Close Ad

  • Shawn K

    Shawn is a freelance writer and editor with a passion for holistic wellbeing, self-development, and harnessing everyone's full potential.
The 4-Step Guide to How to Meditate
Meditation

The 4-Step Guide to How to Meditate

We hear a lot these days about the incredible benefits that a dedicated meditation practice can have on our brain health, mental and physical abilities, creativity, and overall happiness and well-being. But how do you meditate?It can seem like a silly question -- just sit down and breathe, right? This is what I used to think too. "Meditation? I'm a yogi, I got this!" Or so I figured... And then, I found out how to really meditate, or at least, how to do so while truly reaping its full range of benefits for the body and mind.While it might be technically simple to meditate, it's not quite as foolproof as you might imagine. The magic ingredients? Intense focus, duration, and regularity, all built on a bedrock of calm, patience and self-compassion. The longer you can set aside to meditate, and the more regularly you practice, the greater the benefits you'll get. So when I went from an occasional 10-minute break to a daily 20-minute morning ritual, for instance, it made all the difference.Are you ready? Come along now on Goalcast's guided meditation, and we'll give you a few pointers to get you started on the path to living a mindful life.4-Step Guide to How to MeditateThere are different ways to meditate, but most share the essential points. If you're new to the practice, start with a 10-minute session a day, and begin to go longer and longer as you learn to calm your mind. Eventually, you can integrate a 30-minute session into your daily routine to benefit more fully from the powers of meditation.Find a comfortable and upright sitting pose. The first thing is to make sure that you are sitting in a relaxed and comfortable position, so that you don't get distracted by bodily tensions, cramps or discomforts. Generally, a cross-legged position on a soft surface (like a yoga mat, area rug, or lawn) is preferred, but it's important that your knees be below your hips so that your back is upright but relaxed, without any effort required to hold yourself up. This will favor oxygen and blood circulation throughout the body. If your knees are above your hips, you should find an elevated surface to sit on to avoid rounding your back. (A stack of books works well as a makeshift stool if you don't have a yoga block on hand.) But if you're at work, you can even meditate at your desk, so long as your posture is comfortable, upright and relaxed.Breathe deeply. You can begin settling into your posture by taking a deep breath through the nose, and slowly letting it out. Then begin inhaling and exhaling through the nostrils, allowing your chest and abdomen to expand as you take the air in deeply. If you're feeling tense or anxious, it might feel forced at first to lengthen your breaths like this. Don't worry. Just gradually deepen your breathing more and more, and in a few minutes it will start to feel more natural.Pick a focus point. Focus is the heart of the meditative practice, and what allows for the fullest benefits to be unlocked. It's also the most challenging part of meditation, and what leads many people to get frustrated when they're unable to stop their thoughts from ricocheting around their heads like a kid in a candy store. Don't stress it. Just begin by picking something to focus on -- it could be a point on the floor a few feet in front of you, a soothing sound, an image in your mind, or just your breathing.Cultivate patience and self-compassion. Especially when you first start out, your mind will have a hard time settling down. It's okay. Behave as you would a hyperactive (but well-intentioned!) friend -- acknowledge the thought, but gently invite your attention back to your focus point without judging or criticizing yourself.With time, you'll get better and better at slowing down, until frustration finally makes way for excitement for the daily moments spent pampering your most precious resource: your mind.Do you have your own tips or methods that you've discovered for your own meditation practice? Share it with us in the comments below!

