Category Archives: Self-Care

Naps – They're Not Just for Kids Anymore

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Susan K. Minarik

When I was a little kid, my mother used to say, “Go take a nap!” And when I’d ask her why, she’d say “Because I’m tired!” If I had known then what I know now, I would have invited her to take a nap with me.

It turns out that a mid-day snooze is a fabulous positivity practice. It refreshes your brain and clears the way for new learning, even hours later, by clearing your short-term memory.

In an article at Live Science, psychology professor Matthew Walker, of UC Berkeley, says, “Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap.”

Imagine leaping ahead in the afternoon instead of slumping into a mindless haze. What would that do for your productivity? For your ability to find more zest and enjoyment in your life?

Naps Juice Us Up

Not only are we able to learn more for the rest of the day after a nap, but a mid-day nap brings other goodies, too. According to Elizabeth Scott, M.D., a brief afternoon nap:

Reduces your stress level and so it improves your health;
Gives you faster reaction times and the ability to be more efficient, enhancing your performance;
Increases your patience, helping you relate to others in a more positive way;
Keeps your vision sharp and makes you more alert; and
Restores your motivation and helps prevent burn out.

They’re called “power naps” for good reason!

How Long Should I Nap?

I’m one of the 30% of Americans who regularly take an afternoon nap. It’s been a pattern of mine since I was in high school.

When I mention this to non-nappers, they often tell me that they find naps leave them feeling groggier than if they hadn’t taken a nap in the first place.

If that’s been your experience, the problem may be that you didn’t nap long enough.

While a 15-20 minute nap will, in fact, do wonders for you according to many sleep experts, a full 90 minutes, if you can manage it, will do even more.

The reason for taking 90 minutes is because that’s the length of a complete sleep cycle, where you pass through light sleep, deep (dreamless) sleep, and the REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep in which you dream.

Interrupting a sleep cycle will leave you feeling groggier at a nap’s end than completing the whole cycle. So you may want to set an alarm to wake you 90 minutes after you settle in.

Still, for most of us, finding an hour and a half in the middle of the day is impossible, given our over-loaded schedules.

In that case, go for 20 minutes. Recharging yourself for 20 minutes mid-day will actually do more for you than sleeping an extra 20 minutes in the morning,

As for the after-nap groggies, they pass quickly. The key is not to jump into activity right away or do anything that requires alert focus. Get yourself a drink of water, or wash your face. Just move around a little bit and you’ll be fully awake and raring to get back into active mode soon.

Finding Time

While it may be difficult to find 90 minutes for a nap in the middle of your day, most people can create time for a brief nap if they try. And, really, the benefits of napping make finding time well worth the effort. If you can carve out 15-20 minutes, grab them.

In an effort to cut health costs and boost productivity, many innovative companies—Google, Proctor & Gamble and Nike among them– are actually providing nap spaces for their workers . Across the board, they’re finding the results beneficial.

A recent article in Inc.Magazine quoted Cornell sleep expert James Mass – the man who coined the term “power nap” – as saying,

“If we operated machinery like we operate the human body, we’d be accused of reckless endangerment. Just like machinery gets oiled, the human body needs to be nurtured and fed.”

But companies that frown on sleeping on the job are still in the vast minority. And the chances are high that you’re not lucky enough to work for one of them. You could print out this article, and slip it under the CEO’s door or start a nap education campaign. But in the meantime, taking good care of you is up to you.

Take an honest look at your afternoon schedule and see if you can’t block out half an hour of “you” time. Can you take time for a brief nap on your lunch break, for instance? Or set aside time when you arrive home from work?

If you can’t, try taking 5 minutes mid-afternoon to sit quietly with your eyes closed, watching your breathing or practicing your favorite meditation technique—even if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to get a place to do it. A little relaxation mid-day will lower your stress and boost your energy enough to ease your way through the tasks before you.

Posted in Positivity Practices, Self-Care | Tagged benefits of napping, nap, naps and productivity | Leave a comment

Want Happiness? Be Truthful!

