During cold and dark winter months, it can be enticing to hibernate and stay indoors, leading to less activity. But there are still lots of ways to keep moving and to maintain a fitness routine. This month, we offer some winter-proof workouts for you to try.
Before heading outdoors, make sure to brush up on these Cold Weather Clues (from our Fitting in Fitness archive) to ensure that you stay warm, dry and hydrated. This will help conserve energy for your chosen form of activity.
No gym? No problem! Make the most of your break with this quick and easy routine from FitnessBlender.com that can be done at a desk, an office, or anywhere with a spare chair.
Metro Vancouver offers a wealth of unique winter activities and adventures that can only be done at this time of year. Don’t miss out on the fitness opportunities that snowy conditions can bring.
Feeling busy and overwhelmed? Consider the Greatist.com’s list of stress-free ways to incorporate activity into your day, like delivering gifts on foot, decorating and even singing!
For more fitness tips and inspiration, visit our Fitting in Fitness page.
Photo credit: ICORD
This month we feature Steve Bohnen, UBC Campus Security Crime Prevention & Community Relations Officer as our Thriving Campus feature.
How do you thrive at work?
I love our UBC environment and believe most people who work here strongly desire to establish a ‘higher and better social contract’ within this community. My role at Campus Security allows me to contribute to that mission, and I’m superbly grateful for it. The endless flow and variety of our challenges exercise my talents, skills and training daily. I enjoy a great balance of responding to real-time calls for assistance and assessing/analyzing occurrence patterns to promote better outcomes for both the University and the greater community. It’s a wonderful balance of challenges and creative opportunities.
I couldn’t do this work without respectful, highly supportive and like-minded colleagues who realize that we bring our total selves to the workplace every day, and understand that we must engage fully with one another to be most effective as a workgroup. We share our challenges, use check-ins regularly and maintain ongoing training and certification to stay at the top of our game.
How do you thrive at home?
Music has been a lifelong passion for me (yes, guitar players are actually considered musicians) and playing, whether alone or with others, has provided amazing rewards in relaxation, problem solving, left/right brain balance and just plain joy.
I’ve been playing since 1965, and am regularly privileged to sit in sessions with four or five people who bring 200+ years’ worth of talent and experience to the room. These moments transcend language and are a gift I wish everyone could experience. I encourage everyone to find their creative passion or instrument and get into the flow with it regularly. I play daily and wouldn’t be without it. This is Your Brain on Music is highly recommended reading.
I’ve been blessed with a superb partner in my wife Mary, a social services professional who brings a balance of compassion and deep expertise in her field to our family and our marriage. She’s an absolute champion and my best friend.
In three words or less, what does Wellbeing mean to you?
Fully, peacefully energized.
Steve Bohnen has worked at UBC Campus Security for 23 years. He is a certified BCSSA Security Consultant and Advanced Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) practitioner. Steve studied Arts at UBC from 1966 to 1968, left the Lower Mainland for work on the BC North Coast and later returned to UBC in 1986 after widely varied work and life experiences in several parts of the province, including Vancouver Island and the Okanagan. He has been married for 38 years and has four children, one of whom graduated with a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from UBC. His passions are his family, his work, music and the outdoors.
Photo Credit: Don Erhardt
Guest contribution by Dr. Thara Vayali
Empathy comes naturally to us. From our primate cousins to our newborn babies, humans are wired to perceive and respond to another person’s feelings. It has helped us learn skills, build communities and has saved us from danger. It is our language before we learn to speak a language.
We don’t learn empathy. In fact, quite the contrary: we are empathic and for healthy developmental reasons, we mitigate the impact of all the feelings by building boundaries.
In the context of work, politics, education and relationships, empathy is having its golden moment. Praised as a way to improve employee happiness, international relations, interpersonal conflict and learning disorders, empathy has a lot to live up to.
Since empathy is getting so much attention, I think it is worth being crystal clear on the shorthand terms for describing the ways we experience feeling with others. These definitions are a compilation of research in empathy, etymology and communication.
In its essence, without laying out the nuances and qualities of empathic communication, empathy is embedding your emotional being in someone else’s situation (“Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.”)
When you observe someone experiencing an emotion, and you feel that emotion well up in yourself, this is empathy. You have a visceral sense of what it feels like even though you are not experiencing the same situation. (“I feel you.”)