Unleash Your Mind's Potential With the Power of Meditation
Meditation

Unleash Your Mind's Potential With the Power of Meditation

In these accelerated times where it feels like faster is never fast enough, carving out a few moments of peace to catch our breath and reconnect with ourselves can seem like a gargantuan struggle. But as more and more Westerners come to realize the negative impacts of stress and overwork on their performance and well-being, increasing numbers are discovering the surprising powers of meditation to greatly augment all aspects of their lives. The age-old practice of meditation, now practiced by tens of millions of Westerners ranging from hipster yogis to corporate executives, has gone mainstream. Scientific studies and its expanding mass of devotees are discovering what Buddhists and yoga masters have known for thousands of years: that a dedicated meditation practice has the power to not only restore a sense of calm amidst the demands of daily life, but also to strengthen the mind and body, promote long-term happiness and well-being, and unleash the mind's vast reservoirs of creative potential. Unleash Your Mind's Potential With the Power of Meditation Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit. - Jeremy Taylor How meditation strengthens the mind and body Studies have begun to reveal the far-reaching impacts a long-term meditation practice can have on our minds and bodies. Meditation lowers blood pressure and generates the slower alpha and theta waves in the brain, and can affect the area of the brain known as the amygdala, which is linked to fear, anxiety, and surprise. This explains the feeling of Zen we get from meditating, which allows us to sail through stressful situations with calm, clarity and a sense of perspective. But the physiological benefits of meditation go even further than that. Science is increasingly proving what many Eastern traditions have insisted for a long time: that in contrast to the Western notion of a mind-body split (thank you, Descartes), the two are in fact intimately linked. Doctors have begun recommending meditation to patients as a way to deal with a wide range of conditions, including migraines, heart disease, AIDS, cancer, infertility, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, stomach cramps, premenstrual syndrome, and depression. A five-year study in the U.S. even found that people who practice transcendental meditation are 56% less likely to be hospitalized. Calm the mind, awaken to the beauty of life People who practice meditation daily (and for long enough -- sorry workaholics, but 5 minutes a day of peace won't cut it) often report feeling as though their bodies have awoken for the first time. They find themselves focusing more attentively on their every movement and activity, and being fully present in every moment. Without the frenetic chorus of their mind to distract them from what their senses are sending them, they can suddenly taste, smell and hear things more vibrantly, and fully savor their surroundings. We might not be able to slow down time, but the power of meditation to make us more present for every precious minute of life can almost make it feel as though time has slowed. We might not be able to slow down time, but the power of meditation to make us more present for every precious minute of life can almost make it feel as though time has slowed. This could in part explain why meditation has been shown to promote long-term emotional well-being. A 2003 study by scientists at the University of Wisconsin scanned the brains of people with a long history of Buddhist meditation, and found that their left prefrontal lobes, the part of the brain that's tied to our feel-good emotions, were unusually active. Which means that meditation can actually make you physiologically happier! Unleash your mind's creative power For many of us, the fast-paced environment of the modern workplace pushes us to accelerate our thinking, with our performance often measured by our ability to produce more in less time. But as many companies in the creative industries have (belatedly) started to figure out, some things get inevitably sacrificed when the mind is primed to prioritize speed above other factors. Deep thinking, creativity, and problem-solving are all important casualties of our obsession with speed. Experts believe that the brain has two modes of thought, and that they should be carefully balanced if we're to harness our mind's full powers. Most modern workplaces are powered by what British psychologist Guy Claxton refers to as Fast Thinking, which calls on our rational, linear and analytical abilities. Slow Thinking, by contrast, is intuitive, meandering and creative in nature. Our most creative thoughts come to us when we calm the mind, and allow ideas to gently bubble up from the depths of our subconscious. If you've ever felt your greatest ideas come to you when you step away from focusing on it intensely -- to take a walk or a bath, cook dinner, or attend a yoga session, for example -- then you understand that our most creative thoughts come to us when we calm the mind, and allow ideas to gently bubble up from the depths of our subconscious. Creativity, by its nature, is inefficient. That's why many of history's deepest and most creative thinkers, from Charles Darwin to Albert Einstein, were famously slow. When you meditate, you calm the mind's overheated machinery enough to allow these subconscious thoughts to wind their way to the surface. So if you're looking for ways to tap into your imaginative potential, find a comfortable position, take a deep breathe, and get ready to come along on our guided meditation.