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Susan K. Minarik

Photo: istock.com

Of all the traits the happiest people share in common, one outshines them all. In fact, without it, genuine happiness can’t exist. That trait is truthfulness.

Without exception, truly happy people are committed to telling the truth about themselves to themselves—even when it’s scary and difficult. And they extend their truthfulness to others.

It sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? We all tend to think of ourselves as honest people for the most part. And in fact, for the most part we are. But when it comes down to looking our fear or sadness or anger in the face, it’s easy to back down.

We hide our darker feelings from others, too, fearing their rejection, criticism or judgment. Author, consultant and workshop leader Christopher R. Edgar says in his blog post, Self-Honesty and Self-Love, that it can feel risky to admit to ourselves, or to someone else, what is actually going on inside us.

“But,” he goes on, describing a time when he confessed a personal truth to a friend, “I’ve found that when I’m willing to fully accept how I feel in the moment, no matter what it might be, that’s when I get access to the joy and lightness I want in my life. Any energy I was using to avoid what I’m feeling gets freed up and becomes vitality.”

That’s the discovery that all happy people make about truthfulness. It’s liberating, joyful and empowering.

What Truthfulness Brings

Truthfulness grounds you in yourself. It helps to defend you against the outside forces of:
•    Emotional storms
•    Attacks from others
•    Peer/ cultural persuasion to do what’s not good for you
•    Reliance on self-approval, not approval from others.

Truthfulness makes you trustworthy—both to yourself and to others. Other people see your transparency and feel that they can easily know you.

Truthfulness deepens relationships. It opens the door for genuine intimacy. Your honesty promotes honesty in others. It empowers them and gives them permission to be honest themselves. When people share honestly with each other about their feelings and their needs, everyone is more likely to have their needs met.

We feel less tension and stress when we’re honest, too. Lies, even “white lies” are stressful. When you tell them to others, you have to remember what you said and to whom you said it. When you tell them to yourself, a part of you knows it’s not true. Lies are never kindnesses. You can learn to tell the truth tactfully and with respect. Truth comes from love, from a willingness to honor the importance of each relationship – especially the one you have with yourself.

Uncovering Hidden Truths: An Exercise

Here’s a little exercise that happiness researchers Foster and Hicks suggest to discover truths you may be hiding. Get out a notebook and write out as many statements as you can that let you fill in the blanks in this phrase:

“I pretend that_____, but the truth is ______”

It’s a great way to discover what you really believe and honestly want.

To develop greater intimacy with a partner, take turns completing the above phrase out loud to each other for ten minutes. Then spend time discussing what you discovered.

If the Truth is so Good, Why Do We Lie to Ourselves?

Dr. Gerald Goodman, author of The Talk Book: The Intimate Science of Communicating in Close Relationships, explains on his Talk Doctor site how we fall into the trap of self-deception. Truth can be painful, he says. “It gets in the way of ‘our universal urge to be better than we are.’”

We go on pretending that our behaviors, our relationships, our careers and family lives are just fine. We bend reality to make us more comfortable with the status quo.

The problem is that this kind of self-deception can become addictive. Rather than facing the unpleasant parts of ourselves that self-honesty reveals, we ignore the little pieces of reality that paint a less than perfect picture of ourselves.

We tuck our unwelcome feelings, our uncomfortable thoughts and our unsettling beliefs away in a mental trunk in the basement of our minds and pretend that we have risen above them.

And while that may seem to make us more comfortable, it means we’re living in delusion about who we are and about our true feelings. Our authentic self shrinks as our pretend self grows. We wind up having no clue who we really are. And that is a sure recipe for misery and suffering.

Dragos Nicolae, at Inner Peace Blog, says living with self-deception “can lead to poor self-image, a lack of self-confidence, and a constant depressive, negative mood at the back of your mind. You start to feel that life treats you unfairly, when the truth is that life wants to help you out. You’re just not paying attention to it.”

Truly happy people, people committed to positive living, strive to have honest knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses and to know what they really want. “They are searching,” say Foster and Hicks “for what is real in their responses to life. In short, they strive for authenticity and accurate personal evaluation – to live in a state of integrity with themselves.”

