humor

REACH2: Six tips to help regulate stress levels in our organizations

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Recent­ly, an employ­ee at a major Ohio com­pa­ny lost his moth­er to coro­n­avirus. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, his col­leagues would have offered expres­sions of sup­port and sym­pa­thy in per­son. They would have attend­ed a funer­al or memo­r­i­al ser­vice. They would have made a meal for his fam­i­ly. But, since the state was under stay-at-home orders, none of that was possible.

At first, the team looked to their man­ag­er for guid­ance about what to do. But the man­ag­er hadn’t faced a sit­u­a­tion like this and didn’t real­ly know. So, he reflect­ed the ques­tion back to his team: “What do you think we can do to help?” [Read more…] about REACH2: Six tips to help reg­u­late stress lev­els in our organizations

Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress

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These days, we all live under con­sid­er­able stress — eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, job demands, fam­i­ly ten­sions, always-on tech­nol­o­gy and the 24-hour news cycle all con­tribute to cease­less wor­ry. While many have learned to sim­ply “live with it,” this ongo­ing stress can, unless prop­er­ly man­aged, have a [Read more…] about Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress

The Ten Habits of a Sharp Brain

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As our final arti­cle for 2011, let us repur­pose one of Sharp­Brains’ most pop­u­lar blog posts since 2006. It may give you a few point­ers to sharp­en those New Years Res­o­lu­tions. Let’s sum­ma­rize some lifestyle guide­lines we can all fol­low to enhance and main­tain a sharp brain through life...

  1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beau­ty as a liv­ing and con­stant­ly-devel­op­ing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses.
  2. Take care of your nutri­tion. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but con­sumes over 20% of the oxy­gen and nutri­ents we intake? As a gen­er­al rule, you don’t need expen­sive ultra-sophis­ti­cat­ed nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments, just make sure you don’t stuff your­self with the “bad stuff”.
  3. Remem­ber that the brain is part of the body. Things that exer­cise your body can also help sharp­en your brain: phys­i­cal exer­cise enhances neurogenesis.
  4. Prac­tice pos­i­tive, future-ori­ent­ed thoughts until they become your default mind­set and you [Read more…] about The Ten Habits of a Sharp Brain

The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains — Time for Brain Fitness Resolutions?

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Giv­en many of us are start­ing to pre­pare New Year Res­o­lu­tions, let’s revis­it one of Sharp­Brains’ most pop­u­lar-ever arti­cles that can help us all refine our Brain Fit­ness Res­o­lu­tions…

The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains

  1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beau­ty as a liv­ing and con­stant­ly-devel­op­ing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses.
  2. Take care of your nutri­tion. Did you know that [Read more…] about The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains — Time for Brain Fit­ness Resolutions?

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 2 of 2)

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Last week, in this arti­cle’s first part, we dis­cussed the impor­tance of actu­al­ly teach­ing chil­dren how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed, explored sev­er­al sug­ges­tions I hope you found useful.

Let’s con­tin­ue.

Teach­ers can help stu­dent over­come stress by teach­ing them to iden­ti­fy the imped­i­ments they might encounter in doing a cer­tain task. 

The teacher can ask:

What’s going to get in the way of you doing this work?
He or she may have to jump-start the stu­dents think­ing by sug­gest­ing such things as:
— com­pet­ing events (fam­i­ly activ­i­ties, friends call, IM-ing, new video game, etc.)
— lack of ade­quate place to study
— inad­e­quate pri­or prepa­ra­tion or skills
— a neg­a­tive atti­tude (this is not nec­es­sary, I can’t do math, I’ll nev­er need to know this, etc).
— health fac­tors (I’m sick; I’m tired)

Con­verse­ly, teach­ers have to teach stu­dents to iden­ti­fy the enhancers; What’s going to make it more like­ly that you will do this, and do this well?
(exam­ples)
— I have con­fi­dence in my ability
— I feel com­pe­tent in this skill
— I am com­mit­ted to learn­ing this because: I have the nec­es­sary resources to com­plete this task, such as mate­ri­als, sources of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple sup­ports; par­ents, tutor, oth­er kids

Teach­ers can turn dis­tress into de-stress by using the Lan­guage of Success

The key is to de-empha­size PRAISE and empha­size SELF-APPRAISAL.

Teach­ers can encour­age self-eval­u­a­tion by [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 2 of 2)

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 1 of 2)

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Teach­ing kids how to relax.

Con­sid­er this vignette:

-Rox­anne: (agi­tat­ed and loud­ly) I can’t stand this freakin book!

-Teacher: Rox­anne, you need to take it easy. Just calm down! Try to relax.You need to fin­ish your reading.

-Rox­anne: (to her­self) Right easy for you to say, teacher. But very hard for me to do. What do you mean calm down? I feel like my head is going to explode.

-Teacher: (see­ing no response) Well if you can’t set­tle down, maybe a trip to the office will help you!

Some kids are so agi­tat­ed that even if they know how to relax, they can’t. If you think about it, calm­ing down when you’re upset is the hard­est time to do it! Oth­er kids can’t calm down or relax because they don’t know what that feels like. Teach­ers, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists, phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teach­ers and par­ents need to actu­al­ly teach chil­dren (of all ages) how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed. This does­n’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly. If it did, there would­n’t be so many adult yoga classes!

Set­ting the men­tal and emo­tion­al stage for success.

Teach­ers who want to reduce stress and increase learn­ing know that get­ting kids into a pos­i­tive mind­set will do both. They say [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 1 of 2)