You’re reading 5 Practical Tips to a More Restful Sleep, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

 

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Don’t you love it when you close your eyes and fall asleep immediately after your head touches the pillow? Or who doesn’t like to have pleasant dreams without interruptions to wake up feeling totally refreshed and energized? Think about it. If we spend around one third of our lives sleeping, that means that an average person with a life span of 75 years, devotes about 25 years to sleep. So, shouldn’t we aim to make such important activity this enjoyable every day?

However, as Arianna Huffington (author of The Sleep Revolution and Editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post) explains in an interview with Fast Company, “The irony is that a lot of people forego sleep in the name of productivity, but in fact our productivity is reduced substantially when we’re sleep deprived”. The reality is that as much as someone tries to avoid sleeping time, most of us need 8 hours of good sleep to be truly efficient and a bad night could really have a negative impact on how the day ahead unravels.

That’s why I’m sharing 5 tips that I’ve personally found helpful to avoid these annoyances from disturbing our dreams and try to make good use of every single minute of our sleeping time:

 

1 Stay away from ‘intense’ TV shows before bed

 

Image source: Flickr

I know there are people who use TV to lull them to sleep. If that’s the case for you, I don’t pretend that you change this habit just because you read it in this article, but you could definitely choose wisely what type of content you watch before closing your eyes.

Die-hard fans of these kind of thrilling series will not stop watching any episode just for sleep’s sake, but there are ways to ease the inevitable agitation that they cause. Take a shower before you go to bed, watch a comedy series, a short web series, read a book, or find any other activity that unwinds you from the intense emotions and clears your mind a bit. Which leads me to the next tip…

 

2 Light yoga or meditation at night

 

Image source: Yoga Sanctuary

If it is not something on TV which causes you stress before sleeping, your busy life might be enough. Our jobs could not only alter our mind peacefulness with constant thoughts about the tasks that need to be done, but our bodies can also get stiff after sitting for long hours or being tense due to the daily grind. The good news is that a brief yoga session at night could help with both.

Even if you’re not a yoga advocate, there are simple yoga poses that relieve tension in your shoulders and spine, such as an Easy Forward Bend or Child’s Pose. During your practice, you could also experiment with some breathing exercises; and if you want to completely empty your mind, you could try a few minutes of meditation. Just don’t do very intense sessions, or your heart rate will be too high, making it harder to relax in bed.

 

3 Ambient music

  

Image source: Pixabay

I’ve found out that this kind of music not only reduces the outside noise, but it helps to lower the mental noise as well. It’s relaxing and gives you a nicer alternative to lull you to sleep than the TV. More specifically, I recommend the album Long Ambients1: Calm. Sleep. by Moby, which he shared for free earlier this year.

 

4 Drink just enough water

 

Image source: Pixabay

There is a common belief that you should not drink water before sleeping, and while it is true that the need to go to the bathroom could disrupt your dreams, it’s also true that dehydration at night could cause severe discomfort and insomnia. According to Simple Organic Life, drinking water before sleeping helps our body to liberate toxins, avoid muscle cramps and feel fresh in case the weather is too hot. And if you suffer from nasal congestion, proper hydration keeps the mucus thin and loose to breathe perfectly while you sleep.

I’d recommend to drink just one glass of water about 30 minutes before going to bed and learn to know your body from there. If it makes you go to the bathroom, drink just half a glass or do it a bit earlier.

 

5 Do not watch the clock in the middle of the night

 

Image source: Pixabay

Lastly, even if we follow every single advice to sleep better, inevitably there will be times when we wake up in the middle of the night. When this happens to me, my hope is that it is still early so I can remain in bed longer. Thus, it is only tempting to watch the clock to check how many hours are left till I have to wake up. But in my experience, this generally leads to bad news and I end up turning the screen of my phone on just to realize that there is not much time left.

This leads to some sort of anxiety that doesn’t let me enjoy whatever is left. Whether it’s 20 minutes or 2 hours, in my mind I know that it will soon be over, making it hard to fall asleep again. That’s why I highly recommend to not check the time by any means; if you wake up, just relax, imagine that there’s plenty of time and let your alarm ring whenever it has to.

