mental resilience Archives - Amazing Health Advances

3 Mindsets to Unlock Resilience & Mental Toughness

The AHA! Team — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 08:35:50 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #586) and blog, I talk about 3 mindsets that will strengthen your mental resilience so that you are not blindsided by life! This is a replay of a Neurolive webinar I did on my app. For the full webinar AD-free, please see Neurocycle.app. Life is filled with ups and downs, and sometimes, when we least expect it, those downs can really hit us, leaving us blindsided, confused and overwhelmed. Even though our resilience is unlimited, if we don’t work on unlocking this resilience when life is calm and we are at peace, it can become “locked up” when we need it most. Thankfully, there is a great way to practice tapping into your resilience reserves so that it becomes a habit when you need it most: changing your mindset. A mindset is a way that your mind functions, like a habit. It is the way you “set” your mind, literally! Like planting your garden in the spring yields amazing results all year if you do it right, deliberately choosing and practicing a mindset can really help you when life hits hard. That is why I often call mindsets “insurance policies”—they are there for you when you need them the most! Three mindsets in particular are incredibly helpful, and can get you through those inevitable blindsiding moments in life: 1. “I need some time” When you say something like “I just need some time,” you are giving yourself the space to acknowledge and work through what you are going through, which is particularly helpful when you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed. This is not selfish! So, instead of rushing to recover from a tough situation, give yourself time to feel your emotions. This will help you develop emotional flexibility: the ability to regulate your feelings and reduce their intensity in any given situation, tapping into your resilience reserves. Mastery over this mindset can really help you feel empowered during challenging times! 2. “I can handle what comes my way” Reassuring yourself that you’ll overcome your circumstances can go a long way, but you must practice this for it to become a long-term habit. A great way to do this is to think about times when you accomplished something difficult or coped and got through a really tough situation, write about it, and read it to remind yourself when you are struggling. The more this becomes a habit, the more you will be able to let go of just focusing on the negative (thinking this “will end badly”) and understand that things may work out better this time. You will also be able to change and adapt to your circumstances, shifting your coping strategies and harnessing what you need most to get through what you are facing. 3. Saying “no” Don’t feel guilty for putting yourself first and saying no! Resilience should be more about prioritizing your needs by setting boundaries than about what the other person wants or needs. In fact, saying no when you feel you need to will increase your wisdom and empathy, as you will better understand yourself and your needs. It will also give you the energy you need to actually be there for others when they need you. I often compare this to putting on your oxygen mask on a plane—you must take care of yourself before you can truly be there for others. For more on mindsets that increase your resilience, listen to my podcast (episode #586). Podcast Highlights 1:05 Unlocking your mental resilience 2:48 What mindsets are & why they are so powerful 4:08 We all can be resilient! 5:12 3 mindsets that will unlock your resilience 8:06 It’s ok to ask for space! 12:07, 15:56 The power of believing that you can handle what comes your way 19:39 The power of saying “no” 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.

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3 Tips to Make Your Home a Mental Health Haven

