Help Your Child Develop a Positive Attitude: Here’s How

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Jerry Daskoski's image of a little girl looking surprisedPositive thinking as a medical practice has grown in popularity in recent years. Research shows that optimism goes far beyond the idea of a glass being half full or empty, and can, in fact, be the difference in managing stress and the ailments which comes as a result, like heart disease, digestive issues, headaches, and insomnia. While adults understand this concept well, extending it to children is not as common; nevertheless, it certainly makes sense to lay a foundation for these practices and develop positive mindsets in children as early as possible, rather than undoing the harm later in life.

While some may believe that children can’t understand positive thinking as a concept, research shows that children as young as five begin to make associations of behaviors and emotion and, through cognition, can decipher how certain situations make them or others feel, whether positive, negative or indifferent. Furthermore, as children grow, they become better with those associations. Those in whom positive thinking is nurtured are said to be more resilient and better able to deal with upsets.

The importance of such cannot be overstated. Being able to manage stress will ultimately lead to more successful opportunities, relationships and better overall health, over time. Here are some ways parents and professionals who work with children can introduce positive thinking:

Be An Example
Children mimic nearly everything adults do. Their behaviors are learned as a result of what we say or how we act in front of them, whether we’re aware of it or not. Thus, this is one of the first and perhaps most important tool through which one can affect his or her child’s positive mindset. Having already established, or at least committing to, a set personal positive practices makes this step easy.

Count  Blessings
It’s important to have conversations with your child about what he or she is feeling or their experiences throughout the day. First, listen attentively to what the child has to say in full. While doing so, take note of every emotion. Acknowledge all of the bad feelings or experiences, they are important; however, probe the child about what good happened to them today, no matter how small. If there are no good things, suggest some which the child may have overlooked. Doing so may help the child recall them going forward, leading to more positivity overtime.

Affirmations
There is no doubt that parents love their children and have appreciation for small behaviors or characteristics which their children display. Affirming the child with what makes them great or when they accomplish a task goes a long way. This step is as simple as expressing to the child that he or she is smart, handsome, kind, or a number of other positive affirmations. It helps.

Prohibit Complaining
There’s a huge difference between expressing discontent and complaining. Discourage your child from complaining about behavior; instead, empower them to develop solutions to what is bothering them. Doing so teaches children that even when negatives things occur, countering them with positive actions puts them in control, helping them gain more independence and control of their own lives.

Positive Thinking & Exercise Alleviated Symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Study Shows

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Jerry Daskoski shares a picture of a fatigued womanYou may or may not have heard of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but you should have. The illness affects more than one million people and is more common than lupus, multiple sclerosis and some cancers, in the United States. It is not age discriminatory (though more likely to occur in adults than children) nor prevalent in some races more than others, as diseases like diabetes or skin cancer, which unequally affect African-Americans and Caucasians, respectively. So, it something on which everyone should be educated.

Among the known symptoms of the disease are fatigue–as suggested by the name–joint pain, stomach pain, sore throat, insomnia as well as poor memory and concentration. Because of the range of issues, the disease was once dismissed as just a flu, despite being diagnosed as early as the 19th century. Still, not much is known about the disease, particularly there is no one-time cure nor vaccination. However, a recent study published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal has produced promising news for those affected.

The 2-year study included 481 participants and four treatments, by which doctors determined how patients responded and overall effectiveness. What the findings revealed is that neither standard medical treatment nor adaptive therapy, which seeks to help patients adapt to their condition, showed significant improvements in the symptoms experienced by patients. However positive thinking (believing that symptoms could get better, rather than merely accepting them or thinking negatively about them) coupled with exercise proved most beneficial.

One of the study’s researchers, Professor Sharpe had this to say about the findings: “It’s wrong to say people don’t want to get better, but they get locked into a pattern and their life constricts around what they can do. If you live within your limits that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.” The research expresses clearly that the issue is physical rather than one of mental health, however, changing the course of thoughts from doom to possibility was, in fact helpful, and even allowed participants to perform exercise, which was previously thought by many of them to exacerbate the issue rather than help.

I’m certainly glad that more people are seeing the benefits of positive thinking, not just as form of meditation, but as a serious step toward holistic health and wellness, even for chronic illness. Perhaps, not as the only form of medication, but certainly as an aid, as shown with this study. The motivation to adhere to treatment or the move toward progress indeed starts with even believing that such could work. Even when not directly correlated as in this example, mental health should be as much a goal as that of the physical. Positive thinking is good for living, positively.

