5 Positive, Uplifting, and Natural Tips to Boost Happiness

Spend time with those you love

• This is an easy way to get endorphins streaming throughout your brain, because when you feel connection, you feel peace, joy, and safe
• The time you have to do this of course may vary for each individual, but making an effort to spend time with someone for even a short time will help

Spending time alone doing something that is a passion

• I know this goes against the first tip, yet honestly it can be just as important to recharge your batteries and happiness mojo if you practice hobbies/passions that are yours
• Taking time to reflect and sort out your thoughts will decrease your drive to perform around others and allow to connect with your inner life

Spend some extra time to sleep

• Research suggests that a huge mental cost occurs when you don't getting enough sleep
• In addition research also suggests that those that sleep less tend to have experience more repetitive negative thoughts

Eating a balanced diet

• There is science around eating certain foods and having that lead to a "happiness" neurotransmitters: Eating foods that are high in protein and specifically have a higher percentage of tryptophan (like turkey, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds), will provide much needed tryptophan, the precursor to serotonin. Serotonin is the neurotransmitters that medications such as Prozac is attempting to rebalance in the brain. 
• Having a healthy gut, can provide relief as well, so if you experience GI issues, consult a doctor/nutritionist to see if changes in your diet are necessary

Spend time outside

• Early morning sunlight is more intense and this can boost your body’s production of melatonin in the evening. Serotonin converts to melatonin for a great night’s sleep.
• Getting outside for a 20-minute walk in the early morning sunlight can boost your mood and improve your sleep!
• Plus fresh air, and exercise can promote endorphins in the brain as well

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7 Ways to Feel More Secure

First off what does it mean to feel insecure? Sure we've all heard that word before, but often I think words get misused and that people have different ways of explaining feeling words, so here is how I define insecure: Feeling fear or anxiety about not being good enough, or that you’re not going to get what you want, or that you will be abandoned, this may cause a racing mind and heart, sweating, feelings of uncertainty or dread. 

Now with that understanding here are 7 ways to feel more secure:

1. Feel your feelings. People try to push insecurities down or to forget them or ignore them. However, there is tremendous opportunity to grow from them, by feeling the uncomfortable feelings and processing them you can deal with them head on, and grow from them. Test out just how real the fears are or if you are simply holding yourself back.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. Insecurities have less power when people understand both their strengths and weaknesses work together to make them unique. Keep a long of what your strengths are, what you feel adds to your life, and what you are grateful for. 

3. Stop comparing yourself to others. From a distance, other people might seem happier, more successful, thinner or wealthier. But often, that is just how it looks. You never truly know what someone else is going through unless they open their whole life to you, its like the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover", what people put out their is typically just a representative of what their real life is.

4. Live in the now. Insecurities often arise when people live in the future or the past. They worry that new things won't turn out positive or that the past will repeat itself. What if you just simply focused on right now, in this moment and lived life as though all you had was this moment?

5. Share your feelings. Often times when we feel insecure we keep it to ourselves, this can very easily keep us stuck. By sharing our emotions with a trusted person we can get the release of letting some of the emotion go, support from someone else, and possibly and objective look on the situation. 

6. Practice doing what you know. If we build on our strengths they can often translate to helping us fight our insecurities. For example if you are really fantastic at fixing things around the house, then practice that, feeling the strength and accomplishment from performing that task, all of those feelings can thing get stored in your mental strength tool box. Then when it comes to the time to give a public speech, all the strength you built up in your mental tool box can get used in to fuel you through what scares you.

7.  Avoid people that make you feel small. You have to protect yourself. That should be your first priority, you are the first priority to you. If you surround yourself with people that empower, encourage and inspire you, then your life will feel more full, safe, and secure. 

4 Simple Mindfulness Practices for Anxiety

1). Observe an object you can pick up (five minutes)
Hold it in your hands and allow your attention to be fully absorbed by it. Observe it.

Notice things about its physical characteristics. For example, you could say to yourself, “I notice that this object is soft, light colored, thin and can easily bend.” Or, “I see there’s yellowish lines radiating out from the bottom to the top.”

Notice textures, colors, and shapes without judging them as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, ugly or beautiful.

Don’t assess or think about the the object. Just observe it for what it is. Do this simple mindfulness exercise for five minutes.

2). Mindful eating (four minutes)

Start off by taking a few deep breaths and begin the practice by feeling the food against the outside of you lips. Notice this without judgement. Eat the item and close your eats, allowing yourself to taste it, feel the texture of it, notice how it makes the rest of your body feel. Notice how you can savory the food, notice if you feel satisfaction, gratitude or any other emotion. Think abut perhaps where the food has come from, for you to eat it right now, notice your impulse to swallow and how that feels.  Do only this activity while taking deep breaths and nothing else for 4 minutes. 

3). Observe your thoughts (fifteen minutes)

Find a comfortable position. You can be lying down on your back or sitting. If you are sitting, keep you back straight. Release the tension in your shoulders and just let them drop. Close your eyes.

Focus your attention on your breathing. Simply pay attention to what it feels like in your body as you breathe slowly in and then slowly breathe out. Immerse yourself completely in the experience. Spend a few minutes here. Imagine you are “riding the waves” of your own breath.

Now shift your attention to your thoughts. Become aware of whatever thoughts enter your mind.

Try to view them as simply thoughts — they are only objects in your mind. They are just events happening inside your mind. You can imagine them as clouds passing through the sky, or leaves floating down a stream.

Notice them enter your consciousness, develop, and then float away. You don’t have to hold onto or follow your thoughts. Just let them arise and disappear on their own.

If you become aware you are getting immersed in a thought, notice what took you away from observing them and then gently bring your attention back to having awareness of your thoughts again. Getting immersed in a thought is completely normal. Just notice it and shift your attention back to observing.