“Where Will this Lead?”

As therapist Erika Krull, MS, LMHP points out, one of the prime benefits of self-honesty is that it lets you see where you need to make changes. In addition to the discomfort it can stir up, the call to change is another reason that it feels risky. We tend to resist change. It can be scary. And it’s work. Nevertheless, you only have the power to make your situation better if you admit the reality of a problem.

Nicolae suggests that one powerful way to motivate yourself to make needed changes is to ask, “Where will this lead?” If you don’t change your undesirable behavior, what are the consequences likely to be?

To add a more positive twist to his question, also ask yourself what possibilities might open up for you if you do release your unwanted behavior in favor of one that’s more in harmony with your true self.

Living Truthfully: A Life-Long Process

Discovering who you are is a life-long process. We don’t get the whole truth about ourselves in one blinding revelation. We sort things out a little at a time in what Dr. Goodman calls “ordinary moments of clarity.”

These moments of clarity are the little insights we get on a daily or weekly basis that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we need to face.

They come with nagging little feelings of uneasiness to show us that “we can:

Be thoughtless
Be impatient
Be selfishly unfair
Be not quite honest with someone close
Monopolize the dinner conversation
Brush off a friend’s concerns
Give cheap advice
Fear to reveal warmth
Drink more than we thought.”

These ordinary day-to-day realizations, Dr. Goodman says, are the major shapers of our self-awareness. They are where we come face to face with ourselves and make the choice whether to confront them honestly or not.

These ordinary moments of clarity represent the moments that Foster and Hicks are talking about when they say this about the authentically happy people in their studies: “The choice to be truthful is a rich and deeply personal statement that happy people make about themselves, to themselves. It is a kind of truth that speaks to the ability to confront our personal mythologies, to look at our behavior honestly, and to do what is right for ourselves, regardless of the social pressure to do otherwise.”

Over time, we get better and better at hearing our Inner Truth Detector when, with feelings of unease, it signals us that we’re painting a false picture of reality to others or to ourselves. As we experience the liberation and empowerment of living truthfully, we learn to welcome its voice and to make our corrections immediately and with increasing grace and ease. And so we become happier and whole.

Posted in Positivity Practices, Self-Care | Tagged authenticity, happiness, happy, honesty, integrity, self-awareness, self-delusion, self-honesty, truth, truthful, truthfulness | Leave a comment

Magic at Your Fingertips: The Positive Power of EFT Tapping

Posted on September 19, 2010 by Susan K. Minarik

I know that you know better than to believe in cure-alls. I know that what I’m about to say is likely to make me sound like a snake-oil salesman to some of you. But bear with me.

Even though I’m about to tell you that a simple process you can easily learn will fix darned near everything that keeps you from being your best, I know from personal experience that it positively works. I’ll even give you a chance to put it to the test yourself, absolutely free.

The positivity practice I’m talking about is “meridian tapping” or “EFT” (for “emotional freedom technique,” the original name for the process.) You may have heard of it and decided it’s some kind of silly hocus-pocus. Or, like me, you may have used it casually now and then, but never really grasped its genuine power. If so, I want to tell you that I’ve given it another look, and I’m no longer holding back with it.

What changed my mind was a DVD that let me see how awesomely powerful meridian tapping really is. And since seeing it, I’ve been using tapping consistently on, well, just about everything—with beautiful results.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me tell you what meridian tapping is.

Fairy Dust or Fact?

Based on the same knowledge that underlies acupuncture and accupressure, meridian tapping is a process of painlessly tapping with your fingers on specific points of your head and upper chest to release blocked energy.

What? You tap on your head with your fingers and your problems go away? In a host of cases, the answer is a definite and dramatic yes.

Of course you’re right; there’s no such thing as a magic cure-all. But meridian tapping goes an awfully long way in that direction. Essentially, what it allows you to do is delete detrimental programs from your brain and install beneficial ones in their place.