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Alberto G. Güitrón is a contributing writer to BookYogaTeacherTraining.com. He is a journalist, committed yogi and meditation enthusiast. Equally passionate about blue ink and inversions poses. Author of the fiction novel “El Sueño de Unos“

You’ve read 5 Practical Tips to a More Restful Sleep, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading The 5 Best Podcasts on Intuition, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

–  Albert Einstein

We all have choices to make, be it toward relationships, career, child-rearing or even simply our wardrobe. It is often a matter of a pro/con list that helps us make a decision we are contemplating, however, there is something that helps us receive information in a way that we can hear and feel what the best choice is for ourselves. This is called our intuition. If one can allow themselves to live with a ‘receptive’ energy as opposed to being a ‘forcing’ energy, we can operate from what is true and which decision resonates with us on a deeper level.

1. Marie Manuchehri is what one calls an ‘energy intuitive’, who works in the field of energy medicine. The belief is that holistic healing works with the human energy system to help heal disease. In her radio segment podcats, she touches on several subjects through the readings of callers asking for her help.

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2. This podcast asks, as an intuitive how do you know when to trust your gut? It is both interesting and difficult – how and when one can trust their fundamental wiring? You are a speculative thinker (a sensor) if you look for patterns, and make connections between disparate things. However you are an intuitive if you are driven to make speculative leaps (a tendency to focus only on one thing).

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3. Jess Lively’s blog focuses on how to know you’re listening to your intuition and not your ego. A very common question that is very difficult to define, she sheds light on how to glean the wisdom we all carry with us inside. Often intuitions lead us to uncertain feelings, if we are going through something very challenging, try to discover both voices (the ego and the intuitive voice) – there are 3 markers to intuitive decisions, it will feel peaceful, it will be present focused and it will be fine with the uncertainty. Wait for the answer to come to you form your body and not the first thing that comes into your ear, which is trying to control something.

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4. This is about inner guidance, a concept that defines what it means to follow ‘that voice’ within us, which is intuition. It is choosing to go in for answers instead of going outside of yourself, as there is a part of you that knows more than your mind can think of itself. First one must acknowledge you have an intuition, to develop a relationship with it and begin to practice how to cultivate and recognize it.

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5. In Lana Simmons’ podcast, she muses with her guest, Ivy Felicia, on this time of the year which is the holidays and how it can be a stressful, especially for those of us who are sensitive or keyed into our intuition. We can define our own experience, by recognizing that the ability to connect with intuition is always there. We tend to put everything in a box, and our intuition may urge us to rip that box apart. However we experience fear of making choices that can subject us to failure in order to avoid being uncomfortable, so we may suppress the intuitive voice.

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The only way to trust your intuition is view it as a friend, by building a relationship with it as you practice and develop the skill of being instinctive. See what is there to begin with, collect all the information, don’t hesitate and then you can make a leap as to what is considered a decision based on trusting your intuition. We think too often with our reason and rationale versus a deeper and emotive level of thought, there is some guidance one can follow to clarify your intuition. Intuition is subtle and it is based on vibration. It simply feels often like a ‘knowing’, the concept that our own soul communicates and exists as real and tangible when we live in our own intuition.

 

Do you read a great blog about intuition that’s not on the list? Leave a comment on FB!

 

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 Larissa Gomes is a breast cancer survivor and single mom to her spirited baby boy! Originally from Toronto turned Angeleno, she has worked in roles from writer, actor and producer for well over a decade. In that time, she’s developed concepts, film and television screenplays, short stories, along with freelance articles, blogging and editing work

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You’re reading What I Learned about Politeness at a Korean Flower Shop, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

We take it for granted that people should know how to be polite. It seems like something universal: You say please and thank you, you smile, and you tell people you’re doing well when they ask how you are, even if your life is in turmoil. At least that’s how it works in the West.

I’ve been living in Korea for the past year and a bit and it’s a little different over here.

Koreans have a distinct way of saying “Yes” to each other that sounds like a dismissive grunt to the native English speaker.

