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

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

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

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.

10 Mindful Habits for the Work Place

Here are 10 Mindful Habits that Will Make Your work-flow more productive

Recently mindfulness has become increasingly popular amongst various professions, executives and age groups. Mindfulness mediation has been proven to increase memory, awareness and reduce the impact that negative thinking can have on your mind and body.

Mindfulness doesn’t always consist of committing to some sort of Transcendental meditation group or signing up for a yearly membership at your local yoga studio. There are plenty of simple daily habits that you can engage in in order to make you more productive and happier at work.

Here are 10 Easy Practices from Shamash Alidina and Juliet Adams new book “Mindfulness at Work for Dummies

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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-mindfulness-at-work-2015-6?op=1#ixzz3buoFh2ou