Creating organic, peaceful spaces can be arguably one of the most powerful, important acts for human wellness, both physically and mentally. These gardens are also peaceful just to look at, even if you can’t experience them firsthand.
Category: mental health
OpenIDEO – How might we create healthy communities within and beyond the workplace?
Wow, OpenIDEO is on a role lately with their challenges that get my creative juices rolling and my passions up, in a good way! This latest challenge is about wellness in the workplace:
Together with Bupa and the International Diabetes Federation, we’re asking our global community to help us explore how people can best be supported in the workplace to make positive changes to their health and wellness – and what skills and tools are needed to pass these positive changes onto their networks of co-workers, family and friends.
via OpenIDEO – How might we create healthy communities within and beyond the workplace?.
As the Chair of the Wellness Committee at my job for just under a year, we tried out a lot of different wellness incentives, some with better results than others. I feel very passionately about offices promoting and encouraging wellness; we spend the majority of our waking lives there, it’s cheaper in the long run for companies to have healthy and happy workers, and it promotes productivity and dedication from employees.
What are your ideas? Add them to the inspiration. I’ll have to share some of my ideas for this challenge on the blog, as well as my ideas from the previous OpenIDEO challenge I mentioned, which is currently in the concepting phase.
Related articles
- IDEO asks how to inspire communities to care about their environments (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)
Unhappy Employees Cost More (and how to reduce that cost)
A recent study of health factors and their associated costs at seven companies, published in the journal Health Affairs, found that “depression is the most costly among 10 common risk factors linked to higher health spending on employees.”
The analysis, found that these factors — which also included obesity, high blood sugar and high blood pressure — were associated with nearly a quarter of the money spent on the health care of more than 92,000 workers.
First the employees were assessed for health risks, then researchers tracked their medical spending from 2005 through 2009.
The average medical spending for each employee was $3,961 a year. In total, $82 million, or 22 percent, of the $366 million annually spent on health care for the workers was attributed to the 10 risk factors, the study found.
The relationship between higher spending and depression was the strongest, with 48 percent more spending for workers with a propensity for that widespread problem.
via VPR News: Depression And Health Spending Go Together.
Now, to be fair, this is a fairly small study of just seven companies, and the article didn’t say how many employees worked at these companies. However, this is definitely a trend that has been spotted at least anecdotally by many HR managers, so it’s nice to see that there is some “official” analysis being done on the issue.
So what can employers do about this? My fear is that employers would discriminate, unintentionally or intentionally, against people who suffer from depression. But these days many people will be diagnosed with depression due to a temporary life situation such as a death in the family, or their jobs, so being fired for temporary sadness is probably not a good idea for companies.
Instead, my hope is that companies would invest more on making people’s job satisfaction higher. As of two years ago, Americans reported the lowest job satisfaction ever recorded. That means employers can be doing A LOT more to improve their employees’ lives at work. And a lot of that has to do with feeling supported by their managers, and feel like they are heard and respected and overall a part of the team. A lot of that comes from having fun at work.
This philosophy has been spouted in several different books and magazines, and has been shown to work well in classrooms as well, referred to as the “Responsive Classroom” approach.
The Responsive Classroom approach centers on several ostensibly mundane classroom practices. Each morning students form a circle, greet one another, share bits of news, engage in a brief, fun activity and review the day’s agenda. The idea is to build trust, ensure a little fun (which adolescents crave) and confront small problems before they become big. Students might welcome one another with salutations from a foreign language. An activity might involve tossing several balls around a circle in rapid succession. Students share weekend plans or explore topics like bullying before lessons begin. (New York Times)
This approach could very easily be applied to a business setting, in fact it sounds like a team kick-off meeting one might see in a corporate environment. Taking time to connect with other coworkers and laugh a little before diving in to the day’s work has been shown to work wonders for productivity and boost morality in both school and work settings.