When my girlfriend and I first started dating, for example, I’d ask if she wanted to have pizza for dinner. “Uh,” she’d reply, and it took me a while to learn that this meant yes.

Naturally, as we spent more time together, I began using “Uh” myself. Eventually it became unconscious; without noticing I would grunt “Uh” whenever I wanted to say yes to something.

Why was this an issue?

I’m used to expressing politeness by using the word, “Please,” or excessively apologizing like the good Canadian boy I am. But in Korea I’m often at a loss because there’s no real word for “Please” in Korean, and if you say “Sorry” without having actually done anything to apologize for, you just seem strange and silly.

Instead, politeness in Korean is expressed using different word endings. There are essentially three levels—casual, everyday formal, and super formal—and in each level you would end the last word of your sentence in a different way.

It’s a little confusing, but for the sake of this story all you need to know is that using “Uh” to say “Yes” is something you would do only when speaking to someone younger than you or someone who you know very well. You would use a different word to say “Yes” in more formal situations.

The other week I went to a flower shop.

There was an old Korean couple inside sitting behind the register. They were eating noodles together silently. I smiled, said hello, and began browsing the flower display.

The old lady rose from her seat and asked me in Korean if I’d like to buy the bouqet that I was looking at. “Uh,” I said, without noticing.

She began preparing the flowers. As she did I noticed a sour look on her husband’s face as he sucked up a few noodles from his bowl.

“Would you like to pay by card?” she asked me.

“Uh.” I smiled and handed her my card. Now her face looked sour too. I tried making small talk with them in Korean—something I’ve found usually delights the elderly couples here as they watch me struggle to form sentences. This time, however, I barely received a response.

I sensed something was wrong. “Would you like a receipt?” she asked in a tone that seemed rather harsh. “Uh,” I said.

She gave me the receipt and sat back down without thanking me or saying goodbye. I eventually figured it out as I replayed the scene in my head on the walk home.

Worst of all was that I had no idea how many times I’d done the same thing to others; I imagined the number to be high. I consider myself to be a reasonably polite person, yet here I was in Korea, walking around grunting “Uh” at elders like an asshole.

Politeness is often one of the first things lost in translation, as it turns out.

So the next time you see a foreigner acting in a way that seems rude in your own country, perhaps they’ve just misunderstood some of the dos and don’ts of your culture. Maybe they really do mean well and are just confused about how to express their good intentions. Maybe they aren’t accustomed to all of the strange things we do that seem normal to us.

…Or maybe that particular person really just is a dick. Who knows. 😉

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My name is Jacob. I’m fascinated by all of the strange things we often tell ourselves that prevent us from doing what we want to do in life. Soon-to-be blogger at pooroldme.com Check me out here.

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You’re reading 5 Productivity Tools That Will Make You a Millennial Time-Lord, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

If you’re on this Pick The Brain, you already know how essential productivity is. It supports you to work-smart and lower the time you spend on dumb stuff that doesn’t make an impact. You want to be uber-productive, grow your empire and still have social time to spend with friends.

Just 5 minutes per day can make a massive difference when multiplied across a lifetime. 5 minutes a day can save around 100 days in a normal lifetime – imagine what you can do!

I think there are 2 different facets to productivity:

1. Rid of waste
2. Power-up work

Below, I’ve left the important tools that I use and the category I believe they fit in. Let’s start with the “Rid of waste” section

1. Unroll.me – I found this tool a couple of months ago. Simply download the app, add your email and swipe you subscriptions as if it were tinder. I deleted 700 subscriptions in half an hour and that means no more spam emails that I don’t care about. I now don’t spend 10-20 minutes every morning deleting annoying emails. Remember, that’s 200-400 days I’m saving over my life! On a serious note, this is a great product and couldn’t be thankful enough for the amount of time they have saved me. Get rid of those pesky spam emails!
2. GetGistly – Fed up of going through 300 page books to hear the same thing repeated again and again? This tool provides audio and text summaries for the best entrepreneurial books so you can listen or read in 15 minutes. I can’t wait for this product to launch so you guys can see how cool it is! I’ve been invited to their early adopters program and already love the app.
3. StayFocusd – A Google Chrome extension that blocks you from accessing time wasting sites e.g. Facebook or Twitter. We all know how simple it can be to type in “fa” and then click enter or how easy it can be to sit back, open Instagram and submerge in user content. This tool will destroy your instincts and stop you in your tracks.

