Monthly Archives: January 2018

Six Immediate Steps To Improve Your Relationships

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Six Immediate Steps To Improve Your Relationships

Making your relationships more fulfilling for you as well as for the important people in your life is easier than you might think. Most of us simply forget what makes a good relationship, yet we know what it feels like when one of our relationships isn’t going well. Often, improving any aspect of your life is a matter of being reminded what the tried and true behaviors are that create happy relationships. Here are six easy-to-remember and even easier-to-do steps you can take right now to improve your friendships, family dynamics and even interactions with co-workers:

1. Respect Everyone

Respecting someone means to literally accept them for who they are and how they choose to think, feel and live. We cannot change others, and it is futile and even presumptuous of us to try. By accepting others and meeting them in a respectful way, we save ourselves needless frustration. No one wants to be told who to be or how to live; and the sooner you apply this principal, the sooner you improve your relationships.

2. Practice Kindness

Kindness is one of the most attractive qualities in anyone. Even more attractive is when a person thinks and feels that all others are worthy of their consideration and kindness and treats others with mutuality and compassion. People notice kindness and know when someone is caring. This is easy to do if you treat other people the way you would treat anyone you truly care about.

3. Be Happy For Others

In the highly competitive, often dog-eat-dog environments many of us work and live in, we can develop an attitude that if “we don’t have ours” than “no one else should have his.” This is an unhealthy and unsuccessful attitude that doesn’t allow us to celebrate for others and invite them into celebrating for us when we have success or an achievement. Good wishes toward others result in good wishes for us.

4. Release Resentments

When we hold onto anger or resentment toward others, we end up doing more harm to ourselves than to them. Anger and resentment make us sick and chains us to the events or circumstances that hurt us. This does not allow us to move on in life, and it lessens the love and kindness we can be experiencing and sharing with others. It leaves us in turmoil about something in the past.

5. Do The Small Things

Think back to your most tender and memorable moments with the important people in your life. You will probably find that those moments were filled not with expensive, larger-than-life gifts, events or experiences, but rather with small, meaningful gifts, gestures and shared experiences. While you cannot do special things for everyone in your life, the people who are most important will really appreciate it if you show them how important they are to you with the small things that mean so much.

6. Follow the Golden Rule

There is a saying that we should never expect others to give us what we are not willing to give to them. The Golden Rule is a simple one: Give to others what you want the most for yourself. If you want to be loved, love others. If you want success, than provide service or value for others. This is an easy and simple rule and best of all, it works.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

 

3 Expert Ways To Feel Happier

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3 expert ways to feel happier every day

We all want to be happy. Yet few of us know how to achieve happiness on a day-to-day basis. We may be happy when something wonderful happens; but if something not-so-wonderful happens, we can easily find ourselves feeling angry, depressed, disappointed or just plain unhappy. This blog will share three expert ways to feel happier every day.

Simplicity

The first tip is to keep it simple. Health Coaches know that there are simple things we can all do to develop our skills for becoming and remaining happy in spite of whatever may be going on around us or that might befall us. That is not to say that we should not be concerned or sad if someone we love is ill or that we should not react to losing our job or having the landlord sell our apartment building for condo development.

But by developing and strengthening our “happiness muscle,” we can maintain our happiness and bounce back from adversity easier and faster.

Here is a simple yet powerful tool we can all apply daily to help us find a balance point with all the ups and downs that we find ourselves dealing with.

Keeping Track Of Gratitude

Start writing down every day the specific things you are grateful for. A 2003 gratitude study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Robert Emmons of the University of California and Michael McCullough of the University of Florida, showed that when we keep track through journaling about or making lists of what we are grateful for every day, we experience a higher reported level of the positive states — alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy — compared to people who journal or write down negative interactions, complaints or grievances.

Help Others

Positive journaling also results in the reaching out to others and helping those in need. During the time the study was being conducted, each of the participants continued to help others in less fortunate circumstances on a weekly basis. This, in turn, connected the participants to a fulfilling experience of giving and receiving compassion and caring.

Caring for others also translated into a greater sense of caring for themselves for the participants and brought about a sustained sense of happiness or contentment even when less desirable events occurred.

