A person’s environment has a profound impact on their moods, emotions, and stress levels. While it is typically associated with external or natural surroundings, the environment encompasses everything that surrounds you. This means that it also refers to built surroundings where people spend their time in.
Today, society can enjoy the protection and comfort of living in cities with urban infrastructures, however, this also means that the population is confined to built environments and has less contact with nature. As such, urban residents are in constant exposure to environmental stressors such as traffic, crowds, loud noises, thermal discomfort, and air pollution. Research shows that, especially in the urban context, environmental stressors can have adverse impacts on one’s mental health.
Given that your surroundings have an impact on your mental wellbeing, it is important to have an interaction with nature to mitigate stress as well as promote flourishing and resilience.
Connectedness with nature
Research reveals that engaging with nature can improve your physical health, including blood pressure, cortisol levels, and heart rate variability. Moreover, it can contribute to your emotional wellbeing by enhancing self-control and helping you feel more alive and empathic. Spending time in natural environments has also been found by numerous studies to be beneficial for generating positive emotions, recovering from stress, facilitating concentration, and improving moods.
However, exposure alone is not the whole picture when it comes to environmental wellbeing. Even though exposure to nature and connectedness with nature are both linked to positive health outcomes, connectedness refers to a deeper emotional attachment as a result of being in a natural environment, promoting positive feelings such as compassion, awe, gratitude, and mindfulness.
P. Wesley Schultz (2002) explains that being connected with nature involves the following components that respectively correspond to connectedness, caring, and commitment:
Cognitive component – This refers to defining one’s self as being part of nature.
Affective component – At this level, an emotional bond for nature is formed through caring for the environment.
Behavioral component – This is when a person expresses their desire and commitment to protecting nature.
Research shows that having a stronger sense of connection to nature is linked to positive wellbeing in terms of living a more meaningful life and feeling more energetic and happier. People who feel connected with nature also tend to exhibit pro-environmental behaviors. So, it makes sense to take a closer look at how you can enhance your connection with nature and improve wellbeing. Aside from living in harmony with nature to promote one’s health and wellbeing, it can also lead to the betterment of the environment as a whole.
Spend more time in nature
It has been well-established that engaging in physical activities is a key to mental health. Outdoor activities in green spaces such as local parks, forests, or gardens can provide you with additional restorative benefits of nature. Exposure to forested settings also leads to a better stress response with lower cortisol levels, pulse rates, and blood pressure. Other natural environments such as aquatic environments and beaches have also been found to positively influence mental and emotional wellbeing.
Research suggests that people who spend at least 2 hours a week in natural environments are more likely to report mental health benefits than those who do not. In addition to cognitive and affective gains of interacting with nature settings in healthy adults, walking within forested areas has been found to improve moods by reducing repeated negative thoughts in individuals with depressive symptoms. Nature settings involve fascinating stimuli from activities such as practicing mindfulness as well as reflecting on and experiencing nature with all senses helps you relax and recharge.
Connect with nature through gardening
Gardening is another way to experience the healing power of nature.Gardening allows you to bring nature to your surroundings, your backyard, and even your balcony. While engaging with gardening, you can practice mindfulness to restore and recharge your mind by shifting your focus away from stressful thoughts.
In addition to its beneficial impacts on active lifestyles and mental wellbeing, community gardening projects can enhance social interaction as well. By engaging in gardening, you can also grow your own food including vegetables, fruit trees, and herbs. Doing so can also help you develop healthy eating habits.
With more people realizing the healing power of nature, therapeutic horticulture practices gain more attention. Therapeutic Horticulture is a designed process of intervention to cultivate benefits of plant-related activities and gardening to provide stress relief to people from a wide range of populations. Research suggests that horticultural activities increase relaxation and cheerfulness while reducing depression and anxiety levels.
Healthy personal environments: biophilic design
Apart from the natural environment, your personal environment has an impact on your mood and productivity. There are some steps you can take to improve your relationship with your personal space. By bringing bits of nature into your living environment, you can benefit from the restorative effects of nature and trigger positive emotional experiences.
As derived from the theory of biophilia, biophilic design can be considered as a set of applied methods to reconnect with nature in built environments to satisfy the innate need to affiliate with nature. To have direct experience of nature in your built environments, you can use indoor plants, natural light, water elements, and natural ventilation. Bringing images of nature into your space and using natural colors and materials also have a key role in biophilic design practices.