There is definitely a drive and expectation in many industries to work longer, faster, harder hours, and be available and working at all hours. But that drive is unsustainable, demonstrated by the low job satisfaction and high burnout rates in many industries, from high-tech to physicians. Taking time to play a little bit at work, or just connect with coworkers, is being shown as an effective way to reduce depression related to work and job burnout, increase productivity, and create a more cohesive company with more loyalty overall to the company’s mission.
So long story short: remember to bring the koosh ball to your next meeting.
Related articles
- Burnout hitting more workers, study says (sfgate.com)
- The relationships of empowerment, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment among Filipino and American registered nurses working in the U.S.A. (udini.proquest.com)
- The relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction (udini.proquest.com)
- Study: Burnout on the rise among workers (rep-am.com)
- New research reveals job satisfaction is determined by our work colleagues (prweb.com)
- Burnout up among employees (usatoday.com)
Attention Disorder or Not, Children Prescribed Pills to Help in School – NYTimes.com
I find this article in today’s New York Times extremely disturbing:
When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall.
The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.
“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”
via Attention Disorder or Not, Children Prescribed Pills to Help in School – NYTimes.com.
Sadly the doctor is correct that many schools refuse to change a child’s environment to improve academic success, namely that they are cutting out activities like recess and P.E. in order to make more time for studying.
However, P.E., recess, and just getting outside for a quick breath of fresh air have all shown to also be extremely effective ways to improve attention and academic success. Yet because these activities are getting cut out of the school day, doctor’s feel like they must prescribe these incredibly strong, brain-chemistry changing medications to growing brains, many of these drugs with strong side effects .
I have no problem with using these drugs for what they were originally intended for, but prescribing them basically as “performance-enhancing” drugs just seems unethical to me. We frown upon athletes and grown-ups in the business world from taking speed and other kinds of drugs that are supposed to improve performance (other than coffee of course, that seems pretty much like a must-have for adults), but it’s okay for students so they can do well in elementary and middle school? To put in mildly, yuck!
I hope other people will be as outraged as I am and stand up for a child’s right to recess and P.E., and actually NOT studying from time to time, rather than encouraging giving them strong medications in order to perform well on standardized tests.
Related articles
- NYT Hits The Problem With ADHD Drugs: They Work (forbes.com)
- Raising the Ritalin Generation – NYTimes.com (mbcalyn.com)
Visualizations, brainstorming, and daydreaming
I’ve been reading about visualization a lot lately. It can seem kind of hokey or too touchy-feely for some, and I’m usually not one to buy into “if you build it, they will come” kinds of ideas. However, studies are finding that visualization has a lot of positive benefits; usually articles and research focus on the relaxation and pain reduction aspects of visualization, but it also helps formalize one’s ideas, missions, and goals, and how to achieve them.
When most people visualize something for relaxation purposes, they think of outdoor spaces, whether it’s the beach, the woods, or a mountain top. Something wide open. Very few people think of cityscapes when trying to visualize a relaxing place. Women in labor or people using visualization for pain reduction will visualize things opening and releasing, usually a flower or something else natural.
For goal setting, visualization is definitely more personal, but it also often involves the person visualizing themselves doing something they enjoy, whatever it is that makes them feel happy and alive, energized and inspired to go after their goals. Scoring the game-winning goal, building the perfect dream house, nailing the presentation at work. The object of the exercise in all of these cases is imagining themselves in a specific scenario, seeing, tasting, smelling exactly what that’s like, being happy and successful.
Scientists and strategists often describe how sitting with a problem, thinking through its complexities and possible scenarios to solve the challenge.
What’s also interesting to me is that all of these scenarios for visualization could also be described as slightly more focused daydreaming.
Daydreaming, which is considered a type of play, is often dismissed as a waste of time. But it has been shown to be extremely useful for both children and adults in problem-solving, understanding mathematical or biological concepts, or just coming up with new ideas, whether it’s understanding energy or butterfly wings. It’s also good training for more focused practices like visualization, meditation, or focused brainstorming practiced in many professions.
My advice is to take some time this weekend and daydream on a topic of interest or a problem you’ve been having, or move up a step in complexity and try visualization or brainstorming on it.