Six Calming Habits To Build For A Happier and Healthier Day

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No StressToday’s busy lifestyle has many benefits. There is an argument to be made that, as a society, we are more active, interconnected, productive, vocal, and involved than ever before. However, all this activity does carry a cost. High stress, caused by the unceasing anxiety over professional and personal duties, has become a deeply rooted part of our daily life. It is certainly a challenge to find enough opportunity to enjoy peace, serenity, and calm.

When something happens outside of your control, it is always critical to evaluate and engage with what is (and is not) inside your ability to impact. You cannot decide how other peoples or other external forces will behave. All you can do is control your response. That is what matters. Happily, there are a few best practices that anyone can adopt to create substantial feelings of calm for longer stretches of time.

Start Your Day On The Right Foot

A calming morning ritual is absolutely crucial to begin your day on a positive note. Most individuals have the bad habit of waking up and immediately diving into a stressful and over-extended rush. A few simple tweaks to your schedule can alter that for the better, permanently. Wake up a little bit earlier than you absolutely need to and take some time to meditate. You can even hit a few yoga poses to clear your mind and stretch. Afterwards, use the remaining extra time to write out anything that may already be on your mind. This can be something as routine as a dream journal or perhaps something with more immediately tangible utility like your hopes for the day or a to-do list to help you reach those goals. However you choose to spend this time when you wake up, just be sure that you are allowing yourself sufficient quiet time in the morning to adopt a positive mindset and begin your day feeling good.

Think First, React Later

Take a moment to consider the last time an unexpected stressor arose in your life. How did you respond? Certain personalities are more inclined to jump into action. This sort of reflex, although direct, can also be harmful. Some people freeze up and get angry or experience sensations of being overwhelmed. Other folks may sink into a depressed state of self-pity and waste energy wishing things were different (but fail to take action to make those desires a reality). Learning how to monitor your own preferences in terms of response is the first step in altering your behavior to be more positive. You need to fully understand how you act when confronted with stress so you can put an action plan to improve your outcomes into place.

Accept That It Is Not Personal

It is not uncommon for the responses you demonstrate when presented with stress to be rooted in an emotional overinvestment in the situation at hand. When something we do not like happens, it can be easy to assume that someone or something has conspired against us specifically. In part, it can be somewhat reassuring to assume we play a more central role or have some sort of control or input in the situations which end up affecting us. In truth, that often is not at all the case. The universe is not against you personally. Every person has problems with which they are dealing. It helps to recognize they everyone is more likely than not just doing the best they can. Do not assume any event is a personal affront – instead, recognize that external events just happen and whether you choose to respond by getting stressed or staying calm is entirely within your control.

Give Thanks

It is incredibly easy to pay lip-service to saying thank you or expressing genuine gratitude in any other way. However, how often do you honestly live up to this ideal in your day-to-day life? When life gets hectic, and it feels like the sky is crashing down all around us, can you still find it in yourself to be grateful for all the things that are going excellently in your life? It is certainly much easier to just complain or fall into an otherwise predominantly negative mindset. However, choosing to hold steadfastly to the positive things going on in your life and articulating your genuine appreciation for them is an amazing habit – even if you just express it to yourself. As you engage with everything that is going well, you will almost literally feel the stress of other events roll off you as your perspective refocuses and it becomes clear once again that you can comfortably handle whatever it is that life is throwing your way.

Find The Right Outlet

Unfortunately, many people have unproductive (at best) or outright destructive (at worst) responses to feelings of stress. Withdrawing from life, falling into junk food, substance abuse, or similarly irresponsible reactions to stress often only make your situation worse and more difficult to resolve. When you notice the need to cope with stress, work hard to replace bad habits in terms of how your respond with better ones. Health coping methods can include something simple like taking 15 minutes to brew a cup of soothing tea and sit somewhere quiet while you enjoy it. You can also try drinking water, exercise, or talking with someone you trust as better ways to deal with stress as it comes up.

Ditch Multitasking

People multitask these days more than they ever have before. With the permeation of technology throughout what feels like every conceivable facet of our entire lives, it can seem odd to choose to single task. However, if you could do just one thing at a time, what would it be at this moment? That question is a great way to identify your priorities and get what you need done accomplished in a less stressful manner. When you are juggling too many different metaphorical balls, you are sure to spend your day at a high stress level just waiting to drop one. Instead, hit your tasks one a time and pat yourself on the back for each thing you do ell and finish. You will find that working in this way allows you to let go of the stress associated with everything else on your plate and just make progress one step at a time.