Are You Letting Your Ego Guide Your Goals?
Mindset

Are You Letting Your Ego Guide Your Goals?

At Goalcast, we love sharing inspiring advice and stories to push each other along on our personal paths to greatness, knowing all the while that success and achievement can (and should) mean different things to different people. But saying that everyone must chart their own path is not the same as saying that all goals are created equal. We all struggle with tracing the line between self-love and selfishness, between heeding our egos and heeding our hearts. But at the end of the day, the legacy we leave is not measured by what we "achieve" for ourselves, but by what we give back. So I want you to pose yourself a question that we're often too timid to ask: Are your goals powered by your ego or by a higher purpose? If you're bravely and ruthlessly honest with yourself, what part of your vision of success is driven by a desire to "prove" something to someone (often yourself), and what part is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the lives of others? Are you striving to be the "the best," or are you striving to be of service? Are You Letting Your Ego Guide Your Goals? The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. - Mahatma Gandhi (read more quotes) Are you heeding your ego or heeding your heart? It's understandable that so many of us feel the pressure to make a "name" for ourselves in this world. We live in a society of competition and individualism, where "success" is often measured by personal gain and fame. These pressures hold up a big stick of insecurity that is poking the eye of our egos -- and there's nothing our egos like less than being threatened. The ego is a mental construction that is founded on our fears. It is insecure, defensive and competitive by nature, and its outward expression is a rugged individualism that rejects a sense of deeper connection with or responsibility towards others. There are many soft expressions of our egos that we might not notice most of the time. But whether our goals are tied to performance, status, wealth, or other forms of personal achievement, if there's a competitive quality to it, then that's a surefire sign that your ego is in the driver's seat. By contrast, when you are more in touch with your inner self, and are more in tune with your emotions, you tend to develop a greater sense of self-love and confidence that assuages your ego's insecurities and empowers you to seek collaborative successes that serve a greater good. What I've just described is the basic process of developing your emotional intelligence, which states that empathy and social connection are the direct outflows of deepening your capacity for self-awareness and self-knowledge. Being "the best" vs. being of service It takes an uncommon degree of courage to question one's goals and values. It's for its rarity, after all, that humility is such a prized virtue. It becomes less frightening, however, once we remember that questioning oneself and judging or denigrating oneself are not the same thing. The most vital part is precisely to question ourselves without judging, and to then learn from our mistakes and evolve -- so that we can celebrate our ability to grow and improve. So when you think of your life goals, you must try to be extremely honest with yourself. Ask yourself: Why is it important for me to be the "best" at this or that? How will the lives of others be improved if I am the strongest, fastest, richest or [insert your superlative here]? Being "the best" at anything is by definition a relative term that incites us to keep others down so as to elevate ourselves above the rest. It's a zero-sum competition that in the end only ends up hurting all those who participate. It's hard to argue that the world hasn't already seen enough fights of the fittest to last an eternity. What we're suffering from is a lack of collaboration and common purpose, wouldn't you say? The point here isn't to shame anyone -- we all succumb to the tantrums of our egos from time to time. The point is instead to help us realize that the competitive pressures that set them off stem from unnecessary insecurities, and to encourage us to question what true success and achievement mean to us. What is your purpose on this planet? We often hammer home the importance of knowing who you are, discovering your unique purpose in the world, and charting your own path. But what I've tried to show here is that authenticity and egoistic individualism are not only separate things, but are in many ways antagonistically opposed. One is fuelled by our insecurities, and leads us to define and measure our success against others in a competitive race to "prove" ourselves, while the other comes from a place of self-love and security, and inspires us to spread our strength and joy outward by embellishing our little corner of the world. Humanity can't afford to take a pass on the incredible power and potential that lies within each of us. The Great Ship Earth needs all hands on deck. So: How will you use your short time on this planet? What will you do to leave the world a better place than when you found it?

