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Leadership, Wellness
&
Resiliency Tools
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Leadership, Wellness
&
Resiliency Tools
How happy are you? Want to move the needle up a little? Learn a new framework for cultivating more happiness!
How comfortable are you making decisions when you don’t have all the information? As challenging as this is, most of the time, we won’t have the whole picture and still need to decide what to do. Read on and learn how to be decisive amidst uncertainty.
Recently, in my interactions with others, I’ve noticed that we can be really hard on ourselves when things don’t go how we expected or, more common these days, there are too many holes to fix all by ourselves.
Leaders, like captains, steer a ship, crew and all, towards a future vision or destination. Leading well through the waves of uncertainty, volatility and complexity, is difficult. For first-time leaders, the challenge is even pronounced. There's so much that you don't know. You feel you have so much to prove. All the skills that landed you here may not be enough for this role. It's very much like being a parent for the first time: there's no recipe book to tell you what to do and how to do it well.
The first article on burnout focussed on practical strategies each individual can do to help keep themselves healthy. However, just like the COVID vaccine is only part of the equation in preventing COVID, strategies on keeping yourself healthy are also just part of the equation for preventing burnout. The second part is the role that workplaces and leaders play.
Ah, stress… there seems to be plenty around these days! Yet, it's only a problem when we don't allow ourselves to recover. Without recovery, chronic stress may lead to burnout. Read on to find out how you can prevent burnout and manage stress.
Many situations challenge relationships and COVID has to be way up there among them. Need some strategies to keep your relationships healthy? Read on!
Turns out that happy people create more happy people, according to the Framingham Heart Study. Find out how powerful happiness is and ways to cultivate it in the blog below!
Why should we eat protein? What’s the best source? Can what we eat affect longevity? Read on to find the answers!
Can I Trust You? What is trust? What does it mean to you? How do you gain the trust of others? How do you approach a situation where your trust is broken?
Sometimes we all need a little more emotional support. Check out the many resources and strategies in blog below!
Panic and fear has taken a firm foothold in the entire world. It’s normal. We are all feeling various levels of worry. However, it’s also important to realize that panic, fear and worry don’t serve us in the end. Responding from a place of fear and anxiety narrows your focus and we are less able to problem solve and think effectively. Fear and anxiety set off the stress response and that in turn, dampens our immune system. This is when we need to turn to the power of hope. When we feel hopeful, we stand united, work together, and are more creative in finding solutions. Hope has helped us through much in the last few decade and it can work again.
With a little humour, some inspiration and a few life lessons these five inspiring TED Talks will spark motivation and get you feeling a little happier.
Bookmark and re-visit them whenever you need a little pick-me-up!
Compassion is the feeling you get when you witness someone in need and want to help alleviate their suffering. It cultivates kindness & kindness has been shown to activate our vagus nerve and reward circuitry. Practicing compassion strengthens our social connections leading to more happiness. Compassion activates our parasympathetic system resulting in a slower heart rate and less stress when we are confronted with challenges. Compassion also makes us happier by increasing our social connections and making us feel similar to others. Find out how to strengthen your compassion muscle below!
The other day I had a really rough day. But I had a student that I was teaching and I made sure that they received the most out of each situation: all the teachable moments, all the pearls from each case. In medicine, and I’m sure in many work situations, you think you have to look like you have everything under control and nothing can phase you. At the end of the day I realized that I had forgotten to teach the most important lesson: how to deal with the rough day!
’Tis the season for travel! Yet, crossing time zones can cause jet lag. This can cause significant changes to your body’s function (think gut, sleep, concentration) that may just have you feeling the bah-humbugs instead! This happens because your body’s internal clock, its circadian rhythm, is out of whack. This body clock depends on light exposure and our first bite of the day to synchronize itself. When we travel, these cues are all over the place. So what’s a traveller to do? Below are some travel hacks that will keep you in the holiday spirit!
My family and I have certainly had our share of aches and pains, yet we lead very active and full lives! Over the years, we have found some great strategies that we can do ourselves to help us manage these discomforts and stay well. Our three favourite techniques, described below, are a great adjunct to any manual therapy, from physiotherapy and chiropractic treatments to massage, and even to practices like yoga and qigong. The great thing about them is that they are all portable!
