In this extra-stressful time, it can be all too easy to focus on what’s going wrong, which only helps us slide deeper into anxiety or depression. Fortunately, Here’s Something Good provides a daily dose of wholesome, healing content in ten minutes or less, with episodes designed to give us a lift. Feel calmer, more balanced, happier, and ready for any challenge with some of the tips from these episodes, whether it’s using your breath to shake off anxiety, dancing your way to a good mood, creating a new routine to help you feel more stable, or translating your skills to a new career. Feeling low? Then Here’s Something Good.
The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s normal routines, from work to school to grocery shopping. But a routine is so important to our mental health, giving us a feeling of control and stability. Dr. Rachel Goldman of the NYU School of Medicine joins this episode to dispense some sensible advice on how to create a new routine – going back to basics, and giving ourselves specific times for waking up, going to bed, and eating meals, can be a gamechanger, she says. And when it comes to goals, it’s important to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely).
Dancing isn’t just a great form of exercise that gets your heart and blood pumping and burns crazy calories. It’s also great for your mind – dancing releases all the chemicals in our brains associated with good feelings, like serotonin and dopamine. Dr. Elise Risher, director of Dance and Movement Therapy at Sarah Lawrence College, says it can also help us access our emotions more easily, leading to more and better healing and communication. The best part? No professional moves are necessary – improvisation is encouraged. Just put on your favorite song and let the good mood roll in.
Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College, explains that breathing is the only automatic function of our bodies that we can voluntarily control, basically hacking our body’s communication network. Using our breath to send different messages to our brains can help us shake off overwhelming stress responses, maintain our sense of calm throughout the day, and even get to sleep at night. Take a deep breath and listen to her techniques on this episode.
Coronavirus has kept individuals and businesses on their toes, and constantly changing medical advice and guidelines make planning challenging. How can we recognize opportunity in this time, when we’re all just trying to keep our heads above water? Elizabeth Vazquez, CEO and cofounder of WeConnect International, says becoming comfortable with the unknowns and embracing the opportunity inherent in chaos can help us horn in on a problem that needs solving. With our eyes and ears open, we can find ways to be useful, pivot our businesses or our career choices accordingly, and look forward to a bright future.
With so many changes coming at us, we’re all rethinking many aspects of our lives and maybe even our entire careers. But the task of reinventing ourselves can be daunting. Dr. Suedeepta “Sue” Varma of the NYU Langone Medical Center talks about the healthiest ways to make significant changes, advising us to be realistic with our goals, normalize our feelings of stress so we can heal from them, and follow the Four M’s of mental health: mindfulness, movement, mastery, and meaningful engagement; hear all about it in this episode.
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