Stress

Stop Dieting, Start Savoring

January 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stop Dieting, Start Savoring Research suggests that excluding entire food groups, banning your favorite foods, forcing yourself to count calories, and measuring success by a number on a scale may actually make you want to eat more. Restrictive dieting can slow your metabolism down, making it even harder to lose weight over the long term.

You’re more likely to be successful at keeping weight off if you lose weight gradually and steadily. Be more mindful of what you eat and how you eat.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your favorite foods and indulging in your cravings for cookies, potato chips, or ice cream. All you have to do is cut back. Practice awareness by slowing down and thinking about what you’re eating and why you’re eating it.

Don’t gulp your food; you’ll overeat before you realize that you’re full. Instead, rest between bites. Take time to chew your food thoroughly. You really don’t need as much food as you think you do.

When you eat out, keep your food-mindfulness on the right track. Keep hunger under control beforehand. Don’t skip meals. Control portion size. Share your meal or take half of it home.

Idea for Impact: Eating should be a pleasurable activity. No food is inherently good or bad, and there’s no need to build an adversarial relationship with food.

A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset

January 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

It’s okay to have some clutter and untidiness occasionally.

A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset Sometimes, look away when the kids scatter crumbs or toys are strewn all over the house. Instead of spending an afternoon swiffering, vacuuming, scrubbing, and polishing, just play with your kids.

Let yourself off for not getting all the chores done or keeping a flawlessly curated, Instagramable home. If you have guests coming over, stop agonizing and embrace a tidy-enough household. No need to live for your dinner guests—your home doesn’t always have to look the way you want.

Idea for Impact: Train yourself to care less. Yeah, really.

Perfectionism is a wicked way to live life. Look for ways to reach your goals without being perfect.

Setting unrealistic expectations only makes you vulnerable to emotional difficulties. That’s what perfectionism does. Perfection is holding yourself to a paradigm wherein anything less than “perfect” is, in one way or another, failure.

Think about how much more productive you could be if you stop carrying the weight of excessive expectations on your shoulders.

Why is Task-Planning so Time-Consuming?

January 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Planning, which saves time, itself can take quite a bit of time. It’s an interesting quasi-paradox that I’m sure you’ve run into.

Why is Task-Planning so Time-Consuming? That planning is long-drawn-out is one of the main criticisms of even the supposedly solid task-management systems out there. Take David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach, for example. Achieving the system’s potential fully is simply overwhelming. Allen’s method focuses more on the capturing, reviewing, and planning of tasks than it does on the actual doing them.

The key to time management is awareness. Think realistically about your time by recognizing it is a limited resource. Always ask yourself, even when you’re planning your time out, “Is this time-effective?”

Don’t over-organize your list. Don’t spend too much time making it look nice. Don’t feel like you need to do everything on your list. Don’t put anything on your list when you’d be wiser to just do the task now and save the time it takes to put it on your list and think about it again later.

Idea for Impact: Refine your planning approach further. Remember, the benefits of any tool must exceed its costs.

Real Ways to Make New Habits Stick

January 6, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Want to make a new habit stick? Try piggybacking or ‘stacking’ it to an existing one.

Real Ways to Make Habits Stick Choose something you have no problem motivating yourself to do—say, brushing your teeth—then combine it with some habit you want to acquire. The existing pattern serves as the prompt for the new habit.

Most people have robust morning and evening routines; try stacking new habits into those practices. For example, if you want to do some mindfulness meditation every day, do it after brushing your teeth in the morning. Your wake-up routine becomes the cue to build a new meditation habit.

Better yet, associate the habit you want to achieve with a ‘temptation’ (something you love doing,) like sipping your morning cuppa joe. Your habit stacking plan may look like this: “After I meditate for ten minutes, I will have my coffee.” This way, the habit will become more attractive to you, making it more likely to stick.

Idea for Impact: Good habits build automatically when you don’t have to consciously think about doing them. Look for patterns in your day and think about how to use existing habits to create new, positive ones. Stacking habits can encourage you to remember, repeat, and, therefore, maintain a series of behaviors. Set yourself up for success.

How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times

December 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

My biggest takeaway from Daniel M. Cable’s Exceptional: Build Your Personal Highlight Reel and Unlock Your Potential (2020) is maintaining an inventory of reminders of all of the things you’re grateful for: the achievements, accomplishments, things you’re proud of, and events you want to celebrate—even others’ notes of gratitude.