Studies have shown that designing your environments with natural elements makes you happier and inspired which can increase performance and reduce stress. Recent research found that having houseplants triggered positive emotional wellbeing during the lockdowns brought about by COVID-19. Meanwhile, people who had no indoor plants and little natural light in their personal environments reported a more frequent experience of negative emotions such as sadness and stress compared to those who have plants.
By taking these simple steps, you can develop your connection with nature and benefit from the restorative effects to recharge your mind and spirit, and recover from stress and exhaustion.
The beginning of the year is often considered as a chance for people to turn over a new leaf hoping to reinvent themselves. A reflection of last year’s activities and thoughts on what matters in the near future lead to creating New Year’s resolutions. However, this practice has seen a decline in recent years, with just 44% of U.S. adults planning to set a New Year’s resolution for 2022, compared to 50% in 2021.
Despite resolutions being made during the new year, a survey by Optavia saw that only 10% of U.S. adults who set New Year’s resolutions stick with it while 47% broke their resolutions within the first month. In fact, the second Friday of January is known as “Quitter’s Day” when people are most likely to give up their New Year’s resolutions. Some of the primary reasons behind this phenomenon are loss of motivation, not having a plan or the right support, and setting too many or overly ambitious goals.
Moreover, Dr. Judith Beck, president of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, stated that the reason why people fail to achieve their resolutions does not involve a lack of commitment. Instead, people tend to fall into traps when setting up their resolutions. The following are strategies that would help thoroughly implement New Year’s resolutions all year long.
Set approach-oriented goals
Losing weight is just one of the most common resolutions set every year and also the most frequently broken. This kind of resolution focuses on avoiding something; in this case, restraining from eating too much, avoiding sweets, and the like. Avoidance-oriented goals are associated with fewer positive thoughts and greater negative emotions. This relationship may explain the early abandonment of the resolution.
Meanwhile, approach-oriented goals are associated with greater positive emotions, thoughts, and self-evaluations. It helps people get closer to their desired outcome by adopting new habits or introducing something new. Compared to avoidance-oriented goals, approach-oriented goals are proven to be more effective according to an experiment led by Martin Oscarsson. (2020).
Changing behaviors is relatively easier than erasing them. Therefore, instead of setting avoidance-oriented goals like “stop eating sweets”, it is more recommended to rephrase it into an approach-oriented goal such as “eat more fruits and vegetables in place of sweets”. While both goals are set to help lose weight, the second one is more sustainable.
Resolutions can also be described as a range of positive outcomes. If the ultimate goal is to lose 60 pounds, then losing 25 pounds could be counted as the first successful outcome. Setting up positive outcomes towards the goal will help overcome all-or-nothing thinking that only has success or failure as the options. Having a range of outcomes will motivate people to keep trying instead of attacking themselves for not being “good enough” and giving up completely.
Anticipate obstacles
Self-confidence plays an important role in investing a full-fledged effort to implement New Year’s resolutions. As there are always internal and external obstacles, it is very possible to fail in achieving the goal. Failures could be very discouraging once they are perceived as definitive, leading to abandoning the endeavor altogether.
While setting the goal, it is important to think about possible obstacles that may arise during the implementation of the resolutions and how to resolve them. For example, to achieve the goal of exercising regularly to get in shape, one may purchase a gym membership and plan to use it twice a week. However, this plan can get disrupted by the new restriction rules in other areas due to COVID-19 or by the rise of the gym’s monthly rate. By anticipating such obstacles, one could prepare with alternatives such as investing in workout equipment or taking up a routine that does not cost as much, like running.
Practicing a dry run period could also take the pressure off on going through with the goal. It gives people permission to experience failure and re-analyze their resolutions – whether it is attainable or not, what can be learned from the failure, and what are the possible obstacles. Experiencing the challenge slowly before officially starting the planned resolution also helps to gradually build self-confidence.
In case of internal obstacles such as an unconscious resistance to change, getting support from others helps in striving for a behavioral change. By sharing goals with family and friends, they could offer encouragement and act as a reminder when signs of giving up appear. They might also come up with other solutions for the anticipated obstacles.
Every new year starts with all sorts of resolutions, but few people succeed at keeping them throughout the year. Failure to achieve these resolutions is frequently due to traps in setting their goals rather than lack of commitment. Therefore, it is important to adopt an approach-oriented goal and anticipate obstacles when setting New Year’s resolutions.