Simply shift your attention back to your breathing after doing a few minutes of “thought observing.” Open your eyes when you feel ready.

4). Body Scan

Take some time to get into a laying down position, go ahead and be on your backs with you palms facing up and your feet falling slightly apart. If getting on the ground is uncomfortable this can also be done sitting on a comfortable chair with feet resting on the floor.

Next focus on lying very still for the time it takes to do the body scan and move with awareness if it becomes necessary to adjust their position.

Now focus on bringing awareness to the breath, noticing the rhythm, the experience of breathing in and expelling out. Try not to change or force the way you are breathing but rather just hold gentle awareness on the breath.

Bring attention to the body and how it feels, the texture of clothing against the skin, the contours of the surface on which the body is resting, the temperature of the body and the environment.  

Notice any parts of the body that are tingling, sore, or feeling particularly heavy or light, are there any areas of body where you don’t feel any sensations at all or are hypersensitive.

Next is to begin the body scan, and after each tense and relax notice the difference between the first noticing:                 

                 1. Notice toes of both feet, rest the feet tense and relax
                 2. Notice the Lower legs, tense and relax
                 3. Notice the Knees, tense and relax
                 4. Notice Thighs, tense and relax
                 5. Notice the Pelvic region- buttocks, tailbone, pelvic bone, genitals, tense and relax
                 6. Notice the Abdomen, tense and relax
                 7. Notice Chest, tense and relax
                 8. Notice Lower back, tense and relax
                 9. Notice Upper back- back ribs & shoulder blades, tense and relax
                 10. Notice the Hands (fingers, palms, backs, wrists), tense and relax
                 11. Notice the Arms (lower, elbows, upper), tense and relax
                 12. Notice the Neck, tense and relax
                 13. Notice the Face and head (jaw, mouth, nose, cheeks, ears, eyes, forehead, scalp, back&top of head), tense and relax

After the Body Scan is complete and you feel ready to come back to the room, slowly open your eyes and move naturally to a comfortable sitting position.

What parents should be doing to teach their kids/teens to feel good about their bodies?!?

Limit what you can from your daughter’s/son's exposure to the media and popular culture when they are young. This is valuable because it will allow them to develop their creativity, imagination and their own ideas from experiencing relationships and first hand experiences. Of course as they grow, media messages will start to get in, so having rules and routines from the start can help them control their own experiences as they grow and mature. As we all know there is helpful and healthy messages to take in, but there is also so many unhelpful and unhealthy messages out their, and having them be early and skeptical about some message will help them be informed consumers. 

Help them process the messages in the media. Often times there is such a limited focus in the media, try to help them avoid the narrow focus on appearance and consumerism that often dominates the media. By helping your daughter/son process the messages they see on the screen and develop their own ideas about them, you can prepare them to better resist the media’s pervasive stereotypes, and privileges that are displayed all throughout the media. Sit and have a conversation that is open and honest about your experiencing consuming media, and ask them to do the same. 

Avoid making negative comments about your own body. When adults make comments about their own body, children often feel like they most join in, even if it doesn't make much sense to them. When the conversation about dinner starts off with "I ate too much at lunch, I'm only going to have a salad for dinner, so I can fit into that dress I bought for the cruise", your kid begins to want to imitate that, just as they have learned just about everything else for you. As a teen it does take on a life of its own, and they will either reject that message completely (which can also be unhealthy) or follow that message exactly (which again can also be unhealthy). Its best to take a neutral stance about food, not labeling them as "good" or "bad", as well as teach your children to eat when they are hungry and stop eating when full. 

Avoid commenting on other peoples weight loss or weight gain. A lot of parents congratulate kids on losing weight or even find themselves saying things like “That outfit looks great on you – so slimming!” But all this does is remind kids/teens that they are more loveable and valued when skinny. If a child really does have a weight related health issue, addressing that with a trained health professional will be a lot more effective that reinforcing the inaccurate message that losing weight is a cure-all for everything from illness to social problems that kids/teens already get every day in the rest of their lives.

Teach children to take a holistic approach to their health and happiness. Often times parents can be overly focused on one aspect of their kids/teens life, for example the parents who get really jazzed about their kids sports, or their kids grades or their kids friendships, or their kids body shape. Just like you as a parent that wears the variety of hats of mom, career women, stay at home mom, coach, wife, teacher, nurse, etc. your kid/teen offers all types of those things too. For example, lets say you really want your teen to get into the best college, so you focus in on their grades to the point that you talk about them at least 3-5 times a week, or you ask to talk to their teachers, or you simply primary reward them with praise when they do well in school. This can lead a child to become so focused on pleasing you and the expectations that have been set, and ignore other strengths they have, like being a good friend, or acting in a school play or just being a teen. I say this all, to promote their be balance in a kids life, focus on mental health, academic success, their happiness, their relationships, their physical health and all things in between. If you do this as they grow they will be more resilient as adults and things will take care of themselves, so stop putting so much pressure on yourself and on them. 

Teach Kids That Weight Gain and Changes to Body Shape Are a Needed and Expected Part of Getting Older. For a lot of kids, the changes of puberty are rough. Bodies can morph from something familiar to something foreign seemingly overnight. Often, that means that adolescents develop more visible body fat, and girls, in particular, may develop breasts and see their hips, butts, thighs, and bellies grow. But this is not a problem. It is a just sign that someone is growing up. Kids should be reminded that we need fat on our bodies. It’s crucial for brain development, for menstruation, and to keep us warm – just to name a few basics. 

If you want to learn more on this connect with Stephanie Konter-O'Hara, LPC at the Contact page