Superbowl Sunday is almost upon us, and the Superbowl ads are already being released. Volkswagen has released an ad that features a dog getting in shape for his sport. While it’s obviously meant in jest, in some ways it’s great because it arguably sends the message that anyone can train for their personal goals, whether it’s chasing cars (and vaulting through trees), fitting through the doggie door, or whatever.
What are your goals? I’m participating in a 5k on Saturday, but what physical movement and enrichment do you hope to accomplish over the weekend?
Tag: wellness
Life Lessons Passed On
I was really inspired by that blog post I shared a couple of months ago about cancer survivors and what they’d learned about life. I also posted a survey done with older folks last year giving advice on what NOT to do.
Well, thankfully all of that hard-earned knowledge is coming out in book form. Many of the interviews can also be at legacyproject.human.cornell.edu. From the NYTimes:
Eventually, most of us learn valuable lessons about how to conduct a successful and satisfying life. But for far too many people, the learning comes too late to help them avoid painful mistakes and decades of wasted time and effort…
Enter an invaluable source of help, if anyone is willing to listen while there is still time to take corrective action. It is a new book called “30 Lessons for Living” (Hudson Street Press) that offers practical advice from more than 1,000 older Americans from different economic, educational and occupational strata who were interviewed as part of the ongoing Cornell Legacy Project.
Its author, Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at the College of Human Ecology at Cornell and a gerontologist at the Weill Cornell Medical College, calls his subjects “the experts,” and their advice is based on what they did right and wrong in their long lives.
You can also read a summary of their advice in the article: Advice From Life’s Graying Edge on Finishing With No Regrets
What are your life lessons?
Related articles
- What Are Your Life Lessons? (well.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Finishing With No Regrets (3quarksdaily.com)
- Advice From Life’s Graying Edge on Finishing With No Regrets (nytimes.com)
- Top 10 Lessons for Living from the Wisest Americans (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
Designing and Building for Wellness
Great blog post from The Patron Saint of Architecture about what it means for her to be an architect and build and design things for people’s overall health and wellness:
As architects, we seek to inspire those who move through the environments we create. It’s also our job to understand how the space will be used and create elements that support that use. The last leg of the stool, a part we often overlook, is the need to make buildings that support wellness. Even architects who design healthcare buildings often forget about this one as they work to meet many other challenges related to budget, program, operational and code requirements. Maybe it’s because wellness is such a slippery term. Much like the term “green,” “wellness” is often bandied about, a buzzword that makes some aspect of a product, design or organization sound like it’s good for us. So how do we know if it really is- much less translate that into design elements? I have been thinking about this issue for a while and even found an interesting website devoted to defining wellness complete with helpful questionnaires.
I’ve come to the conclusion that true wellness is multidimensional and positively impacts our physical, mental and social state of being. With that in mind, I have also observed that, as a profession, we kind of, sort of, dip our toe in the waters of designing for wellness. We embrace sustainable building standards, evidence-based design, lean design, even socially conscious strategies. However, these are just quantifiers. Building blocks of the wellness leg of the architecture stool, but not enough as stand-alones. True architecture of wellness must incorporate all of these measures, but spring from a much deeper intent.
Read her recommendations for building spaces that promote wellness at her blog post: architecture of wellness
Infographic: How Bikes Improve Everything!
Ok, maybe a bit of an overstatement, but I still like the infographic; sometimes it is easiest to explain really complicated, heavy issues using an image:
From Sustainable Business Oregon:
If the entire European Union boasted average cycling miles like Denmark’s the region’s emissions would drop by 25 percent. This according to the European Cycling Foundation.
But a cool infographic from a Northwest coalition of health care management advocates also points out the health benefits of bike commuting. For example: The average worker will lose 13 pounds in their first year of biking to work.
The group also posits that Portland’s investment in bike-commuting infrastructure will save the city millions in health care expenses.
Created by: Healthcare Management Degree
Rehabilitating Vacant Lots Improves Urban Health and Safety
Humans are greatly effected by the greenery in their environments, but remember how a few weeks back I was lamenting that not much robust analysis or study had been done on this kind of positive impact? Well, voila!
