Category: wellness

A Little Solitude Can Be Good for You

“As much as it is important to socialize and be around friends, it can also be good to be alone, focus on yourself, and enjoy a little solitude.”

Sometimes, it’s good to recharge your batteries alone. We all need real social connection and friendship, that is for certain, but there is nothing wrong with seeking out solitude to enjoy your alone time. Everybody has a different tolerance for how much time alone they can handle before they seek out a social event, gathering, or activity to dust off the cobwebs and not let one’s social skills atrophy. As much as it is important to socialize and be around friends, it can also be good to be alone, focus on yourself, and enjoy a little solitude.

Solitude often has a negative connotation, and it is often associated with having it imposed on you or having it done without consent such as the similar phrasing of ‘solitary confinement.’ That kind of solitude is denigrating to one’s spirit and causes one to mentally break over time. Just like endless solitude is harmful to one’s health, I also think that is true for the opposite side of the spectrum when you are constantly surrounded by other people, some of them mere acquaintances or coworkers for which you are forced to be around and whose company you do not enjoy. There are many forms of loneliness, and it is true that you can be as lonely by yourself as you can in a room full of people who don’t care for you, or you don’t care for them.

If you are around people who constantly want something from you or need something from you, that can be as draining as it is to have no one to talk to or to share life with. Just as a balance of having some social activity is good for you, it is as important to be on your own sometimes and enjoy one’s own company. There have been times in my own life where I have sought to be on my own deliberately, not because I didn’t enjoy being around others, but that I needed the time alone to meditate, to think, to reflect, to problem solve, and to more fully observe the world around me. In extroverted cultures including in the United States, this kind of activity can be thought of as strange or unusual, but I find that my best ideas or my most relaxing moments can be on my own and even when doing nothing but just the art of being present in the world.

We constantly are having our attention pulled to the next meeting, the next call, the next trip, the next gathering that we can forget to take the time to be on our own in whatever form that may take. Solitary kind of activities have gone out of style lately for some people whether that is reading, writing, walking, meditating, or just doing nothing (looking at your phone doesn’t count here). While these things can be done in concert with other people around, these activities are best done alone in my view and help me to recharge so I can be more present and engaged when seeing friends or family members.

You shouldn’t wait on other people to live your life too even if it’s by yourself. If you must be alone for a little while on a trip, at a concert, in the library, and generally out in public by yourself, it is not the end of the world. No one is judging you for doing life solo sometimes and it can be healthy to do so. Rather than giving too many people too little of your attention or having it split too often, why not focus all of your attention on something singular such as the footsteps you take on a walk, the thoughts in your head as you absorb a good book, and the clacking of a keyboard as you work on your novel.

Being alone all the time is not healthy, I want to make that clear, but it’s also not healthy either to be surrounded by people all the time. Part of being a healthy adult is working to have a little solitude, a little social life, and mix it all together to rewarding yet refreshing lifestyle. By being on your own sometimes, you’ll be more reflective, more observant, more self-aware, and treasure those social moments more when you’re more present, more engaged, and happier to have that social muscle stimulated.

I’ve always been an advocate for a moderate and balanced life and that is why solitude should not always be shunned for someone to progress as a person. Our deepest thoughts, our brightest ideas, our healthiest habits aren’t always cultivated around other people, which is why it is important to use one’s solitude to see if you can think deeper, live better, and build more because your attention is focused inwards rather than outwards. Find out what your tolerance for solitude is and then see what it can give you when you’re alone, because you would be surprised how relaxing and necessary it can be, especially when you put that solitary time to good use.

Don’t Let Yourself Be Gaslighted

“There are numerous ways to combat gaslighting, but it is key to make sure you don’t let yourself be gaslighted, even when it is by people you are close to or have grown to trust or admire.”

‘Gaslighting’, a term that was originally derived from the 1944 film titled, “Gaslight,” is sadly an increasingly common form of psychological manipulation, where one person tries to make another person doubt their own reality, memory, or perceptions.