Even though Western medicine is now embracing the effectiveness of methods based on the ancient Eastern knowledge of our bodies’ energy system, because a physical mechanism for it remains unidentified many people mistakenly cling to the notion that it’s nothing but a woo-woo, New Age belief.

If you’re in that camp, may I gently suggest that you reconsider the matter? An open mind is a benchmark of positive inquiry into any topic, and a little investigation will show you that physicians, psychiatrists and therapists all over the world are using tapping in conjunction with traditional therapies and obtaining remarkable outcomes. And it’s a wouldn’t-do-without-it practice for celebrities like Joe Vitale, whom you may remember from The Secret. Joe has used it for 25 years.

How Does It Work?

When we’re distressed by a trauma, whether physical or emotional, we withdraw and contract as a natural response. The natural, easy flow of energy through our system is squeezed and knots up. It gets stuck, remaining as memory in our bodies.

Tapping in a special way on certain spots—EFT master Dr. Patricia Carrington calls them “comfort spots”– releases the trauma-induced blockages and allows our energy to flow freely again. It’s sort of like the way that removing plaque from a blocked artery allows blood to return to its free flowing state. When your energy is free to flow as it was meant to flow, near-miraculous things happen:

Relief from physical illnesses and quick healing of injuries, including high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, cuts, bites, burns, migraines, allergies, asthma, back pain, neuropathy, muscle strains, carpal tunnel and more;
Addiction relief;
Weight control;
Improved relationships;
Relief from emotional illnesses, including depression, anxiety, phobias, ADD-ADHA, OCD, PTSD and more;
Vision improvement, help with dyslexia, enhanced reading ability;
Enhanced sports performance;
Enhanced school, career and arts performance;
Improved finances and abundance;
And much more!

You don’t have to take my word for it. Page through some of the hundreds of success stories here and you’ll begin to see what I mean when I say this technique packs nearly magical power.

The Positivity Breakthrough

Just as positive psychology evolved from the study of mental illness to emerge as the science of what’s right about human beings, tapping has recently evolved as a powerful means of strengthening and reinforcing the positive factors of our mental, emotional and spiritual layers.

For me, this is one of the most exciting applications of tapping and the aspect of it that I have been exploring with the most fervor in my own life. I warmly invite you to explore tapping toward greater freedom and growth by trying it in conjunction with all your positivity practices:

Use it while you tune into your gratitude and feel it expand your heart, and move you into states awesomely deeper appreciation.
Use it to reinforce your serenity and you’ll flow into incredible levels of inner peace.
Use it to focus yourself in the present, to show up fully, right now.
Use it in your creative endeavors and watch your imagination burst with new ideas.
Use it to problem-solve and see how new insights and angles of approach unfold for you.
Use it as you hold warm thoughts for your family, friends and loved ones and feel your appreciation for them expand and deepen.
Use it to reinforce positive habits you’re working to grow and see them become easier and more naturally a part of your life.
Use it in conjunction with your meditation to enhance the effects of both techniques.
Use it with your law of attraction work to get into greater alignment with the focus of your desires.

Use it on all the things that are holding you back, stealing your confidence, inhibiting your courage and stifling your imagination. Use it to overcome frustration and to bounce back quickly from setbacks and disappointments. Use it as you visualize goals and achievements you want to attain.

Ready to Give it a Try?

To make it a snap for you to learn the basics so you can take it for a test drive yourself, I’m pleased to offer you a wonderfully comprehensive and easy to follow manual that was written by my friend and master-mind partner Charles Burke. Just click this link and download it, free of charge, thanks to Charles.

Charles, who once had the pleasure of interviewing Gary Craig, the man who brought tapping to the world’s attention, is a long-time practitioner of tapping himself and often uses it with remarkable success in his own consulting and training work.

What Next?

Take the time to explore some of the available resources. I have listed a couple of great places to start in the post below. Most of all, take time to explore tapping itself.

Of all the positivity tools I can recommend, it ranks among the top few in power and effectiveness. It’s like having a magic wand that you can carry with you anywhere and put to beneficial use in almost every aspect of your life—and offer to those you care about and love.