With the holiday season now over, it is time to start the new year. Around this time, people are raring to make good with their resolutions for the year. It is also a good time to look back, reminisce, and see what has changed over the past year like achievements and failures, as well as the people gained and lost along the way.
You might be thinking of either rekindling old friendships as part of your New Year’s Resolution or simply because you miss having the familiarity of old bonds. Some friendships fade simply because life happens – people change jobs, move cities, or find themselves different life stages. Whatever the reason is, if you find yourself thinking about that person often, it might be good to start reaching out to them and rekindling the friendship.
If you are thinking of reconnecting, you might be wondering where should you start or what would you say. It might help to put yourself in their position and ask “How would I want them to reach out to me?”. Reconnecting with old friends might make you feel uncomfortable, but according to a study, 90% of people who felt anxious before reconnecting reported that it was enjoyable afterward. If you are still unsure of how to do it, here are some steps that might help you to reconnect.
Little things matter
Reconnecting with old friends does not mean that you have to do everything that you used to do together. Try to eliminate the all-or-nothing mindset in reconnecting. You could start with something small and meaningful.
You could call, message, or email to let them know that you are thinking about them. During this pandemic, you can reach out and ask how they are doing. It can be something along the lines “Hey, how are you? We have not talked in a while.” If you have not been in touch for a while, you could also share what you have been doing to open the conversation.
Bring up shared memories
Discuss something that you used to enjoy together or what interests both of you. Remind yourself and that person on what brought you together before and how that lead you to reconnect. Nostalgia can help people to feel more socially connected and bringing up old memories can help you to reconnect with old friends.
Have a plan
When you have already had your initial catch-up, remember to make a concrete plan for your next meet-up. At this frail stage of your friendship, you must make an actionable plan to maintain it. If you do not set a date and time, it is likely that it will never happen. Once you take care of the logistics to get together, it will be easier to follow through.
Keep it casual
It might make other people uncomfortable if you have not talked in a while and you invite them to meet all your new friends, so it would be better to have a one-on-one get-together with them instead. During this time, ask them open-ended questions that will help them feel comfortable so they can talk about themselves and what they have been doing while you can listen and learn more about them. If you are worried it might get awkward with just the two of you, try to choose an activity to do together like bowling, watching a movie, or going to a sports game. This will give you something else to focus on if things get awkward, and possibly something new that you might bond over.
Entering the new year is not all just about having a resolution and making a new goal; it is also about reflecting on your past self and experiences. If you find yourself wanting to reach out to an old friend for some time but keep putting it off, the new year can be a good time to start doing it. This might make you uncomfortable at first, but with good intentions and effort, you will not fail. Try to find little ways to show that you care and make an effort to build and maintain the friendship. Reconnecting with old friends will remind them that you still value them despite the time that passed, and this will give you something to build in the upcoming year.
People look forward to the holidays to unwind from the difficulties of the past year and to spend much-needed quality time with loved ones. For at least a week just before the beginning of the new year, people are generally in a cheerier mood, and for just a few moments, can leave their worries behind. That is until the holidays are over.
Shifting gears from a relaxing holiday to getting back into the grind can be stressful, especially when there is work waiting on the desk. It has been much more difficult these past few years due to COVID-19 because there is no physical transition from house to office. In some cases, people who do not have a separate home office find themselves working in the same place that they relax, requiring more effort than usual to get back into the mode of working.
Whatever the reason is, people normally dread to return to their responsibilities which can be a source of stress. Here are some ways to mitigate that overwhelming feeling of returning back to work after the holidays.
Transition slowly
Normally, people would check their inboxes once they get to their work desks. Immediately seeing that pile of emails that need to be answered can be stressful. While there are potentially a dozen of emails to get through, start the day at your own pace, get your coffee ready, and settle down to put yourself in a good mindset first before poring through your work.
Adjust your mindset
Speaking of mindset, make sure that you are in a good mood before work. Oftentimes, people immediately stress themselves out with the idea of going back to work. Instead of focusing on the negative, make sure you are surrounded by things that put you in a positive attitude like playing good music or reorganizing your desk for a change.
Plan your day ahead
Planning out your day can not only help you organize how you want to work, but it also helps you figure out the most important tasks that need to be done. Simply blindly going through your work without any plan in mind might end up with you wasting time just thinking about what to do next. This also helps you set the pace for how you will work and avoid getting overwhelmed with other tasks that can be done on another day.