Sail Away from the Safe Harbor, and Find Yourself
Self-Development

Sail Away from the Safe Harbor, and Find Yourself

If you're ever lost or unsure of who you are, rest assured: There's a timeless method for discovering your deepest passions and values. Travel, or better yet, live away from home for a time. Because it's only by casting off from the familiar shores and exploring the unknown that you'll begin to uncover the inner contours of your own soul -- and ironically, find yourself somewhere halfway across the world... or a few hours from home.Sail Away from the Safe Harbor, and Find YourselfTwenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.- Mark TwainWhen I think of my own life, I tend to divide it up by the different periods I spent traveling or living abroad, or in one case, in a city the next province over. Each of them marked a new chapter in my life, and a new phase of self-discovery, where I was thrown into unfamiliar territory and forced to define who I was based on experiences that were alternately inspiring or challenging. What is it about leaving home that seems to lead you back to yourself?Break the routinesNo matter where your destination is, simply being away from home, especially when you're traveling alone, pulls the rug of your routines out from under you, and forces you to find your own two feet anew. What are your interests and hobbies? What sort of people do you connect with most? What inspires you, what repels you, and why?When you don't have the same old easy answers to fall back on, or the same friends to latch on to, you're quickly forced to question everything you usually take for granted. If you approach the adventure with an energetic and intrepid sense of discovery, you might be surprised by where the spark of exploration can take you. There's simply no better way to refresh your interests, thinking and habits than to have the crouches of your comfort zones yanked away.When you find your people, they stay with you foreverOf all the moments in my life, few are stamped deeper on my heart than the times I arrived in a foreign city, and found an instant affinity with strangers who were raised in a culture a world away. In these rare and precious moments when we find our "tribe" in an unfamiliar land, we discover the values and passions that tie us to other human beings in this world, and that propel our search for connection and community.If we're fortunate, we might even find ourselves seduced by an entire culture or people, and hear whispered words of welcome that speak to a deeper instinct within us, far below the level of a language that you might struggle to speak. When something so strange and inexplicable as this happens, as it did for me when living in Mexico for three months, the awakened voice within you holds up a mirror with the image of your new spiritual home, and invites you to trace the reflection back to the root of the connection. For me, discovering my bond with Mexico made me wonder whether on some instinctual or emotional level, I felt more at home in a foreign culture than in the one in which I was born and raised.When you don't, it shapes you even moreWe often romanticize travel, portraying it as a journey from one extravagant adventure to the next. It's understandable, after all, that the most inspiring moments are the ones we most like to recall and retell. But as someone who did most of his traveling in his 20s alone, I know too well the pangs of homesickness and alienation that can strike when you're away from your loved ones and failing to connect with a place's people or culture. For me as a Quebecer, the strangest revelation was to discover that I felt more isolated in Toronto than in Mexico, despite my rusty Spanish skills that made conversation a clumsy affair.My year living in Toronto was a trying one for me -- and one which I will never regret. Just as adversity teaches us more about ourselves than ease, so too does being immersed in an environment that feels unfriendly to us force us to discover and define ourselves against that opposition, so as to understand the source of our discomfort, affirm ourselves, and seek out the people or subcultures which might help you carve out a corner of home.No chance for an adventure? Be a traveler at homeAnd what if you don't have the luxury of taking a few months off for an adventure of self-discovery?Getting away from home certainly pushes you out of your comfort zones, and opens up the world of opportunities I've described above. But in an era of diversity and immigration, where every globalized city is a mosaic of cultural communities, subcultures and tourists from around the world, it's become possible to be a permanent traveler within your own city as well. Break out of your routines. Throw away the crouches of your comfort zones. Explore the many scenes and spaces that your home town provides. If you approach it with enough energy and determination, traveling can become your new mental home.Just sail away from your own safe harbors whatever they may be, and soon enough you'll find yourself in the open ocean of your self-discovery.