Sympathy (more recently cast aside as unhelpful) is often poorly defined as pity and sorrow, which each hold their own as unique feelings. Instead, sympathy is to be with someone else while they emote, despite not feeling it in tandem. We do this in the context of caring and desiring them to thrive. (“Though I do not/cannot know what you are feeling, I will walk beside you.”)
When you observe someone experiencing an emotion but you do not experience that emotion rise up within you, you can still sit with the person through their challenge – this is being sympathetic. You can hold space for the feeling and enable their resilience without feeling it yourself.
Both sympathy and empathy can support someone through distress. When we have the capacity to recognize and validate someone else’s emotions, we are better able to hear them and be supportive of them.
What doesn’t help us is when empathy becomes be “emotional contagion”, where the line between the original feeling and the empathic feeling becomes blurred. The observer perceives that and acts as if both people are experiencing the same thing. This situation often renders both individuals needing support. Small children (and some adults) experience high permeability of emotional states. One person’s distress becomes another person’s distress because healthy boundaries were not developed/established.
To build boundaries is not to build walls or to shut down emotional responses. To build boundaries is to say, “I respect your experience as yours. This is how much time I have, how much energy I have, how much perspective I have, and I will give to that extent willingly.”
Another reason to be conscious of these boundaries is the relationship between stress and empathic response. In a nutshell, stress both increases and decreases empathy, and empathy both increases and decreases stress. Chickens and eggs everywhere.
Stress is ubiquitous and can mean anything from anxiety to surprise, danger or exhaustion. Statistically, 1 in 4 working Canadians report being stressed, but exactly what the stressors are and how they show up emotionally vary from person to person. It is no wonder that stress and empathy are mired in a never-ending loop.
When we experience personal distress, we tend to decrease our empathic response as a protective mechanism: when the stress feels isolated, we become more self-oriented. We may be more sensitive to cognitively noticing someone else in distress, but less capable of understanding their experience.
When we experience a social or contextual distress we tend to increase our empathic response: when we are “all in the same boat”, we become more oriented to the greater good. We may be able to “get it” when someone is in distress, but less capable of taking space away from that emotion.
Striking a balance between thinking and feeling is useful in our “empathic response.” Too much or too little of either and our actions can be misguided.
When our empathic response is out of balance, it does us well to remember this:
Empathy can be misguided. We are wired to be empathic, but need more information to get a better sense of another person’s plight. It is only through our own eyes (perspectives, realities, histories, experiences, biases) that we imagine the other person’s situation. Our empathy tends to be specific: toward people we care deeply about or are similar to, for experiences we identify with, and to emotions we are familiar with. Through those eyes and those preferences, our statements/actions can be misguided.
Empathy requires energy. Empathic responses require almost all regions of the brain to work together. Like any mental task, the brain uses nutrient resources to meet demand. Compassion fatigue can occur in situations of high empathic demand, weak boundaries and low nutrient resources. We need to stop before the tank is empty, or replenish and refuel.
Empathy is a limited resource. Limited resources can drain; sometimes we use it all day long and have little left for loved ones at the end of the day – or vice versa. If you recall that no resource is limitless without care and conservation, you might be more judicious of how and when you support others.
How to make friends with empathy:
Take a body break. When you feel yourself picking up on another person’s emotion, notice your body. There is a section of your brain oriented to do just this: what sensations do I feel and where are they? What are they telling me?
Take a breath, and localize the emotion (Chest? Head? Fingers? Gut?) It’s somewhere – that’s part of how we pick up on another’s feelings – through our nervous system. If you can place it, you can also release it. Stretch it, breathe it, squeeze it, visualize throwing it away. Do something so you are not at the whim of the emotion within you.
Check your boundaries daily. How much energy do you have? How have you eaten? How have you slept? How are your personal stressors being managed? How many people are relying on your support today? Know your limit. Stay within it.
Be kinder to yourself. A vital piece of experiencing sustainable empathy is developing a positive self-image. If we can be kind to ourselves and our own emotional states, we have more room for another person’s emotion. If we feel poorly about ourselves, feeling another person’s emotion can feel invasive and depleting. When you feel your emotional tank for others starting to run low, take a moment to let yourself refuel, reflect and remember what you love about yourself. Ask yourself: What could I do to be kinder to myself today?
Empathy is a tool. Like any tool, we need to know how to use it safely to protect ourselves and others. Used wisely and with practice, we have an opportunity to create a beautiful outcome. Practice with your body, boundaries, and being kind to yourself – your empathic response will serve you well.