AHA Publisher — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 07:00:58 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #382) and blog, I talk about how to make your home a mental health haven. When the world feels like a mess (a common sentiment these days!), it is important that your home is a haven—a place where you can rest, relax, and feel happy. Thankfully, there are many ways we can create a joyful atmosphere at home, including: 1. Intentionally bonding with your loved ones at home. We are made for deep, meaningful connections. When we feel connected and part of a community, we boost our mental resilience and toughness, as well as our mood. As I point out in my book, 101 Ways to Be Less Stressed, meaningful socialization helps us feel happy and at peace within ourselves, balancing the energy in the brain and helping us build up our cognitive resilience. Some ways I love to bond with my family and friends are: Walks/exercising together. Cooking family meals or baking together. Playing board games like Scrabble or Clue, building puzzles or making up Lego sets. Watching our favorite movie or TV series (we are big Lord of the Rings fans!). Planning and going on trips together. Sitting on the floor in each other’s rooms and chatting about life. Watching funny videos together. Sharing cute pictures of our pets in our group chat. 2. Practicing good mental self-care. Often, we tend to focus on our physical needs, and forget to meet our mental needs! But mental self-care is as important as eating, hydrating and exercising, because we don’t go 3 seconds without thinking! This includes practices like: Self-regulation. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I have found that the most effective way to manage unhappiness in the moment and boost my mood is to practice intentional, directed self-regulation. I do this using my Neurocycle mind-management technique, which I discuss in detail in my latest book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and app Neurocycle. The Neurocycle is a way to harness your thinking power through mind-management that I have developed based on years of research and clinical practice; any task that requires thinking can use it, which means everything can, because you’re always thinking. In fact, this de-stressing, self-regulation technique can really work with any issue, and can be done anywhere, any place and at any time—all you need is you! There are 5 steps in this method: Gather: become aware of how you are feeling emotionally and physically and how you are behaving, as well as your perspective and attitude in the moment. Reflect: ask, answer and discuss in detail what you gathered awareness of in step 1. Ask questions like “What does this mean?”, “When do I feel this way?”, “Is there a common pattern?”, “How do I experience unhappiness?” and “Why was I triggered?”. Write: write down your answers from steps 1 and 2, which will help you organize your thinking and gain more clarity into how you feel and why, so you can take steps to change your thinking and heal what is making you unhappy. Recheck: In this step, do what I call a “mental autopsy”. Recheck what you wrote down, looking for thought patterns and triggers, and think about why you feel the way you do and how you can be happier. Active Reach. Work out an action for the day based on your recheck step, which will help you practice what you learnt about yourself, such as building more fun into your day to help bring some joy back into your life. Maybe take a long hot bubble bath, bake your favorite dessert or watch your favorite feel-good movie. Allow yourself to have fun and be happy! Taking what I call “thinker moments”, where you just let your mind wander and daydream for a few minutes, also helps calm the mind, reboot your thinking and improve your mood. I talked about these in depth on my podcast and in my books Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and Think, Learn, Succeed. Brain-building, which involves deep thinking to learn and build memory. This is a great way to boost your mood by exercising your mind. You can do this with any information, whether you are listening to a podcast, watching a documentary or reading a book or article. The goal is to think deeply about the information in chunks and then teach back what you have learned to yourself or a loved one (or even a stuffed toy!). I talk about this in detail in Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. 3. Bringing the outside in. I am sure by now you have heard of the phrase “plant mom”; these are people that love filling their homes with indoor plants and greenery. But this shouldn’t just be a social media trend. Fresh, living greenery and natural light can have a profoundly positive effect on our mental health, helping us calm down, breathe better and feel more at peace in our living and working environments. To read the original article click here.

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How To Help Your Anxious Child + Tips For Raising Mentally Strong Children