How I Found Gratitude and Learned to Love Life
Self-Development

How I Found Gratitude and Learned to Love Life

Sometimes, you need to leave the things you love the most to better appreciate them. And oftentimes, being immersed in a place where the money is scarce but the joy is abundant will shake out your petty anxieties like a dusty rug, leaving only a thick layer of gratitude and contentment to settle deep at the bottom of your heart. I have said here before that if there is a single before and after in my life up until this point, it would be the moment I started practicing yoga. That was how I laid the foundations for what I'm about to describe. But if there is a second, it would be when I moved away from my home town to pursue my studies in Toronto for a year, and then moved to Mexico for three months. I was doing an internship there three days a week while staying with a host family, and used the other four to travel the country staying with locals I'd met through the Couchsurfing website. It was one of the best decisions of my life. How I Found Gratitude and Learned to Love Life Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. - Cicero When I came back, I’d changed so completely that my friends’ jaws were left dragging on the floor. From the weight in the room who struggled with feelings of inadequacy, I became the boy with a bounce in his step that others looked to for energy and encouragement. From an anxious type whose mental wheels would spin in the ditch of imagined offenses, I became the clear-eyed comfort who would remind friends of the sun over the horizon. What happened to me? To put it simply: I found gratitude, and it changed everything. The view from outside your comfort zones Nothing builds confidence like a self-imposed exile from your comfort zones, where you learn that you not only find your footing quickly, but can sail with ease through a foreign land where your language skills are rough at best, navigating by the smiles of strangers to discover a whole new world of human connections. With each new encounter and each new sight or sound, smell or taste, you breathe in gratitude with every breath -- thankful not only for the awesome beauty of the world we inhabit; not only for the treasure of all of humanity's open hearts and open arms; but perhaps most important of all, for the deep wells of capacity and intuition within yourself that steered you there, and that will propel you towards continuous growth and learning throughout your life. The grateful harvest: returning home It was after returning home that I noticed the true transformation begin to take flight. Coming home from Mexico, the juxtaposition with the North American lifestyle was stark. All around me, I saw the faces of stress and worry, signs of tensed hearts and foggy eyes, and a society of sleep-deprived sprinters on a frantic race to find "success" and happiness around the bend. Yet in our noble hunt for the horizon, so many of us forget to appreciate the flowers that blossom at our feet. It's a tragic irony that in the countries where we have the most, you'll find the people who seem to cherish life's gifts the least. We have safety, security, and food on our tables. We have life in our veins, and, for most of us, love in our lives. Yet we forget to feel it, and seem to try our hardest to make life and happiness as complicated as we can. There's life in your veins. Feel it. Though it certainly helps, you don't need to travel the world to open your eyes to the wonders of its beauty. Humans are sentient, after all. We're the only beings on the planet that don't just see the lush green of foliage and crisp blue of the sky, but can actually pause to enjoy the great gift of consciousness that allows us to soak it all in. Remember that next time you savor a delicious meal, touch the warmth of a lover's skin, or soar to the sounds of your favorite musician. You have five glorious senses that let you connect to the world, and you're alive. There's love in your life. Cherish it. Every day I was away from home made me look longingly towards my friends back home, and realize just how fortunate I was. When I returned to them after what felt like an eternity, my relationship to them and myself had been profoundly transformed. It spelled the end of my perpetual search for insatisfaction, and my instinctive drive to find ways to always want more. Four years later, I remain permanently in awe of the incredible souls I've surrounded myself with, and the gratitude and acceptance of them that's flowed from this has further deepened and strengthened our bonds over time. Who built this beauty? You did. It always astounds me to hear the things people tell themselves in their worse moments – or to remember the things I used to tell myself! Write them down the next time you judge or criticize yourself harshly, and then read them imagining that it were a message written to you by your closest friend. What would you think? When you learn to be grateful for your life and loved ones, you also learn to love the artist of all the beauty – yourself. Perhaps the most important part of learning to be grateful is how it transforms us from our own worst enemy into our own best friend. And if you can learn to love your own company, happiness is always a breath away. You've come a long way. When I think back to all the connections I made on my couchsurfing adventures, and then remember the shy and nervous youth who struggled years earlier to break the ice with strangers at youth hostels in Europe, I'm astounded. Just like when I conjure the smaller me who once felt like an impostor among a social group that inspired him, and then look with bewilderment at the person today who can channel the comfort he found in his own skin to guide those near him towards theirs. This is how I capture the incredible distance I've come in tackling my own insecurities. For you, it may be in overcoming other personal, mental or emotional obstacles, or perhaps in your professional accomplishments. Look to your life, and you’ll find your own progress story. When you learn to appreciate progress over a longer time span, it helps calm the stress and anxieties related to daily (often self-imposed) pressures. I found this new sense of perspective to be essential for another reason too, in that it nurtured the crucial virtue of patience. Now imagine what's to come. This newfound gratitude I felt for life, my loved ones, myself, and the progress I'd made had laid the seeds for a surging sense of self-love, confidence, patience and perspective that remains with me today. These qualities have enabled me to trust my own instincts and listen to my heart, in order to learn from it rather than judging it. This encouraged me to set goals that flowed from my true passions and desires, which in turn fuelled my motivation and determination to pursue them. It helped steel me against setbacks too, allowing me to be nimble and compassionate towards myself when I hit the inevitable bumps along the road. Gratitude, then, is about much more than an occasional thought for the riches in your life. It is a process, which once begun, can transform your relationship to yourself, your life and others. Open your eyes a little wider, and find yours.