There’s really no one way to daydream or visualize, although there are lots of suggested techniques out there.
What do you find yourself daydreaming about? Do you have a goal, dream, passion? Think about what that might look like? What are you doing, how are you doing it?
Do you have a problem or challenge that has been creeping into your mind without your consent? Instead of pushing it away, let it come in and think about it? Why is it bothering you? What are some ways to fix it?
Wishing you all a happy Friday, and a visualization-filled weekend.
Related articles
- The Power of Daydreaming: Why You Should Let Your Mind Wander (marksdailyapple.com)
- Did You Daydream Today? (healinginwriting.wordpress.com)
- Two Easy Brainstorming Techniques (verynovel.wordpress.com)
- 14 More Ideas for Daydreaming (tropicaltheartist.wordpress.com)
- It pays to be a daydream believer in a fast-moving age (express.co.uk)
Outdoor Play Poster
From the nonprofit organization Voice of Play and their host organization, the IPEMA (International Play Equipment Manufacturing Assocation):
This poster is appropriate for any player, whether you are 2 or 92.
What other reasons can you think of to play outside? Leave them in the comments below.
Penguins get their own watery highway
I recently posted about the Philadelphia Zoo’s plans to open up their overhead walkways to a variety of different mammals. Well now an aquarium in Tokyo has opened a similar skyway… for penguins!
From Inhabitat:
At Tokyo’s Sunshine Aquarium, penguins are getting a taste of what flight might be like. The aquarium is currently hosting a special penguin exhibit that involves letting the penguins swim in the “Sunshine Aqua Ring”— which is normally reserved for the sea lions — for one hour each evening. So while they aren’t exactly taking flight, it’s still a unique way to view penguins that probably can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world.
On the roof, the open-air “Aqua Ring” is elevated about 7.5 feet off the ground, giving visitors an opportunity to view sea lions — and now penguins — swimming from beneath. (This videoshoes sea lions swimming laps in the Aqua Ring.) The “flying penguin” exhibit currently runs from 6:30 and 7:30 PM, and it is expected to run through September 2, 2012.
IF you just happen to be in Tokyo soon, do “fly” by and let me know what you think. This sounds like a great enrichment for the penguins as well as human visitors.
Related articles
- A Cool Sight for the Hot Summer! See Penguins Fly – at a Rooftop Aquarium in the Middle of Tokyo (en.rocketnews24.com)
- Overhead Aquarium (idiotyouth.wordpress.com)
- This Aquarium Is the Only Place On Earth Where Penguins Can Fly (gizmodo.co.uk)
- This Aquarium Is the Only Place On Earth Where Penguins Can Fly [Aquariums] (gizmodo.com)
6 Tips to Stay Playful Your Entire Life
Happy Friday! Lately on Fridays I’ve been sharing my next great adventure destination, but this weekend that destination is staying put! And boy am I gonna have fun doing it! 🙂
For those of you who are also staying home this weekend and don’t know what to do about it, or maybe you had a loooooong week and you know you need to inject some fun into your day but your brain is so fried you can barely talk or type straight, here are some great suggestions from Remembering to Play. In fact, they recommend these tips for living an overall playful life, not just a playful day or two (although that is certainly a good start):
1. Play with movement: Children have a wider range of body expression than adults. We tend to move our bodies in the same, often rigid and predictable way. When walking down the street try moving your body differently. Start in small ways. Swing your hands in a different way, bounce your head from side to side, or shift your shoulders back and forth, one at a time. After a while try something bigger. Zig zag or walk backwards or sideways, or skip over the lines on the sidewalk. Or while walking in your office hallway twirl around one time…or perhaps more than once, tap the walls, or strut like you just made a million dollars for your organization! Walk like you are the bees knees…because you are!