Thara Vayali is a naturopathic doctor and yoga teacher in Vancouver, as well as a UBC alumna. She is obsessed with intestinal and immune health, hormones and pain-free bodies. She is also the creator of Change Natural Medicine, which offers budget-conscious, membership-based health consulting.
Guest contribution from Dr. Thara Vayali
The 4 o’clock drop that requires a fully loaded latte. That extra piece of cake at the party. That late night bowl (or two) of ice cream. We’ve all been there. We all know what it’s like to feel an irresistible urge to have just one more. In the right moment, that sweet temptation can override any well-seasoned health plan.
The concept of temptation implies restraint, and assumes bad behaviour. This set up may be the origin of our society’s disordered relationship with sugar. Our well-laid dietary plans can backfire when we aim to control our desires and admonish our opposing actions. We can have a more balanced, fulfilling relationship if we are honest with our cravings and use mindfulness to interact with our sugar-laden food.
There is absolutely nothing unhealthy about reaching for sweet food to fulfill a sugar craving when it hits, but when those cravings are daily (or for some, constant) there is the potential to lose our capacity to regulate intake.
Usually, this loss occurs because we aren’t paying attention to why the craving is there in the first place. When we ignore the source signals, the craving grows and with it, our intake regulation goes out the window.
What are the source signals?
There are many reasons we can over-consume sugar.
All these beg the question: What does “overdoing it” look like?
The World Health Organization’s recommendation for maximum daily refined (or added) sugar intake is approximately 5-10% of our daily calories. That equals to 6 – 10 teaspoons or 24 – 40 grams.
One large pumpkin spice latte has approximately 48 grams of sugar of which 31 grams are refined sugar from the flavour syrups alone. The rest (17g) are naturally occurring sugars from the milk. Add in some whipped cream and you have an extra 12 grams. That’s your entire added sugar quota for the day.
Unfortunately, nutrition labels do not separate added sugars from naturally occurring sugars, which further confuses our personal sugar assessments. Mindfulness might be more helpful than micro-managing and controlling our recommended intake.
A sugar recommendation does not mean we have a sugar requirement, it just means that to engage in common food customs and maintain social engagements, we will likely consume some refined sugar in the day. So, it is best to keep it below the recommendations.
On average, Canadians consume 50-60g of added sugar per day. For more information, check out these infographics of our annual total sugar intake from Statistics Canada, through MacLean’s, and Global News, and a fantastic Canadian Documentary, Sugar Coated that discusses the health impact of sugar and the influence of industry lobbying.
But for now, let’s get back to mindfulness.
When it comes to health behaviours, the most common dialogue around refined sugar and health is about self-control or ways to cut sugar out completely.
What we want to be aware of is the difference between self-control (will power) and self-regulation (mindfulness).
Using self-“control” in the context of cravings is akin to ignoring a message that our body is trying to tell us. Will power doesn’t break craving cycles, it merely silences them for a short time. Silencing a craving can build resentment and strengthen the urge to break free from the restriction.
Being mindful about our sugar intake is a more active role in breaking a cycle. Using mindfulness can be a more effective way of regulating sugar intake. Mindful sugar consumption starts with pausing, noticing, asking and choosing. It’s not a quick fix, but it makes long term behaviour change more realistic.
What could mindful sugar consumption look like?
Pause: Next time you choose to consume something that’s sweet, check in with your body by taking three deep breaths.
1st Breath – Do nothing, simply inhale and exhale.
2nd Breath – Look at what you are about to eat/drink.
3rd Breath – Look around the room at your surroundings for context.
Notice: Take in the sounds, smells and sights. Notice if your body is tense, if you are salivating, if your stomach has a knot, or is growling.
Ask: Which of these is true for me right now:
Choose: Given my answers:
Through this process you are regulating your relationship with sugar, rather than controlling it.
If you use this mindful process regularly, over time you will build better communication between your body, mind and the way you nourish yourself. Mindfully breaking the sugar habit is learning to listen and respond to your needs. Your body will thank you for it.
New Year’s resolutions. At this time of year in particular, people spend a fair amount of time thinking about them, recording them and typically either loving or hating them. Unfortunately, we can also become de-motivated or discouraged if we perceive ourselves as failing for not completing them.
I chose not to set any resolutions this year, at least not in the traditional sense. In an effort to better use by mental energy, I’m adopting a new philosophy for how I view the world. I’m hoping this new outlook will provide me with more time and energy to re-dedicate towards things that I love (cooking, family and friends, and creative pursuits).
