Casual friendships
Having weak ties (neighbors, your favorite bartender, or fellow members in a spin class) can have a positive impact on our well-being by helping us feel more connected to other social groups.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
According to experts, choosing to spend time by yourself can help your social relationships. Solitude can also help you regulate your emotions. It can have a calming effect that prepares you to better engage with others.
Learn to identify moments when you need solitude to recharge and reflect to help with negative emotions and experiences.
Being overly busy with long to-do lists has become a way to communicate status. Although being busy is not a real status indicator, the impact is real and it contributes to burnout, anxiety and stress-related diseases.
Doing nothing can be a great productivity tool for recharging.
Worrying about when something will go wrong will only steal your current joy. Accept that you can't perfectly prepare for potential challenges.
Researchers found students who predicted getting a poor grade on an exam felt bad for days before receiving their results. The stressing, however, didn't diminish the disappointment they felt once they got their scores.
Guilty pleasures, like junk food or trashy books, can be good for us, as long as we enjoy them in moderation.
Take a mental break and enjoy doing something that doesn't require intense intellectual focus. It will improve your ability to deal with stressors productively.
Getting credit for your work gives your brain good feelings and helps you accomplish more.
The psychological impact of keeping a positive view of your accomplishments can decrease stress and encourage better habits.
Doing something only once may leave you naive to the missed nuances remaining to enjoy.
Experience has many layers of information to reveal. It's probably a good idea to repeat it.
Research shows that ignoring upsetting feelings can reduce your capacity for joy and may manifest as physical pain.
Acknowledge the bad experience. Notice your thoughts and sensations. Relax your face and hands, and accept how you feel knowing that you won't feel this way forever. Draw out a lesson you can apply to future situations.
RELATED IDEAS
- Whether you are using it or not, be aware of how much of your conscious thoughts are occupied by your devices.
- Take your devices out of your sight and keep it so while you need to be productive.
- Take notes by hand if possible. Studies show that writing by hand increases learning.
- Don’t give up. Reducing the use of devices is hard and takes time.
Also known as Fear of Better Options (F.O.B.O.), is the relentless researching of all possible options for fear that you’ll miss out on the “best” one.
Though maximizers tend to make better decisions, they are less satisfied with those decisions than are people who make quicker ones based on less research.
They are a powerful human mechanism for managing extreme emotions and stress, and we should be leaning on them now.
The utility of the ritual isn’t related to its practicality. Absurd rituals can have high utility. If it helps you create that sense of control, if it calms your anxiety, that’s what matters.