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The spooky season is in full swing! This month, you may have explored haunted houses, gone on a hay ride, carved spooky (or cute) pumpkins, watched scary movies, played horror games or read horror books. This month seems dedicated to the emotion of fear: exploring what scares us as well as scaring away creatures with scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns. So, this week, let’s look at the fear response.
We carry so much throughout a single day: responsibilities, reminders, the weight of impending deadlines, bags, and the heat, now that we’re in the middle of the summer. Our bodies deserve a break—deserve to release and relax. You deserve to relax and heal.
Today, we are taking another tip from the trees this season. Just as the trees learn to shed their leaves, let’s shake it off!
Earlier in August, we wrote about the unconventional horror story: the Wall of Awful. The Wall of Awful describes a metaphorical wall that makes starting or working on tasks difficult. This wall is built up of past experiences that interfere with your ability to do The Thing. This week, let’s examine several responses to the Wall of Awful and how we can climb it with our well-being in mind.
So, you’ve made a mistake. What do you do afterwards? Do you recognize the mistake, accept it, and make adjustments to improve on it next time? Or, do you dwell on the mistake and beat yourself up for making even one mistake?
If you are prone to doing the latter, stick around for 3 steps to invite self-compassion.
The days that stick out to you: do they fill you with love, joy, happiness? Or do they fill you with a heavy weight? Our minds tend to focus on the negatives in life. It’s how we survive: scan for threats, notice them, and remember, so you can survive the threat.
So, remembering your favorite dish is out of stock on a night out is more likely to stick in your mind than the delicious taste of your second favorite dish. It may even cloud your senses so you don’t notice the cute baby’s contagious laughter (but you do notice the tiny pieces of burnt food instead).
This week, let’s examine our memories and discover how we can build positive, long-lasting, happy memories.
Yesterday was the autumnal equinox—a time when day and night are of equal length. We’ve already begun to see the trees letting go of their leaves. Their leaves that pulled in the sun’s rays and turned them into energy, supporting the tree’s growth and survival. As the season turns cooler, the days shorten, and the leaves age and die, the trees shed the leaves that are no longer serving them. Today, let’s learn the art of letting go.
Now, before you click away with a proclamation, “I’m not an artist” or “I could never draw something good enough,” bear with us for a few moments. Breathe.
This is not for masterful artists who can create stunning portraits, clean lines, or breathtaking landscapes—not necessarily. This form of art is for those who carry stress in their backs and the world of responsibility on their shoulders.
This week, we’re drawing up an art exercise to calm the mind. You can have shaky hands, imperfect circles, and be bad with color mixing because (spoiler alert) the end product does not matter. We’re focusing on the process.
In a world filled with billions of people, we tend to make things personal. With access to nearly the entire world on the internet, we see thousands of other people, and naturally, we compare ourselves to others.
We measure them up, we measure ourselves up, and then we tend to draw a conclusion on all the things that make us “lesser than” the other person. We may also latch onto aspects that we do and form it into our identity, which can create a sense of belonging or become helpful in finding friends.
However, by personalizing things and forming our identity around a small character trait, we may be preventing ourselves from living the life we desire.
So, you’ve started a habit. You’ve kept up good progress for a week. Each day, you’re marking off that you hit your daily goal. The momentum is building, and you have a good roll with this new habit.
And then, one day, several weeks later, the day gets crazy, and you forget. Or you fall sick and can’t find the energy to meet you daily goal. You broke your streak.
Now what?
Are women more likely to be anxious than men? Research would show that women twice as likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder than men. So, does this mean the men experience less anxiety than women?
It could be, and yet it is more likely that our definition of anxiety is a gendered construct. That is, what we know as anxiety is more likely to fit a woman’s experience of anxiety than a man’s experience of anxiety. Our understanding of anxiety is too narrow.
Congratulations on taking this step!
We look forward to working with you!
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