I’m hopeful that this new outlook might resonate with others and so I am sharing it with you today!
Accept: Begin by acknowledging and accepting that there are things beyond control, and then move on. Time spent worrying or being angry over things that you cannot change is time you could better spend elsewhere. Consciously recognize what you cannot control, perhaps even saying it out loud, to shift your focus elsewhere.
No amount of yelling, worrying or complaining will make that traffic move any faster.
Appreciate & Attempt: Next, take stock of the areas in your life where you have some influence. Where possible, attempt to manage these as best you can.
You may not have control over getting a cold but you can influence your eating and sleeping habits to heal faster.
Alter: Finally, turn your focus and energy to things that are within your realm of control. We have the ability to alter aspects of our lives and effect change. That is empowering knowledge.
Spend your time focused on who and what you can change (hint: look inwards, this is typically you!)
Whatever and whenever you decide to make changes in the New Year, I hope you will keep this perspective in mind. We all deserve to spend some of our time and energy focused on the things that bring us fulfillment and joy.
Happy 2017!
All my best,
Miranda
References:
3 A’s of Stress Management and Spheres of Influence (Adam Rollins, The Neutral Zone, 2014)
Guest Contribution from Dr. Thara Vayali
When we turn over a new leaf – such as in the new year, closing a chapter in life, or creating a plan of action for change – we tend to imbue that shift with an urgency, a haste to see the fruit of our efforts. This urgency can sometimes result in the same type of frustration that arises in daily situations when running errands, commuting, and interacting with others who don’t agree with us.
When frustration arises from the choices we make, the energy generated can help us by motivating us to get creative and choose alternatives that suit us better. It can refocus us to switch to a more appropriate goal and it can allow us to recognize how important the goal is for us. But this type of frustration is active and positive.
Frustration has a cousin named impatience – a more gnawing emotion that doesn’t let go and move forward. Impatience can drain from our capacity to make change. Impatience is a boiling within, a festering annoyance.
Our work, whenever life takes a turn away from our plans and impatience gets the better of us – in traffic, with new resolutions, with co-workers, while waiting in line – is to use tools to practice patience. Patience is not only a virtue; it can provide a more useful solution.
Although it may not seem like the most appropriate action in the moment, it is the choice that eats up the least of our energy, energy that would be much better used toward doing the things we want to do. Impatience takes more energy than patience.
Impatience: a restlessness and agitation with the current situation. There is an intolerance for feeling irritated, an inability to manage delays. This pacing, whether frenetic or calm, tends to have a tight grip on the need to know the future.
Patience: not an inactive state, it is not surrendering to fate, nor condoning poor behaviour. It is specifically not biding your time nor biting your lip, which it is often mistaken for. It is a devotion to the moment and a choice to see the current situation like an adventure; accommodating for new unpredictable obstacles. Patience is the capacity to take a step back and choose again. It is a loosening of one’s grip on ‘needing to know’.
The rising energy of impatience often shows up with thoughts such as: “I’m not sure where this is heading”, or “I don’t like the direction this is heading”.
The choice then is to either commit to continuing along with our intentions or changing directions, but that choice is best made from a patient mindset.
When we are impatient, it usually has to do with our reality not meeting our expectations. It takes energy to expect the world and its movements to conform to our personal rules. That valuable energy could be used to mobilize our own best choices. When unexpected and sometimes undesired situations pop up as roadblocks on a charted journey, remember that when we interact with the world, we will inevitably be pulled off track in moments.
Imagine a feather floating down from the sky. On watching, one could feel either an urgency or an ease for the feather to find its way to land, but regardless of feelings the feather will float quietly to the ground at the pace of the natural world. If our impatience gets the better of us and we attempt to move it along, by blowing on it or waving it, we end up expending energy with minimal returns. The more we hurry a feather along, the more difficult it becomes for it to travel and land along its path and destination. Don’t sweat the journey – breathe deep and manage the gusts as they come.
Patience, little feather.
Thara Vayali is a Naturopathic Doctor & Yoga Teacher in Vancouver and is also a UBC alumnus. She is obsessed with intestinal and immune health, hormones, and pain-free bodies. She is the creator of Change Natural Medicine: Budget conscious, membership based health consulting.
In January, we’re focusing on recipes and nutrition tips to fuel your physical activity.