Socialize with colleagues
More often than not, your co-workers may be feeling the same way about going back to work. Instead of keeping it to yourself, have short watercooler sessions with your colleagues or hang out to the extent possible and share how you feel. You may even share stories about what you did during the holiday vacation. The bottom line here is that you do not need to go through it alone.
Schedule your next vacation
It might sound ridiculous to immediately think of a vacation right after having a holiday break, but having something to look forward to can help lift up your spirits. Knowing that there is a vacation planned ahead can also help motivate you and put you in a better mindset as you start your work.
People usually anticipate the amount of work that they need to get back to once the holidays are over. While it is true that responsibilities will still be there even as a new year begins, knowing how to take things slow, prepare mindsets, plan ahead, engage with people, and even look forward to the next vacation will help lessen that stress that comes after the holidays and start your new year right at work.
Special meals and sweets often indicate the festivities, making it one of the most essential features during the year-end holidays. The abundance of food can also bring people to partake in holiday eating, which is the overindulgence of relatively unhealthy food. To avoid that, meal planning can be a good strategy to stay healthy during and after the holidays while still enjoying good food.
Challenges in meal planning
Eating unhealthy food could jeopardize one’s working performance after the holidays. Optimal nutrition intake during the holidays can mitigate this and help to feel refreshed even after the holidays. However, preparing this kind of meal could be challenging for some people especially during holidays when portions are usually bigger to accommodate families and other guests.
Cooking also requires time and energy. Time scarcity, which is a condition when someone perceives their time is not enough for doing everything that needs to be done, was found to cause the rise of fast and convenient food consumption. Research from Universitatea Transilvania Brasov also discovered that time management and healthy eating are associated wherein planning meals can help a person have clear objectives as well as enhance the quality and complexity of food.
Meal planning may vary depending on how, where, and with whom someone spends their holidays. Many people use holidays as the time to reconnect with their families and friends either by staying at home or traveling. To make holiday meals healthier with your loved ones, here are two ways of meal planning at home and during traveling.
Meal planning for holidays at home
Some people accept guests during holidays, but even for those who celebrate holidays with just their immediate family members, the food needs to be extraordinary. Big portions and grand menus would take plenty of time. Meal planning makes it possible for individuals to think about recipes that could be done quickly such as preparing the ingredients in advance to avoid the feeling of not having enough time. Here are some tips to have stress free holidays meal preparation:
Estimate the number of people you’re expecting over and consider their dietary needs, allergies, and food preferences.
Research holiday menus, take note of the time needed to prepare the food, and list down the ingredients modified with the portion quantities. Try to balance carbs, proteins, and vegetables.
Separate grocery lists for perishable and nonperishable items. Perishable foods should be bought a day before to guarantee freshness while nonperishable items could be bought 1-2 weeks before the holiday. Supermarkets are usually very crowded near holidays; by buying nonperishable items in advance, you can avoid having a long list of groceries and that long line towards the checkout.
Make a schedule on when to serve the main meals and the sweets. Try to serve sweets in between the meals to avoid family members, especially children, feeling full during mealtimes.
Meal planning for holidays away from home
One might find difficulty in controlling the amount of food that they eat during trips or staycations because they can only eat what is available in whichever restaurant is within reach or have limited time to prepare their own food. A study in Scotland about children’s holiday eating habits found that nuggets and burgers were always found in kid’s menus provided by hotels. These types of menus focus more on making smaller portions compared to adults instead of the nutritional needs of the children.
Meal planning can help parents have more control over what they eat as a family. Planning vacation meals also lessens the burden on decision-making on food and focuses more on having fun. Here are some tips for meal planning ahead of time before traveling:
Consider and check the menus and cooking facilities provided by your accommodation. If there is no functional kitchen with a fridge and stove available, you can prepare meals ahead of time or bring portable cooking equipment such as an electric pot, induction stove, etc.
In the case that there’s a nearby supermarket available, you can plan on buying the ingredients for your meals from there
Keep the meal plan as simple as possible.
Plan ahead if you want to eat out by doing a quick check of restaurants and the menus. Eating out is fun, but spontaneously eating out should be avoided if possible.
The holidays are a time to recharge and have joyful moments with your loved ones over delicious food. However, holiday eating encourages people to consume more portions, including sugary and fatty foods that could affect one’s physical health after the holiday. That’s why planning out your meals is a good coping strategy to make meals more nutritious while avoiding unhealthy holiday eating habits.