3 Secrets to Successful Snoozing: Improve your Sleep for a Better Day

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Family SleepingEach day brings about a new adventure. Whether your waking hours involve thriving at school, succeeding at work, keeping the household running smoothly, or some combination of all that and more, one thing is certain – to do your best, you need to feel your best. To accomplish that end, you will need to be rested. This is a simple truth that all of us can attest to anecdotally. Everyone is well aware of how much longer a day can feel when you start it feeling groggy and unprepared on the wrong foot. However, what many people completely undervalue, is how severe the consequences can still be when your lack of sleep persists in a less dramatic fashion.

If you stay up all night, the negative impacts are obvious. However, cheating yourself out of an hour or two of sleep each day until it becomes a habit yields equally destructive results. In contrast, prioritizing your sleep and well-being can be nothing short of transformative in your ability to be productive, sharp, emotionally balanced, and full of energy. Here are three tips to help you maintain the highest possible level of cognitive function and achieve your best self by knowing when it is time to making snoozing your number one mission.

Consistency is Key

Identifying and committing to your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle (called your circadian rhythm) is a crucial strategy in achieving deeply restorative sleep. Going to sleep and getting up at the same time every day will help you feel refreshed, significantly more so than if you were to hit the same raw numbers of hours asleep but at dramatically different times. Shifting by as little as one or two hours is enough to throw your body off. So, it is essential to establish good habits and defend them against all the curveballs of life. Set a regular bedtime and do your very best to not break this routine. That includes on weekends, when it may be more tempting to stay up late. By the same logic, also wake up at the same time. You will know you are getting enough sleep because you biological alarm clock will soon set itself. If you find you are unable to get up without the alarm, you likely need to turn in a little early the night before. If you do end up needing a nap, it is better to take one during the afternoon, rather than sleeping in late and thus disrupting your circadian rhythm.

Build the Right Habits

Your body naturally regulates your sleep-wake cycle through the production of a hormone called melatonin, which is controlled by light exposure. Your brain produces more melatonin in the evening, when it is dark, and thus makes you sleep. Alternatively, you produce less during the daytime when the sun is out and you need to alert. The vast advances in modern technology, however, have made it increasingly easy to disrupt melatonin production and thus your circadin rhythm. For example, spending all day away from natural light because you are working in a dark office can alter your wakefulness. On the other hand, exposure to the bright lights of TV, phone, computer, and tablet screens that extends late into the night can suppress melatonin production and keep you wide awake.

To counter these challenges, increase your exposure to natural light during the day. Try to spend more time outside when possible and let as much natural light as possible into your home and workplace. In the evening, turn off all your technology well before bedtime. Many people enjoy relaxing with a TV show or social media session before bed, but this is a mistake because they can be overly stimulating. Instead, listen to music or an audio book. Before sure your room is sufficiently dark and, if you do have to wake up, use a flashlight instead of turning on all your home’s lights to keep your light exposure in the late evening to a minimum.

Treat Your Body Right

Much like how you sleep during the night can affect what you are able to do throughout the day, how you spend your waking hours very much impact how well you sleep. It is especially critical to be aware of what you put into your body leading up to bedtime. Avoid large meals at night and avoid heavy, rich foods within two hours of when you get into bed. Fatty foods require a substantial amount of energy to digest and can therefore keep your body working hard, which will make it harder for you to get to sleep. Similarly, imbibing alcohol before bed might make you fall asleep better but it reduces the quality of that sleep since your body is up and busy processing it. Cut out caffeine as much as possible, especially after noon, given that it can have a measurable chemical impact as much as ten to twelve hours after you consume it. Drinking too many liquids at all before bed is also a sure way to have you waking up throughout the night to relieve yourself, so avoid too much drinking of any kind before bedtime as well.

Your Sleep is Worth It

It can seem counterintuitive that going to bed, which you have likely done just about every single day of your life, stands to benefit so significantly with just a little conscious effort on your part. However, the positive impact of building excellent sleep habits cannot be understated. Put your mental and physical health first by making great sleep a priority.