We can develop our happiness skills and happiness sustainability by focusing on being grateful for the positive things in our lives every day and by focusing less on the things we may want but don’t have. This makes us more compassionate of others and well as of ourselves.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

 

The Secret To Reducing Stress: Balancing Life

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The Secret To Reducing Stress: A Balanced Life

A statement by the well-known mind/body physician, Herb Benson, M.D. says that 60-90% of all visits to the doctor’s office are due to stress. We all hear about stress, experience stress, but what exactly is stress? Most of us think of stress as the emotional conflicts we experience in our daily lives, but our emotions are just one category or one type of “event” that can cause us to experience stress.

In order for us to survive in our ever-changing environments, our bodies are designed to adapt and it does so through a series of biochemical reactions. These chemical reactions are natural and necessary, but they are the wear and tear of living that we call stress.

Here’s an example I like to share in relations to because it gives a clear vision of this principle. When I was living in New York City, I drove my little stick shift through the stop and go traffic. Imagine the wear and tear (stress) on the clutch.

There are many events that might cause similar stress to our bodies. Some may surprise you.

  • Weather
  • Excess Exertion (such as too much exercise or lack of sleep)
  • Trauma or Injuries
  • Allergies and Immune Insults
  • Infections
  • Reproduction Related Events (monthly cycle, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, etc.)

While the common nature of these events does not sound encouraging, there is some good news. If we have a stress response that is short term, like when the phone rings and the nurse tells you that your child had been vomiting, our bodies do just fine.

It is the prolonged stress, like anticipating for two whole weeks a root canal or that pesky “annual office evaluation.” That does us in! This extended stress affects our digestive system, immune system, cardiovascular and even reproductive systems. Couple this with poor eating habits or insufficient sleep, and we are not happy campers.

While excessive or chronic stress is definitely not good for our health, we need stress adaptation for survival, so it is actually a very good thing. How this adaptation takes place is by way of specialized hormones from our adrenal glands, located in our kidneys. They change our heart rate, blood pressure, lung capacity, and a host of other functions, for our survival. However, these hormones, if secreted too much or too often can suppress our immune, digestive and reproductive systems and even damage our cardiovascular system. Chronic stress is one very large reason why some of us have fertility problems.

So how can we make friends with stress? The answer is good old moderation. Remember being told “all things in moderation leads to a healthy body.” It is true. We do not have to learn to do anything exotic to reduce stress, we just need to balance our lives and avoid excess.

Nevertheless, there is the rub, given modern life. We are all excessing more and more and moderating less. For a great book on this subject, check out Why Zebras Don’t Have Ulcers by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. It is a very witty and informative book. Laugher, as we know, is “our best medicine.” It is also a great stress reducer.

 

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

 

 

How You Can Shape Meaningful Relationships In the Workplace

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How You Can Shape Meaningful Relationships In the Workplace

Some of us may not realize just how important it is to shape meaningful relationships in the workplace. Without the support or cooperation of those with whom we spend a significant amount of our time, our job performance and certainly our work satisfaction can suffer. Several studies have shown that difficult office relationships impair performance and decrease morale even more seriously than rumors of employee layoffs.

Most of us spend the majority of our waking hours working. And as a result, we spend the majority of our time with our co-workers. Just as with other people in our lives with whom we interact on a regular basis, our co-workers need to be viewed as important and essential parts of our “life support” group. Cultivating respectful, considerate relationships with our co-workers is good for our health and our work performance. It creates a positive and friendly environment where we spend a majority of our time.

Here are some easy ways to make the work environment nicer, friendlier and more positive place:

Avoid gossiping: No one wants to be gossiped about. If you don’t gossiping about others, your co-workers will get the message that you do not wish to “stir the stink” about them and they will respect your integrity and treat you likewise. If someone starts to gossip with you, simply respond: “Really?” Then change the subject or excuse yourself from the conversation. Reducing gossip effectively enhances the work environment and your reputation.

Show genuine interest: One of the nicest experiences is having someone show interest in the things that interest us. It makes us feel valued and builds rapport and trust. If you are aware of co-worker’s interests and happen to run across something pertaining to those subjects, giving them information or helpful articles can really make their day and enhance your working relationships.

Give credit where credit is due: Embrace the win-win attitude and always give credit where credit is due. If people have worked hard and made a huge contribution to a project, they should be recognized and applauded for their efforts. Nothing is more uplifting than being recognized for our contributions and the value we bring to our work. By supporting and appreciating co-workers, you create for them and for yourself a cooperative and trustworthy environment that encourages them to continue to do their best.

Competition can be healthy, but not when it results in giving credit to the wrong people or not recognizing excellence in others.

For more life-changing, whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.