7 Reasons Everyone Keeps Telling You To Meditate

The post-divorce period is always one of stress and angst. Meditation is a great practice to help you cope with this difficult time. I speak from experience. This is a piece I wrote about the value of mediation. It starts like this:

I bet you know people who meditate. They’re often hawking the benefits of meditation, right?

 Annoying as it is, they’re correct. 

There is a wealth of research showing the benefits of meditation. These benefits include greater happiness, an improved sense of well-being, better emotional control, more compassion for, and better relationships with, others, less depression and anxiety, improved focus and even less inflammation in the body.

Though you may understand the benefits of meditation, when you imagine yourself in the perfect meditation space…you’re sitting on a cushion, the temperature is just right, there’s a slight scent of lavender in the air, it’s silent except for the tweet of a bird outside…you know you are never going to find that in this lifetime.

You’re busy, it’s noisy everyplace, and there may be a smell in the air, but it’s more likely to be car exhaust or pet effluvia, than lavender. When it comes to meditation, that’s okay!

Read more here...

How To Quietly Rage Against Ageism (And Grow Older Gracefully)

One of the things I started doing post divorce was road-racing. It was a real jump-starter, so to speak. I talk about it in this recent article.

The running community is awesome. You make friends training, racing, or out for a casual jog. We’re all equal. If you can keep up with the group, you’re in. Age, ethnicity, and gender are irrelevant.

Or so I thought.

Not long ago, I ran a 10K — far from my first. The race was a combined 5K and 10K. If you’ve never run one of those, as you might guess, there’s a point at which the 5K and 10K groups divide.

As I approached the split, the specter of ageism first appeared.

I could see and hear — despite my no doubt rapidly declining faculties — a guy yelling out the split: 5Ks to the left, 10Ks to the right. He repeated 5K slightly more insistently and pointed left as I approached. Hmm.

Then I got closer, and, since my cognitive abilities are still relatively intact, or at least I like to think so, I was already on the right. And another guy actually repeated, more loudly as I got to the split, "5K, 5K, 5K!" urgent gesticulation left, urgent gesticulation left, urgent gesticulation left.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’m pretty sure he was convinced I looked too old for the 10K.


Read more here...

Spring, 2016 Newsletter

Click here to see my Spring, 2016 Newsletter, with my recent posts and others I've enjoyed on health and wellness, relationships, dating and post-divorce adjustment. And there's news about my new office. Read it here…

For the next 5 days my book, The Post-Divorce Survival Guide. Tools for Your Journey, is available FREE.

Stress Turns Out To Be Good For You! 3 Strategies You Need To Follow

As many of us view our divorce as something akin to a train wreck, there's no shortage of stress.

But the good news is that you just need to figure out how to put your stress to work for you. I recently wrote about it in a post that starts like this:

It's common knowledge that, repeated over time, stress leads to problems with health, performance and wellbeing, including illness, missed days from work, depression, aggression and relationship problems.

If you're like most people, your mindset is geared toward getting rid of the stress or avoiding the problem. Who can blame us? Nobody likes that that sick-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach fight or flight feeling. Our response is usually denial (I'm fine!), anger (Why me!) or overwhelm (I can't handle this!).

But, oddly, recent research has shown that stress actually heightens awareness, speeds up thinking, improves performance and leads many to say, "I'm great in a crisis." It's why my clients suffering with anxiety tell me their worry helps them anticipate problems and envision potential solutions. It's how I know that adults who have faced hardships early in life can have tremendous reserves of strength to face current difficulties and often a greater appreciation for the gifts life has given them.

Read more here...

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.


Read more here...

 

A Simple Hack to Stick to Any Goal… using a Rubber Band

Post-divorce, you are working on lots of new things. My guest blogger, Victor Mathieux, has developed a simple product he thinks will help you reach your goal, any goal. Check it out. It's science:

A couple years ago I launched the Everest goal-setting app and many people from this community liked it, so I’m back to share something new (full-disclosure: I am sharing a product but also have a useful hack you can use regardless):

 
One day, I realized that despite having 3 reminders set on my phone to “do pushups & take vitamins,” I STILL WASN’T DOING IT. Having studied behavior change for years and having co-founded a company whose sole purpose was to help people stick to their goals, I found this lack of consistency in my own life frustrating.

Practically speaking, I was well aware that to turn a goal into action, three things need to come together: First, you must have the ability to do the task, second, the motivation or desire to do it in the first place, and third, a trigger that sparks you to do it (if you’re not already familiar with this framework, you should checkout the work of BJ Fogg, a behavioral researcher at Stanford).

 
Read more here…
 

My Summer, 2015 Newsletter and Free Book

The year's top posts on social media, health and wellness, relationships and post-divorce adjustment are all in my newsletter. You will also find a link to my book, The Post-Divorce Survival Guide. Tools for Your Journey, which is available FREE for the next 3 days.

The newsletter starts like this:

Reflecting my continuing interest in social media, this post was published on Care2 Healthy Living and Thought Catalogue:

·         6 Reasons Saying Bye To Facebook Will Make You A Happier Person. People are incensed about Facebook's manipulation of emotional content. Psychologist that I am, I wasn't too upset about it. Since my dissertation involved deception, how hypocritical would that be? And, I seriously doubt that Facebook's research killed anyone, as one Tweeter apparently wondered. 

 

Read the rest here...

The Zen Of Wellness

Divorce is a time of turmoil but also an opportunity to recreate yourself. It's a great time to look at your life in terms of health and wellness.

In my recent article I suggest an approach to wellness that I found useful post-divorce.  See what you think. It starts like this:

Does the thought of creating a wellness plan trigger fear of deprivation, pain and suffering? You may worry about a diet free from unhealthy foods, the physical pain involved in starting an exercise program or the suffering of trying to make good choices when it would be so much easier to have that drink, smoke that cigarette or enjoy that chocolate cake. 

As much as you try to avoid it, you can't help but notice that, in the news again, is the advice to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat and sugar. It's time to take that advice to heart.

With heartfelt caring for your mind, body and spirit, I suggest an Eastern approach to practicing wellness. I borrow from the Buddhist eightfold path, tenets to apply to your wellness plan. May it ease your suffering and enliven your plan to try: 

Right Speech

Stop undermining your plan by being washy washy about how many times a week you'll get to the gym or whether you can really live without your favorite fast food. 

Read more here...