ScienceDaily (2011-11-17) — Greening of vacant urban land may affect the health and safety of nearby residents. In a decade-long comparison of vacant lots and improved vacant lots, greening was linked to significant reductions in gun assaults across most of Philadelphia and significant reductions in vandalism in one section of the city. Vacant lot greening was also associated with residents in certain sections of the city reporting significantly less stress and more exercise.
Journal Reference:
- C. C. Branas, R. A. Cheney, J. M. MacDonald, V. W. Tam, T. D. Jackson, T. R. Ten Have. A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2011; DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwr273
Steps to ease into being grateful, and how it benefits you psychologically
"The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us." according to the New York Times article, A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day.
Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.
But say you’re not in the habit of giving thanks. After all, we’re only asked to officially do it once or twice a year. Well, there are some pointers in the article to get you going:
Start with “gratitude lite.” – start out with writing just five things, and maybe a sentence or two about why you’re appreciative of them.
Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness – you don’t need to owe anybody anything to be grateful for them.
Try it on your family – even if they are horribly dysfunctional, you can still be grateful they passed the peas without throwing you a dirty look.
Don’t counterattack – okay, so maybe they did throw you a dirty look. By being grateful to them anyway, it puts individuals off guard and makes them more likely to be kinder in the future, according to some studies.
Share the feeling – … “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”
Try a gratitude visit.This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”
Contemplate a higher power. Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.
Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger…
And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself —
Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Using Play and Technology for Therapy
I truly think technology (and play) are underutilized when it comes to all kinds of therapy, partially because it’s expensive, and partially because people don’t know how to implement it. This article in the Wall Street Journal offers a great example of how people are integrating play AND technology into therapy.
Multitouch technology—which turned smartphones, iPads and other tablet computers into consumer sensations—has a new function: therapy for cerebral palsy and autism spectrum disorders, as well as a range of developmental disabilities. Researchers from at least three North American universities, including Iowa, are developing therapeutic applications for multitouch devices. Games developed by the Scientists’ Discovery Room Lab at Harvard University, and by University of Alberta researcher Michelle Annett, encourage children with cerebral palsy and stroke victims to stretch their range of upper arm and wrist motion.
“It’s a very motivating tool for the patients. It’s visual, the feedback is instant and it’s fun,” said Isabel Henderson, vice president of Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton, Canada, where games on a touch-screen table are part of stroke victims’ physical rehabilitation.
The new apps offer patients engaging ways to address their medical conditions over the long term, said Quentin Ranson, an occupational therapist at the Alberta hospital. They also could help reduce the time patients need to spend in expensive traditional therapy, Mr. Ranson said.
Children with cerebral palsy—a group of disorders caused by brain damage before or shortly after birth—work to improve their motor skills and coordination through repetitive exercises like wiping a cloth across a table, stringing beads on a pipe cleaner or throwing a ball back and forth. Patients recovering from stroke do much of the same, stacking cones and flipping cards to help them lift their arms against gravity.
more via the Wall Street Journal.
This is just one example of how using play and the right tools can encourage development and healing.
Related articles
- Computer Games as Therapy (online.wsj.com)
- Playing on a Tablet as Therapy (allthingsd.com)
- Sensor Glove Could Help Stroke Patients Recover Mobility Through Gaming | Ecouterre (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)
New WA hospitals are more open, less foreboding – seattlepi.com
Getting sick and not feeling well is scary, so it’s good to see hospitals becoming more in-tune to the whole user experience. Here is one such case, with a new hospital opening up in Enumclaw, WA.
“The innovative designs at Swedish/Issaquah and St. Elizabeth Hospital in Enumclaw, like other new hospitals, include big windows that let in natural light, rooms with pullout couches for overnight visitors, and even hospital beds that ask patients questions in different languages…
…The design highlights food and spa and wellness products. The hospital opens into a five-story atrium surrounded by a mall, and its lobby includes a fireplace and a destination restaurant with a wood-burning oven.
The changes are driven in part by competition for patients with good insurance, the Seattle Times reported, Outpatient services, giving prime space to medical offices and centers that provide chemotherapy and radiology were emphasized.
The new St. Elizabeth in Enumclaw opened in February with beds programmed to provide information and to ask questions in 20 languages. For example, a bed might tell a patient in Spanish: “You have a tube in your throat to help you breathe.” The realization that critically ill patients may not speak English prompted the purchase.