2. Play with perspective: Instead of always looking straight ahead, or in your usual direction, look up or down, and in a direction you would not normally point your eyes. You may notice something different that you have never seen before. A bird, a lovely coloured leaf, a funny looking cloud, a happy couple cuddling. It is easy, especially in big cities, to point our nose to ground and plow forward. Let’s remember that life is not about getting there but rather enjoying the ride. As you point your eyes in new directions, you never know what you might see, and what may come about from this new perspective.
3. Play with words/conversation: Whether it is, How’s it going, How was your day, or our conventional ways of starting a Monday morning meeting, we have many verbal or conversational routines. It takes awareness and creativity to inject something new and fresh into the mix. For instance, instead of saying Hello to your friend, you could say Hey Hey, what do you say!? Instead of calling your friend by their name, give them an unexpected nickname. Call them Sunshine or Peaches. (For over three years, a friend and I have consistently called each other Steve. It still brings us and others a good chuckle!) Or start your meeting off by having everyone share the last time they had a really good laugh. Read Creative Connections for more ideas.
4. Play with your surroundings: What you surround yourself with either feeds or depletes your creative, authentic Self. How often do you watch the news? Is the TV blaring in the background? What books do you read? Do they inspire you? What colour are your walls and what pictures do you hang from them. What music do you listen to? Could you play more music in the background, say when cooking dinner or cleaning your home? Do you have plants, or earth coloured tones in your home? Who do you spend your time with? Do your friends support your playful, authentic Self? Can they hold space for the fullness of You? Part of living a playful life is creating the container for playful living, and this means being clear on what supports or does not support authentic living.
5. Play with diverse activities: As creatures of habit, it is easy to always order the same food, buy the same groceries, visit the same theatre and run the same route. Play means looking up when we normally look down, turning left when right is our regular choice. As we expand our range of choices and travel down new paths, we improve our brain functioning by building new neural pathways, and open to new possibilities. So instead of always seeing a movie, go to a live show instead. Instead of always eating the same meals, try to make one new meal a week. Join a class, take a spontaneous road trip, visit a local museum, volunteer your time for a good cause, talk to a homeless person, pay for your friend’s meal, stop to smell a flower, play with a dog that is waiting for its owner, organize a games night, or start a book club. Do one thing different and you never know who you might meet or what adventure may unfold!
6. Play with your smile: A single smile can change someone’s day for the better. I have experienced this when feeling a bit down, someone offers me a warm smile and suddenly I can feel my heart again. Life is not so bad anymore. In the same way that a picture is worth a thousand words, so too is a smile. So share your smile freely and fully. And share your smile with You as well. When feeling down, close your eyes and imagine a soft, warm, loving smile slowly appearing inside you. Allow it to get brighter, filling you with joy and light. Let your inner, playful spirit smile at you from the inside.
Read the original article.
Have a play-filled day! It will help you be more productive at work overall.
Related articles
- Tips on how to be more creative by John Cleese (presentationzen.com)
- Imagination on a Friday… Ride on! (drses.wordpress.com)
- 13 Tips to Make Vacations a Reality (openforum.com)
Animals get their own trail systems at Philadelphia Zoo
I am so excited about this I’m practically jumping out my seat to tell people. I first read about it in USA Today; animals are getting to wander outside of their exhibits, share spaces with other animals, and over all just chill around the zoo. Yup, that’s right:
The Philadelphia Zoo on Thursday opens the first leg of an ambitious enclosed trail system designed to allow large animals such as great apes, bears and big cats to roam throughout the zoo. It will give them access to one another’s habitats in a kind of time-share arrangement and offer visitors a closer look at wild animals behaving like wild animals.
Other U.S. zoos have created paths between exhibits, mixed habitats, elevated paths or rope swings for apes.
“This is an emerging trend” among zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, says the group’s senior vice president for external affairs, Steve Feldman. “Great animal care means providing for animals’ physical and psychological welfare. These pathways and rotations really allow them that kind of stimulation.”
The Philadelphia Zoo’s program is the first to encompass the entire zoo. “This campus-wide effort to build this trail system is unique,” Feldman says. “It’s innovative and is really taking that trend to the next level.”
