought, ask you self the following: Is this thought a weed that needs to be plucked out of my thoughts?  Or is it a flower that needs to be nurtured?

9. Allow your heart to break.  When you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, or here in your very own world, don’t look away.  Look right at them and let them break your heart.  Then let your empathy and talents help you make a difference in the lives of others.

10.  Quiet your mind.  Try to meditate at least once a day, even if only for a few minutes.  Dance when you are alone!  And laugh out loud.

Sources:

• Daring Greatly  –  Brene Brown PhD

• Meet your Happy Chemicals  –  Loretta Graziano Breuning PhD

• The Happiness Project  –  Gretchen Rubin

• Happier at Home  –  Gretchen Rubin

Parenting

The most basic parenting advice you will ever need

1.  Let your kids fail.

To learn self-sufficiency, kids need to occasionally dust themselves off without your help.  Most of us know what our kids are capable of but find it difficult not to step in and make it easier for them. Think long term benefits:  teenagers who know how to do their own laundry!  Of course, you would not put your child in real danger.  If the activity is age appropriate ( social studies poster due tomorrow; “thank you note” to Aunt) take a step back and see what happens.

2.  The three rules of homework:

Do the hardest thing first.
Put away the phone while doing homework.
As soon as assignments are finished, load up the back pack for tomorrow and put it by the door.

3.  Plan random acts of kindness.

Kids need to know that  helping others is an everyday practice.  Challenge your kids to complete small  kind acts every day like throwing away another kid’s trash at lunch or raking a neighbor’s lawn.  And remember, kids listen to what you do, not what you say.  Set a good example.

4.  Be firm about bedtime.

Studies show that kids who have irregular bedtimes have more behavioral problems than kids who go to bed consistently at the same time.  This is true for adults as well!

5.  Let them read what they want.

Kids who read for pleasure excel academically.  Not only in language arts but in math as well.

6.  Don’t pay your kids to clean their room.

Give your kid an allowance as an introduction to money management, not for doing chores.

7.  Don’t be a short order cook.

It’s a child’s job to learn to eat what the parents eat.  Instead of the all-or-nothing approach, offer a variety of foods at mealtime;  the main course, plus rice or pasta, a fruit or vegetable and milk.

8.  Pay attention at age 14

This is when most kids start to resist peer influence and flex the think-for-myself muscle.

9.  Put on your own oxygen mask first.

In other words, take care of yourself or you can’t be fully engaged as a parent.

Sources:

• Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family  –  Ellen Satter

• I Can’t Believe I Just Did That  –  David Allyn

• Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don’t  –  Mary Leonardt

• Have the Guts to Do It Right:  Raising Grateful and Responsible Children in an Era of Indulgence  –  Sheri Noga

What is a Telomere?

A couple of years ago, several scientists won a Nobel prize in medicine for the discovery of the functions of telomeres.

Why is that important to you?  Well, telomeres reside at the end of the chromosomes in order to protect them from deterioration.  When cells replicate, telomeres are cut and become increasingly shorter.  If the telomere becomes too short, it dies or becomes dormant.

Many researchers now use telomere length to determine cell age.

Still with me?
Two recent studies, out of the University of Colorado (Thomas LaRocca ) and  Germany (Christian Werner), measure the effects of long-term exercise on telomere length, with some interesting results.
They found that young people, regardless of how active they were, have basically the same length of telomere.  The marked changes come only later when looking at middle-aged people.

Here it comes…
Middle aged people who were sedentary had telomeres that were about 40% shorter on average than young people, even the sedentary young ones.  Those who maintained physical activity had not only higher aerobic capacities but also longer telomeres.  Actually, their telomere lengths were only slightly shorter than that of youthful exercisers.

So…. next time you consider putting off exercise, think of your telomeres and improving the health of your cells. Improved cell health has so many implications for  brain cells and their capacity to adapt to new functions.