Next up, let’s talk about how you can improve your work so that 1 unit of input equates to 3 units of output! So, how do we “Power-up Work”?

1. Skimm – this service sends a newsletter that gives you the lowdown on current affairs. Rather than browsing through your boring news outlets, just get sent the most salient news in your inbox every day. Skimm has gathered a great following and even received funding, so it’s becoming more and more popular every day! Oh and, if you don’t like reading the news, this will get you in to the habit so you can talk the talk with the wisecrack political expert at your college re-union!
2. Instagress – Personal brand equity is becoming more and more important everyday. Instagram gives you the platform to grow this personal brand but managing a social account can take a ton of time. This is why Instagress is super-useful! The tool automates your Instagram growth by commenting, following and liking under hashtags relevant to your niche.

Now that we’ve got our grand list of tools, it’s time to put them into practice. Try them out and tell me how they worked for you in the comments

For now, have fun and happy working!

You’ve read 5 Productivity Tools That Will Make You a Millennial Time-Lord, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading How Art Affects the Development of Intelligence, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Any child deserves all rights to get an art education.  In fact, art helps to form the development of the whole child’s development. It doesn’t only prepare it for the life but fills with joy and happiness. Art is valued much for its ability to improve cognitive skills and intelligence. Gifted and intelligent children have been always much valued. But who is a talented and intelligent child? It’s really difficult to identify this.

Importance of Art Education

Due to music and various images, it becomes easier to make kids become more interested in the studying process. No one would ever try doing something if he is not interested in it. And art works perfectly in such a case.

According to the observations, it’s known that children become very happy when hearing the sound of music they play with their own hands. The most important is to be occupied in art each day. If you start playing the piano, you would do a progress, when doing it day by day. The same with painting. A continuous occupation with art leads to the development of confidence and self-assurance. Once your child starts being engaged in painting or playing music and does it daily, he would gradually become more confident about this world.

Why are Habits so Important?

Habits are equal to success. No matter what you do, the result would always depend on your habits. There are many children, who achieve aims by their own efforts, others believe in luck and some do it day by day, developing habits. In fact, the last are one of the most successful, because if you once formed a habit, changing it becomes a real challenge further.

Art is one of the best ways to make children more creative. Creativity is one of the key moments of developing a child’s intelligence. In fact, focusing on scores at college is not enough. That’s why it’s very important for parents to understand how art is significant in the life of their children.

Why is Art So Important?

Art offers a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic benefits to the development of any child.

 Intrinsic benefits include:

• Creativity;
• Imagination;
• A chance to experience beauty and joy.

Extrinsic benefits are the following:

• Better engagement in the process of learning;
• Better metacognition;
• Enhanced self-confidence;
• Developed social skills.

What is Intelligence?

In fact, intelligence is not a big volume of facts and other knowledge, accumulated in your brain. It’s your ability to learn new information, be able to retain process and use it in practice.

How Music Affects a Child’s Brain?

All of us know about Mozart effect. Don’t you know? It’s a notion, which describes the process of listening to Mozart music, at the same time increasing your intelligence.

According to a number of experiments, it was found out that many people got a lot of visual-spatial skills improvements when listening to this kind of music. However, it’s not yet clear whether the passive listening may contribute to the development of intelligence. But what about becoming active in this kind of occupation? The researchers say that being engaged in music is able to change the course of the whole brain. There is evidence that certain music play can easily improve working memory, self-regulation, and even self-confidence.

In fact, everyone can stimulate his brain, because art is accessible to all of us. If you lack self-esteem, arts will certainly help you developing it. Moreover, it will increase the levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, which is responsible for good mood and motivation. It would also contribute to better concentration, drive and focus. Due to art lesson benefits in childhood, one can further benefit from them in adulthood.