This manipulative kind of behavior can have severe consequences on an individual’s mental health and overall well-being. Recognizing and combating ‘gaslighting’ is crucial in maintaining one’s psychological integrity and emotional health. There are numerous ways to combat gaslighting, but it is key to make sure you don’t let yourself be gaslighted, even when it is by people you are close to or have grown to trust or admire.

Gaslighting itself can occur in various scenarios, from personal relationships to workplace environments and even on an entire societal level. Here are some common examples that I would like to highlight where ‘gaslighting’ can take place and whom can be responsible for it occurring:

  1. Personal Relationships: In intimate relationships or romantic partnerships, a partner might persistently deny events that have happened, downplay your feelings, or blame you for their own abusive or manipulative behavior. For example, they might say to you, “You’re too sensitive” or “You never take things seriously.” “That never happened; you’re imagining things.” Gaslighting in any relationship at any time is a toxic combination and can cause some long-lasting trauma, regret, or depression.
  2. Family Dynamics: Within families, parents might gaslight children by denying past abusive behavior or shifting the blame onto the child for what the parent did to them. Phrases like, “I never said that”, “I never did that to you”, “I knew you couldn’t do it,” or “You’re just making things up to get attention”, “How would you know? You’re just a child.” are commonly used in terms of gaslighting.
  3. Workplace Conditioning: In professional settings, a supervisor could deny promises they had previously made to an employee or group of employees. They could also undermine their employees’ performance and contributions by taking credit for it themselves or by taking advantage of the work you do without rewarding it later or acknowledging its positive impact. Comments made by a supervisor or fellow employee could be such as, “I never approved that project”, “I did not give you permission to do that”, “That presentation was all my idea”, “You did not do as much as I did” or “You must be mistaken, that wasn’t your idea” can make employees question their own competence, proficiency, and memory when it comes to the work they do for their fellow employees or employer.
  4. Societal Distrust: Gaslighting can also be seen on a broader societal scale where media heads, activists, or political figures deny facts or historical events that did occur, leading to widespread confusion and distrust among the public because leaders of those institutions are meant to be trusted but since they lie or deceive, the institution itself is distrusted and loses its standing in society.

Gaslighting has become increasingly prevalent in today’s digital age, where misinformation and manipulation are rampant combined with seemingly never-ending ways to engage people to disbelieve what they perceive or create a different reality than what we are used to. Social media platforms, where information can be easily distorted, manipulated and spread endlessly, provides fertile ground for gaslighting on a mass scale. Politicians, national leaders, and public figures often engage in gaslighting tactics to sway public opinion or deflect criticism to win support for their agendas and policies. When it comes to personal relationships, the anonymity, the rapid pace, and the sheer distance provided by online communication can embolden individuals to gaslight others without facing immediate repercussions because of how they hide who they are and what they really believe by gaslighting you instead.

Avoiding being gaslighted is not easy especially in the modern era where we are constantly exposed to other people’s worldviews and are made to take in rapid streams of information instantaneously. Being able to avoid gaslighting involves the following steps in no order, which can help you avoid these manipulative tactics that harm your mental health:

