focus Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Dealing with Textxiety

AHA Publisher — Wed, 01 May 2024 05:00:43 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #566) and blog, I talk about how to manage texting anxiety (yes, it’s a thing!). I am sure you have had the experience where you see a text come through and your heart just sinks into your stomach.Texting anxiety is so real that it even has its own coined term, “textxiety“! Some people may worry that their messages will be misinterpreted or taken out of context. In fact, many people feel a sense of unease, worry, and stress when texting. Although this may sound strange, it is important to remember that texting is another form of communication—it makes sense that it could cause someone to feel a sense of anxiety. Some people may worry that their messages will be misinterpreted or taken out of context. They are concerned that the recipient will not understand the intended tone or meaning of their messages. For others, texting can create a sense of urgency; someone may feel pressured to respond immediately, which can lead to anxiety, especially when they are unable to reply promptly. In other cases, someone may obsessively review and revise their messages before sending them, fearing that any wording or phrasing could be problematic. This can add a lot of stress to a conversation. And some people may find texting stressful as they are not able to read the nonverbal cues that they rely on in face-to-face interactions. In other cases, someone may obsessively review and revise their messages before sending them.. If you are someone who battles with texting anxiety, I recommend using the Neurocycle mind management method I have developed and studied over the past three decades, which I discuss in detail in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and my app Neurocycle. It has 5 steps: Steps 1-3: gather, reflect and write down how you feel when a text comes in. Try to analyze why texting gives you anxiety. Take into account your emotions, behaviors, bodily sensations, and perspective when you receive a text. Sit with these feelings and write them down to help organize your thinking and bring clarity to the situation. Use who/what /when/where/why questions to find the pattern behind your reactions. Step 4: recheck. Once you feel like you understand the meaning behind your anxiety better, try to come up with solutions to alleviate the stress you feel when texting. This will take you to: Step 5: the active reach. This is a thought or action you need to practice daily to help you reconceptualize what you worked through in the previous step. What are you going to do each day to give yourself the time and mental space needed to deal with what is bothering you and turn this situation into something constructive? Here are some examples: Establish clear boundaries for when and how often you engage in texting. It’s okay to take breaks from your phone! Send a text to someone that you will reply to later when you get the chance in order to alleviate the stress that comes with feeling bad about not replying. Take a moment to think before responding, especially if the conversation is emotionally charged. Avoid rushing to reply when you’re upset or anxious! If certain individuals consistently cause text anxiety, consider blocking or muting their messages temporarily. This can provide relief and time for you to regroup. Be kind to yourself and recognize that it’s normal to make mistakes or experience anxiety in communication and texting is a form of communication just like any other! Remind yourself of this. If you can, put your phone on “Do Not Disturb” mode when you are working or at night when you are sleeping. Tell people that you do not answer texts during certain hours. Categorize your texts with colors and pictures, so that you know what to read first and what to leave until you feel better prepared. If a text is causing you a lot of anxiety, perhaps get someone else to read it first. Before opening a text, prepare yourself with breathing exercises or movement like yoga stretches to ground you. The key thing to remember that text anxiety is a pretty common experience. It is not something to be ashamed of! It’s okay to seek help or employ strategies to alleviate it. By incorporating these practices into your digital communication routine, you can make texting a less stressful and more enjoyable means of connecting with others. For more on texting anxiety, listen to my podcast (episode #566). Podcast Highlights 3:20 Text anxiety is a real thing! 5:30, 8:44 Signs that you may be experiencing text anxiety 13:00, 19:33 How to manage text anxiety This podcast and blog are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. We always encourage each person to make the decision that seems best for their situation with the guidance of a medical professional. To read the original article click here.

The post Dealing with Textxiety appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Why You Don’t Need to Hustle to Have a Fulfilling Life + How to Quit the “Cult”of Hustle for Good