Food provides energy for body function and physical activity. Your energy and food intake needs may change in relation to your activity levels. Balance and variety of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and water will provide you with the nutrients required.
To keep your body hydrated, aim for a daily fluid intake of about 2 – 3 litres (8 – 12 cups) per day, based on your body size and activity level. When you are more active, and the weather is hotter, you will need to increase your intake. Water is one of the best fluid choices and you should use your thirst as a guide.
Here are tips and recipes to help you stay hydrated:
Having a small meal or snack before you exercise can help stabilize blood glucose levels and keep you hydrated and energized. It can also help you perform for longer and with more intensity.
Here are tips and recipes to help you fuel up before exercise:
Healthy eating after you exercise is important to replace the energy, fluids, electrolytes and carbohydrates that are used up.
Here are tips and recipes to help you satisfy your hunger after exercise:
Each week in January, we will be sharing tips, tricks, and information to stay well while being active! Become a UBC Health Contact to receive weekly reminders, tips and tricks.
Guest contribution by Dr. Thara Vayali
As the fall ramps up with task managers and organization tools and the schedules quickly start becoming booked up, our tendency is to jump right in to be productive. Productivity is a reward in itself and it seems that the more productive we are, the less stress we have. Although this is one way to mitigate stress, one of the key pieces of stress management and resilience building that gets forgotten is spaciousness. Without spaciousness, we can eventually crash and burn despite our best intentions.
Creating spaciousness is the art of planning for buffer time in your agenda. Buffer time is not only accounting for the time for unexpected delays or a spontaneous passing conversation with friends/neighbours (which is also important!), but also giving enough time for you to breathe, to notice, and to absorb the context you are in before taking any actions. In our modern society, efficiency and organization can often be placed at the head of stress management and are associated with “doing” or task productivity. Let’s take a step back and – while we give efficiency and organization their due credit – start to view spaciousness as a crucial component of our long-term resilience building.
Just as you might imagine spaciousness in a room or a field, or as the human eye sees the night sky, spaciousness in life is the ‘space between’ – the pauses in between the actions of the day, or a relaxed relationship with time.
Instead of running from meeting to meeting or dropping off someone/ and gobbling your lunch before rushing to your desk, there is a window of time that you “schedule” in, where you become a witness rather than a thinker/doer.
This could be five minutes before a meeting, or 30 minutes between ending a day’s work and walking into the routines of your home. If we don’t build spaciousness into our schedules, the efficiency megaphone within us will call the shots. In modern life, moments of quiet don’t arrive without an element of intention.
We may think that jam-packing our schedules as the act of being present and excited with our days, or as spending our time doing what we love, with people we love. This can be true and yet still be detrimental. The people we connect with and the work we do may be fulfilling, but the sustainability of “doing” constantly is short term and in that time can damage our resilience mechanisms. To build resilience for the inevitable stressors that come with time, we draw our resources from the practice of creating space, even when we feel energetic enough not to need it.
On the flip side, for some of us, there are more than enough energy draining responsibilities to fill up 24 hours. In our current productivity model it can seem we barely have time to sleep, for fear that our precariously teetering stability may falter. Which is to say – it may not be an easy task to create spaciousness. Just because it is not easy does not make it a less important component of stability.
By cramming our days, we cram our minds and bodies, and there is only so long a person can last in a healthy mindset in a crammed headspace.
Stress grows when time is tight. Stress can dissipate when mindful space arrives. Mindfulness is what nourishes resilience. Give your resilience room to grow, so it can be a pillar for you when you need it.
Planning: Intention matters! Planning to have timed space between actions is a functional way for spaciousness to feed you. If we wait for the “free time” to arrive before taking space to sit back and observe, the spaciousness can feel not only precious, but fleeting and lost to another unforeseen moment in time. The joy of embracing the rarity of spaciousness runs in parallel with lamenting the lack of it. If you know you are choosing to build spaciousness into your days regularly, it is easier to let it nourish you and to let it go. Spaciousness is not handed out randomly, it is fostered.
Prioritizing: The world can tug us in all directions and it is our job to get clear on what helps us serve others. There may be more tasks than you could accomplish in a day. These tasks may be important, but if you remember that your own mental health is the linchpin to being of service to yourself and others, spaciousness takes a front seat. Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. Valuing your own needs does not mean you are devaluing another’s needs.
Mindfulness: When we bounce from task to task it can be difficult to observe without sliding into a flurry of thoughts. Using the tools of mindfulness and the sensory experience of sight, smell, sound and touch, you can bring yourself into a witness state where resilience grows.