One of the most common complaints in a doctor's office is poor sleep. Often people want the quick fix of using a pill to help them along, but sleeping pills don't work long term. In fact, over time, they actually can worsen the architecture of your sleep so that you are less likely to get that deep restorative sleep. There are, however, some proven strategies for a good night’s rest.
Turns out most of don’t breathe properly. All that sitting and slouching results in shallow breaths at the top of our lungs which actually activates the stress response all on its own! 😯
Breathing is a salient feature of ancient traditions like yoga, qigong, tai chi, and meditation. So why is breathing such a good thing?
On our journey to eat healthy, our family has had to come up with some quick and easy dinners that are also nutritious, plant-based, and don’t need much in terms of cooking skill.😊 That way, any one of us can whip up dinner during the work week. Looking for some quick and easy dinners for your week? Take a look at the easy recipes below!
Why do we really need to eat well throughout the day? Read on to find out and try some easy recipes for lunch!
Need a fast, healthy breakfast? Try these 3 breakfast powerhouses!
Many years ago my family and I started a “daily” gratitude practice at dinner time. We would talk about the 3 things that went well that day or that we really appreciated. I used this practice as a tool to deal with the negativity from the challenges that I had been facing at work. It ended up being a great practice that we have continued. But is gratitude practice really worth the effort?
Imagine scaling a 3200 foot rock in the middle of Yosemite National Park…. with no rope! I recently saw climber Alex Honnold do just that in the National Geographic documentary film Free Solo. The movie documents his journey to scale the El Capitan rock formation with no ropes and no assistance. I was captivated from the start. It was truly an exhilarating experience. As I watched Alex do the climb, I could palpate his flow state; that feeling you get when you are completely absorbed in what you are doing and time seems to stand still. I was in awe.
Our minds are so busy wondering with worry and anxiety about the future or anger and resentment about the past. In fact, research conducted by Matt Killingsworth in his Track Your Happiness project, (where he’s collected over 650,000 responses from people about how they are feeling, what they were doing and about their mind wandering; using cellphones), showed that our mind wanders about 47% of the time! His project also showed that when our minds wander, we tend to be less happy and that it was the mind-wandering itself that led to unhappy feelings. So then, it would make sense that practicing being present and focused on the task at hand would help increase our happiness. But how do we do that? Enter: Mindfulness.
Stress and tension from our day to day lives are thought to causes blockages in our energy system causing tension in the form of muscle tightness. Imagine holding a tight fist for a long time. It takes energy to do that, just as it takes energy to keep your muscles all knotted up. A Qigong practice helps to clear those lines of tension to allow the energy to flow more smoothly. Like many mind-body practices, Qigong helps transition our bodies from stress to relaxation. When our energy is not being used up in stress mode, we are left with more energy for the day.
Have you ever noticed that when you are driving a car, you tend to steer towards what you are focusing on? Hence, the importance of ‘look at where you want to go.’ Well, this happens in life too. Most of us tend to look at what we don’t want in life and especially at the beginning of the New Year:
I recently read about Will Bowen, a minister of a small church in the American Midwest, who, in 2006, challenged his congregation to 21 days of no complaining. The idea was that if you want more abundance and prosperity, then you couldn’t get there by complaining about what you already had. If you complained, you started back at day ONE! He took the challenge himself, and it took him 6 months to go 21 days straight without complaining! He states that the average person complains 15-20 times a day. His congregation also noted all kinds of benefits in their lives and their health.
Are you finding that despite meditating, yoga and trying to be physically active, that you really aren’t feeling as well as you could? Perhaps you need to take a closer look at your nutrient intake. Notice I did not say “nutritional.” That’s because we tend to focus on carbs, proteins, fats; which ones to eat and which ones to avoid. But we forget that the foods we eat are also supposed to give us nutrients that help our bodies to function optimally and remove toxins that come from what we ingest or even from everyday metabolic functions of our body!