It’s natural for employers to ask for favors or extra assistance while at work, but it can be hard to keep up with your job duties while handling all of this extra work. To maintain a healthy work-life balance, you’ll need to establish boundaries with your employer.
Chronic depression in adults isn’t something you think about much when you’re a kid, but it can affect the later stages of your life. Parents with depression tend to treat their kids differently than neurotypical parents do.
Many people will have advice for you as you start college. Here are some common advice that does not necessarily pay off.
If you suffer from chronic pain, you know just how easily this pain can seep into every area of your life.
However, it can be difficult for your friends and family who do not experience chronic pain to grasp the toll that chronic pain takes on your life.
Learning to focus on the positives takes practice and intentionality, it is possible to make this mindset shift.
Here are five tips to help you improve your happiness and learn to embrace a positive mindset:
Contrary to what dating app commercials and jewelry ads have to say, everyone isn’t searching for their one true love.
In fact, 72% of millennials make a conscious choice to be single.
While misconceptions around singlehood might make this decision seem odd, a growing number of millennials are embracing this choice and deciding to wait for longer periods of time before pursuing serious relationships.
Here are four reasons why millennials are waiting to get into a relationship.
many college students not only experience depression but actively want support for their negative emotions. Here are five facts about college students with depression that everyone should know.
Being single is not a bad thing. There are many reasons why a person may be single, and being single can also be more beneficial than many people might think.
Committing to change can be difficult. Often times people hold off on taking the first step due to it “not being the right time” in their lives. As a practicing Catholic, I look to Lent as a great time to make a positive life change. For many of us, whether religious, secular, or in between, there are many such meaningful annual milestones to look toward as a motivation for making positive change. In my case with Lent, I decided I would sacrifice alcohol and I would add a daily prayer practice. Perhaps a secular person might do the same with a birthday or a New Year’s Resolution.
All the same, annual milestones for positive change can be productive and healthy things to build from every year and can be chosen individually to best fit our individual motivations for positive and sustainable self-improvement.
As I begin this process in my case with Lent, my self-talk wavers between minimizing the difficulty of giving up a bottle of wine, as it’s not a significant immediate loss, and recognizing the social significance I’ll have to adjust to in the upcoming months possibly not partaking in alcoholic social occasions as much. It’s an opportunity to dedicate the saved money as such to charity and to explore a different way of connecting to the loved ones I share that wine with. My drinking companions are of course not obligated or expected to abstain from drinking, and I look forward to exploring what changes will be promoted in our relationship. I also thought about when I would have time to pray, I struggled to think about when I would get some quiet moments. Praying daily, something I have found to have a great positive benefit for me in the past, just as daily meditation or self-reflection might for a secular person, was not something that I had done in earnest since the diagnosis of leukemia in one of my children. Would my practice of prayer get put to the back-burner when life gets too busy? What would I even pray about? Having read that it’s at times best to have a prayer focus, I decided my focus would be on thankfulness and others who need support. I’d like the opportunity to give back and provide the dozens of prayer groups and countless individuals with the same type of support they gave me and my family during our trying time. The same could perhaps be said for self-reflection and meditation versions of this for a person that is secular. The psychological aspects of Lent are not to be overlooked, as each individual participating is embarking on a period of change. Many of us will quickly and completely quit drinking, smoking, or eating meat only to embarrassingly find ourselves lighting up that cigarette out of sheer habit the moment we wake up. Similar struggles to say a person, not of faith with New Year’s Resolutions. Let’s not forget the emotional longing – not eating meat on Ash Wednesday has reminded me how much I like bacon! Simple strategies will help to reinforce good intentions.
Ultimately, Lent provides an opportunity to practice change as do many other secular annual milestones. Forty days of consistency from Lent can provide the boost needed to make greater strides in self-improvement, from our spiritual and secular positivity and fitness to our awareness of our social interactions and dynamics. You also do not need to be devotedly religious or religious at all to practice this change either. [/av_textblock] [/av_one_full]
As a therapist and a person, I hear time and time again “I just want to be happy” or “I’m not sure why I am not happy.” Upon further discussion it almost always leads to the other person comparing themselves to others around them. Whether it is a single person comparing themselves to all of their paired-up friends or a person in a dead-end job comparing themselves to people they know that are successful. Comparisons.
I’m not sure when humans as a species first learned to compare themselves to others around them but I bet it is similar to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” After all, how did we determine who the fittest was or how could we be fitter than the fittest if we first did not compare ourselves to our fellow humans?
This logic might have worked for us back when we had to run from wild animals, but like many evolutionary traits (like the fight or flight response!) they don’t have nearly as much use as they did way back when.
Now, in the modern world, we use that “comparison trait” to compare ourselves to others who already excel in one area where we are weak. Like my earlier examples of single vs. in-a-relationship or in a dead-end job vs. successful. This is not a very fair comparison at all since the other people already have something that you desire. Sometimes this type of comparing can lead to people working harder to surpass others, but more often it leads to unhappiness.
So how does this all relate to happiness?
I’m not sure we can do away with the “comparison trait” all together, but we can turn the focus more inward than outward.
Instead of comparing yourself to what others choose to show you, you can compare your current self to your former self.
Make your own happiness dependent on whether you are growing as a person and completing goals you set out for yourself. Every person is unique and has unique ways they grow. This cannot be fairly compared to the growth or success of someone else. It can be as big as taking a chance and asking someone out that you’ve had a crush on or as small as cleaning your house. Both examples create a sense of personal accomplishment that involves no comparisons.
Three Ways in which to do this:
There you have it–whether or not you choose to focus on internal or external happiness is on you.