The Lifestyle of Happiness: Why It's Not All In Your Head
Mental Health

The Lifestyle of Happiness: Why It's Not All In Your Head

We often hear that happiness isn't something that just arrives at your doorstep one day, wrapped neatly in a bow. We remind ourselves all the time that it's a state of mind more than anything else, that it's a life skill to be developed and strengthened with time, and that it's always a process. All of which is important and true. But it's a roof without a structure. It's missing the most crucial part. When we talk about happiness as a state of mind, we can make the mistake of thinking it's all in our heads. As if repeating a feel-good mantra to ourselves a hundred times a day will root out the deep fears and insecurities that fester beneath. We can all understand the allure of buying into quick fixes. But here's the truth: you can't positive affirmation your way to lasting happiness, any more than you can "kumbaya" your way through your minefield of fears. You have to design your life for it. The Lifestyle of Happiness: Why It's Not All In Your Head We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. - Stephen Ilardi, PhD Now before you get overwhelmed at the thought, rest assured: happiness, despite the colossal industry that's arisen to complexify every last aspect of it, is actually much simpler than most people imagine. Hear me out. The lands that depression forgot Today, we think of stress, anxiety, loneliness and other mental strains as integral and omnipresent aspects of our lives. In the wealthiest and most stable societies the world has ever known, we've gotten to the point of normalizing and trivializing -- and when it comes to stress, at times even glorifying -- the mental stresses that are causing unprecedented and ever-skyrocketing incidents of mental illness. Did you know that one in every four Americans aged 18 to 29 has already struggled with major depressive disorder in their lives? For the oldest generation of Americans alive today, those aged 60 and over, that ratio is just over one in ten -- for their entire lives. So can you imagine how the millennials' children will fare, if this runaway trend isn't stopped? Now did you know that there are societies in the world with barely any incidence of clinical depression? Did you know that there are societies in the world with barely any incidence of clinical depression? This is no exaggeration. These are facts related in an eye-opening TEDx talk by Dr. Stephen Ilardi, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Kansas. Who are these mystical happy folk who depression has mostly spared? There's nothing mystical or magical about them, actually. They're simply indigenous tribes, whose traditional lifestyles, with their intense physical activity, natural diets, embeddedness within nature, and closely knit social bonds mirror the way humans lived for all but the last 10,000 of the 1.8 million years of our existence. In other words, they live the way our bodies evolved to live. So should we all abandon the cities and return to the land to live as hunter-gatherers then? Probably not, though that would doubtless make for a fun weekend adventure. What we should do is design our lives as much as possible around the basic needs of our bodies and minds. Positive thinking is in our heads -- in the sense that it depends on our brain chemistry. But our brain chemistry is affected by everything we do, from what we ate for lunch, to who we ate it with, to whether we ate it outside or in the sun, and maybe took a walk afterwards. In short, it depends on our lifestyles. It all comes down to the very basics of human wellness. Time-tested and true: The ingredients of happiness Ilardi used his findings to devise what he calls the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change program for treating clinical depression, or TLC for its delightful little acronym. The results proved simply astounding. But the TLC program doesn't just provide a drug-free pathway out of depression. It also provides a blueprint for wellness, informed by almost two million years of human evolution. What do we need to be well? Let's have a look. 1. Exercise We all know exercise is good for us, but many of us might not realize just how important an effect physical activity has on our brain chemistry, and by extension our moods, mental clarity, energy, motivation and long-term health. Physical activity has been shown to alter the body and mind in ways more powerful than any pill you could take. Physical activity, says Ilardi, is "literally medicine," and yet so many of us struggle to integrate it into our lives. It shouldn't be a struggle. If the gym isn't for you, give yoga a try. If yoga doesn't pull you in, start biking everywhere, or even just going on long brisk walks. Whatever the activity, find one that draws you in and makes you want to integrate it into your weekly routine. Choosing a form of physical activity that's social and useful -- as opposed to running on a treadmill alone and getting nowhere, for example... -- can help you stop thinking of it as "exercise," and find your joy in the activity itself. 2. Social connection It's not an exaggeration to say that our ancestors spent every minute of every day in the company of those closest to them. For most of our history, it was the only way to survive, and so we evolved to find our comfort, leisure, and meaning through our connections with others. Our species is profoundly social and even tribal by nature. We need each other, deeply and daily. In fact, even just being in the physical presence of others has been shown to combat the brain's stress response mechanism that's at the root of so many of our ills. Connection literally heals us -- just as its absence kills. Yet in today's individualist society, many of us spend so much time racing towards our career goals that we sacrifice our social connections, and undermine our own health, happiness -- and goals -- all in the process. It's time we got back to valuing what really matters in life. 3. Omega-3 fatty acids Despite the image we have of our rugged ancestors marauding around the plains chasing wild beasts with spears, the less glamorous reality is that most of our ancestors' diets came from fish, nuts, plants, and other easier catches. (I mean if you could spare a little energy and the risk of becoming dinner, wouldn't you?) Our brains are mostly fat. Diets high in omega-3 fatty acids, and in the key active ingredient EPA, have been proven to have significant anti-depressant and mood-enhancing effects. 4. Sleep hygiene In the rush to squeeze ever more time out of every day, many of us have taken to viewing sleep as an expendable luxury, or an inconvenience to be beaten down on the fast lane to our goals. It's even become commonplace in our performance-obsessed culture to see high-profile figures glorify sleep deprivation, or try to shame the wise few who insist on good sleep hygiene as somehow weak or lazy. It's no wonder then that the average American today gets 6.7 hours of sleep a night, while a century and a half ago this number was closer to nine. Two million years of evolution, and modern science, tell us that the sleep-shamers are both wrong and irresponsible. While everyone's sleep needs vary somewhat, most people need eight hours of sleep a night to truly be at their best. Inadequate sleep has a major impact on our mood, mental performance and long-term health, and is a major cause of depression. How's that for a good reason to sleep better? 5. Sunlight Anyone who's ever felt the winter (or rainy-day) blues knows the incredible mood- and mind-enhancing effects of the sun's rays. Our ancestors lived most of their lives outside after all, so it's little surprise that our bodies and minds depend on sunlight to function at their peak. People who don't get enough natural light see their sleep quality, mood, hormonal balance, and energy suffer, and they begin to crave unhealthy foods. That's why natural light is so important in workspaces. And it's also why those of us who live in northern or low-light climates should consider buying a light therapy lamp for the darker months. I've tried one, and I can tell you, it's really night and... day. 6. Anti-rumination strategies Our ancestors had little time to sit in a corner and dwell on negative thoughts. Our brains are meant to be active. So if you ever catch yourself in a negative thought spiral, break it immediately by focusing your mind on something external to yourself: social interactions, creative hobbies, writing your thoughts in a journal, being in nature -- all of these have been shown to have significant mood-enhancing and anti-depressive effects. Happiness is easy -- our lifestyles are complicated Everywhere we look, it seems people are dragging their feet wondering where happiness went, or else racing towards a mythical future where they imagine it to be hiding out. But the simple truth is that if we stopped to smell the roses -- or better yet, travelled to less fortunate places where the money is scarce but the joy is abundant -- we'd find that happiness really isn't that complicated at all. If our material needs are met, there's love in our lives, and we're living lifestyles in tune with the basic needs of our bodies and minds, then all the gratitude, confidence and motivation in the world will flow naturally from that. We need to get back to the fundamentals and tend to the foundations of our lives, instead of perpetually reaching for a fresh coat of paint to paper over an unstable structure. No, it's not happiness that's complicated. What's complicated are our frenetic, sedentary, and socially disconnected lifestyles. Just don't blame happiness for playing hard to get.