AHA Publisher — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 07:00:34 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Being a parent can be challenging, especially when it comes to teaching your child how to handle the hard stuff in life. There is a thin line between being overprotective and being overcritical, and often there are situations where doing or saying the right thing seems impossible. In this week’s blog and podcast, I speak with child psychologist and best-selling author Dr. Tina Payne Bryson about why we need to let our children experience negative emotions like anxiety and irritation, how to show up when your child is struggling, common parenting mistakes we all make and how we can avoid them, the importance of modeling behaviors as a parent or guardian, the difference between discipline and punishment, and what it means to take a mind-based approach to parenting. Over the past several decades, more and more research on the mind and brain has shown us that we have a lot more power to change our lives than we ever thought we did, even when it comes to parenting. As Dr. Bryson points out, when we start using our mind to think about the way we interact without children, asking more “why” questions and trying to figure out how to teach our child to regulate their feelings and responses, this can help us avoid common parenting mistakes like: 1. Just focusing on the behavior. One of the biggest mistakes we make as parents is that we focus too much on the behavior of the child and not enough on the mind behind the behavior. We should always be chasing the “why”. We need to investigate what is going on so we can treat the issue correctly; we need to peel the “layers” back. 2. Confusing punishment and discipline. We need to rethink discipline, and recognize that most of the time kids are doing the best they can. When our children are not doing well, then we need to approach the situation with curiosity, not just anger. What is going on? Why are the acting that way or saying those things? A disciplinarian should be a teacher and skill-builder, not a punisher. We shouldn’t punish kids for things they cannot help. The big question is, do they have skills to deal with this situation? What is their behavior telling us? It is important to remember that behaviors communicate the skills they need to learn. We need to stop punishing kids for things they don’t know how to do differently, which only makes them more anxious and upset. When it comes to discipline, we are so focused on behavior that we forget to pay attention to regulation, or what strategies we can teach children so that they can do better next time. Compliance through punishment or rewards does not mean success. Regulation means success—it gets to the “why” behind certain behaviors and teaches the child to cope and builds resilience by addressing the root of their feelings and behavior. 3. Not being on the same page. It is rare that two parents or guardians have an intentional and similar philosophy when it comes to discipline; most parents react in the moment. However, it is important that we take the time to get on the same page when it comes to how we choose to discipline our children. When there is a lot of conflict and confusion, it can undermine a child’s overall happiness. If you are parenting in response to the other parent’s reactions, you are not responding to the needs of the child. That does not mean you need to say and do the exact same thing as your partner or spouse. As Dr. Bryson notes, it is good for kids to learn how to manage different reactions and personalities. On the other hand, it is helpful if you talk to your co-parent about your discipline philosophy and get on the same page in terms of what you want for your kids and what you want your kids to become. This also means facing and dealing with your own childhood experiences. Are you repeating patterns from your own childhood, or trying to do things different without really examining your past experiences and what they mean? How has your childhood impacted you? How is your background affecting your parenting style? What is the mind behind your situation? When you can answer these questions, then you can learn how to resolve issues together as parents. 4. Pathologizing negative emotions and experiences. In our society, we tend to pathologize normal human emotions like grief and sadness, which has made us more fragile. We need to give ourselves and our children permission to feel and be uncomfortable, because life is full of uncertainty and challenges. Indeed, if we try to protect our children from negative emotions like sadness or anxiety, rather than teaching them that this is part of life and building up their resilience, we send them signals that we don’t trust that they can handle the situation, which will undermine their view of themselves and set them up for failure in the future. When your child is struggling, show up in the moment and allow them to feel what they feel. Don’t minimize how they feel, punish them or criticize their experiences. Say things like “I know this is hard” and “we will figure this out together”. Celebrate these feelings; teach your child that these emotions are normal and are telling them that something needs to be addressed in their life. This will help them build up their resilience and teach them how to cope with the ups and downs of life. As Dr. Bryson notes in her book The Power of Showing Up, being present in this way creates a safe environment where the child can learn how to be independent. It is important to remember that kids move towards independence when they feel safe enough to do so. If most of their experiences teach them that they are “safe, seen, soothed and secure”, this will help them build up their mental capacity and resilience, teaching them to cope and soothe themselves and others during hard times. It also affects what they seek out in a relationship, because their repeated experiences have taught them the value of feeling safe and secure in a relationship. This kind of parenting style does not mean that we won’t make mistakes from time to time. As parents, we don’t have to be perfect all the time. We need to look at the big picture: what are the majority of our child’s experiences teaching them? In fact, when we mess up and apologize, this is a good thing! We can model the real life “messiness” of relationships for our children, so the they too can model it in their own relationships. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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How Challenging Conversations and an Open Mindset Boost Mental & Brain Health + Tips on How to Have Difficult Conversations Correctly and Effectively