When you’re entranced by ongoing anxieties and unable to find refuge in presence, the negative self-talk becomes your default setting. Unable to focus on what is happening right now, you spiral downward and find yourself in ruts that hold you back from your potential. Reigniting a certain sense of pride within yourself can jolt you into a more optimistic cycle and create real personal change. It can enable you to maintain a stable center no matter what’s going on in your life right now.

Personal Highlight Reel - How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times Research on the ‘Reflected Best-Self Exercise’ indicates that scanning the “highlight reel” of the best you’ve achieved in your life can help you, as it would a professional athlete, rediscover and reinforce how to repeat past successes. It can energize you to use your strengths even more and give more to others.

Idea for Impact: You make your most significant impact when focusing on what you do best. A personal highlight reel will remind you how others perceive you when you make your best impact and hope you build upon the unique strengths that make you exceptional.

How Emotional Resilience Improves with Age

December 17, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Studies of social and emotional aging have consistently shown that we tend to enjoy a better sense of emotional well-being as we grow older—starting from our late 50s.

The brain slows down, and memory deteriorates with age, so we process information slower. We get better at regulating the instinct to enact annoyance and anger.

As we get older, we tend to have a positive bias. We stop sweating the small stuff, pick our battles wisely, and find it easier to let go of situations we experience as unfavorable, especially with friends and family.

The lessons these studies bear for us all: organize your life’s physical and social aspects to reduce unnecessary stressors. Happiness is indeed a result, not a cause.

You’ll Overeat If You Get Bigger Servings

October 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Small Plate Movement---You'll Overeat If You Get Bigger Servings

So many diets, so little evidence that they work. Many of the better plans boil down to basic strategies: eat lots of fruits and vegetables, stay active, and keep portions under control.

Most people have struggle with portion control

If you’re reading this article, you live in a society with too much food. Food production has become more industrialized and cheaper. Healthy food is not just more expensive than unhealthy food, but less convenient. Portion sizes have increased spectacularly in the past several decades—and that includes packaged foods in the grocery stores, meals served at restaurants, and plate sizes at home.

Dr. Brian Wansink, formerly director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (2001,) has shown that plate size prompts portion size. In study after study, he has found (some of his data analyses have been questioned) that the bigger the plate, the more you eat. This trend derives from an optical illusion—the same amount of food on a bigger plate seems smaller.

Whatever size of plate you choose, you’re likely to fill it. As a result, if you reduce your plates’ diameters from 12 inches to 10 inches, you’ll significantly reduce the amount of food you dish up. Besides, per Wansink, using a smaller plate gives the illusion that you’re getting more food. That’s a first step towards addressing your concerns about your health or waistline.

Visual aspects of a meal, such as portion size and plate sizes, can influence how much you eat

British food writer and food historian Bee Wilson’s brilliant First Bite: How We Learn to Eat (2015; my summary) states,

Being able to regulate the amount of food we eat according to our needs is perhaps the single most important skill when it comes to eating—and the one that we least often master. The first stage is learning to recognize whether the stomach is empty or not.

The first and most obvious step to weight loss is reducing the portion size—and thus the number of calories you eat. When you’re consuming fewer calories than the body uses, you’re likely to start losing weight.

Consider one of those “portion control plates” to help reset and reinforce in your mind what a portion size should be. Sectioned and color-coded, these plates take the guesswork out of getting nutrition from all food groups and reduce the risk of overeating.
Slow down when you eat, take time to chew and savor your food, and pause between mouthfuls. Stop when you are already full. You don’t need to eat every morsel of what’s dished out for you.
If you’re uncomfortable with not filling up your plate and risking disrespecting a host, say at a holiday party buffet, spread your portions around the plate and leave a bit of space around each food item. Your plate will look full but will have fewer calories.

Idea for Impact: Small plates help make portions look more substantial

If you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, keep the portions down. You certainly don’t need as much food as you think you do.

Get Everything Out of Your Head

September 9, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When there’s so much going on in your head, you’re constantly playing mental ping-pong. All those unfinished tasks can indeed affect your ability to be present with anything that you’re doing.

