October's Notable Words

I really enjoy sharing quotes, sayings, and pictures that have inspired me throughout the past week or month. Here are some of my most inspired finds from October. I hope you enjoy!

"Kindness is contagious": Robin Roberts inspired by George Saunders on GMA speaking on his experience with kindess

      George Saunders

Martin Luther King

A Lighter Yet True Word!

 Until Next Time ~ Be Well

Following the words from my own post on September 30^th, I decided to make my own personal commitment. I challenged myself to practice yoga for 30 consecutive days. I’m pleased to follow up letting you know I practiced 27 of the 30 days. (I’m even more pleased to let you know I successfully practiced daily while on vacation.) Initially I was apprehensive doing this challenge on my own verses with a studio or with a class, yet I found my own system which worked out great for me. All of my practices were done solo, outside of a studio and at no cost!  I was even fortunate enough to take my practice to the beach for a day and into the sunrise on another.

Yoga isn’t new to me and luckily I’ve experienced a number of yoga styles and different studios, so during my first few days I was able to draw from these experiences; I gathered my yoga resources and created my own practice. I utilized information from previous classes, The Women’sHealth Big Book of Yoga, Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown, Pocket Yoga App, Yoga Studio App, and even a few On Demand Classes. My best practices came from following my own system and at times forgoing a previously planned routine. Most days I just listening to my body and went where my breath and my flow took me. 

     

I’m a firm believer that ALL things can provide us with a lesson if we look! So what did my practice teach me??? Well, aside from the well known benefits such as increased flexibility and strength, and improved focus, I learned a lot of other unexpected things! Here are the top lessons my challenge taught me:

    I’m a much more productive morning person than evening person. If I didn’t practice first thing in the morning, it was hard for me to “find time” and easy to “find excuses” My most successful practices came within an hour of waking up

    I can be flexible: Even though I prefer morning practice, I stumbled upon a great PM yoga routine that helped me relax and unwind before going to sleep

    Seemingly small successes are indeed a success and should be celebrated as one. Half moon has always been a challenging balance pose for me, however day after day, I found myself smiling as I found myself opening up the slightest bit further than the previous day

    Commitment and Accountability: I’m stubborn so a personal challenge is a great way to hold myself accountable and follow my commitment. When I set my mind to something, you better believe I’m all in

    Increased metabolism: I’ve never been so hungry by 10am

    Tomorrow is always a new day: So I missed 3 days, did I fail at my challenge?  Not at all! In fact I succeeded because after each of my missed 3 days, I didn’t dwell on it, I woke up the next day and picked up right where I left off on the path of my goal!

So what’s the take home: Challenge yourself even if it initially seems lofty! Remember “Only those who risk going to far can find out how far they can go”!

Until Next Time ~ Be Well

A Protein Morning

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the importance of a high protein breakfast helping to get our day started off on the right foot.  Looks like our mothers, grandmothers, teachers, even the bus driver was right, Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!  Taking it one step further, having a healthy breakfast is actually one of the most important things you can do for your body. Proceed with caution though, not all calories are created equal! There is little benefit in turning to the muffins and donuts. (Remember muffins were created to convince us its okay to eat cake for breakfast). I’ve always liked the 6 meal rule, of course each day is a bit different, but its a great goal for yourself to try to eat every couple of hours to keep your metabolism going while warding off cravings. When you wake up in the morning, it’s likely you’ve gone anywhere between 8 and 12 hours without eating. Even though we’re sleeping, our metabolism slows during this time and begins going into starvation mode. In essence our body goes into a hibernation, it becomes fearful not knowing when the next calories are coming. To survive, our body stores what it can instead of using and burning the calories off.  