Art benefits include:

• Increased brain plasticity;
• Better fluid intelligence;
• Higher IQ;
• Better attention span;
• Improves overall behavior;
• Reduces impulsiveness.

According to one study at Stanford University, students, engaged in art, had the following characteristics, in comparison with those, who weren’t:

• They won more academic awards;
• Received more community service awards;
• Got higher SAR results.

Art – Brain Food?

In fact, art is a brain food. For example, if you start playing the piano, it will help developing your coordination, reaction, social participation. Telling the truth, it’s not obligatory to be professional in some kind of art to get cognitive benefits from it. If you even have the slightest exposure to art, it will certainly make you smart. Due to it, we start thinking critically, which simultaneously increases our intelligence. It’s not enough to take a brush into one’s hands- before creating a painting you should give yourself a thousand of questions. Of course, it requires time and efforts, but the result is worth that.

Author bio: Alexandra Foster is an ex-English teacher who helps parents/students and organizations with educational planning. She is a tech savvy, who loves education and technology, that makes studying process more convenient and collaborative. Currently working with Noplag.com team as a consultant.”

You’ve read How Art Affects the Development of Intelligence, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Will Fail – and How to Avoid It, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Are you excited for the upcoming new year?

I’m sure you are! The beginning of the year is a special moment…your hopes are at their highest level. You want to live your best year ever.

This also means you already wrote (or are thinking to write) your new year’s resolutions.

But…

…you need to know something very important.
It may be a little too harsh, but…your new year’s resolutions will likely fail.

Let me show you why.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail

Stanford University’s professor Baba Shiv conducted a very interesting experiment that will make you think.

In his study, he took 165 students and divided them in two groups: one group had to memorize a 2-digit number, the other one had to memorize a 7-digit number.

After memorizing the number, each student had to go to another room. But on their way to this room, they were offered a snack: they could choose between a chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad.

You’ll be surprised to know that those students who memorized the 7-digit number were almost twice as likely to take the chocolate cake.

What does it mean?

If you use your mind energies for something, you will have less willpower. Or to put it in another way: your brain energies are limited – and so it’s your willpower.

Think about it: what are you doing by choosing your new year’s resolutions?

You’re basically asking your brain for a huge amount of willpower to carry different disciplines. The more resolutions you choose, the more willpower you will need…and the more likely you will interrupt your resolutions before reaching your goals.

Now, it should be obvious what’s the secret to stick to your new year’s resolutions…

What To Do To Stick With Your New Year’s Resolutions

Given that the more resolutions you have, the more likely you are to fail…the less resolutions you have, the more likely you are to succeed.

Which means that by having just one new year’s resolution you have the highest chances of success.

Now, you probably are wondering “if I can choose just one resolution, which one should I pick?”

Of course, pick the most important one. The most important for you. It’s the resolution that will have the highest positive impact on your life.

But you don’t have to stop there! In fact, there’s something very useful that I want to share with you.

How to Accomplish ALL of Your New Year’s Resolutions

Your willpower is taxed by the adoption of new behaviours…but you don’t really use it for certain old behaviours.

Think of all the things that you do in your day: how many of these things take a good amount of willpower?
Not many.

The reason is that many of the things that you do during your day are habits.
Habits are magical 🙂

Habits consume almost no brain energies.

So, if you transform one of your resolutions into a habit, you are free to had a new resolution in your schedule. The way to do that is by sticking with one of your resolutions for about 21 continuous days (this is the average time that a new behaviour takes to become a habit…so know that this number may be a little different for you).

After that time, your resolution will be a habit and you’ll be free to start practicing a new resolution.

The good old “one at a time”.
That’s the secret to accomplish your resolutions – and so your best year ever.

Want a Shortcut?

Do you want a shortcut?

Maybe you’re wondering “what if I carry two of my new year’s resolutions at a time, instead of one? I can double my results!”

No, it doesn’t work like that. There’s no shortcut. It isn’t just what you read up to now in this article…it’s also practical experience.