AHA Publisher — Fri, 13 May 2022 07:00:05 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #379) and blog, I talk to former Wall Street lawyer and top podcast host Jordan Harbinger about hustle culture, burnout, and so much more! In a recent blog, Jordan talked about “hustle culture” and how it affects our mental and physical wellbeing and quality of life. Hustle culture is a term used to refer to the “rise and grind” attitude of work, work, work. It is what Jordan calls the “the ethos of constantly working your butt off in the pursuit of some vague goal, no matter the cost”. Hustle culture puts work on a pedestal that towers over everything else in our lives. It “glorifies nonstop labor, brute-force drive….as well as the publicity of that effort, by constantly talking and posting about how damn hard you’re working” and what you are sacrificing, even if what you are giving up is friendship, sanity or joy. It may look like resilience, but it is what Jordan calls “blind resilience”. Hustle culture is underpinned by the assumption that it is always possible to break through and improve your situation, IF you are just motivated enough and work hard. Of course, in certain situations it is good to emphasize hard work and achieving your goals, but this should not consume your every waking moment or destroy the things which make your life worth living. In fact, it is unhealthy to think that you can excel at everything all the time IF you are motivated enough. It doesn’t take mere motivation to be good at something or succeed at something. Unfortunately, the purveyors of hustle culture tap into this desire to be “more than” that many of us have-the longing to have purpose and our fear of failure. They manipulate these feelings to sell us stuff that they promise will get us to where we want to be, IF we are motivated and work hard. Baked into this attitude is the assumption that “anyone who doesn’tdevote their life to rising and grinding is scared, lazy, defective, entitled and/or unworthy of success”. As Jordan points out, this is the unfortunately common idea that “work = good, work = success, work = the only way to live a fulfilling life”. It is a one-size-fits-all lie. Hustle culture often leads to burnout, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, shame and many other issues that affect our mental and physical health and quality of life. Say, for example, you work really hard but what you are trying to achieve doesn’t work out. According to hustle culture, it is because you are unworthy of success, lazy, bad and so on. The fault lies in you, and you alone, which is an incredibly toxic mindset to have. Hustle culture sells people a lie, that if they do x then y will happen, and then places the blame on the individual when things don’t work out. They sell the destination, not the journey, and blame the individual for not achieving the impossible. It is about entrapment, not empowerment. We need to remember that failure is part of life. Things often do not work out as planned, for a multiplicity of reasons, even if we have the best of intentions, are incredibly motivated and work really hard. Hustle culture sells the lie that this is not the case—it denies the nature of what it means to be human and to live in a world that is complex and multifaceted. Work is an important part of life, yes, but it is not the only way to have a fulfilling life. The simple idea that more work is always better is a recipe for misery. There is a lot more to life than just working! Most people who are high performers get meaning from their work, not the results of their work. For these people, it is not about the yachts, fancy cars or flying first class. It is about what they do—the journey, not the destination. They find meaning in their work, whereas hustle culture places emphasis on the destination and traffics in negative emotions to get there. Hustle culture wants you to feel like a failure so you keep trying to get ahead. It wants you to feel that if you don’t get these results, such as getting rich, driving a fancy car or flying first class, then you can’t be happy, which is simply not true. If you think that you have to work, work, work and get rich to be happy, then that’s a good sign that you are listening to toxic hustle culture. Even if you magically got all the results of working hard tomorrow, you wouldn’t necessarily be content, because you are not focused on fulfillment, which is what truly adds meaning and purpose to life. Work is about the journey, not just the destination. True creativity and learning often occurs in the moments when we are not just focusing on “work, work, work”—when we give ourselves time to let our minds wander. Thankfully, there are ways we can quit toxic hustle culture and start living a more fulfilled life: Keep track of your thoughts. If your thoughts are focused on new opportunities or approaches, this is good. But if your thoughts are only focused on what you have not done or what you need to do to get “ahead” or achieve what someone else has achieved, you are letting hustle culture shape your thinking. Focus on how and what you are thinking about—don’t let hustle culture shape your mind and choices! Embrace, don’t suppress, uncomfortable emotions. Negative feelings like anxiety and grief do not mean you are a failure. These are feelings you can learn from. Hustle culture preys on negative emotions to manipulate and commodify you—don’t give it this power over your life! Learn to get comfortable with uncomfortable emotions like disappointment and anxiety, and explore them; these feelings are signals telling you about what is going on in your life. Don’t look for quick fixes. Working on yourself and finding fulfillment takes time. This will look different for different people, so don’t compare your journey to other people, and be wary of anyone who offers you a one-size-fits-all approach to success. Study your patterns. Are you actually making progress? Is your fulfillment going up? Or do you feel like you are going backwards? What patterns do you observe in your life? Has hustling and grinding actually gotten you anywhere? When you become aware of your patterns, you will have a better grip not only on where your life is going, but also where you WANT your life to go—that is, what direction your life takes and why. Create your own values. Don’t just let hustle culture dictate what you value and seek after. What do you actually want? How do you want your life to play out? What do you value? What principles underscore the way you live your life? Family first? Health first? When you know your own values and principles, you will be less likely to be swayed by hustle culture’s empty promises. Watch what you consume. What kind of things are you exposed to? Are you “addicted” to hustle culture content? What can you change? Can you listen to things that are more helpful and fulfilling? Our brains merge with our environments—what is shaping your brain and thinking? Are you consuming a lot of hustle culture, rise and grind content? How can you change this? To read the original article click here.