Six Ways to Say Goodbye to Stress

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Image of Jerry Daskoski Reduce StressJust by virtue of being alive, you will find yourself confronted with stress. It is inevitable. A defining aspect of the human experience is to care, but for every instance in which you emotionally invest, there is the chance, however small it may be, that something might go awry. As ubiquitous as that situation maybe, it is a rare individual who truly and completely handles the stresses of life with total ease. Learning to manage the hurdles that come your way are is an essential component of a happy adult’s skillset. Fortunately, there are several ways in which you can push yourself to better engage with stress when you are confronted with it. Although some of these tips may be more easily adopted by you than others, all offer insight into how you can live a happier, less stressful life.

Identify the Source

The first step to solving any problem is to recognize there is one. The second should be to find its root. Much like a gardner’s approach to weeds run amok in a yard, if you only focus on attacking the visible symptoms of your stress without addressing the underlying cause or causes, little sustainable progress can occur. It may well feel like the stress is coming from every possible direction, which can be overwhelming. You might even find yourself ascribing to the old aphorism, “when it rains, it pours.” However, an honest investigation of the situation at hand is likely to reveal that the real aggravation boils down to at most one or two truly pressing issues that is metaphorically poisoning the other facets of your day-to-day duties. Take time to really get to the bottom of this. Pinpointing the causal stressor is a critical step in organizing your thoughts and taking real action to resolve the problem.

Make Peace with Your Locus of Control

One of the most humbling experience of getting older is realizing that although you have remarkable agency in this world, there is only so much of it that can actually bend to your will. Regardless of your intentions or efforts, there will always be much that is beyond what you can impact or influence. Depending on your situation, this limitation will vary, but identifying and making peace with it is crucial. It is upsetting and unproductive to spend your time stressed about what is not in your power to change.

What is always in your power to change, you may wonder? The way you react to challenges is.  Instead of wasting your mental capacity by focusing on what is outside your ability to improve or solve, dedicate those efforts to stressors you can control. Do not hold yourself to impossible standards by demanding you do everything to fix a situation, or your stress will flourish unabated. Instead, hold yourself accountable to doing everything in your power. That small but incredibly important distinction can move you forwards to a healthier state of mind, and allow you to feel empowered and invigorated.

Make Time Your Friend

One of the most common sources of stress in people’s life is a lack of time. It often seems that as to-do lists grow, time just slips away. Take a moment to step back from the apparently insurmountable projects that are stressing you out and reconsider your perspective. Everyone in the world is working within the same 168 hour time frame. Logistically speaking, the fact is that many of people are able to accomplish at least as much as you need to do, all while getting enough sleep and living satisfying lives. Review your schedule and critically analyze where you are losing so much time. It may be as simple as learning more about how long tasks take you to complete, or being generally more cognizant of how you use your time between tasks. It is not uncommon for people to find they waste much more time on their phones or distracted online than they expect. Make it a priority to time yourself, so you can be armed with the information you need to manage your time better. Once you have a good idea of how spend your day, you can plan for how you should spend your day, and then execute that plan.

Trim the Fat

In learning more about how you spend your day, you will also likely notice you not only spend longer than you need to on certain tasks, but there are things you do that are completely unnecessary for you to have a happy and/or productive day. Simply put, you may be spreading yourself far too thin, which does not ultimately serve anyone’s greatest benefit if it is causing you stress. Weigh all of your daily activities and seriously evaluate if they not only cater to your goals and values, but also give you meaning or make you happy. For individuals predisposed to being busybodies or over-achievers, it can be difficult to accept that you cannot do everything. However, selecting a smaller number of activities and having the time to not only excel at them, but enjoy them, is a much more rewarding way to approach your life.

Know the word “No”

As an intensely social species, human beings love to collaborate and communicate. It is just part of our biology. We generally derive great joy from being able to work together, which is how we can accomplish feats much greater than we ever could alone. A real sense of pride comes from working well in a team. However, this means that it can be very difficult sometimes to say, “no.” For a people-pleaser or otherwise committed team player, the idea of refusing a request can feel akin to abandoning the other party or letting them down. However, taking on more than you can handle never serves you in the long-term. As a result, it diminishes your ability to positively contribute to a larger, combined effort beyond the issue immediately at hand. So, while you may be able to bend over backwards today, the increasing amount of stress is likely to handicap your ability to serve the greater good tomorrow. It may be an initially uncomfortable skill to develop initially, but learning to protect your boundaries and be defensive of your time is highly beneficial to decreasing avoidable stress and increasing your overall happiness.

