#39 May 5th, 2022

Thought of the newsletter: Is there someone on your team that you can try to build up or encourage today? Maybe a coworker that you have not spoken with in a while. Sometimes quick moments of connection with someone else can be the best part of our day, especially if it is unplanned or spontaneous. This has definitely become even more important during remote work since we do not physically run into our coworkers as much. Maybe someone is fighting a hidden personal battle you know nothing about, but you showing that you were thinking about them and care about them could totally make their day. What we can do for others is so often more important than whatever we are producing in our work.

How Mindful Are Your Relationships?

When was the last time you intentionally paused to take stock of the various relationships in your life? Often we may maintain the same relationships in our lives even if they no longer serve us. We default to keeping the same people around since is what we are used to. We choose certainty, even if the relationship may not be healthy. But change is inevitable, and life has tons of different phases and seasons. The people that were around for some parts of your life don’t necessarily?need to be around for all of them, especially if the people drain your energy or take away from your growth. Maybe there are one-sided relationships where if you stop reaching out you would never hear from them again. Everything doesn’t have to be 50-50 but it shouldn’t be 100-0. If you’re having to do all of the work what does that say about the relationship? It can be painful to let go of people that have been a part of our lives for years or even decades, but sometimes you need to put yourself first. If people are always bringing you down and sapping your energy it may not be worth the effort you’re putting into keeping them around. It can be very telling to see who fades from your life if you start lessening your part in maintaining the relationship. It reveals when things were one-sided.?

https://marriagekidsandmoney.com/why-increasing-your-income-wont-solve-your-financial-problems/

If your income is consistently increasing but your expense are too then you’re not really making much progress. If that is what happening your net worth is staying close to zero. The author of this article describes how lifestyle creep and poor spending habits plus being in a lot of debt kept him financially strained even when his salary had doubled from what it started at. It does a good job explaining the importance of looking at a variety of financial metrics, not just your salary. You must get the full picture of what is going out and coming in.

Realistic Rates Of Fat Loss | FITNITIATIVE

Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to losing fat and improving your health. You want consistent change that you can maintain. Typically it takes years for people to get to a bad enough place where they need to make significant changes, yet we may think we can get back to our ideal health in a matter of weeks. It doesn’t work that way. It will probably take you almost as much time to lose the weight as it took you to gain weight. That is why it is important to have realistic expectations. That makes you less likely to give up and quit from not seeing progress as fast as you want. It also increases the chance that you will develop affective happens that you can sustain even after you’ve reached your weight goal. That is just as important, being the type of person who will stay healthy so you don’t have to go through the weight loss transformation again. You also must consider that your body will actively try maintain balance and homeostasis so as you lose weight it may become more difficult to keep the loss going as your body adapts. Anticipating that difficultly can help you breakthrough it as it comes up.

A new way of seeing depression and using mindfulness to overcome it

This article takes on some of the more common assumptions of what will or won’t make us happy. We all hear the stories and anecdotes of people who have all the money and material possessions that they’ve always wanted, yet they are miserable and unhappy. Those things just don’t bring true and lasting peace and joy. I love the end of the article where it talks about it’s impossible for depression to coexist for a long time with feeling loved, loving others, and having meaningful connections with those people closest to you. Happiness can be found in the present moments with the people you care about, not in the achievement of some external criteria or goal.?

Feeling. Exposed.. What do you think of when you hear the… | by Greg Audino | Invisible Illness | Medium

This article asks a very powerful question that most of us probably have not really thought about: how do you feel about feelings? Have you labeled some feelings as good and others as bad and you should then try to avoid? Sometimes our feelings about feelings can be one of the most mentally challenging things we deal with because we beat ourselves up for having a negative feeling. But we need to get comfortable with the idea that we cannot always feel good 100% of the time. Painful emotions are part of the experience of being human. Those emotions and feelings are also temporary and will fade, so feeling bad about feeling bad is?pointlessly making things worse. We do ourselves a favor by recognizing that the bad feelings will pass and that it is OK that we are feeling it.?