With finals week quickly approaching, you might think you can’t afford to focus on your well-being. On the contrary, you can’t afford not to! Taking care of yourself may well be the most important thing you can do to handle the pressure and do well.
Here are some suggestions:
*Don’t go into isolation mode. Yes, you might need solitude to study for exams, but don’t completely withdraw socially. Meet a friend for lunch or coffee or a walk. Social support is key for coping with stress.
*Don’t abandon your exercise routine. Working out is a good way to relieve stress and physical activity boosts your energy level and mental clarity. If you’re going to sweat an exam, this is the way to do it!
*Skip the junk food. Eating well plays a crucial role in your ability to handle stress. Good nutrition helps you stay alert and healthy. It’s tempting to save time by grabbing something from the nearest vending machine. Make smart choices or, better yet, take a break with a friend to eat a healthy meal together.
*Get sufficient rest. Late-night study sessions can negatively affect your test performance. Adequate sleep is necessary for concentration and memory recall. A quick nap between exams can help you maintain your energy level throughout the day.
*Don’t give an exam more importance than it actually has. Remind yourself that a particular test is one of many you will take as a student. No single exam measures your potential or determines your future. Try to keep things in perspective.
*Value learning over performance. The most successful people adopt a growth mindset, recognizing that it is more important to learn than it is to get the top grade. Stretching yourself to learn something new exercises your brain, which helps you improve over time.
*Be grateful. Take a minute to think about what is good in your life or write down 3 things for which you are thankful. Gratitude reduces anxiety and strengthens your immune system.
*Be happy. Seriously. Think of something that makes you happy before you start taking your exam. Or talk to someone who makes you happy. Students do better on tests when they are in a good mood.
*Be kind to yourself by practicing self-compassion. College exams can be very hard. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get the grade you wanted. Stop the negative self-talk and treat yourself with the same caring and concern that you would a loved one.
*If all else fails, use your school’s resources. Should you need some support during finals week (or any time), seek help from counseling services or student health services.
Best of luck everyone!
This article originally appeared on George Mason’s President’s blog.
Don’t Just Feel It, Say It!
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward
Many of us will be counting our blessings next week as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Thinking about all that we are grateful for improves our well-being. Gratitude has been linked to stronger marriages, improved job performance, greater compassion, optimism, and forgiveness, and lower levels of stress. Keeping a gratitude journal or writing down 3 things you are thankful for each day can help you experience more gratitude.
But don’t stop there! You gain additional benefits when you express your gratitude to others. John Kralik was at a low place in his life when he made a decision on New Year’s Day to write one thank-you note every day over the next year. Writing the notes reminded him of all of the blessings in his life. But it was reconnecting with friends and family through his notes that helped Kralik turn his life around. He writes in his book, 365 Thank Yous, “By appreciating the things we did for each other, we encouraged each other to do more nice things.” His son repaid a loan, he got into shape when one friend suggested he train for a triathlon and another, who had a brain tumor, inspired him by running a marathon, and lawyers and clients who received John’s thanks sent him more cases, which pulled his firm out of a financial crisis.
Unfortunately, it’s easier for most of us to experience feelings than it is to express them. A survey of over 2,000 people found that 49% express gratitude on a daily basis to their spouse or partner, 37% express thanks to their children, 15% express gratitude to their close friends, and only 10% thank their colleagues.
Expressing gratitude can make you feel vulnerable, anxious, or embarrassed, but the rewards can be worth the discomfort. To whom are you grateful? Let the Thanksgiving spirit move you to express your thanks.
Are You Hovering?
I’ve been hearing a lot about helicopter parenting lately. It’s natural for parents to want to protect our children and help them to be successful. And while there are a lot of ways in which we can help to prepare our children for adulthood, over-parenting is not one of them. In fact, it can do more harm than it does good. Parents who are too involved in their children’s lives prevent them from developing self-confidence and resilience.
Children need to learn to make decisions and to take responsibility for doing their own work. If parents always help them, they are sending the message to their children that they aren’t capable of doing these things on their own. Sure they might get a better grade, but they aren’t building the self-confidence they will need to succeed later in life.
Resilience is another essential life skill. We learn to be resilient by overcoming adversity, by falling and then getting up and trying again. Parents can provide encouragement and be a safe-haven where children seek comfort when they fail, but parents who protect their children from ever failing are preventing them from developing resilience.
Another extremely important factor for success in life is having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. People with a growth mindset believe their abilities can be developed with effort, whereas people with a fixed mindset believe they were born with their abilities and there is nothing they can do to change them.
Parents can help their children develop a growth mindset by teaching them to value learning and improvement over perfect performance, by letting them struggle and make mistakes, and by showing them that challenges can be fun. It is especially important to praise children for their effort and not their intelligence.
