Wellbeing

Today the Times brings out the list of the 100 richest people in Britain. If you’re one of them and like to read about yourself, fine! If you are not one of them and find it all a little depressing here’s a list that’ll do you some good: The Independent on Sunday Happy List profiles of people who make Britain a better and happier place to live.

A few examples:

John Cunningham; Charity fundraiser
Area of excellence: Charity

A retired painter from Durham who has raised more than £1m for charity, walking more than 100,000 miles in the process. He began in 1986 with a 1,000-mile marathon – since then he has covered many long-distance walks including Land’s End to John o’Groats. Has also collected for charity at a local supermarket for 29 years.

Clare Parry-Jones; Clown doctor
Area of excellence: Mental well-being

Aka Dr Ding Dong. Each week she dons a red nose, purple hair and a giant turquoise stethoscope to administer the best medicine. One of Britain’s longest-serving clown doctors, she visits more than 4,000 children a year, is a specialist and teacher of drama therapy, and adapts her play according to a child’s personality, age and illness.

Megan Blunt; Author and charity campaigner
Area of excellence: Mental well-being

A 16-year-old bone cancer survivor, she is the author of ‘Chemotherapy, Cakes and Cancer’, an A-Z guide for children living with cancer which includes tips for treatment and easy definitions of medical terms. As well as studying for her GCSEs she is also a young people’s ambassador for the children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent.

If you can’t read this list without feeling better then I respectfully suggest you need some help, or better still, go help someone else it’ll do you good.

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This is a series of 12 tips to help you get the most out of the Christmas holiday season, whatever your religious beliefs.

These tips are based on NLP and other techniques and are aimed at how you feel about the holiday and everything that goes on around it. You won’t find any help in cooking a turkey or how to dress for a party. However, you may find some help about reducing your levels of stress and increasing your levels of enjoyment.

Tip 1. Finding The Christmas Spirit

Love it or hate it Christmas isn’t going to go away. So you may as well make the best of it. In this tip you can explore your ‘Christmas Spirit’. How would the perfect Christmas be for you? How would you like to feel? What would you like it to mean?

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In another excellent podcast from Shrink Rap Radio Dr David Van Nuys interviewed Dr Steven Post about the value of unselfish love. Just before you start cringing about a Californian “lurve-fest”, Dr Post researches the benefits and puts into practice the benefits of what Buddhists might call metta or loving-kindness.

His book about the value of loving kindness has the oddly self-interested title: Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research That Proves The Link Between Doing Good and Living A Longer, Healthier, Happier Life.

While the interview is very interesting as a whole, one part caught my attention. Using data from psychology studies spanning 25 years, researchers compared people’s levels of hostility with their mortality rates in later life.

Those people who were in the top 25% of the hostility scores had a 20% death rate by the time they were 50, those in the bottom 25% had a 2-4% death rate by the time they were 50. Which is to say that their high levels of hostility sent them to the grave more quickly. The main cause of death was coronary heart disease but there was a similar relationship between hostility levels and other life shorting illness such as cancer.

Since I’m approaching 50 I feel I have a personal interest in this kind of research. It’s more evidence for the idea that negative emotions can seriously damage your health.

I can’t offer medical advice, but it might be worth cutting down on your consumption negative emotions with a view to giving them up entirely!

OK. Maybe not giving them up in this lifetime, but it’s worth working towards. After all, it’ll probably give you more lifetime to enjoy.

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An article in the Journal of Clinical Nursing reported that acupressure was used to significantly reduce the level of agitation in dementia patients.

The research, conducted in Taiwan showed that twice daily 15 minute treatment sessions reduced verbal and physical attacks and wandering. Unfortunately once the 4 week treatment period ended agitation levels began to rise again.

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Useful suggestions for dealing with festive stress from Bill O’Hanlon

Plan ahead

• Think ahead about what shopping and chores need to be done
  and make a plan for who will do what by when.
• Think of the typical stresses or problems at holiday time and
  make a plan to avoid or minimize them (or to recover from them if they
  occur).

Take time to prepare emotionally and mentally

• Before the trip or at the beginning of the day, take time to get centered, clear and connected
• Pray, meditate, write in your journal, visualize the kind of trip/holiday you would like.
• Connect to internal resources, spiritual resources and other people who are resources for you.

Take time out

During the day, take time out to get centered, clear and connected. Some ideas:

• Take a walk
• Exercise
• Take a nap
• Make a phone call to a friend who will offer support or help you get perspective
• Write in a journal
• Listen to music
• Take a drive
• Take a bath
• Linger in the bathroom just to get away
• Pray
• Meditate
• Read a book
• Practice your art

Connect with compassion rather than irritation and judgments

If family members or friends do something upsetting, imagine that they are scared or stressed rather than hostile or insensitive. Find a way to get perspective:

• How much is this going to matter in five years?
• If this person died on the way home, how would I want our last interaction to have been?

Remember graititude

• Remind yourself of the things for which you are grateful.
• Remember the people to whom you are grateful and what they have done for you or contributed to your life.

Bill O’Hanlon, M.S., Possibilities, 223 N. Guadalupe #278, Santa Fe, NM 87501 USA800.381.2374; Fax# 505.983.2761; PossiBill@brieftherapy.com; http://www.brieftherapy.com

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There’s some interesting research just published that demonstrates how being angry and hostile can speed the process of declining lung power.

In a study of 670 men ranging in age from 45 to 86, they found that males who had higher levels of long-standing anger at the start of the eight-year project had significantly poorer lung function at the end of it.

“This study is one of the first to show prospectively that hostility is associated with poorer pulmonary function and more rapid rates of decline among older men,” said Dr Rosalind Wright, of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, in a report online in the journal Thorax.

Another good reason for dealing with anger. So if this, or anything else, makes you cross: take a deep breath (while you still can) and relax. Or take up meditation or EFT to reduce your anger levels.

Visit Anger quickens lung deterioration | Top News | Reuters.co.uk for the full article

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One of the participants of a newsgroup I’m on posted a link for this online video. I’ll not tell you what it’s about, except to say that it brought a lump to my throat and a feeling that human beings can be utterly extraordinary.

-> CAN < -

Enjoy!

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