  1. Educate Yourself: Understanding what gaslighting is, where it can come from, and recognizing the signs of when it is happening is the first step in protecting yourself. Familiarize yourself with common gaslighting tactics and how they manifest in different situations in different areas of our life.
  2. Trust Your Perception: Keep a journal to document events and conversations where you think gaslighting could have occurred. It won’t always be the case, but this approach can help reinforce your memory and provide tangible evidence of what happened, making it harder for someone to distort your reality because you’re able to jog your memory on what happened, what you did, and what was their reaction or behavior about it.
  3. Set Boundaries: It’s vital to establish clear boundaries with those who exhibit gaslighting behavior even if they are close friends or family. Make it known that manipulative behavior is unacceptable to you and that you will not engage with it regardless of if they think they are gaslighting you or not. It is better to preserve your own mental health and wellness even if it harms the friendship or relationship temporarily.
  4. Seek Support: Confide in friends, family, or a mental health professional who can provide an outside perspective and validate your experiences as an impartial participant in what happened. Support networks from people you trust and can confide in are essential in maintaining your sense of reality and self-worth. Never seek support from someone you found out was gaslighting you or attempting to gaslight you. You must hold your standards high because if they did it once, chances are good that they will do it to you again.
  5. Practice Self-Care: To protect your own health and wellness, you should continue to engage in daily or weekly activities that bolster your mental and emotional health. Exercise, meditation, sports, and hobbies with trusted friends and family members can help reduce stress and enhance your resilience against manipulation and other gaslighting tactics.
  6. Assert Your Reality: Calmly assert your version of events without getting drawn into a debate. If you can give examples surrounding what you were doing at the time or provide proof or evidence to back up your point, it doesn’t hurt to do so. Most impactful will be to use phrases with the accuser such as, “I remember it differently”, “I wrote down what happened and have proof to share with you” or “I don’t agree with your version” can help you maintain your stance without escalating the conflict further.

We know that there are ways to avoid gaslighting, but how do we combat it in different ways to give ourselves options to get out of the situation or to remedy the effects of it happening to us.

  1. Direct Confrontation: If safe to do so with the person(s), address the gaslighter(s) directly. Use specific examples and “I” statements to express how their behavior affects you. For example, “I feel confused when you say that because it contradicts what I remember” or “I am upset when you don’t believe what I tell you was how it happened to me.”
  2. Detach Emotionally: Emotionally distancing yourself from the gaslighter can reduce their impact on you or ability to affect your mental state. Do your best to practice this form of detachment by recognizing that their actions reflect their own issues, and not yours. Their problem is not your problem, and you did not do anything wrong.
  3. Seek Professional Help: Therapy or talking to a professional psychiatrist can be invaluable in recovering from the effects of gaslighting. A therapist can help you rebuild your self-esteem and develop strategies to deal with manipulative behavior if you experiencing it happening again to you.
  4. Limit Physical Contact or Distance Yourself: In some cases, the best course of action is to limit or sever contact with the gaslighter. This is especially true in toxic relationships where the gaslighting is severe and persistent. It is always better to get that person out of your life or to never see him or her again if it gets to be too much to deal with their behavior.

Gaslighting is a deeply harmful form of psychological abuse that can have long-lasting effects on someone’s mental health. It erodes your self-esteem, creates self-doubt, and can lead to anxiety, depression, and a host of other issues. The pervasive nature of gaslighting in our modern era, amplified by endless forms of digital communication, misinformation, and coarsening societal dynamics, makes it a significant issue to address for people everywhere.

Recognizing gaslighting as a negative behavior and taking steps to combat it is essential for maintaining your psychological well-being. By educating yourself, trusting your perceptions, setting boundaries, seeking professional support, practicing self-care, and potentially limiting or ending contact with gaslighters, you can protect yourself from this serious form of manipulation. Ultimately, preventing, addressing, or combating gaslighting is not just about preserving one’s mental health; it is about fostering healthier, stronger, more authentic relationships and societal environments where care for one another, truth, and trust can flourish equally.

What Is The Real Rate of Return on Investment?

“As you get older, you realize just how valuable time as a commodity is. You tend to start measuring the cost-benefit analysis or the return on investment that you are receiving not just regarding finances and how you spend or invest your money but also on how you spend your time.”

As you get older, you realize just how valuable time as a commodity is. You tend to start measuring the cost-benefit analysis or the return on investment that you are receiving not just regarding finances and how you spend or invest your money but also on how you spend your time. Unfortunately, this is a topic that we do not prioritize or learn about very well at a young age. Often, you must figure out what are the best ways to use your time wisely and your money.

There are numerous tools out there to help guide you find the real rate of return on your investment, but you must be the one making the decision on what you prioritize. We know for a fact that our time on this Earth is limited from the day we are born. Having such knowledge shouldn’t be morbid or despairing, but rather help us to prioritize how we spend our lives in search of a good use of our time, our money, and much more.

