Could Pickleball Be Your post-Divorce Happiness Hack?

 

 Photo by Aleksander Saks on Unsplash

If you're like me, you were looking for social things to do post-divorce. This is the beginning of my piece about pickleball, happiness and well-being:

When an announcement for a beginner’s pickleball class appeared in my inbox I wondered if it might be just the opportunity I needed. It could be a chance to replace the casual social connections I’d lost during covid, when my yoga and running buddies fell by the wayside for various reasons. The absence of those social connections created a happiness and well-being deficit. The conversations we have, sharing little snippets of life, sometimes over the course of years, don’t seem like much, until they’re gone. This is especially true if, like me, you work from home.

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5 Awesome Benefits Yoga And Running Bring To Life

Now that you're divorced, or going through the process, you're probably looking for things to do that will bring balance, joy and growth to your life. My recent piece gives you two suggestions as well as skills an attitudes you can bring to your current activities. It starts like this: 

As I ran one day it came to me, in the way that running and yoga bring insights, that there are striking similarities between the experiences of running and yoga. Neither is solely about benefits like relaxation, stress reduction or weight management, because the gains are so much bigger. Most forms of exercise and meditation enable us to practice the same skills and attitudes that also serve us well in life.

If you struggle to achieve balance, joy and growth in your life, choose an appealing form of exercise or yoga-like activity, and try it using these skills and attitudes:

1.  Respect your intelligent edge. We have all paid the price of not respecting the limits of our bodies, of not stopping at our intelligent edge. The result is physical pain or exhaustion after muscling into a pose that's beyond us or running too fast, too long on a given day. While you don't want to be a slacker, you also don't want to overdo.


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Emotional Eating Post-Divorce

Some of us eat when we’re upset post-divorce, others, not so much. I’m addressing the former, AKA “emotional eaters.” You just made it through Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it wasn’t your happiest. Did you drown your sorrows, boredom or anger in a bag of chips and salsa, a gallon of ice cream or an entire chocolate cake? Many would call this emotional eating. Not me, and here’s why.

Ever notice how you suddenly feel like eating something when you walk into your kitchen? You don't have to be sad, mad or bored. The eating triggers are all there for you: the fridge, the cabinet with the chips, the bowl on the counter. They call to you, eat something; you know you want to. When you have down-time at the office, aren't you more likely to grab a snack than when you're flat out, trying to make a deadline? There are eating triggers at the office as well: the break room, the drawer where you keep your emergency stash of goodies. I call this mindless eating, as compared with mindful eating which I will recommend shortly.

I'll wager that you know some people clean when they're upset. Do we call them "emotional cleaners?" No, because people who clean when they're upset also tend to clean a lot when they're not upset. They clean mindlessly when nothing needs cleaning, about which everyone who lives with them will complain endlessly. Eating works the same way. In other words, you eat mindlessly.

I’m betting that if you eat when you’re upset you also eat at other times that you’re not actually hungry. You may eat without even considering whether you're hungry. You probably don't notice when you're full, or if you do, you don't stop. I'm not a huge fan of pejorative labels, like "emotional eating." It makes it a thing that you have, like a disease. It is important to recognize, however, that a survey of psychologists  identified emotional factors as interfering with diet attempts.

If you want to address the factors that undermine eating too much, you have to be more mindful about your eating. Mindful eating revolves around eating when you're hungry, slowly savoring the experience and stopping when you're full. With practice you will learn to consider, before that first bite, whether it's the smart thing to do at that moment. With practice you will learn to enjoy what you're eating and notice when you've eaten enough. With practice you will learn to make good choices. Instead of eating chips, maybe your time would be better spent looking for your date for next Valentine's day.

Somebody that I used to know. Gotye

Top Tips Toward Wellness

It's the new year and time to focus on those resolutions. Read my newsletter about wellness for my top tips.

 I'd also like to invite you to join my Post-Divorce virtual group, Move Into Post-Divorce Life… Enjoy the Journey. Contact me for more information, and to start your new year off moving in a positive direction.

 Happy New Year and thanks for reading my blog!

Enhance Your Post-Divorce Well-Being With 5-Minute Mindfulness Practices

I know what you're thinking, you don't have five minutes to spare, especially now that you're divorced. But I'm here to tell you that you need to make just 5 minutes each day.  This is a little bit of time you can take to separate yourself from the post-divorce madness and stress.

We know that you can reduce stress and emotional reactivity, and increase focus and well-being, and improve your health, all with a few simple practices. Cultivating mindfulness can bring these rewards. Have to deal with an ex-spouse?  Research suggests improvement in emotional control is also associated with mindfulness practices. And who can't use more emotional control post-divorce?

There are as many ways to become more mindful as there are people, so here are my suggestions for cultivating your mindfulness. You have to try them out, and see what fits for you.

Breathe mindfully, by taking slow breaths that start in the abdomen and work their way up to the top of your head, exhaling as slowly as you breathe in. Spend 5 minutes a day breathing this way. Try breathing into your stress, be it a stressed muscle or a stressful thought.

Notice your thoughts without judgment. This means just noticing, not questioning, editing, criticizing or controlling your thinking. This is a biggie post-divorce. Everyone tends to be hyper self-critical in this time. Observe your thoughts nonjudgmentally for 5 minutes each day.

Experience what you're feeling in your body without trying to change it. Take 5 minutes daily to do a body scan. Start at your toes and work your way up to the scalp, just noticing what's going on in your body. Simply be aware of places you're tight, loose or neutral.

Focus on what you're doing with awareness. Whether you're walking (feel the air on your face and your feet hitting the ground), eating (notice texture and taste) or sitting (attend to body temperature and heart rate), try noticing all the perceptions and sensations you experience during a 5 minute period.

Meditate daily. Choose a type of meditation that suits you. There are many options. Do it daily for 5 minutes on your own, or find a meditation center or group where you can practice and learn. Many people find that practicing with a group deepens the experience.

Practice loving kindness toward yourself and others. This is a meditation in which you wish for things like safety, health, happiness or freedom for yourself. Then you extend that wish to your loved ones, to acquaintances, and finally, to your not-so-loved ones, for 5 minutes of your day. Depending on where you are in the post-divorce process, this last one can be very helpful. It's liberating to give up the anger and have positive wishes for your ex. Really.

Practice an ancient healing art like yoga, tai chi or qi gong by spending 5 minutes a day on it. Taking a few classes will teach you the basics. Simple yoga poses can be learned in no time on-line. You can practice alone. As with meditation, sometimes practicing with your kids, partner or a friend is a nice change.

Pick a time you can practice one or more of these daily. Work it into your schedule. As your daily mindfulness practice becomes routine, you will notice that an increase in awareness and a decrease in judgment begins to permeate the whole post-divorce experience. Control over your thinking and behavior becomes easier. It all comes together to reduce stress and enhance well-being. I'm not saying five minutes will bring all the rewards, but I suspect that once you start doing five, it will turn into 10, then 15, and who knows how much well-being you can attain?

Try some Iyengar Yoga Music to get in the mudra.

A version of this article was originally published at YourTango.