Look, I’ve coached hundreds of people and I’ve seen a common pattern: no matter how smart/tough/determined you think you are, trying to establish more than one habit at a time is a surefire recipe for failure.

It isn’t because you are not enough, it’s because life can be tricky: suppose that you have a hard day at work/university/family and this will consume a lot of your brain energies. You may still find some energy to keep one resolution…but if you have two resolutions you’ll lose both of them.

Now, think on how likely it is to have just ONE tough day in 21 days…it’s very likely! Which means that the most of the time, you’ll end up breaking your habit-forming cycle.

And once you break it, you have to start from scratch…and 21 more days to go.

Does this sound like a good plan?

No way. Stick with one resolution at a time and you’ll end up in a very good situation.

Conclusion

Now, if all of this sounds good, I encourage you to start by implementing a good habit: reading a life-changing book, for just 10 minutes a day. It helped me transform my life and can do the same for you.

You can come visit me for some great books to start with.

You’ve read Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Will Fail – and How to Avoid It, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading 5 Key Lifestyle Changes For Staying Sober During Recovery, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Once you’ve made the decision to get and stay sober, it is an ongoing process. It’s going to take effort and a massive 180 degree turn from your life as a former addict. While change is always a difficult thing to cope with, there are a few key lifestyle choices that you can make to help this particular change a little easier to stick to.

Here are 5 lifestyle changes that will help you stay sober during recovery, and even enjoy it.

Honesty

First thing’s first, you simply cannot truly get sober without being honest, sometimes brutally honest, about your addiction.

You absolutely must be honest with yourself first. The fact that you have decide to change your life proves that you can do that, but along the road of recovery you may be tempted to say ‘oh, I can handle that’ or ‘just one sip won’t hurt’. That may be true, but if it’s not, don’t fool yourself. Be open and honest with yourself, but make sure to leave the judgement and pressure at bay.

If you are really serious about sobriety, you’ll also need some kind of help. There’s no shame in it. In fact, getting help is the smart step to take. However, therapists, meetings, sponsors, and anyone else from whom you seek guidance cannot help you if you are not honest with them. It is understandable if you don’t wish to have your personal life become public news, but there are certain people, including yourself, that need to know the facts.

Fitness

Before you decide to skip over this part, remember that getting exercise doesn’t have to mean that you’re at the gym 5 days a week doing all kinds of fancy combinations of cardio, weight training, and so on. There are so many fun and creative ways to incorporate fitness into your routine without it being a hassle, or feeling like a chore. Think sports, dancing, rowing, biking, hiking, anything that involves a little bit of physical exertion and an increased heart rate really.

Working out, in its many forms, carries so many benefits beyond getting in shape and simply looking better. Many people have found that the naturally occurring high that you have when you get your blood pumping rivals the highs of drugs and alcohol, helping you stay sober.

Budget

It’s hard to feel like you’re in control of your life or making progress when there are bills piling up and your financial status is shaky. So much of the stress that people face on a regular basis is money related, and when you’re a recovering addict situations will weigh on you that much more.

So take control by budgeting. Get a job, calculate your earnings against expenditures and debts. Make sure that at some point you are able to save up towards certain goals. Try to stick to your budget so that you always have exactly how much you need. When the stress of a rocky financial status is lifted from your shoulders, you’ll have a few less reasons to reach for that drink.

Healthy Diet

Let’s not kid ourselves here; while living a life of addiction, making healthy food choices

probably was not at the top of your list of priorities. Addicts and alcoholics alike indulge in an alarming amount of sweet and savoury, processed foods. Often times, the only food you ate in a day was probably junk food. Addicts and alcoholics generally don’t care what goes in their body, drugs, alcohol, incredibly unhealthy foods, it’s all the same.

When you’re in recovery, maintaining a fairly healthy diet will actually help strengthen your resolve to stay sober. Paying attention to the food you eat and making sure that it’s good for you will help reduce the chances of you deciding to just take a sip or try a hit.

Gratitude

Chances are that you became an addict because you felt like there was always something missing, or you were very upset about various things and situations. You probably started using or continued using to try and make yourself or the situation feel better. By practicing gratitude, you reverse that thought process.