Now, not everything that we do in life should be correlated with a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ or ‘opportunity cost’ involved. Such behavior should be discouraged if you’re obsessing over how you spend every waking minute each day. You should be leaving some room for spontaneous actions that you enjoy regardless of if it’s geared towards health, wealth, and personal satisfaction. There are times each day where we have to commit to actions that take time when we would rather be doing something else and that is what adulthood entails sometimes.

The true focus is what can we do with our time that is free, which will help us in the long-term. If we have goals of wealth, health, and pursuing our own happiness, your time should be spent in looking in investing each day in building yourself up in each of these areas. For example, when we look at investing in our health, we know there are concrete things that can be done, which will help us with a return on having a healthier body, a healthier mind, and managing our stress and anxiety.

We may have to join a gym, change our diet, sleep more, and make time for exercising, and these are the kinds of investments, if done consistently, that can pay off in the long-term. These investments that I cite will not guarantee a longer life, but it is giving yourself the best possible chance of living a healthier life, especially if you are focusing on multiple investments.

In this case, the real return on investment may not be seen right away but you are likely to see some results if you’re consistent with your investments on a long-term basis. You can measure how your diet is helping you lose weight, how your sleep patterns have changed, and how much time you spend at the gym, the yoga studio, or in playing sports. These investments are measurable but the results on these investments will eventually show up in a real rate of return that will put you on a path that leads to a healthier life in the long-term. Returns are not guaranteed but if you are putting in the work over a long enough period, I believe the chances are good that you will be better off than you were years or even decades ago.

Similarly, how we save and invest financially for our long-term financial future, we can do the same with our health and our happiness. Everyone has different financial goals, and I won’t talk about specific investment advice to give, but you can always estimate to a degree what kind of percentage return you’re likely to get from your investments over a year or a decade or a century in terms of growth. These real returns will come to you but if you’re not consistently investing in building your wealth, those real returns will not be as impactful or as fruitful as you would have hoped. It goes to show that with either health, wealth, and happiness, that the earlier you invest in those facets of life and the more that you invest in them, the better off that you will be.

What makes someone truly happy is complicated and will differ depending on your emotional state, but I do believe spending more time with those who care about you, and you who care about them, enjoying more time spent doing the hobbies and interests that give you joy, and being able to invest time in learning new skills, exploring new places, or investing in your home and community, those kind of investments will have real returns on making you happier in the long-run. There will be times when what you did or do no longer makes you happy and that is alright. The key here is to keep trying out new things, keep meeting people, keep trying to be involved in areas of life that you think will make you happier, that is key in continuing to make those investments in building your happiness into the future to keep producing better and better returns.

Time is fleeting and you must prioritize health, wealth, and happiness in my view, which will give you those real returns in your life to enjoy and take joy in. Most of all, you have to know the difference as you get older between what’s give you actual returns for your hard work and efforts, and what you have to stop doing that is giving you no real returns. It is important to prioritize more of what will pay off in the future throughout your life and increasingly avoid those activities that produce a negative return and will leave you worse off.

It is one thing to be able to invest well in activities that bolster your life satisfaction, but you should also remember to avoid those other ways of spending the time that lower your real returns or negate them entirely. Be sure to know what a waste of your time is, if you can cut that activity out or lower your exposure to it and be able to replace the time spent on that activity with a good alternative. which you can take part in to continue to invest in building a life and a future that will make you healthy, wealthy, and happy.

Putting Yourself in Natural Environments

“Man or woman was not meant to spend all day under fluorescent lighting in an indoor place without windows, natural light, or sun.”

Man or woman was not meant to spend all day under fluorescent lighting in an indoor place without windows, natural light, or sun. While modern life often forces us to work and live in less-than-ideal conditions, we often have to spend our time away from nature and where we feel most comfortable. Whether it is a factory, an office, a clothing store, a mall, or a movie theater, we spend somewhere between 80% – 90% of our lives indoors. While many people consider this to be a normal part of life, I would argue that while it may be ‘normal’ in our modern age, it is far from healthy for all of us.