The post Why You Don’t Need to Hustle to Have a Fulfilling Life + How to Quit the “Cult”of Hustle for Good appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Why You Can’t Pay Attention + How to Think Deeply Again (with Johann Hari)

AHA Publisher — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 08:00:02 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #353) and blog, I speak to journalist and best-selling author Johann Hari about his incredible new book Stolen Focus, why our inability to focus, think deeply and pay attention has dramatically increased, and what we can do about this as individuals and as a society. As Johann points out in Stolen Focus, “We think our inability to focus is a personal failing–a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to us–by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen.” Our culture has made it harder and harder to pay attention—this is something that affects us all. Indeed, research shows that the average college student now only focuses for 63 seconds on any one task, and the average office worker for only 3 minutes. But why is this happening? Johann discovered there are twelve major factors affecting our ability to focus and think deeply, including the business model behind modern technology and social media. This model relies on advertisements and collecting complex information about you to sell to advertisers. When you put down your phone or device, both these revenue streams go away—so they essentially need to keep you “logged on” for as long as possible. These companies have deliberately designed these platforms to “hack” your attention for as long as possible, which includes a system of rewards that you learn to crave (such as likes on your photo) and increasing your anger levels (so you think less clearly and more impulsively). These companies are financially dependent on distracting you. However, Johann also learned how, as individuals and collectively, we can get our focus back, if we are willing to fight for it. We can do things like: Demanding that the business model of these companies change, such as shifting to a subscription model or type of public ownership option. Companies shouldn’t be able to discover new ways to hack our attention and sell it to the highest bidder. Reading more, and not just on a screen! Reading is one of the most important forms of deep focus that most people experience in their lives. However, in the last 20 years there has been an extraordinary collapse in reading, which is both a symptom and cause of the current attention crisis. Reading actual books/articles/papers/magazines (not just on a screen!) can help us to learn how to think in a more linear way again, which, in turn, can help us maintain focus in a calmer way, while reading novels can help us also become more empathetic. So, instead of just letting our consciousness be shaped by angry social media feeds or short bursts on information on a screen, we should try to incorporate more reading, including novels, into our everyday lives. Letting children play, play, play! This is a great way to increase a child’s ability to focus, and teaches them how to manage their stress and anxiety, work with others, and discover what fascinates them and makes them interested in learning. letgrow.org is a great organization that is doing this right now! To read the original article click here.

The post Why You Can’t Pay Attention + How to Think Deeply Again (with Johann Hari) appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

The Myth of Multitasking + How to Actually Improve Focus to Get Things Done

AHA Publisher — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 07:00:43 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #327) and blog, I interview cognitive neuroscientist and author Dr. Amishi P. Jha about her amazing new book, Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day. We talk about the different kinds of attention systems in the brain, how to train the brain to pay more attention and focus in high stress situations, how mindfulness can improve attention, and so much more! As Dr. Amishi points out, although attention is an incredibly powerful brain function, there are things that we face every day that are like Kryptonite for our attention, such as stress and feelings of threat. But the great news is that we can learn how to manage these feelings in the moment and protect our ability to pay attention. In Peak Mind, Dr. Amishi discusses her experience working with individuals who experience challenging situations daily, such as soldiers, athletes, government officials and surgeons, and the remarkable discoveries she has made in her own lab. She has consistently found that, although our attention is vulnerable, there are ways we can learn how to control it, especially in high-stress situations. We need to understand that attention is cognitive fuel. We need it for more than just “thinking”; we need attention to make decisions, to deliberate, to regulate our emotions and behavior, and to connect with other people. It is needed for many complex cognitive functions! There are 3 important sub-systems of attention. First is FOCUS, which means to privilege some information and disregard other information. This is also called the orienting system of the brain, which acts like a flashlight in the dark, focusing on certain areas in our external and internal environment. It can be directed by us, and it can be pulled by certain kinds of stimuli. Second is the ALERTING system, which is like a floodlight. It is broad, vigilant and receptive, and privileges what is happening in the moment—right now. The third system is EXECUTIVE control or attention. Its job is to ensure that our goals and actions are aligned, and to course-correct if things are going in the wrong direction. These systems function best as a coordinated system, even though they may seem at odds with one another individually. In fact, we should not be paying attention to everything all the time, because we cannot act on everything simultaneously. Our brain is not designed to multi-task. Our attention system does not have the capacity to do a bunch of important, demanding tasks at once. Multi-tasking is a myth. What we are generally doing when we think we are multi-tasking is actually switching between tasks. This can be exhausting because the entire brain is re-calibrated by a new task, which comes at an energetic cost. This means that you are more likely to make cognitive errors, and you cannot give a task the comprehension it may demand. Our executive function can help us manage our attention and choose what to pay attention to instead of jumping from one task to another. Using this system, we can mono-task instead of multi-task. This can be something as simple as making a choice to put your phone on silent during a meeting or asking people not to disturb you while you work on a deadline. Interestingly, Dr. Amishi has found that certain kinds of mindfulness and mind management practices can help us learn how to pay better attention in other areas of our life instead of just jumping from task to task, especially when partnered with a physical practice like breathwork. Essentially, mindfulness is a specific form of cognitive training for our attention! In her book, Dr. Amishi suggests doing a simple exercise to help you practice this kind of mindfulness to start improving your attention: first, just notice yourself breathing, then choose to focus on a breath-related sensation (such as the coolness of the air passing through your mouth) using your executive function. Then, use your “flashlight”: notice when your mind wanders, and use your executive function to re-direct your thinking. Dr. Amishi has found in her research that practicing this kind of mindfulness for a minimum of 12 minutes a day, around 4 to 5 times a week, can help support your ability to pay attention during stressful times! To read the original article click here.