Slow and Happy Wins the Race: Why Doing Less Will Give You More
Self-Development

Slow and Happy Wins the Race: Why Doing Less Will Give You More

The pressures can seem constant, and they're flying at us from every direction, morning to night. Performance and productivity are the buzzwords of our age, and speed and efficiency are its lifeblood. But what would happen if instead of rushing through our lives in a perpetual state of fatigue and distraction, we simply tried to slow down -- enough to catch a breather and a moment, savor ourselves and each other, and reclaim the peace of mind that is essential to tapping into our deepest essence and harnessing our potential? All around us, we see people who are firing on all engines, working themselves to the bone, seemingly terrified that if they're not racing towards their career goals, they're falling behind. The torrent of messages flood our inboxes, social media feeds and mental space. They light up our smartphone screens with the parade of superfluous notifications demanding our attention. And the Internet is awash in tips and tricks for "hacking" the clock, and squeezing more and more out of each minute we exist. But are we actually squeezing more time and activity out of every day? Or are we only squeezing more life out of ourselves? Slow and Happy Wins the Race: Why Doing Less Will Give You More The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections -- with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds. - Carl Honoré I'd like you to slow down for a moment... and think about when you are at your most focused, creative, and dynamic. Is it when your mind is rested and well, or when you're stressed and overwhelmed by the flood of demands on your time and mental energies? Our culture of speed is arsenic for the anxious, and stress has become such an integral part of our daily lives that many of us have forgotten how destructive it is, not only for our mental and physical health, but for the very goals we claim to be sacrificing for. The problem with this industrial-era idea of productivity is that it was designed for economic output rather than human potential. And as the modern epidemics of burnout, stress, anxiety, obesity and other lifestyle-related illnesses loudly remind us, there's a high price to be paid for riding roughshod over the bodies and minds that nature gave us. Sabotaging ourselves in a culture of speed Too often, the first casualties of our breathless and hyperactive lives are the very things that are so essential to our health and well-being. We have little time for our friends and loved ones. We have little time to prepare proper meals and enjoy them with our families. We have little time to exercise, meditate, nourish our minds and souls with cultural and leisure activities, or cultivate hobbies outside of work. But not everyone is buying into the (very Anglo-American) idea that faster is better. Around the world, there is a growing movement of people who feel that if we slowed down and did less, we would reap the benefits in the additional love and care made available for the fewer things that are worth doing, and worth doing well. Carl Honoré's international bestseller, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed, lists some of the main examples. In praise of slow: harnessing our potential In Italy, the Slow Food Movement is trying to turn back the clock on our industrialized lifestyles that have seen us increasingly abandon proper food preparation and ingredients, as well as the ritual of dining together, in favor of fast food and processed ingredients that are literally killing us. In the world of education, some of the most prestigious private primary schools in the world have implemented a ban on homework for students under the age of 13 -- often over the initial objection of parents, who worried that their children would fall behind. The result? In one such school in Scotland, students' math and science test scores went up by 20%. Even Ivy League universities like Harvard are now actively encouraging students to slow down and be happy with doing less. And perhaps most important of all, all across Europe the work week is getting shorter, with Scandinavian countries leading the way in demonstrating that the happiness and productivity of workers go hand in hand, and that both go up as employees get to enjoy a healthier work-life balance. Even some of the biggest corporations in the world have begun to understand that more work hours don't equate to more results, and that it's likely even the opposite. That's why Google allots 20% of their employees' paid time to roaming freely around the grounds, engaging in social interaction or reflection so as to stimulate their creativity. If Einstein said it, it must be so What Google, the Scandinavian countries, the Scottish primary school, and the Italian Slow Food Movement have all understood is that humans are at their best when their environments and lifestyles are working with, and not against, the necessities of our mental, physical and emotional well-being. Albert Einstein famously said that imagination was the highest form of intelligence, and that creativity was "intelligence having fun." Give yourself permission to slow down, and you'll reap the rewards of an intelligence that is rollicking its way to greatness.

Know Thyself: Why Self-Awareness Is the Starting Point for Your Goals
Self-Development