Proven benefits of a healthy breakfast

• Improved memory
• Improved concentration
• Weigh less
• All around healthier

Without going further into our  biological makeup, this is where protein come in to help us. Protein is a building block of cells in your body, it’s imperative to healthy skin, nails, and muscle tissue. Simply protein energizes your body for the day ahead and helps you feel full longer leading to less unhealthy snacking throughout the day. This snacking is almost always a result of craving fatty and sugar foods needed to energize us. Protein however actually reduces brain activity responsible for food cravings.

In 2011, a reported 31 million people skipped breakfast on a routine basis, the primary reasons being “I’m not a morning eater or I’m not hungry”. I admit this has been a lifelong struggle of mine, It’s difficult for me to eat right when I wake up, if I solely listen to my body, the warning signs tell me hungry around 10:00am. However a couple of years ago when I made it a point to change this behavior, I noticed myself getting hungry earlier and earlier. My body started craving breakfast earlier and earlier. Our excuse may be more a result of long standing habits.   

Still not a morning eater? Start small! Have a piece of fruit, an egg, or a handful of nuts. If that seems too much grab a protein shake on your way out the door in the morning or try substituting a protein smoothie instead of coffee.

Until Next Time~ Be Well

Having A Better Wake Up

Your Wake Up Can Dictate Your Day!

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed… We’ve all been there, maybe too often. We all know that feeling that as soon as our feet hit the floor things start going wrong, our morning slowly begins getting out of hand and before long our day has spiraled into chaos. Luckily it’s not always that bad, sometimes we’re able to get a handle on our morning and our mood. Sometimes we’re able to bring ourselves around and still have a productive and successful day. So what’s the difference? Why do we rebound after some mornings while allowing others to spiral downward? In a word, Resiliency (the ability to recover from difficulties and challenges).  We build resiliency when we develop our skills to not sweat the small stuff, to not allow a frustration negatively impact our mood. Remember that our attitude towards/about something dictates our mood, which influences the day we will have.

Resiliency is an essential quality but don’t undervalue pro-activeness. Being proactive can preempt many things that wreck havoc on our mornings, many of the things that we attribute to “getting up on the wrong side of bed”. A few minutes of planning can benefit you well beyond the morning. Adopt some of these suggestions to develop your own barrier to a chaotic morning

Before Going to Bed

• Put gas in your car on your way home (gas stations are notoriously crowded during the morning rush hour, this extra time can lead you to feeling rushed)
• Spend a few minutes planning out your day on paper. 
• Click HERE to read post on making and using To-Do List
• Make tomorrow's lunch 
• Plan tomorrow’s dinner
• Get your clothes ready for tomorrow (this is especially helpful for the indecisive)
• Set your alarm clock across the room (forces your feet to hit the floor – walking will stimulate your brain, helping to wake you up)
• PLEASE DO NOT WAKE UP TO THAT AWFUL ALARM BEEPING NOISE! PLEASE WAKE UP TO SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU WANT TO SCREAM AND THROW YOUR ALARM THROUGH A WINDOW!
• Put all other electronics in another room
• A buzzing phone or tablet alerting you to email interrupts deep and refreshing sleep
• Rolling over to read the headlines or emails on your phone before getting out of bed causes two main problems:
• Wastes time getting up/going in the morning – possibly causing you to rush later
• Causes difficulty falling asleep the next night – you are training your brain to be stimulated while laying in bed instead of sleeping

After Waking Up

• Establish and follow a morning routine
• This is a great time to exercise: awakens you while also kicking your metabolism into gear
• Build in extra time: Allow time for the unexpected things that WILL come up
• Wake up 15 minutes earlier than you think you will need
• Don’t hit Snooze
• Eat a high protein breakfast
• Drink water! 
• There isn’t anything wrong with having a cup of coffee to help wake up but don’t forget that we become dehydrated throughout the night while we’re sleeping. Try drinking 2 glasses of water before having your coffee. (AM exercise will also mitigate your need for morning coffee),
• Don’t sweat the small stuff that WILL go wrong (especially on your commute). You can only do what you can do. Learn to laugh at yourself and situations that arise around you. Laughter is the best therapy.