Sitting down to write out all the things that are weighing on your mind can boot out the clutter. Per the Zeigarnik Effect, interrupted tasks and unfinished thoughts tend to inundate you with a constant stream of reminders. Just the simple act of capturing a task can achieve a sense of completion for the moment.

Get It All Out Of Your Head - Reduce Stress Clear off your cluttered desk, pour some tea, put on some relaxing music, light a candle, mute the phone, and write down all the things you need to pay attention to. Work stuff, home stuff, kids stuff, paperwork, school stuff, friends stuff—all the stuff! Get it all out of your head.

Writing down everything that’s occupying your mind right now won’t solve your problems, but it makes them evident. This exercise makes it a lot easier to make good intuitive choices about where you should focus now and where it’s okay that you don’t focus now.

Idea for Impact: Stop what you’re doing right now and write down everything you have in your head. Not only will this exercise put in perspective all those things you need to keep track of, but also it’s a great way to reset your day.

The Dutch Practice of Doing Nothing: Niksen

July 26, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The Dutch have this practice they call Niksen (from niks doen, literally “nothing-ing.”) It entails being intentional about doing absolutely nothing. Doing something without purpose. A sort of sanctioned daydreaming indeed.

Niksen is gazing out the window and letting your mind wander. Unlike mindfulness meditation, in Niksen, you’re not observing your thoughts. You aren’t focusing on your breath. Nor are you bringing awareness back to the present moment.

In Niksen, you’re just being. You’re taking a break. You’re practicing stillness. You’re staring vacantly at the horizon. You’re taking the time to sit or stand—just be wherever you are. And you don’t do anything on purpose. No effort whatsoever. When thoughts occur, you don’t interrogate them; you simply let them come and go as they please.

Niksen - Dutch Technique of Doing Nothing, Just Being

As a stress-busting technique, Niksen is increasingly popular. Doing nothing is turning your back on hyper-connectedness and the storm of stress, anxiety, and depression. Scientists have shown that letting your minds escape from the task at hand helps different parts of your brain activate. This allows you to access information that may have previously been dormant and inaccessible. This accounts for creativity and heralds insights into wisdom.

Idea for Impact: Try Niksen, even for a minute or two each hour. It’s a great way to give yourself a little bit of wiggle room in moments of tension and fretfulness. At a minimum, brief escapes can add color and intrigue to your life and open you out beyond the quotidian.

Entitlement and Anger Go Together

July 15, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Exaggerated entitlement could possibly explain what’s driving the recent surge of abusive or violent incidents on flights in America.

We live in a time where everyone seems hypervigilant to the point where even a slight snub can be taken as an act of deliberate aggression—either reactively or without provocation. People want to assert themselves, and every little social interaction seems to turn quickly into a battleground of entitlement.

Self-Protective Efforts Heighten Entitlement

To make things worse, air travel sits at the confluence of so many things involving so many people (and circumstances) where each “participant” has little direct control over what’s happening to them and others around. Political polarization and mask mandates seem to have intensified these anxieties too. Moreover, the FAA’s zero-tolerance policy toward disturbances and the threat of massive fines are unlikely to disincentivize passengers and staff in the heat of the moment.

When people feel entitled, they’re not just frustrated when others fail to acknowledge and entertain—even listen to—their presumed superior rights. People feel deceived and wronged. They feel victimized, get angry, and exude hostility. Worse, they feel even more justified in their demands and thus assume an even stronger sense of entitlement as compensation.

Idea for Impact: Entitlement and Responsibility are Inextricably Linked

Underlying this kind of anger process is a lack of separation of rights from responsibility. No professional, social, or domestic environment can remain stable and peaceful without everyone respecting the fact that rights and responsibilities are inseparable.

Nobody is entitled to compassion or fair treatment without acting on the responsibility to give it to others. If you don’t care about how others feel, you can’t demand that they care about how you feel. It’s a formula for disaster in human interactions.

Stress

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Train yourself to care less. Yeah, really.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Most people have struggle with portion control

Visual aspects of a meal, such as portion size and plate sizes, can influence how much you eat

Idea for Impact: Small plates help make portions look more substantial

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Self-Protective Efforts Heighten Entitlement

Idea for Impact: Entitlement and Responsibility are Inextricably Linked

Wondering what to read next?