Know Thyself: Why Self-Awareness Is the Starting Point for Your Goals

Emotional intelligence is a big buzz word these days, and with good reason. Decades of research show that it's the single biggest predictor of success, with 90% of top performers having high emotional intelligence. It's emotional intelligence that explains why people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time.But what exactly is emotional intelligence, and why is it so vital to achieving your goals?The shortest answer is that it's all about self-awareness. It's the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one's emotional responses, so as to better be able to recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.Let's delve into the longer answer now, so we can see how self-awareness is the single most important factor in finding happiness, success and fulfillment in life.Know Thyself: Why Self-Awareness is the Starting Point for Your GoalsKnowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.- AristotleThe term "emotional intelligence" was coined by two researchers in 1990 and popularized by author and psychologist Daniel Goleman in his groundbreaking 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.The idea was pretty revolutionary for the time, in a culture where the word "intelligence" (still) tends to refer by default to the logic-based form of thinking that's tested by IQ. Suddenly, we were told that there is not one form of intelligence, but potentially many, and that our emotions, rather than being weaknesses or obstacles to be overcome, instead possessed their own inherent wisdom that we could learn to harness. Emotional intelligence shook up our old assumptions, by showing that our emotions and intelligence are not in conflict with each other, but actually work together.How?The four stages of emotional intelligenceThe term emotional intelligence might be very recent, but the idea behind it as old as history. Back in the day, when Ancient Athenians would go to see the oracle to discuss their problems -- basically the old-school Greek equivalent of going to see your shrink or priest for advice -- an inscription above the doorway served as a constant reminder of the source and solution to all our problems: Know thyself.When Daniel Goleman listed the four stages of emotional intelligence, it all began at the same starting point:Self-awarenessSelf-managementSocial awarenessRelationship-managementI like to think of these stages as four concentric circles, where we begin at the center with self-awareness, and gradually expand our abilities outwards as we deepen our knowledge of ourselves, and by extension, others.Let's go on an adventure now through the four stages of emotional intelligence.Self-awareness: where it all beginsOur journey to self-awareness begins with practicing mindfulness in our everyday. For me, it was yoga that launched me down the path to deepening my self-awareness. Engaging in silent meditation, deep breathing, or other meditative activities (anything from walking, to sewing or painting, to listening to music) are all powerful techniques for calming the mind so that you can hear your emotions speak. Keeping a journal can be a wonderful tool for clearing your thoughts and getting to know yourself better too.Whatever avenues you choose, the crucial part is that you learn to listen attentively to what's happening beneath the surface without letting your mind suppress or distort what emerges. You need to listen as you would to a dear friend, without judgment, so that you can learn from your emotions. If you speak over them whenever they disappoint or frustrate your ideal version of yourself, you'll prevent yourself from arriving at a faithful portrait of who and where you are now.Self-managementTo move from self-awareness to the second stage of self-management requires that we take responsibility for our emotions. To own our emotions isn't to assign fault or blame -- that would amount to some pretty major judging after all! -- but to understand that the causes of our emotions are always internal to us, and not ascribable to whatever external factors may have triggered them.When we begin to understand that the causes and triggers are two separate things, we can start to observe and understand better the relationship between the two in our inner worlds. And once we understand the things that trigger us and why, we can start to manage our behavior when emotions arise, or even anticipate and prepare beforehand if we sense a trigger coming our way.It's a powerful thing to reclaim your emotions. When we learn to stop blaming others for our feelings of hurt, fear or anxiety, we stop trying to control others or retaliate against them. We focus instead on managing our own inner worlds, and guiding our lives to maximize the positive influences around us.On the flipside, when we stop crediting others for our feelings of joy or accomplishment, we become less dependent on others for our happiness, and are more able and empowered to build strong and healthy relationships.Social awarenessThis takes us neatly into the third stage of emotional intelligence, which flows naturally from self-awareness and self-management. Put simply, the more you get to know yourself, the less you seek validation from others. Rather than looking at people around you and imagining mirrors reflecting back at you, you begin to truly see them. You relax, and find that a secure and peaceable mind is one that opens up more readily to others.I know, because this used to be me. I had a veil of insecurities that hung between me and my closest friends, and that prevented me from developing deeper connections with them. Today, my exceptional closeness with my friends is the achievement I cherish most in my life.In short, the more you know yourself, the better you get to know others.Relationship-managementThis is where we've reached the peak. Because fewer skills are more central to your life goals -- be they related to happiness, fulfillment or professional success -- than being able to read others' emotional language, understand and empathize with them, and build strong and lasting connections that will steady you when you faulter, launch you to the next level when you least expect it, and propel you across the finish line with a smile.So the next time someone asks you for the secret to success, you can throw a little Socrates their way. It's two simple words: Know thyself.

We Can Come Together, or We Will Fall Apart
Self-Development

We Can Come Together, or We Will Fall Apart

The air holds an ominous weight that seems to grow heavier, day after day. It crackles with febrility; at every news clip, every headline, every harrowing image that races across the screen.The air crackles with febrility... or is that, our nerves?First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —Because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.-- Martin Niemöller There are days when it seems the world is coming apart at the seams. Whole countries left buried beneath the rubble, souls shattered by such terrors and traumas to make minds crumble as readily as the cardboard buildings turned to wreckage.The sea has become a graveyard for those who fled and failed. And for too many of those who survive the journey out of hell, their unspeakable suffering is turned to silence, their voices muted -- dubbed over by demagogues on the hunt for easy answers to ease our rising anxieties, and for easy enemies to explain our righteous woes.These waves of unwelcome history keep crashing back up against the shores, and the waters are glacial at my toes. It shoots a serpentine shiver down my spine.It takes a special kind of courage and calm to swim through turbulent waters without tensing up. We don't know how to react. How to respond. Who to blame.Beware.When our fears are furious, they will ask for a cold blood that will chill our hearts into hardness.He against she. Us against Them. And we will surrender our common humanity to the siren songs of a Savior, who will feed on our fearful hearts to rally the mob to the never-ending list of imagined enemies within.But have you ever stopped to look the Other in the eye, and ask them what they dream of in their lost and lonely hours? Have you asked where they come from, or wondered what hurt and horrors keep them lying awake at night in cold sweats and tears?And if, instead of shriveling up into brittle mounds of kindling nerves, we opened our chests and broadened our shoulders to embrace all the weak and wounded in search of a home?What if we replaced our preconceptions with curiosity, our callousness with compassion, and humbled ourselves enough to lend our ears to the fears of our neighbors and brethren of all creeds and colors, and to the besieged masses of humanity who are crying out for life and love?What would happen if we simply talked to each other, and actually stopped to listen?What world, then, would the sun rise over at tomorrow's dawn?