As you organize each day this week, look at your schedule/tasks and choose ONE time in the day where you could build in a buffer, a spaciousness for breathing and observing without doing, planning or preparing. Be it for five minutes or one hour, let that time be an open field for observing where you are; for arriving and sensing before acting. It may be a practice that you find takes your emotional odometer into a place of calm. It may be a practice that you will take forward beyond this week into your life.
The ‘“space between” is where understanding happens, where meaning occurs and where all this “doing” has purpose beyond task management. Resilience is built on four pillars: Confidence, Connection, Adaptability & Purpose. Spaciousness allows for these pillars to expand.
As Paulo Coelho writes in The Witch of Portobello: “If all the words were joined together, they wouldn’t make sense, or at the very least, they’d be extremely hard to decipher. The spaces are crucial.”
I’d venture a guess that we could look at the way we use time in a similar way. We could consider spaciousness as requirement to make sense of the moments and actions in lives.
Build space. Prevent burnout.
Thara Vayali is a Naturopathic Doctor & Yoga Teacher in Vancouver and is also a UBC alumnus. She is obsessed with intestinal and immune health, hormones, and pain-free bodies. She is the creator of Change Natural Medicine: Budget conscious, membership based health consulting.
This month’s healthy recipes & tips include nutritious snacks to nourish yourself and maintain energy throughout your work day!
Seven Eating for Energy Tips – article
It’s no surprise that we get our energy from food. Maintaining energy is all about avoiding drastic fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Use these seven tips to help you beat the three o’clock slump.
Healthy Snacks for Adults – article with snack ideas
Pick up some satisfying snack ideas to keep your blood sugar levels stable and your energy up throughout the day.
Energy Balls – recipe
This recipe contains nuts, dried fruits, cinnamon, and a hint of Canadian sweetness. They are called energy balls after all, so they are a perfect mid-morning or afternoon snack.
Easy Overnight Oats – recipe
Eating a nourishing breakfast is an important way to start your day. Plan your breakfasts and even prepare them ahead of time! Try this delicious and easy overnight oats recipe.
To keep informed of all new recipes and additional weekly health and wellbeing offerings, become a UBC Health Contact.
Here are more recipes & tips…
For more of tasty treats, visit our Healthy UBC Recipe Series page. Bon appétit!
I rarely set New Year’s resolutions. While I find that a new year is a great time to re-evaluate and reset my health behaviours, I am jaded by many years of watching my resolutions fall lonely by the wayside as the weeks move on.
Human motivation is an interesting phenomenon. Our behavior is commonly described as the result of internal (intrinsic) or external (extrinsic) factors that push and pull us towards a desired outcome. We are motivated to act based on elements such as rationality, drive, incentives, self-control, cognition and reinforcement, but are often passive participants – acting or not acting without taking the time to understand why.
This year, instead of making the New Year about resolutions or goals, I am making it about my motivations to achieve these goals. My hope is that by focusing my attention on how and why I am motivated to reach my goals, instead of on the goals themselves, that I might actually create some long term changes.
Example 1:
Example 2:
Be specific
Break down goals and use bite-sized steps to get there. This allows for celebration and achievement along the way and can help identify the deeper motivators behind the goal. “Be healthier” is a tough goal to achieve unless you identify what this means to you and why.
Share your goals
Share your motivation and goals with a partner or friend. They can check-in and help provide additional external motivation, reminders, (or nagging) when necessary. Posting your goals/motivators can also help keep you accountable to yourself. A friend of mine even framed his!
Put an end to it
Studies have shown that long range and open ended goal setting can be problematic, even contributing to symptoms of depression. By setting a realistic end date (I might suggest 4-8 weeks), your goal is measurable, tangible and ultimately more achievable.
Identify your motivators
Tease out the specific benefits that you are hoping to achieve through your goals. This can help provide a deeper connection to the goal and a more personal motivation for seeing it through. Why are you setting this goal and how would you like it to impact your life.
Relapse, re-set and repeat
Forgive yourself if things do not go perfectly. Seeing your goals through to completion might require you to take a break, re-set or re-evaluate. Use this time to review goals, steps and roadblocks and then begin again.
I invite you to welcome the year 2016 with open arms. Take this month to delve deeper into the motivations that live behind your resolutions as it may provide you with the added value to carry on.