So there are many things that parents can do to increase the chances that their children become happy, successful adults, but doing everything for them is not one of them. As hard as it might be, you have to let them struggle, make mistakes, and, yes, even fail.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
Time confetti. Isn’t that a wonderful way to describe the feeling of never having enough time to do anything? The only free time you have comes in tiny bits and pieces spread throughout your day. Hardly enough time to catch your breath; certainly not enough to consider it leisure time. Washington Post journalist Brigid Shulte writes about time confetti in her book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time.
She explores the factors contributing to the overwhelm that so many of us, especially women, are experiencing. Among them are expectations that we be the ideal worker available 24/7 and also engage in intensive parenting. And that we do so with no help from workplaces that remain inflexible or government that provides neither parental leave, nor paid sick leave, nor child care.
So what are some solutions that can lessen the feeling of constant time pressure?
- Become clear about your priorities. Once you have decided what is most important, then schedule those things on your calendar first and feel no obligation to do anything else. You must learn to say no.
- Set realistic expectations. You aren’t perfect and you can’t do it all. Do what matters most. That is enough. You are enough.
- Take breaks. You will have the energy to get more done in less time if you alternate between periods of intense work and time for rest and renewal. Ideally you should work for no more than 90 minutes without taking a break.
- Chunk tasks. Constant switching back and forth really increases your sense of time pressure. Stop multitasking. Check email in batches. Schedule chunks of time for work, family, and play.
- Be more mindful of what is happening right now. Mindfulness reduces contaminated time, which occurs when you are constantly thinking about all you need to do. When you have too much on your mind do a brain dump. Write everything down on a piece of paper so you can stop worrying that you will forget it. Now you can forget it. I mean it! Stop thinking about it!
What about you? What do you do to manage the overwhelm? Please let us know!
Is It Helpful?
I’ve mentioned before that I am a worrier. Let’s say I’m a recovering worrier. I used to worry a lot! But since I’ve started practicing mindfulness I worry a lot less. I notice when my mind starts to go there and I do my best to stop.
Yet sometimes I think, “I’m not worrying, I’m planning”. I’m a big planner! In fact, I attribute my tendency to worry to my need to plan, to be prepared. I feel much more comfortable knowing what’s going to happen. Planning things gives me a sense of control. Yes, I know, I can’t control everything and even when I have a perfect plan things don’t always go the way I expect. I’m proud to say that I’ve learned to be a little more relaxed when that happens and I do my best to go with the flow.
But I still like to make plans! And so I spend a lot of time thinking about my plans. I plan a week’s worth of meals so I only have to go to the grocery store (which I hate!) once a week. I plan our vacations in advance so plane tickets are cheaper and there are more hotel options. I plan my presentations carefully so they go smoothly. Planning is important for my peace of mind. The more prepared I am, the less stressed I get.
But it’s easy to cross the line and go from planning, which is productive, to worrying, which isn’t. Thinking about problems you might encounter is good if it helps you prepare for handling them. I always email a copy of my presentation ahead of time in case I have trouble with the thumb drive. But thinking about what I need to buy at the store while I’m walking the dog is useless because I won’t remember it by the time I get home. And how productive is it to think about bad things that could, but most likely won’t, happen to you or a loved one?
Now when I’m thinking about something in the future I stop and ask myself, “Is this helpful?”. It let’s me know whether I’ve crossed the line. If I can do something about it then I’m planning. If I can’t do anything about it then thinking about it isn’t useful. I’m worrying again. It’s time to think about something else or, better yet, practice being mindful and focus on the present moment.
We’re Not So Different
Our children recently returned from a summer study program in France. In addition to improving their French and experiencing life in a different country, they also had the chance to spend time with kids from all over the world. They hung out with students from Russia, Columbia, Libya, Switzerland, and Holland. Our daughter shared a room with 3 other girls, one from Italy, one from France, and one from Spain. Our son spent many afternoons playing soccer with a group of Brazilians.
Traveling abroad let’s you learn a lot about people’s differences. We eat different foods (on his last night in France our son had frog legs and escargot for dinner), have different religious beliefs (one of the students was observing Ramadan), and follow different customs (even after living in Spain for years I never got used to eating lunch at 2:30 and dinner at 10:30!).
But I think one of the most important lessons we learn when we travel to different countries is not how different, but how similar we are. All people want the same thing. We want to be safe from harm, to be healthy, to be loved, to be happy. I’m sure the conversations my daughter had with her roommates in France were very similar to the conversations she has with her friends here in Virginia. My son’s experience playing soccer with the Brazilians was a lot like playing soccer with his friends in the States (maybe a bit more intense!).