As with any positivity practice, a quick once-through won’t show you its full power. While tapping can – and often does – produce such instantaneous relief that it many times seems miraculous, to gain the full benefit of it, you’ll need to give it a fair try. The process is more sophisticated than it looks on the surface and it takes time to learn and practice its nuances. A lot of our energy blockages, after all, have been reinforced and buried in our bodies and minds since childhood. Nevertheless, it’s the express route to freedom. Give it a try. What have you got to lose?

And do me a favor. Let me know what kind of results show up for you when you put it to work for you, will you? I’d really like to know. I expect to be posting more information about tapping in the future. If you have a favorite resource you would like to share or a story about how tapping helped you, please do pass it along.

Posted in Mood Management, Positivity Practices, Self-Care | Tagged EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, Meridian Tapping, overcoming addiciton, overcoming PTSD, pain management, Tapping, The Tapping Solution | 2 Comments

Let's Get Physical: One Step Toward Positively Radiant Health

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Susan K. Minarik

Most of the time, despite the neglect and abuse we all too often heap upon them, our bodies serve us wonderfully well. But that’s no excuse to overlook them when we’re developing positivity plans. On the contrary! To be at our best, we need optimum health. Our bodies deserve our utmost attention and care.

When you think about it, your body is your very best friend and most valued possession. It’s been down every road you ever walked, knows all your deepest secrets, has suffered your most severe pains, and experienced your highest pleasures. It breathes your breath and beats your heart and heals your wounds. It delivers all the sights, sounds, fragrances, flavors and textures of the world to you. Where would you be without it!

Miraculously, the body’s needs are few: air, water, food, and rest. It likes to move and to be kept at a reasonable temperature. Given adequate supplies of those basics, it will take you far.

The Practice: One Step Toward Radiant Health

To kick your health quotient up a notch, read over the list of basics below and choose one thing – just one – that you can begin doing daily that would give your health more zing. Which basic have you been neglecting most? Your nutrition? Exercise? Sleep?

First, think about where you want to put your attention. Tune into your body and let it help you choose. Then decide what one thing you could do that would move you toward greater health in that area. Make it something small and specific that you can add to your daily routine with only a minor adjustment. You’re not looking to overhaul your entire lifestyle here, simply to bring your attention and care back to your wonderful body so that you can support it in supporting you.

If you decide to focus on breathing more deeply, for example, you can set aside ten minutes every day to practice. If you chose the area of nutrition as your focus, you could start with something as simple as deciding to pack a healthy lunch instead of buying fast food on your lunch hour. Here are 25 lunch ideas for you from Eating Well.

To help you stay focused as you learn to make the change a natural and permanent part of your life, track your success with it for a month. (See Keeping on Track: Three Tools for the Road for a couple of good, free online tracking programs.) And decide on a rewarding token or experience you can give yourself after you have successfully practiced your one thing for 30 days.

The Basics

Breathe, Baby, Breathe

Are you breathing deeply, slowly and well? If so, you’re gaining these benefits:

You’re reducing stress, promoting longevity, helping yourself prevent high blood pressure, and easing asthma;
You’re releasing endorphins—our natural painkillers. You’re sleeping better, having fewer headaches, backaches and other stress-related aches and pains.
You’re clearing your mind and helping yourself stay focused
You’re strengthening your abdominal and intestinal muscles.

Core Breathing

Slow, deep breathing bathes and nourishes every cell of our bodies with life-living oxygen, and carries away toxins from our blood streams. Yet good breathing is probably the most neglected health habit of all.

