Tag: health

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What is Wellbeing? How can it work for you?

Wellbeing In A Week Course

Why is Wellbeing so important?

Wellbeing online course
WELLBEING AND HEALTH

Simply because it affects your overall health and happiness.

As a teacher and therapist of many years I see first hand how important wellbeing is for people to thrive. See what the World Health Organisation has to say about it.

I have learned that everyone has a story and none of us move through the journey of life unscathed. Some people suffer anxiety from past or current events and other’s live with emotional scars. And whilst some live with physical traumas, everyone has to deal with loss at some time in life.

It’s Not   Happens To You, It’s How You Deal With It.

My short course Wellbeing In A Week helps combat anxiety and stress.

It offers simple exercises and is packed full of opportunities to program positive thinking and wellbeing into your mind and body.

There are 5 main components to Wellbeing

1.Connection

Loneliness is an epidemic and there are many reasons for it, technology not being the least. People who feel lonely often talk about feeling isolated too. Whilst this isolation is actual, in that they may have stopped going out and connecting to others,  it can also show up as a  physical numbness,  an inability to feel.  In therapy we discover that  this usually forms part of a much bigger picture of grief.  Grief can come from all kinds of scenarios such as a childhood where parents are absent because of  divorce, death or just  ‘unavailable’ because of long working hours. Grief and isolation can also stem from periods of bullying at school or in the workplace.  The lonely person can feel cold, numb and shut-down.

The remedy is to  connect, learn to trust again and reach out for connection. Finding just one  person to talk to or discovering a small group that you could join. You can develop connection by taking up a  hobby. 

2. Be Active

It’s so important to stay fit and healthy. The stress hormone cortisol goes up when you feel lonely and this can compromise your immune system and affect your heart adversely. Psychologically this could be because ‘affairs of the heart’ will have you thinking in negative cycles spiralling into anxious and depressed thinking.  Serotonin, Oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins all help us to feel happy and most are released when doing things we love and enjoy … so find the exercise you love and boost your wellbeing.  So many people talk about a sense of ‘coming home’ for example, when they discover the joys of yoga. 

3. Keep Learning

Keeping your mind active by discovering something new learning something different from your usual daily routine will boost your wellbeing.  It could be something technical or a musical instrument or online courses that teach you how to think differently such as Wellbeing In A Week.

Wellbeing In A Week, online course, the stresshacker

Remember there’s always help at The Stresshacker to deal with things that threaten to derail you or negatively impact your wellbeing.

Take at peak at the shop here for resources to:

4. Give To Others

Yes! believe it or not giving to others makes us feel great! Develop an attitude of gratitude to boost your happy hormones. Think back, when was the last time you helped someone out? The last time you made a random act of kindness? If you can’t think of anything try doing something by the end of today to help someone out. You will be helping yourself too.

5. Mindful

Being mindful means being present in the moment here and now.

Try this exercise,  stop right now and centre yourself by observing 3 things that you can see, 3 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel without moving too much and 3 things you can smell and taste. 

How was that? How long did it take.  It was easy wasn’t it! And do you know what’s even easier? Go to ‘freebies’ section in The Stresshacker shop and download your free audio guides for mindfulness. Let me know how you like them.

Interestingly sometimes the smallest change in your routine, your thinking or habits can have a massive positive impact on your health and wellbeing. Investing in self-care is probably one of the most important things you can do to maintain a good sense of self and wellbeing.

Enjoy!

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Seven Ways To Eat Smarter

Over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of clients exploring the underlying ‘drivers’ that are responsible for weight gain.

Excess weight can be complex because often there are deeper emotional factors at play. Being overweight  can weigh just as heavily on the mind, doing untold damage to a person’s self-esteem.

Personally I think people are great just the way they are (I really mean that, if I look at a field of poppies I don’t think one  poppy should look better, or different than another) but my work experience has shown me that people struggling with weight issues can be desperately unhappy, more because of the damage it does (or they do) to their self  confidence. As I once said to a client, you wouldn’t dream of saying some of the unkind spiteful things to someone else that you say to yourself on a daily basis.

One thing I’ve found in common with these clients is a certain mind set.

For example they will be highly disciplined for a period of time,  then (and perfectly naturally to my  mind) will  have  a day where they give in to a desire for something they consider to be (bad) such as chocolate or chips.

Then they take a big metaphoric stick and beat themselves up telling themselves they’ve ruined everything, the whole diet’s gone out of the window, they are weak,  useless, not worth it.

This is often followed by a beano where they eat a whole lot more of those types of food than they (or anyone else) would ever normally do, usually accompanied by large amounts of negative self talk!

It is essential to develop a healthy mind-set, to feel up-beat and positive about yourself in order to challenge any habit or addiction.

The first step toward this is to input something regularly that will help you to believe in yourself, a good confidence-building program such as Stress-Free with Confidence or Super Charge Your Confidence. This is a fundamental step in hypnotherapy training. If you are going to withdraw a psychological prop from someone, you MUST put something positive in that same space.

In my yoga teacher training I remember we explored a ‘square meal’ – a little of everything and balance. I still believe that balance is the key to healthy eating. I think it’s human nature that the minute we say  we can’t have this or that, we want it more than ever. This is why most people will ‘fall’ off of a diet plan.

I don’t believe in diets and would never go on one.

I do have a few rules around eating though and I want to share a few of my top tips for maintaining control. (For more of this kind of advice, you can sign up to my Mindful Weightloss ecourse now.

7 Ways to Eat Smarter Continue reading Seven Ways To Eat Smarter