All my best,
Miranda
Ways to stay motivated this month at UBC:
References:
Dickson JM, Moberly NJ. Reduced specificity of personal goals and explanations for goal attainment in major depression. PloS one, 2013, 8(5):1932-6203.
Litt MD, Kleppinger A, Judge JO. Initiation and maintenance of exercise behavior in older women: predictors from the social learning model. Journal of behavioral medicine, 2002, 25(1):0160-7715.
Harackiewicz, JM. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: the search for optimal motivation and performance. San Diego: Academic Press, c2000.
Guest contribution by Dr. Thara Vayali
Sometimes, it really is all in your head. Despite our best intentions to relieve stress, Multi-Tasking and Daily Decision Making can make the effects of stress worse. Occasionally, these habits can generate a stress response on their own, without any external stressors being present. Last year, I talked about how the chemicals released during stressful events trigger various physical responses. In this post, I’ll share how the brain shifts its modes in daily life and how some of our default modes can actually make our brains feel a little stressed out.
In The Organized Mind, Daniel Levitin and Vinod Menon present four states that the waking brain operates in:
When switching between tasks, the brain needs to continuously be making decisions on what, how, when, where, and why. In addition to the everyday decisions of what to eat, what to wear, which route to take to work, this cumulates into something called Decision Fatigue. Putting continuous energy toward minor decisions can drain the brain’s capacity to handle the larger, more meaningful, consequential decisions. There is a functional reason for world leaders wearing the same clothing style daily or award-winning scientists eating the same daily lunch for a season. Or why you might want to do the same. Multi-task when it’s time for a change, not all the time.
Multi-tasking builds higher cortisol levels and the brain requires more glucose than when working in sustained attention mode. Decision fatigue becomes a barrier to even simple task management. Distraction is a high-cost commodity.
Learning how to stay on task and allowing space for daydreaming helps productivity and requires less energy.
Every person and project requires different foci, but here are effective tools for each brain state that you can adapt or use as needed.
1. Mind Wandering (Daydreaming)- At least once a day, do nothing for five minutes. Not thinking, not talking, not sleeping, not eating, not reading, not watching. Allow yourself to stare off into the space. Let your brain have active rest. Allow integration and growth of new knowledge, creativity, and drive. It’s harder than it seems – gazing at moving clouds or a flame helps.
2. Attentional Filter (Sensing) – Learning how to filter information is an undervalued skill of our time. Prioritizing our focus is a necessity from inboxes to looming deadlines or dinner plans.
A great tool for inboxes, from Getting Things Done, by David Allen, is the 4 Ds:
3. Central Executive Mode (Thinking) – Once you’ve decided on your task, big or small, your brain is primed for action. Ensure you have time allotted and, get to it! Do what you need to do to minimize distractions, be it for five minutes, 25 minutes or three hours. Turn on ambient music, put headphones in, got to a quiet room, go to a large courtyard. Each of us has a preferred way of focusing, so find out what works and commit to using it whenever you have filtered out your “do it now” task.
4. Switching Mode (Multi-Tasking) – Multi-tasking happens when our attentional filter tells us that many things are important at once. It happens when you search for keys every morning or try to remember that it’s garbage day, or look at unlabeled spices in a cupboard when cooking. Using your thinking brain for actions that could be habitual takes energy away from the sustained attention brain. This is too often the case in our busy lives. People we may associate with productive multi-tasking may in fact be highly efficient ‘mono-taskers’, with rote memory for the regular tasks. Prevent Decision Fatigue.
Make the simple decisions simple.
A billion pressing things? Get it all out on a whiteboard or paper or index cards that you can see regularly. This isn’t a list, it’s a brain dump.
Consistently misplacing things? Keep regularly used objects in the same space. Label irregularly used items. Use muscle memory.
Trying to remember to do that one thing today? Place a reminder object or note near the door, or a place where you will look.
For clothes, events and meals, make a choice once and stick with it for a week, a month, or a season.
At work, choose to block out alerts and other communications while you focus on a task for a given amount of time.
Bottom line: prevent distractions, make it rote, and get it out of your head.
When stressors arrive, know that you’ve done your best with your brain modes. Be realistic with your skills and timeframes and pressure will release.
Thara Vayali is a Naturopathic Doctor & Yoga Teacher in Vancouver and is also a UBC alumnus. She is obsessed with intestinal and immune health, hormones, and pain-free bodies. She is the creator of Change Natural Medicine: Budget conscious, membership based health consulting.