Instead of focusing on things you’re not happy about, be mindful of the many blessings that you have the good fortune of receiving. When you start paying attention to the various little details of your day that you can be thankful for, you’ll probably find that life’s not all that terrible after all. You will probably find a new appreciation for the world, it’s all about perspective.

These are all very simple things that don’t require too much effort, but for a former addict they can seem like massive lifestyle changes. The good news is that once you get started, and are able to feel the positive effects these changes have on you, it will be that much easier to stick to them. Not to mention, they will increase your quality of life so that you don’t have to feel like reaching for a bottle to feel better. At the end of the day, your recovery is the most important thing in your life. It’s okay to focus on yourself, because you’ll only be able to properly be a part of other people’s lives when you are doing well.

You’ve read 5 Key Lifestyle Changes For Staying Sober During Recovery, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading The Importance of Being Emotional, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Have you ever been criticized for being “too emotional”? And told that this may be hindering your chances of enhancing your career, or advised that “great leaders know how to keep their emotions at bay”? I have. And for a while there, it made me think that, to succeed, I need to strip myself of feelings, or at least to become an A-list actor at hiding them well. Unsurprisingly, this was not an easy task.

But then, I started wondering. Why? Why emotions have to be so bad? And do I have any chances at all to thrive in life then, but to reserve my softness and compassion?
Well, let’s see what wise men have unearthed.

Emotions and decision-making don’t bond well together, we are often told. In fact, to reach good-quality outcomes—ones that we won’t later regret—we’d better take our feelings out of the equation. That is, we have to “keep our heads cool.” Same is true in business dealings—logic, hard facts and data are often the winners when it comes to strategy, negotiations or planning.

Emotions make us appear too human, too warm, perhaps even weak, “irrational” or defocused.
They are good for things as romance, parenting, friendships, but not when we need to make the real, big life choices—as regarding what to go to college for, or what salary to accept to work for, or whether to buy the house or the car we want. These, we tend to believe, are decisions that require the whole logic we can summon—our own, our family’s, our friends’.

We certainly can’t let how we feel get in the way of successfully closing off an important personal or professional deal. The “real” world, for most part, is driven by things as reason, logic, and interests—be it personal, financial or political. We surely can’t, for instance, expect the bank to lend us money just because we really need it, or because we are a really nice and honest fella. We need a solid case, based on tangible and provable facts.

That is, we’ve been historically conditioned to think, emotionality (compared to cognition) doesn’t make for strong convincer, nor is a negotiation-winner, nor a part of the lending criteria of our bank for that matter.

More importantly, however, emotions and respect from others tend to be perceived as rather polar notions. They, more often than not, get in our way of arriving at good decisions; may devalue our brand, or make us come across as the “too mushy” or the “teddy-bear”-ish type. To be respected, one has to be reserved, in control of their feelings, serious, focused, and even egotistical.

Admittedly, the above revelations sound quite trivial and too apparent even. “Tell me something I don’t know,” many are probably thinking here.
Well, here it is.

On the surface, common wisdom dictates that we have to keep our feelings locked away when we face serious choices, have to make important decisions, or want a successful outcome. Who doesn’t know that, right?
In fact, though, it’s quite the opposite.

Emotions are part of the decision-making process, want it or not

In 1994, a Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Southern California— Antonio Damasio, came up with a rather stimulating theory, which he called The Somatic Marker Hypothesis (1994). It’s based on what some deem a revolutionary idea—that emotions are helpful and needed for us to make rational decisions, especially in situations when we must make a snap choice, or under high uncertainty.

Generally, science tells us, when we attempt to reach a resolution, we rely on either cognition (reasoning, logic) or emotions. When we navigate in a complex environment, however, our cognitive capacity may reach its limit and overheat. In such situations, emotions are the one that take over and guide our decision-making process and our behavior.

Emotions are not the same as feelings, though, prof. Damasio claims, although in everyday life, they are used synonymously. Emotions are signals in our bodies, as elevated pulse and heartrate, contracting muscles, for instance, which are sent to our brains for interpretation, and based on past stored information in our minds, we experience the subsequent feeling (fear). In this sense, feelings actually follow emotions.

