January/February 2009 Newsletter
January 1, 2009
The End of Adult Peer Pressure
~ Susan Reuling Furness
When the economy turned this fall, I recognized I had been living with a lot of peer pressure. This came as a surprise.
People tend to think peer pressure ends after adolescence. Not true. Even the most sophisticated adult is vulnerable to advertisements suggesting how to create an image of success or importance. We receive daily doses of marketing pressure, telling us what we should buy (eat, wear) in order to be accepted.
I do not discount the fact that money woes threaten the survival of many families during hard times. But having less disposable income, may help others turn away from subtle, but powerful, pressure to keep up with the Gates or the Jones. As the choices shrink, I find myself feeling liberated. My family decided to scale-down Christmas giving. That, alone, comes as a great relief.
Rather than feeling deprived during a recession, we may find this is an opportunity to simplify. As we grow more relaxed with less money for non-essentials, perhaps we will uncover the silver lining. With less cash there will be less to buy. This means less shopping and less time in traffic. With fewer purchases we will have less to clean, maintain, repair, and re-cycle. All of this means less pressure. Maybe there will be more time to drink a cup of coffee, talk to a friend, help a neighbor, read a book. Maybe every one of us will have more time to weigh-in on what really matters.
Living Simply with a Passion
~Randy Meenach
When things seem to be falling apart, having a passion can keep you sane and whole. When you are focused on what you love you have someplace to go with your frustrations and excess energy/stress. You lose your self- consciousness. Carl Jung said, “All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of his or her outlook the indissoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically on its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.”
Finding a passion insulates you from the wanderings of idleness. When you have a passion, you are not as interested in cruising the shopping mall, or wasting time in front of the TV. You are less likely to be manipulated by external forces. If you’re involved in painting, playing music, building a birdhouse or sewing a quilt, commercials can’t touch you. The authentic self that results from enjoying your passion keeps life simpler by reducing the mental clutter that comes from wasting time, not being focused or being bored.
Experiment. Find your passion. Get into it. Try something new. It will reduce mental clutter and make you happier.
How to Keep your Dark Winter Months Bright and Energized
by Stephen H. Hill, Ph.D.
Unless you’re an avid and frequent skier, the cold weather and short, cloudy days of winter leave many of us in Idaho just feeling “blah” for a few months. In past winter newsletters I’ve written at length about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and how to prevent or treat it. (For a free reprint of this article please contact our office).
But even if you don’t experience SAD or winter blues per se, this time of year many do experience a general decrease in energy or excitement, combined with a decease in exercise and activities. To chase away this sometimes drab time of year, here are several pointers to keep you active physically, socially and mentally.
- Especially during the cold months, be sure to find alternative sources of aerobic exercise. Try out a winter sport, join a gym seasonally– or just start using that gym card that lies forgotten in the closet. Physicians now recommend 30 minutes aerobic exercise daily—not just 3 times a week. Find an exercise partner or trainer to increase your accountability.
- Try scheduling your workouts to increase your exposure to daylight—exercising outdoors, near large windows or even just commuting back and forth. Research shows that daylight exposure slows down the over-production of melatonin, which causes us to feel sleepy and lethargic, and that long-term, frequent aerobic exercise can effectively reduce depression.
- On days you don’t get a full aerobic workout, at least make time for a brisk 10 minute walk or partial workout in the late afternoon or early evening. Walk fast enough to truly raise your heart rate, perhaps choosing a hilly route or walking with hand or ankle weights. An exciting recent study demonstrated that even very brief daily exercise in the late afternoon may restore our subjective energy level to morning highs, and erase the tendency to feel more pessimistic or irritable late in the day, when families reunite.
- Artificially lengthen your day with a full-spectrum light therapy box, or with a sunrise alarm clock. Sitting in front of a 10,000 lux bulb for 15-20 minutes a day, ideally just before sunrise or just after sunset, has been shown to treat and prevent SAD effectively. Although unresearched to my knowledge, several clients have found that a sunrise alarm clock, with a bulb that gradually brightens 15-60 minutes before waking, has helped with winter fatigue and difficulty waking up on dark winter mornings.
- Socially, be sure to schedule some fun events to look forward to. Whereas the holidays naturally create opportunities to visit with colleagues and friends, and the spring renews our outdoor hobbies, you likely will have to be more creative in the dead of winter. Consider budgeting extra money in the winter for plays, live music, special dinners out, dancing, or taking a community education class. Anything that gets you out of the house instead of hibernating from the cold is fair game.
Fresh
To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?
~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~