AHA Publisher — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 07:00:16 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – I am currently reading an amazing book by Ijeoma Oluo, “So You Want to Talk About Race,” and read a passage that really struck me: “Take care in your conversations, remember that you are dealing with the real hurt of human beings. But be brave in that care, be honest in that care. These conversations will never become easy, but they will become easier. They will never be painless, but they can lessen pain. They will never be risk-free, but they will always be worth it.” This got me thinking: what does having these kinds of conversations look like? How do we get comfortable with the uncomfortable? How do we become brave enough to look in the closet of our personal and public history? How do we face, process and deal with any painful skeletons we may find there? This is something we all need to do—myself included. So, don’t see this blog or podcast as me instructing you. See this as the beginning of many fruitful, painful, uncomfortable, freeing, and powerful discussions we need to start having to live better, healthier, and happier lives. This kind of work is what I call “mind-in-action” work. It is integral to the life well lived. As we face, process and reconceptualize the thoughts, mindsets and worldviews we have in our heads, which have affected and still affect our communication and behavior, we “renew our minds”. This builds up our cognitive resilience and our intellect, and boosts our mental health. Yes, this kind work is both powerful AND painful, but be assured that you are not alone. We are all in this together! 1. Recognize that each person comes to the table with their own lived experiences (their own mental luggage), which affects how they receive your words and messaging. Try to see how someone’s lived experiences, emotions, and trauma are just as valid as yours before you just lash out. 2. Go into the discussion with a learning mindset. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything someone says (or even believe everything they say), but it does mean that, by listening with sincerity and integrity, you are both respecting and sharing in their humanity. 3. Before going into a difficult conversation or responding to a challenging idea, pay attention to what your brain and body is telling you. Do you notice any physical or emotional warning signals, such as anger, an adrenalin rush, and so on? Pause and take a few deep breathes (I recommend doing this for 60-90 seconds). Never start a conversation on a highly emotional or agitated note. If you need some time to calm down, that is fine. Say something like “I am not in the right headspace now to give this conversation the attention and emotional strength it deserves. Let’s talk later.” Also, try avoiding tough conversations when you are hungry or tired, as this affects the brain and body, and you will be less likely to make good decisions! 4. Watch how you frame your words. Be careful you don’t put the other person on the defensive from the start, as this will be counterproductive. Be clear, direct and respectful. Don’t assume you know what someone is thinking or trying to say. Avoid trigger words or statements like “you always….”, “just calm down”, “you just think…..” or “you never…”. Rather, say something like “this is my opinion, so let me know if I am misreading you” or “I do not think I understand what you are trying to say, can you clarify…..”. You can also ask questions like “can you explain what you mean….” or “why is this important to you?” I found this helpful: AVOID: “You always…” “Calm down!” “You never…” “You should…” “You must…” & Name calling SAY: How you feel, not what you think Sorry and take responsibility for what you feel you may have done wrong, but don’t say sorry excessively “I feel like you are not quite understanding me, can we talk about this for a minute?” “What I heard you say is ____; is that accurate?” “From your perspective, this is about ____?” “I am struggling to understand…..” 5. Remember that being open-minded and engaging in challenging and difficult conversations is one of the best things you can do for your brain! It strengthens brain muscle, increases stress resilience and cognitive flexibility, and, if done correctly, will build healthy, happy thought structures in your brain! Your brain is always changing (this is called neuroplasticity). How you respond to someone directs this change, determining what is built in your head as a thought structure, which, in turn, affects your mental and physical health, as well as your future behavior. This can be either negative, neutral or positive—the choice is yours. 6. Check your mindset before going into an argument. Are you doing this because you want to win—do you perceive this discussion as a power struggle? Do you see these conversations as zero-sum games, where there is only one winner and one loser? Are you trying to be better or are you just trying to be “right”? Don’t go into a conversation trying to fix someone, correct them or save them. That is not your job. 7. Watch your body language! Stay calm, don’t throw hands up or raise your eyebrows, and try control your facial expressions. Remember, 50% of communication is nonverbal; what you are really thinking will come out through body language. 8. Don’t bring up any past mistakes, arguments or experiences. Talk about what is happening now. Bringing up past hurts and mistakes will only make things worse, putting the other person on the defensive. Encourage the other person to express themselves and be honest with you. 9. Always ask yourself “is what I’m about to say coming from a place of love, or with the goal to win?” Do you want to speak to this person or hurt this person? 10. Watch your tone—keep it even and try to avoid raising it. 11. Before engaging in a conversation on a difficult topic, be sure to educate yourself on all sides by reading books and articles, listening to podcasts or watching talks or documentaries. This does not mean just collecting information that supports your viewpoint! Read and engage with materials that have a different point of view. There is always more you can learn! Educating yourself doesn’t mean you are agreeing to all the ideas. It does, however, allow you to be better informed and more understanding, and will stimulate the brain to think deeply, which is very healthy! 12. Avoid social media fights. Social media is good for a lot of things, but trying to have real, deep and respectful conversations on platforms like Instagram and Facebook is often impossible, and can become very toxic very fast. Avoid being nasty, name-calling and traumatizing people with your comments. And don’t use major platforms to push forward your own point of view. This will only make you look bad, or get you banned for being uncivil. Yes, you are free to speak your mind, but other people are just as free to not listen—especially if it is their platform and you are being discourteous. If you have something to say to someone who has a major platform send them a private email with your points. Be clear, direct, respectful and courteous. 13. Don’t interrupt. This is incredibly annoying even in a happy conversation! Let the other person speak and listen to what they have to say with respect. 14. Take care of your mental and physical wellbeing. Make sure you have a support system in place you can turn to, i.e. a group of people you trust or calming rituals like yoga and deep breathing, which will help you process and deal with challenging conversations. If you are worried a conversation will get very toxic, avoid being alone with that person, and make sure they can’t corner you. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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