Watch Your Language: Words Matter

If you tend to procrastinate and not finish things (remember that procrastination is perfectly fine as long as you meet your deadlines), your depression may be active. Depression and anxiety can seem to be diametrically opposed emotions, but the paradox they create can lead to creativity and renewal if you can treat both emotions (and yourself) with love and empathy. If you doubt yourself and feel unable to proceed, check in with your shame in article 8. Your shame arises when you're not living up to your agreements or your ethics -- or when your agreements and ethics need to be updated because they're not workable or livable. If you procrastinate and fail to meet your deadlines, you may want to look at how your shame and your anxiety work together. Shame can be painful, but it's not an intrinsically negative emotion (there are no negative emotions). The reason we mistakenly identify shame as negative is that it arises to help us deal with negative and painful situations. We've learned (wrongly) to blame shame for the pain, but shame doesn't bring the trouble; See article 8 for support with your shame. If You Don't Feel Like Reading Right Now Plan for the future Planning for an emergency isn't exactly fun, but it can be helpful. Of course, you can't plan for every possible scenario, but knowing what you might do if your loved one has a fall or if their condition worsens can help you face and deal with the situation more easily if it does happen. I have to admit that my family didn't plan for when my mom first had a bad fall and had to be rushed to the emergency room to get 16 stitches in her head. It was scary, but thankfully my sister and I were close by and were able to be with and comfort my mom while she was in the hospital. Educate yourself If you're not already versed in All Things Parkinson's, you should at least have a basic understanding of the disease. This will help you support your loved one and anyone who may be caring for them close by. You can start by Googling your national Parkinson's foundation or going to AllAboutParkinsons. There you can find information on diagnosis, symptoms, treatment options, nutrition and exercise regimens, and a whole lot more.

When neurogenesis and neuroplasticity increase there are dramatic changes: We see cognitive enhancement and rapid learning, robust emotional resilience, and protection against depression, anxiety, and stress. What Is Mental Health? As a psychology professor at the graduate level for over three decades, I came to see how poorly most mental health professionals understand what mental health is. At one conference I attended, someone asked this question to an audience of over 500: Who has had even a single class in mental health during their training? Not one hand went up. Who learned about mental illness and psychopathology? Every hand rose. It is paradoxical that the field of mental health is so exclusively focused on pathology and has hardly begun to map out the higher possibilities of the psyche. Mental health is on a continuum ranging from severe psychopathology to the normal neurosis of everyday life and extending up into higher ranges first envisioned by Abraham Maslow and humanistic psychology that have been called flourishing. The level of normal neurosis that the vast majority of people function at is fine for getting by in everyday life. I took them into a cool eyewear boutique and gave them an update. What a difference just that one change made. Because of their prominence on the face, eyeglasses can have a powerful impact. After all, they're visible all day long. More important than any other fashion accessory, glasses stay with you until you're ready for bed. They can make or break your look, so be sure they say, This woman has style! Top Five Reasons to Change Your Eyewear You may need a new prescription. You have a new job or a promotion. You broke your glasses.

They were at a standstill with each other and neither one was willing to give. Angela also shared with me that she had colitis, or irritable bowel syndrome, which made perfect sense to me because of these ongoing relationship issues and her inability to process the feelings, thoughts, and emotions she was experiencing, holding it all inside, which was creating dis-order within her annamaya kosha (physical body). During our work together, we focused a lot on Angela's manipura chakra at her navel using various chants, visualizations, and breathing techniques and cultivating her awareness. She began to see and admit to her role in the dynamic between her and her partner and how they were both playing these ego games: I am right, you are wrong, dominating, refusal to be dominated, cover up, and survival. The more she surrendered to this, to the dynamic she saw taking place, the less she blamed her partner for their situation, and things began to energetically shift and move back into a healthy state of being. Love became the foundation of their relationship again. Begin to notice your breath, feeling your chest rise and fall with each breath. Chanting to ignite the manipura: Chant rung seven times while picturing a golden orb spinning just above your navel or solar plexus, your power center. Process to Learn to Trust Your Gut So what happened? Obviously things got straightened out. What happened was that Sandy recognized the state of chaos we were in. She called us all together to help diagnose the trouble. She took the blame for the confusion and never pointed a finger at anyone else. That showed us that management was on our side. In the meeting we realized that we wanted to be empowered but that we lacked many of the necessary skills. Together we concluded that we needed training in how to become a self-directed team. We needed strong leadership to guide and direct us. And we needed careful monitoring of our progress.

How the heck are they supposed to know? First of all, they judge us based on their value system, which probably is a lot different from our own; How can some people come up so quickly with descriptions of our character and personality, knowing so little of us, our education, and our experiences? How can they understand why we are who we are and act how we act based on so little knowledge about us? Even we don't entirely know who we are. Believe me: In most cases, the ideas these people have about you are mistaken and incomplete. Unless they are real, deeply concerned about your well-being or your life, don't give them too much attention. You will feel a lot better about yourself if you don't care so much about other people's opinions. In Spain, there is a saying that goes What Pedro says about Juan, says more about Pedro, than it says about Juan. We could transform this to What Pedro thinks about Juan, says more about Pedro than it says about Juan. The first child raised her hand to playfully slap her friend on the arm. Before she was able to make contact, the other little girl cried, Ow! The first girl looked at her friend and asked, Why did you say, `Ow'? I haven't even touched you yet. Her friend replied, Well, I knew it was gonna hurt. The body, like everything else in life, is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. It is always talking to us, if we will only take the time to listen. I believe we create every pain and illness in our body. Every cell within our body responds to every single thought we think and every word we speak. The body is always aspiring to achieve optimum health, no matter what we do.

More importantly, to declutter your mind, you should consider taking a break. You might believe that taking breaks is unproductive, but the truth is that your productivity can be given a huge boost when you take breaks more often. Giving yourself some time to unwind helps you recharge. As a result, you end up doing more in less time. This is what effectiveness and efficiency are all about. They both account for your productivity. The Importance of Decluttering Your Mind Decluttering the physical space around you will help you create more space for more important things. In addition, such tidiness will also have an impact on your mind since everything will be organized and you will know where everything is. There are few things reminding you that they need to be arranged. Epictetus himself appeared to have been a nice chap, so the passage (and several others, in both the Enchiridion and the Discourses) is not meant to be callous. The author is simply stating what he sees as a combination of a fact of nature (physics: people are mortal, including our loved ones) and of sound reasoning (logic: it makes no sense to be distraught by inevitable facts). Despite their internal consistency, passages such as this one give Stoics the reputation for being people who seek to suppress all emotions. The fact is, Epictetus had the advantage of believing in a kind of cosmic Providence, which could afford him that sort of detachment--similar to the notion of nonattachment in Buddhism, which leans on that religion's belief in karma and reincarnation. The problem is that the modern scientific outlook is not compatible with the ancient Stoics' take on how the world works (more on this when we discuss theme 5), and so we are left to face our own reality in which there is a significant difference between the breaking of a cup and the dying of a child or partner. Still, modern Stoics can retain much of the original insight, not by treating the breaking of a mug in the same fashion as the death of a loved one, but by training themselves to accept inevitable events with magnanimity (literally, in Greek, greatness of soul). What I am suggesting is something akin to a memorable scene from the movie Bridge of Spies. The two major characters in the story are lawyer James Donovan and accused Russian spy Rudolf Abel. During Abel's trial for treason, Donovan notices that his client doesn't seem disturbed by the very real possibility of facing the death penalty. So at one point he asks Abel, Aren't you worried?