Good breathing means you’re breathing from your abdomen, your core. An article on deep breathing at Discovery Health beautifully describes how it’s related to maintaining your positivity:

“When you breathe with your abdomen, you create a center; when you have a center, you are more confident and coordinated; when you have confidence, you have much more potential and are not afraid of challenges. In effect, you are bringing back the potential that God gave you. You are not afraid anymore. ”

I especially liked this visualization in part 2 of the article that describes how to breathe from your core. It’s from Nancy Zi, author of the book, The Art of Breathing:

To fill the lungs more deeply, she advises, “Lower the diaphragm muscle by expanding the abdomen. When this happens, the lungs elongate and draw in air. You don’t breathe into the abdomen; you allow it to expand comfortably all around its circumference — back, sides and front. Proper core breathing is really the foundation for all things — it’s the foundation of health.”

“Where is the core?” the article continues. “It’s below the navel a few inches or so. It isn’t a thing, you can’t see it: it’s a sensation. Zi likes to use the image of a lotus blossom when teaching people how to breathe from their core:

“When you inhale, imagine a blossom opening within your abdomen; when you exhale, the blossom closes. You open from the center of the blossom, the core. What causes the petals to open is the energy from the core; the more you breathe from the core, the more you stimulate and nourish its energy, and you become more in control.”

You can find three great breathing exercises from Dr. Andrew Weil—one for energizing you, one for relaxing, and one for meditation—here.

Have a Drink

Turns out there’s a lot of urban myth and misinformation about how much liquid you need. The best advice? Drink enough to keep from being thirsty. And what should you drink? You can’t go wrong with water. Ditch the soda pop, cut down or cut out the caffeine. But you already knew that. Just do it!

Get Your Moves On

Move! Stretch, build some stamina and strength. That’s the whole formula. Pick whatever means you please and put it in motion. If you don’t know where to start, here’s a good beginner’s guide. (And whatever you plan choose, my personal hint is that exercise always goes better if you do it to music or with a friend.)

Munch Magnificently

Whole foods? Organic and locally grown or not, whole foods are the ones that come wrapped in nature’s packaging: Fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts, and whole grains. If you like, add fish, meats, poultry and dairy that’s as near the source and messed with by humans as little as possible. (Choose grass fed meats, free range chickens, and wild seafood, for example.)

The benefits? When you give your body the fuel it was designed to run on, you’ll see your energy soar. You’ll sleep better, heal faster, and have a stronger, more powerful immune system. Studies prove that eating a varied diet of fresh, yummy whole foods reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer and type 2 diabetes. And as an added plus, whole foods are generally cheaper than processed.

The drawbacks? You’ll have to learn to cook. But don’t worry, this lost art is more easily mastered than you might think. Here’s a list of user-friendly cookbooks to get you started (or to give you some fresh ideas, if you’re already at home with the range):

The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook: Whole Foods Recipes for Personal and Planetary Health, Second Edition

Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking

The Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook: With More Than 1,000 Recipes for Choosing, Cooking, & Preserving Natural Ingredients

Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods

Catch the Early Train to Dreamland

In her book Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, Marci Shimoff quotes a study from the journal Science that says the quality of our sleep has a greater influence on our ability to enjoy our day than household income or marital status.

Cheat yourself of sufficient sleep (meaning fewer than 7-8 hours every night) and you’ll reap irritability, poor concentration and memory, a low stress threshold, social ineptitude, and just plain tiredness. Yuk! Sleep six or fewer hours and you triple your risk of a car accident.

Go to bed early for three nights in a row and see how your mood changes. (Shimoff calls this “catching the 10 pm angel train.”) Indulge in a 15-20 minute afternoon nap. If you have trouble sleeping, do some online research to learn what factors contribute to easy sleep. To get you started, here are “Ten Tips for Better Sleep” from the Mayo Clinic. Sometimes something as simple as a change in the temperature of your bedroom or removing some of its clutter can make all the difference in the world.

A Final Word

One of the very best things you can do to optimize your health is to continue building your positivity. Adding more gratitude, kindness, pleasure, mindfulness and meaning to your day keeps those happiness hormones pumping right through your energy streams. Immerse yourself in positivity and you give every other health practice a giant, measurable boost. It’s a wonderful feedback loop: positivity feeds health, which in turn feeds positivity. So pick a practice for notching up your health today. And as you work on building it into your daily routine, smile. Have the best of both worlds; you deserve it.