What Makes You, You? Be a Surgeon and Dissect Your Stress, Seek Laughter

Hi Folks! Connor and Nick here from Healthy Living With Nick and Connor. Thanks again for being on our email list, it means a lot, and we are excited to share our weekly email with you. We hope you enjoy it! Here is what we hope you take away from this one: 

1. Seek to know yourself a little more everyday

2. Put your mind on the table and start dissecting

3. Teach yourself to seek out the humor and comedy in life and get your healthy dose of laughter

Starter Mindset Tip: To Know Oneself is Always a Good Place to Begin

         If I were to ask you what makes you, you, and you were able to give me a confident and clear answer; you would be in the small minority. Knowing ourselves is not an easy feat and is an ever-changing target. It comes with two big advantages; firstly, it allows you to better know your strengths and weaknesses, and secondly it allows you to know where you truly enjoy spending your time. One thing you could do would be to write down all the positive and negative traits you can think of (for example [+] honesty, integrity, sense of humor, compassion, leadership, generosity, creativity; [-] vanity, gluttony, arrogance, resentfulness, judgment, hypocrisy, envy, dependence, etc.). This list can get expansive and can be whatever you come up with; then assign yourself a grade from 1- needs work to 10- master. This will demonstrate to you where your strengths lie as well as your weaknesses. If you are looking to improve parts of yourself, it also serves as a way to know where to begin. If you do this a few times a year you will start to see where you are making or losing ground. Next, think or write down a short list of those things that you enjoy doing above all else. What would you do if you had a month off of work or obligations? This will allow you to get back to those things and carve out more time for them. If you are finding this challenging, ask yourself “what did I used to enjoy doing as a kid?” and maybe reintroduce that into your life. 

Health Recipe: Stress Dissection 

Timing: 2 – 5 minutes regularly

Level of Difficulty: Medium - Hard

Serving Size: Small

Spiciness: Medium Spicy

INGREDIENTS

You, a pen, and paper

 REASONING AND BENEFITS

         Stress comes in all forms, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. In some contexts, it can be healthy in that it helps provide some motivation, determination and energy to get things done, and can help build resilience. However, if we are not careful, the insidious and negative effects can start to take over. Stress can be very hard on the body if not kept in check, and can worsen both mental and physical health. Chronically it has been shown to worsen digestive tract health (by rerouting blood away from it), worsen the health of our blood vessels themselves, and may increase the risk of heart disease, cognitive decline, and cancer. Needless to say, it is not good. To better get a handle on our stress, this recipe comes with two components: recognizing when you are stressed, and recognizing why you are stressed. Without first recognizing that you are stressed in the first place it is hard to know what is causing it. As soon as you start asking yourself whether you are feeling stressed you will already be ahead of the game. The next step is to discern what is causing it in the first place. This may sound simple and sometimes it will be, but for the subtler forms of stress it may require some surgeon level in-depth self-analysis. The minute you recognize what is causing you stress, the doors to reducing or harnessing it will open.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Make it part of your morning routine to check yourself for stress (it pairs well with coffee).

2. Try to relax any part of your body that is feeling tense.

3. Ask yourself “what is causing me stress?”

4. If the cause of stress is not obvious, or you find you are under more chronic stress, set aside longer durations of time (maybe with some pen and paper) and try to get to the bottom of it. Until you are able to get a sense of it, the stress will be hard for you to harness.

5. Think about what will help reduce stress for you – maybe it’s getting some things done on the to-do list, or talking about it, or stretching more, sleeping more, studying or training, etc.

6. Think on what may lead to you being more stressed in the next week, month, year and try to prepare yourself for how to meet it. 

PRO TIP: Stress can be a good or bad thing, if we are aware of how it is affecting us and why we are feeling it we can harness it for the good.

* Depending on how you manifest stress, learn ways to protect yourself from its harm – as an example if you tend to carry stress in your upper back and neck (maybe you’re prone to headaches) then make it a regular habit to stretch these areas to keep them loose.

** Sometimes stress comes from being overtired, recognize when what you need is sleep.

*** For expert level – Think on what may lead to you being more stressed in the next week, month, year and try to prepare yourself for how to meet it.

Dessert Quote: 

 “There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter — loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.” Dr. William Ostler 

OR

“We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.” – Dr. William Ostler  

Now we want to hear from YOU! Please let us know what you think of today’s newsletter, and send us an example of how you applied the health recipe to your life! We would love to share how you introduced this week’s recipe into your life’s unique menu. Thanks and have a great Sunday!