You don’t have to leave the country to find people who are different from you. The U.S. is full of people from diverse racial backgrounds, religions, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and generations. Our tendency is to focus on our differences.
The next time you interact with or start to form an opinion about someone who seems different from you, take a minute to remind yourself how similar you really are. We all share the same DNA. In fact, it is possible that research into your genealogy will reveal that that person is a distant cousin.
Imagine what might happen if we all treated one another as family, if we focused on our similarities rather than our differences, if we reminded ourselves that all anyone really wants is to be safe, healthy, loved, and happy. What a wonderful world that would be!
“Summer Song” Enhances Reminiscing
As our family prepares for our summer vacation, I find myself wondering what our “summer song” will be this year. My husband always likes to pick one song or album to play over and over when we are on vacation. It has driven me crazy for years, but now I realize how wonderful it is for reminiscing later.
For example, the summer of 2002, when the kids were 5- and 3-years-old, he played Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” 100 times during our week at the beach in North Carolina (at least it seemed like it!). Now every time I hear that song I am at the beach again. I can smell the salt air, feel the sting of too much sun on my skin, and see our kids splashing in the surf. In 2010 he insisted on playing the Mumford & Sons album Sigh No More again and again and again on our summer trip. Thankfully, there were 12 songs instead of 1, which kept me from going absolutely bonkers! Hearing any song from that album takes me right back to that happy time.
Todd Kashdan, my colleague at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, mentioned that he also listens to music when he travels so that “memories become sticky”. You know how hearing a song can take you back decades in a split second. Scientists believe that music has such an amazing power over memory because it activates a large area of the brain. Brain imagery shows that the auditory (sound), motor (rhythm), and limbic (emotion) regions of the brain are all activated when we listen to music. This is probably why music makes memories more likely to stick.
Spending money on experiences makes us happy because we not only enjoy the experience itself, but also the anticipation of it and the memories afterward. Associating a song with a happy experience is a great way to increase the amount of times you will recall the experience in the future.
Why not try it on your next vacation? You might get a little tired of hearing the same song, but it will be worth the happy memories you will associate with it for years to come.
Lessons from Revitalize 2014
Last weekend one of my favorite websites, MindBodyGreen, hosted an online wellness summit. Wow! It was awesome! There were 26 different talks by leading experts in food, fitness, personal growth, and sustainability. You can see video highlights or the whole summit here: Revitalize 2014.
If you just want some key takeaways, here is what I found especially interesting:
- ABC News anchor Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier, gave a very funny talk about mindfulness. He describes it as a superpower that gives you a game changing skill; the ability to respond wisely to stimuli instead of reacting blindly.
- Meditation teacher Charlie Knoles encouraged people to value themselves more. If a friend asks you for 10 minutes of your time you’d give it to them. Why not give yourself 10 minutes to meditate? Find moments of time to close your eyes, sit comfortably, be aware of your breath, and experience your own inner consciousness. Charlie believes meditation can help you achieve any life change, because change requires making good decisions and lack of stress helps you make good decisions.
- I really enjoyed hearing from Dr. Mark Hyman, Chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine. Some of my favorite quotes include 1) “If you eat crap, you feel like crap”, 2) “Leave the food that man made and eat the food that God made”, and 3) “Sugar is a recreational drug, use it rarely for fun.”
- I learned a lot about the importance of our microbiome from Dr. Robynne Chutkan. I must say I had no idea how important our “gut garden” is! Did you know we have 9 times more bacteria in our bodies than we have cells? Good bacteria is key for health and weight loss. We have more good bacteria when we eat a lot of plants, take less medicine, and come in contact with more dirt. Robynne’s advice is to “live dirty, eat clean.”
- Rich Roll is simply amazing! He is an ultra-endurance athlete who completed the Epic5 Challenge, that is 5 Ironman triathlons on 5 Hawaiian islands in under a week. He gave an inspiring talk: “Life Hacks Don’t Work”. Rich believes we need to stop looking for shortcuts to “hack” our lives. He explains that we only grow through earned investment in experience. Mastery is what makes us feel alive. So we should embrace the commitment, fear, obstacles, and incredible persistence that true success requires.
- Joe Cross, whose movie “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” tells the story of his 60-day juice fast, wrapped up by saying, “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think fruits and vegetables are good for them.” The knowing part is there, it’s the doing part that’s hard. He believes we can bridge the gap with community. “It’s easier to make healthy choices when you aren’t alone.”
Since I’ve recently started drinking green smoothies, I found it interesting that many of the speakers mentioned smoothies. In fact, so many people brought it up that MindBodyGreen founder, Jason Wachob, ended up asking most everyone he interviewed what they put into their smoothies. Smoothies are a great way to eat more plants!