The post The Myth of Multitasking + How to Actually Improve Focus to Get Things Done appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Interview with John Maxwell on the Neuroscience of Leadership + Tips on How to Lead During a Crisis, and Why We Need to Fail More

AHA Publisher — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 07:00:30 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Yes, we are in the midst of a global crisis. For many people, life is incredibly challenging right now. It is easy to lose hope, and fear what will happen in the future. But did you know that you can also use this time to grow as a person, learn how to make the most of living in the moment and discover the unique opportunities that present themselves? It is often the case in life that something good is birthed out of something bad. Crises can be watershed moments, compelling us to get out of our comfort zones, teaching us to embrace our fears and helping us make the most of living in the moment, as I discuss in this week’s podcast with leadership expert and best-selling author John Maxwell. Even though events like the current COVID-19 pandemic can disrupt our schedules and plans, we can still find clarity in the present, and make the most of the only time we know we have: right now. As John points out, it’s okay to be uncertain but it is not okay to be unclear. Today matters: you want to be very clear on what to do right now. Whether you are a leader or not, you can learn how to live in the moment and make the most of today, getting through the problem to find the opportunity, rather than begrudging the crisis and how it has changed your life. Don’t undervalue the power of the present, don’t overexaggerate what happened yesterday, and don’t overestimate the value of tomorrow. The thing is, true leaders don’t provide all the answers in a time of crisis. They provide awareness and help prepare, which allows people to do well in the moment. They take it day by day, thinking about what they do now that can bring great value, and asking themselves three essential questions: What are my responsibilities? What or who do I have to take care of today? What are my priorities? What can I do right now to get the highest return? What are my possibilities? Many of us have something that we needed or wanted to do but didn’t have the time. Well, now we have the time! So, lay out your plans, write that book, start learning that language—there is no time like the present. It is important to remember that crisis causes distraction, which is opposite of traction (as I discussed in recent blog and podcast episode #127). When we focus on the moment, however, we bring a degree of stability and clarity to an uncertain situation, which opens up possibilities for the present and the future, allowing us to get creative and use our imagination. The truth is, you can choose to focus on what you can do now, rather than what you fear may happen. Remember, where you put your focus is where you put your mental energy, which shapes your perspective. The more we think about something, the more it will grow and become a mental habit! Yes, we are going to be afraid at times, especially during a pandemic—this is completely normal! In fact, this fear creates a shift, moving us out of homeostasis and getting us out of out comfort zones. Fear can be a powerful motivator: we want to get back to feeling balanced, which can help us find opportunities to learn and grow during a crisis, if we embrace and face our fears and reconceptualize them. If we give up and just let our fears take over, however, we will fall, but, even then, we can pull ourselves up again! The human mind is incredibly resilient, and it is never too late to change the way we think and deal with any situation, so don’t beat yourself up if you fail! Fear of the unknown and failure are actually an important part of the success cycle, which has three main elements: Testing: we have to try a lot of new things we don’t know, which is the only way to find answers. Failing: when we do a lot of testing, we do a lot of failing. We are never good the first time! Learning: when we test and fail, we learn a lot about what does and doesn’t work. Failure has terrific value. It goes along with success: the more we fail, the more we learn. Failure is an essential part of success, because if we don’t learn from something then we repeat it! Failure also helps us keep on keeping on. When we keep testing, failing and learning, we keep moving; we don’t just rest on our laurels and become stagnant. The cycle of success never let’s us say we are finished. This works in tandem with the brain, which is designed to be constantly stimulated. When we cross the finish line, we are finished, mentally and physically! This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

The post Interview with John Maxwell on the Neuroscience of Leadership + Tips on How to Lead During a Crisis, and Why We Need to Fail More appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.