Because it’s the first effort of its kind, “we don’t have a road map to see how others have done it,” says Vik Dewan, the Philadelphia Zoo’s chief executive officer. The system “puts animal well-being first and foremost,” he says, and gives visitors “an experience here, that when combined with other experiences, paints the bigger picture of how they could be more effective stewards of the world.”
The critters will have to “timeshare” so the orangutans won’t be hanging out with the brown bears. In fact the bears might not get a chance to use the pathways until winter when it’s too cold for the primates. But that said, it’s sure to be a boon for the animals, as well as for the people. The zookeepers already report seeing a positive result from a similar vine system in their primate exhibit.
The article mentions other zoos starting to move in this direction. But which ones, and what exactly are they up to? I’m curious to learn more. Any hints? Leave them in the comments below.
animals given access to the new trail are expected to be more active and
to benefit from the stimulation of being able to see visitors and other
animals from a new perspective.
Let the children play outside, darn it!
While summer may just be getting into full swing in my neck of the woods, it’s almost over for most everyone else (*sob!*). It seems everyone is trying to take advantage of a few last weekends of summer before school starts back up. But for some kids, that is a lot harder than it sounds. Free Range Kids recently posted about separate instances of a mom and a dad getting in trouble for letting their kids play outside unattended.
Today the police visited my home after one of my neighbors called in about my children being outside alone…in our yard with a home on two sides and six foot fence on the other two sides. The officer said, “Don’t have me called back out.” So now, do I have to go outside with my children every time they go out? I have a chronic illness and sitting outside all day sucks for me. They love being outside. They come in for bathroom breaks, they come in to tattle, they come in to say “I Love You”… they are in and out every 5-10 minutes. I check on them anytime I pass the door, and I lay or sit next to an open window. If I call for them, they come to the door/window and answer as a “check in.” They will literally stay outside from wake up to 9 pm, when I force them to come in, with breaks for the above and for food. They were perfectly safe. I don’t know what to do.
Dear Lenore: A neighbor of mine called the Texas CPS (Child Protective Services) and the Police on my wife and I because we allow our children, ages 6 and 8, to play in the courtyard directly in front of our apartment. CPS has been investigating my family since April 4th 2012, it is now August 12 2012, and all they have come up with is the one report to Police about my 6-year-old being outside in front of his home. Now we are dealing with the courts in a “Negligent Supervision” case, which makes absolutely no sense because my child wasn’t hurt or asking anyone for help. I was outside with my son when the Police arrived, but the CPS caseworker insists that I take drug tests and parenting classes. People are not neighbors anymore, they are just @$$holes. – A Texas Dad
Unfortunately the Free Range Kids blog has waaaay too many examples of this kind of reaction from authorities.
I find this really concerning, since we’re basically telling children they can’t be responsible for themselves when parents are trying to teach their children independence and responsibility, we’re not allowing them unstructured play time which is crucial for learning and brain development, that it is a way more dangerous world out there than it really is, AND it discourages them from exploring and getting exposure to nature and natural sunlight, both things that are crucial for growing bodies.
Why are children no longer allowed to play in their own front yards? I’m sorry if this comes off as a rant, but I feel not letting children play outside and learn on their own is a serious problem if we are simultaneously so concerned about “winning” the education race against other nations.
Aside from yelling at CPS and the police, what can we do as concerned citizens, either with children or without, to encourage and enable children to play outside and allow parents to let their children roam a little bit freer and get the unstructured, unsupervised play time they need in order to develop normally? Ideas welcome in the comments below.
Related articles
- My Kids Are Not Allowed to Play Outside (So Now They Are In the Mobile Home with Me) (freerangekids.wordpress.com)
- Virgin Airlines Australia moved firefighter from seat next to boys because men can’t be seated next to unaccompanied children (boingboing.net)
- Happy Take Your Kids To The Park (and leave them there) Day (yogicare.wordpress.com)
- New article: what became of outdoor childhood? (bluemilk.wordpress.com)
Mental Flowers 