Recent Articles
To Be or Not to Be a Stay-at-Home Mom
Sometimes, the stay-at-home option works better for moms and their families as it reduces the stressors influencing their daily life. Multitasking can take its toll on the mother's mental health. By letting go of job-related stress, moms can shift their focus to their families. Read more about the advantages and disadvantages of being a working vs. non-working mom.
Thriving as a Working Mom
We are constantly plagued by the popular notion that mothers must work like we don't have children and raise children as if we don't work. As a mother, nature designed you to put the needs of others above your own. As female employees, society has placed enormous pressure on us to prove ourselves worthy and deserving of the previously male-dominated corporate world.
Emotional Agility
Emotional agility isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts. It’s about holding those emotions and thoughts loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to make big things happen in your life. Read on to find out more about how having emotional agility can set you up for success in your life and career.
Feeling Insecure at Work
Insecurity is a widely common feeling, and most of us experience it at some point. It is especially present at the workplace, where our abilities are constantly tested, and we have to defend or justify our work. When we feel insecure, we tend to shy away from uncomfortable situations, avoid confrontation, or stop ourselves from speaking our minds. Insecurity can even lead to us questioning our own skills and ability, which can ultimately decrease job performance. Contrary to what some may think, we are not born insecure. We should therefore acknowledge where this feeling comes from so we can deal with it.
Enjoy the Journey
We live in a world where the norm is to be driven by our constant quest for the ultimate state of happiness. However, happiness is different for different people. So how do we define happiness? Some would say that happiness is defined by the goals we set for ourselves and our ability to achieve them. These could be related to our careers, our families, or even material gain. Across the board, though, the common denominator is a constant endeavor to reach those goals.
Observing Your Worry
Having a newborn is a constant source of worry for new moms. These negative feelings accompany us through every stage of life and get more intense once we deal with the uncertainty of being responsible for another human being. However, when worries spin out of control can be very detrimental and bring a lot of anxiety. Therefore, observing and being aware of your worry allows you to manage it better.
How You Can Change Your Experience of Pain
Pain is a survival instinct. It tells the brain to switch on our fight or flight response. The brain processes this message and sets in motion all the necessary physical and chemical responses, such as activating the correct muscles or increasing the heart rate to cope with the crisis. The transition of the high alert message that something is wrong from the point of injury through the nervous system to the brain is the biology of pain. If we didn’t feel pain, we would land up impaled on a knife or frozen to death within days.
Control the Controllable
When you’re experiencing a crisis or going through a difficult time, coping with the uncertainty of a situation can be really hard. Most of us crave predictability. We thrive on structure and want to know what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and what the outcome will be. We want to be in control. Think back on your life and how continuously doing exercise improves your muscle strength. Practicing controlling only those things in your life over which you do have control is the same.
How Slowing Things Down Can Make You More Productive
Modern lifestyles are becoming increasingly busy and difficult to balance. We work longer hours, and we take on more responsibilities and commitments. This way of working and living is detrimental to our mental health, physical health, and even productivity levels. It might seem counterintuitive, but having a super busy schedule won’t help your productivity. Instead, slowing things down a little bit can have a positive effect on your performance.
How To Turn Anger into Passion
Getting angry is a natural response and one of the most basic human emotions. It is an intense experience that gives you a big energy boost to change whatever is agitating you. However, if you let anger take control of yourself, it can lead to inappropriate or harmful reactions that can damage you and those around you.
Done is Better Than Perfect
Perfectionism, as defined in psychology, is the desire to be without any flaws or to achieve exceedingly high standards in everything you set out to do. At a first glance, it should be a positive characteristic, shouldn’t it?
How does Meditation Improve Sleep?
We all know the impact that a night of poor sleep has on our daily performance. That is why insomnia and other sleep disorders mean a real threat to our well-being and can aggravate stressful situations. Sleeping problems are common during pregnancy and postpartum, which can lead to great discomfort and stress. Meditation has been associated with positive changes in sleep patterns and has been proven a solid alternative to traditional insomnia treatments.
Why New Moms Are Not OK
Being a new mom hard because there is nothing out there that can truly prepare you for what you are about to experience. The transformation from being a young adult to a young parent is one of the most difficult challenges of our lifetime.
What Does It Mean to Be a Mother?
At first glance this seems like a fairly straightforward and even rhetorical question. Defining motherhood is easy – it’s simply bearing children and then nurturing them to become adults, right? As a mother myself, I think most of us would beg to differ. Many mothers would say that it’s the hardest, most stressful, and unrelenting job in the world, but also the most rewarding.
Why Self-Compassion Is the Key to Success
Having a lot of confidence in yourself (in other words, having high self-esteem) has a lot of benefits to your own well-being, of course, but it doesn’t necessarily help in personal growth or learning. Breines and Chen point out in their article that some previous studies show how self-enhancement might lead to inflated self-evaluations that, in turn, lead to greater defensiveness, lower resilience, and poorer academic results.
Meditation and Sleep
The daytime sleepiness and grogginess that ensues after a bad night’s sleep can leave you feeling depleted and unproductive, and it may even harm your health. Researchers have become increasingly drawn to the potential of mindfulness meditation as a treatment for various sleep issues. Furthermore, meditation is an easy-to-implement and affordable intervention for those who cannot access other types of sleep therapy or medications.
Postpartum Body Changes
When you’re pregnant, it seems as if all you’re focused on is making sure that your baby is healthy, and is growing according to all the expected milestones. However, your body has also gone through an enormous transformation during pregnancy and after delivery, but your health often gets put on the backburner as you worry about caring for your new baby and trying to navigate life on very little sleep. Many women struggle postpartum because they feel so unprepared to deal with all the new changes to their physicality, and end up anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed.
The Power of Self-Awareness
One of the most important qualities that separate human beings from animals is our ability to introspect and take on perspectives outside our own. It is based on the notion that we are not our thoughts; that we are thinkers able to observe and witness the machinations of our minds. As a result, it provides valuable feedback on how we act and how we treat others. Research shows that when we see ourselves more clearly, we are more confident, make better decisions, and communicate more effectively. We also become better leaders, have higher levels of job satisfaction, and can manage our emotions better.
Meditation and Mindfulness for the Management of Chronic Pain
In patients with chronic pain, it has been found that stress, fear, and depression amplifies the perception of pain. Mind-body approaches to chronic pain such as progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, laughter, and mindfulness-based approaches have been found to markedly reduce the pain experience.
Lower Back Pain During Pregnancy
Pregnancy and lower back pain are almost synonymous. It is common to experience stiffness and aching that sometimes refers down into the buttocks, hips and legs. Back pain usually starts in the second trimester of pregnancy and sometimes only remits once your baby is born.