Care, Don’t Worry

One of the best ways to fight stress is to just be aware of it. Similar to appreciating what you can and cannot impact, the way in which you frame the stressor in your brain can make a huge difference. It is great to care about the things with which you fill your day. However, worrying is nowhere near as productive. Worrying is when you try your hardest to control or impact the future just by thinking about it. This is, of course, impossible. Caring is defined by taking whatever action we can to support the best interests of a person or thing. Worrying is useless and will not result in change. So, make the decision to care and take action.

Treating Anxiety

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Anxiety–what is it?Jerry Daskoski

It’s a feeling of worry, of nervousness or unease, most likely in regards to an imminent event, or something out of your own control. Often associated with panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, unrelenting worries, and incapacitating phobias, approximately 40 million Americans aged 18 and older suffer from anxiety disorders.

Myriad therapies cater to the needs of those experiencing anxiety, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, giving those who suffer the tools to manage anxiety and stress levels, worrisome thoughts, and debilitating fears.

Therapy vs. Medication

Anxiety medication, though widely prescribed, isn’t nearly as effective as anxiety-targeted therapy. This is because therapy, unlike medication, addresses more than just the current symptoms presenting themselves. With therapy, you’re able to uncover underlying causes of your anxieties and fears and find the best tools to manage them in real-world situations.

Because anxiety disorders differentiate vastly, from a driver’s phobia of bridges to a war veteran experiencing PTSD, therapy can be tailored specifically to fit your symptoms as well as your individual needs. The most popular courses of treatment are cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, and are relatively short-term, with people showing significant improvement after 8 to 10 sessions, according to the American Psychological Association.

 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

The most widely-used course of treatment for anxiety disorders, it has proven effective in helping those suffering from panic disorder, phobias, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, among others.

Addressing negative patterns and distortions in the way we view ourselves and the world around us, CBT involves two main components: cognitive therapy and behavior therapy. The first examines the relationship between negative thoughts and anxiety, while the latter examines how behaviors and reactions to situations trigger anxiety.

Exercises associated with CBT often involve: learning to recognize your own anxiety and what it feels like both emotionally and physically, adopting coping skills and relaxation techniques to cope with and overcome feelings of anxiety and panic, and confronting real and/or imaginary fears.

Exposure therapy

Experiencing feelings of anxiety is no walk in the park. In fact, for some, it’s completely debilitating. It’s only natural that those who experience it try to avoid triggers as much as humanly possible.

The problem there is that people tend to miss out on a lot, and by avoiding these triggers of anxiety and fear, they remain unconfronted, thus holding power over you and your everyday life.

Exposure therapy does exactly what the name suggests: exposes you to the cause of your fear, whether it be an object or situation. The rationale behind the treatment is that through repeated exposure, participants will gain back control and the power their anxiety and fear once held. Exposure therapy can be conducted on its own, or in collaboration with cognitive behavioral therapy.

These confrontations can happen either hypothetically, in therapy, or out in the real world. Typically, these confrontations start on a small scale step-by-step approach called systematic desensitization, which allows you to gradually challenge fears while building confidence and mastering coping strategies.

Other therapies

While discovering underlying factors and coping mechanisms in anxiety therapy, there are complimentary therapies to help manage overall stress levels you can practice in order to help achieve emotional balance:

Exercise naturally releases hormones that combat stress and anxiety, and research has shown that as little as 30 minutes of exercise three to five times per week has a significant impact on improving anxiety levels.

Practicing relaxation techniques (like mindfulness meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, controlled breathing and visualization) on a regular basis is shown to reduce anxiety and increase levels of relaxation and emotional well-being. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also completely free.

Using sensors that measure specific physiological functions, otherwise known as biofeedback, helps you become more in-tune with how stress and anxiety affects your body, how to recognize it, and control it. Heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension are just some of the physical indicators.

Make it work for you

Anxiety and stress doesn’t go away in a day, it requires time and commitment. Practicing exposure therapy and uncovering underlying causes of your anxiety might make you feel worse before you feel better, but it’s key to stick to your treatment and work together with your therapist. Remember, therapy is giving you tools to manage your anxiety and fears on a long-term scale; it’s not meant to be a quick fix.

You can support your own therapy by making positive, healthy lifestyle choices daily. This includes learning about anxiety and your anxiety in particular, maintaining positive connections with people (family, friends, your therapist, support-groups, etc.), as well as eating healthy and exercising regularly.