What’s rather intriguing, however, is that prof. Damasio’s research is based on observation of patients with damage to the frontal part of the brain, responsible for emotions (called ventromedial prefrontal cortex, VMPFC). Such individuals, although many high in intelligence, had serious problems functioning normally in their everyday lives. They couldn’t make good and suitable decisions, especially when it came to avoiding risks—a condition, which adversely affected their finances and relationships and many other aspects of their lives.

Therefore, it appears that emotions are not the bad influencer in our reasoning process. On the contrary, they are the ones, which let us to make the right choices, to distinguish between good and bad (not only in the abstract), and help us accumulate wisdom over time, which comes from “cultivating knowledge about how our emotions behaved and what we learned from it.”

Acting out “on emotion”

Thin-slicing is a term, which was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” in 2005. But the original idea goes back to 1992 when two professors of psychology—Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal published a paper, documenting how quick observations—usually under 5 minutes (some of the later tests were done for 2,5 or 10 seconds), yielded high-accuracy outcomes. That is, higher than 50%– the rate, which can be attributed to chance.

Such “predictions” or opinions about the characters of people we meet, are not necessarily logical. They are based on our “intuition” and cues we read about others—mostly visual, as gesture, posture, facial expressions. But the “thin slicing,” or the limited and fast evaluations we draw on others, has been shown to correctly reveal information about their personality, sexuality, inner states and moral behaviors (as confidence, honestly, professionalism or optimism). The technique has been recognized to work in various settings and circumstances—from first impressions, to speed-dating, to the choices, which medical professionals, firefighters, policemen have to make in splits of a second.

Labelled “gut feelings” or “sixth sense,” the phenomenon confirms what each of us largely suspects to be true—that our “feeling”-side of the brain is more important that just as a manifestation of our artisticity. It is actually a snap compass to aid us in navigating in the world, in getting to know others, or in making on-the-spot decisions when needed. All this, with a scarily great dose of accuracy too.

Not bad for a mushy inner sensation, which generally contradicts all the logic and cognition we frequently equate with the great decision-making—the ones that are supposed to leads us to success and riches.

Warmth vs Strength

Harvard Professor Amy Cuddy, along with fellows Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, has pondered on this question for a while—that is, to be a good leader, should one come across as warm, empathetic, humane, or as competent, authoritative and perhaps even cold?

When we meet people for the first time. prof. Cuddy claims, there are two things that we quickly weigh on—can we trust the person and can we respect them? The former is the so-called “warmth” dimension, while the latter is linked to competence. And although many of us consider that gaining others’ respect is the first step for a new leader to establish authority, it’s not quite the case.

The most important thing in relationships, including business, is to build trust. It is warmth, not competence that does this. Warmth, prof. Cuddy tells us, can be demonstrated as being empathetic, understanding, listening to others, or smiling. Hence, it is based on creating a personal and emotional connection to others.

To be a successful leader, a person must ensure that they come across as warm first before they demonstrate their competence. “If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t trust you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative,” prof. Cuddy elaborates.

Therefore, to thrive best in our personal and professional arenas, we should become more “feeling” individuals, rather than less. Being temperamental and sentimental are not signs of weakness but of smarts; it means we are perceptive enough to realize that showing emotions and warmth toward others is the right path to building trust and lasting connections, and is also an integral part of being a role model others want to follow.

So, next time, when faced with a big decision to make, or have a “feeling” about someone you just met, or if you want to earn respect from colleagues and friends, just remember—don’t try to reign in your emotions.

Instead, feel away, I tell myself every day now.

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Evelyn Marinoff is a Canadian, currently living in Dublin, Ireland. I am a blogger, a social introvert, an MBA, a passionate reader and a writer in the making. I hold a degree in Finance and Marketing, and I spend my free time reading, writing and researching new and intriguing ideas in psychology, leadership, well-being and self-improvement. You can also find her on Twitter at @Evelyn_Marinoff, or read her blog at mind-chatters.com

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