While we do have limited choice on where we live, where we work, where we eat, etc., I would encourage everyone reading this to remember that we as human being are most comfortable, free, and healthy when we are in a natural environment. In nature whether it is a beach, a jungle, a mountainside, or a forest, while intimidating at first, once you get used to being in the great outdoors, it is hard to get used to being inside or routinely indoors again. You never lose that yearning to be breathing fresh air, swimming in fresh air, and cooking fresh food over an open flame.

I truly believe that this is kind of environment is what is best for our health and well-being. When we are in a natural environment, the stress is less for all involved, we tend to be more social especially if we must cooperate to fish, to hunt, or to cook food together, and there is a great sense of satisfaction achieved from climbing, hiking, fishing, swimming, or starting a fire that you can’t get in other environments.

If you do not have the great outdoors near you, at least make the effort to get outside on your balcony, your rooftop, or even your garden if you have one. I promise that you will feel refreshed from getting out of the florescent light and into real sunlight. While being indoors is not a bad thing, I do think that we have overindulged in modern life in an effort to keep ourselves comfortable rather than challenging ourselves by dealing with the outdoor elements.

No matter where we come from, all our ancient ancestors had to deal with the elements. That is why being out in nature is most rewarding because that is what our ancestors had to deal with for thousands of years. Modern agriculture and industry have been around for maybe a few hundred years in terms of its adoption by most of humanity. We are still more accustomed to being out in the jungle, savannah, or forest rather than inside a city or a factory farm. It is unfortunate that most of our time at work or at home is indoors because there is a lot that can be done outdoors and for which we can socialize with each other in different ways.

If you cannot get outdoors as much as you want, try to at least take 10-15 minutes out of your day to go for a walk or to get lunch and sit outside. If you are having a bad day, I can guarantee that having the sun shining down and the breeze hitting you can really improve how you feel, if only for a short while. Instead of going to a bar or a movie on a warm, spring day, encourage your friends to go hiking or to go hang out at the park instead. You can also make use in some places of an outdoor gym where you can lift weights, do calisthenics, or even practice Yoga with the wind at your back.

When you’re at work, see if you can’t encourage your colleagues to do a working lunch outdoors one day a week when the weather’s nice or to do an event outdoors if possible. A team building event, as cliché as it sounds, can be a good idea to spend more time outdoors if you can ask your boss to do a retreat somewhere where you can be outdoors part of the time or to maybe go hiking, try out kayaking, or walk around the city together to boost your comradery or teamwork.

Society may be pulling you to go from your car to your office to your home and to do it all over again each day but that is no way to live. Try to find the time to get out of unnatural environments and be in nature again, whatever kind of nature that is. You are not meant to be indoors for 90% of your life. Instead of being in your car, walk or bike to work if you can or try to have a work meeting outdoors if you’re remote or can ask your colleagues to do it there.

Taking a trip or vacation where you’re mostly outdoors, exploring new environments, and trying different activities like snorkeling, scuba diving, bungee jumping, skydiving, etc. are ways that you can broaden your horizons and enjoy what the wide world has to offer. Life will get very boring and repetitive if you are constantly going from one indoor environment to another indoor environment without mixing it up. You should remember that it is no way to live and especially no way to live healthily.

Remember to get yourself outside at least 30 minutes to an hour each day. You owe it to your mind and body to put yourself in a natural environment, whichever one is most comfortable to you. A change of scenery can do a world of good. If you’re feeling like you have no energy, are going through the motions, and are just plain bored, getting outdoors and into nature may be the closest thing to a cure. Try to encourage others to do the same as it is healthier, and you’ll feel better from having involved others to be in nature with you. Man or woman was not meant to be indoors for most of our lives and I hope that you all will spend more of your lives outdoors in natural environments and less time indoors under fluorescent lighting.