St. Elizabeth and the new $365 million Swedish campus are part of a U.S. hospital building boom in suburbs and fast-growing communities that is now evident in urban areas as well.”
more via New WA hospitals are more open, less foreboding – seattlepi.com.
More research is also finding that people who have views of nature heal faster when they’re sick or recovering from surgery, so bring on the light, bring on the green!
Related articles
- Today’s hospital: spacious, single rooms, talking beds (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- New Washington hospitals are more open, less foreboding (thenewstribune.com)
- Swedish/Issaquah design medical centers to benefit health, staff (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
June is “Me” month
- This month, kick your self-maintenance into high gear! Image via Wikipedia
Interested in joining me for a little “me” time? How about a whole month of it?
My mother and I have decided that for June, 2011, we are going to be totally self-centered. That’s right, we are going to focus entirely on ourselves; our health, our mental wellness, our physical fitness, taking time for ourselves, and figuring out what we want out of life. Neither one of us is very good at this kind of self-focused behavior, so it will be an interesting experiment to see if we can both pull it off.
So far I have done pretty good: I woke up early and did a productive, challenging workout, I have eaten quite healthy meals (oatmeal with raisins and a tuna salad, thank you very much!), did not spend an exhorbitant amount of time at work, tidied up some stuff online I’ve been meaning to do, finally asked my boss about a couple of nagging issues, and am planning to spend time doing fun stuff with my husband before going to bed at a reasonable hour. I actually started a day early yesterday and bought new clothes (some new, some new-to-me) that made me look and feel good, and had a decent dinner. Pretty good track record for only a day and a half.
I invite everyone to join me for “Me” month. If you can’t do a whole month, maybe choose a week. Or even one day a week. This isn’t about indulging in your every whim or being hedonistic or a narcissist. It’s about taking care of yourself for an extended period of time. Getting enough sleep. Eating healthy food, and not too much. Moving around, getting exercise. Figuring out who and what you want to spend more time on and DOING it!
We all have things we could be better at for self-maintenance, and often we take a lopsided approach. Some people focus entirely on what they put in their bodies, some only focus on how their body or mind performs, paying no attention to the other side. But we are all one big giant package of tissue and firing neurons, and all of it needs to be taken care of, not just the muscles OR the brain OR some other feature (your hair?).
Recently I asked what your deathbed regrets would be, so think of this as the next step: what can you do today to take better care of yourself, to make sure you don’t have those regrets, or at least delay that deathbed a bit more? I know some very healthy, well-rounded people, so I’m curious to see what they secretly think they need to work on.
Take some time to think about what your body and mind really need, unless you already know, and leave it in the comments below.
The top 5 regrets people make on their deathbeds – inspired by Lifehacks
They say hindsight is 20/20, and I find it very informative to find out what people wish they had done or are very happy they did, either at the end of a school year or sitting in a rocking chair on a porch in retirement. So this bit of anecdotal evidence is interesting, and while none of the regrets are surprising it’s good affirmation of what people’s priorities in life should be.
…the following regrets were first posted in The Observer in 2010, and we’ve recopied them for you here below. But instead of just the grandmotherly bits of advice about dreams having gone unfulfilled, we’ve supplemented each regret with some rockstar advice on how to not have these regrets in the digital age.
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
TNW Advice: We interview so many entrepreneurs here at The Next Web, some of whom will succeed, most of whom will fail. But it’s about going out and creating a reality out of what was once just an idea in your head.
read all 5 regrets, plus the added bits of TNW advice at The top 5 regrets people make on their deathbeds – Lifehacks.
What the five regrets basically constitute are making time for themselves, their friends and family, taking risks rather than playing it safe, and just giving space in their lives for happiness.
This is a really good exercise to do at any time, to see if you’re really living the life you want and what you can do to change it.
If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, this evening, whatever, what would your regrets be?
Mine would be:
1. Not taking that hiking vacation through Europe.
2. Not taking a sabbatical, more time for me.
3. Not finishing my thesis.
4. Not spending more time with my sister the last couple of years before she died, which translates into generally just spending more time with others I love before they kick the bucket.
5. Not starting a family.
Mental Flowers 