My Alarm Wake Up Song


Until Next Time ~ Be Well

The Fallacy of Multitasking

Are you a multitasker? How many things are you actively involved in as you’re reading this? How many Internet screens are opened in your browser? Are you watching TV, listening to a webinar, doing laundry, catching up on emails, cooking dinner, preparing for a meeting, researching a new project, watching your kids, or reading other sites? Are your thoughts elsewhere? We all do this on some level. We seem to have a million things going on at any given time.

Test: If you receive an email alert right now, will you open it before finishing this article? (Truth: I just received an email banner alerting me to new mail and I’m having a hard time not switching over to my inbox.) 

Multitasking is simply performing two or more tasks simultaneously, or switching back and forth from one task to another. It seems unheard of these days to do anything one at a time, in fact many of us believe multitasking is a basic requirement for staying afloat in this day and age. Without multitasking, how on earth would we get everything done we have on our to do list? Many of us will adamantly argue that it is because of our multitasking skills that we’re able to get done the amount of things we do in the time we have. Unfortunately for our belief system and our daily routines, research is showing us something entirely different. In fact it’s been shown that when we multitask we are more distracted, make a higher amount of mistakes, and have an overall decline in performance. You may be thinking “No worries Wels, I multitask all the time, I’ve taught my brain how to function in this manner.” You may even think you excel at multitasking, unfortunately again, chances are high are that you are merely overestimating your effectiveness and productivity.

Some recent findings have shown then following:

1. Laptop multitasking hinders classroom performance
2. Students lost 27.1% performance efficiency when multitasking
3. Too much multitasking alters the way our brains process information 
4. Multitasking can reduce productivity by upwards of 40%

Simon Horup Eskildsen sums of Multitasking this way:

"Multitasking is attempting to handle more than one task simultaneously. The human mind is not directly capable of this, thus it emulates multitasking by rapidly alternating between the tasks. This makes for a higher rate of errors due to lack of attention, and since context switching from one task to another is expensive, the sum of time spent on the tasks is larger than if the tasks were done sequentially. "

Read full article here

So is all multitasking always a bad idea? Absolutely not! 

Distraction can be beneficial, especially during an unpleasant task. For example folding laundry while watching TV is multitasking and because of the TV, it probably takes longer to complete, but because safety or quality probably isn’t a factor, no harm no foul in this case. However add another task in the mix and things can change, the distraction can turn into a safety concern. Distraction can become a concern when the split second it takes to shift cognitive processing is related to safety. Texting and driving is a perfect example. Distracted Driving breaks down cell use (while driving) into three types of distraction: 

1. Manual when we remove hands from the wheel
2. Visual when we shift our eyes off the road
3. Cognitive when we take our mind off driving. 

Many experienced drivers fall into the trap of thinking that driving becomes mindless with experience; this fallacy can lead to an increase in multitasking while behind the wheel. It’s alarming that 77% of surveyed youth are confident they can safely text and drive. In 2011 at least 23% of traffic accidents were the result of using a cell phone, equaling 1.3 million crashes! Please put your phones down!

Please watch this Distracted Mom's Confession! It's definitely worth the few minutes!

So what can you do? My favorite piece of advise is to remember this:  Do what you can with what you have. Yes there are absolutely things that make sense to multitask. I honesty don't think it's practical to do all things one at a time however, there are many times we simply try to do too much without enjoying or even paying attention to what is in front of us. So don't be tempted by all the multitasking Apps for your smartphone/tablet/laptop! Try to slow down and enjoy what you are experiencing. Stay in the moment and you might just find yourself with more time on your hands after all. 

Take the words from Views sign-off: 

"Take A Little Time and Enjoy the View"

Until next Time ~ Be Well

I may have resisted looking at my email, but I'm not always a single-tasker, I have been known to listen to audio books while doing yoga and Face Time while cooking dinner. The top image captures some of my own behaviors pretty accurately.