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Longevity Hacks for Busy People
The fundamentals of healthy aging are no big secret: Regular exercise, eating well, quality sleep and a robust social life can all help you live better for longer. But doing these things takes time — and when there’s only so much time in the day, it’s hard to know where to start. ... You can quickly boost your mental and physical well-being with an “active noticing” exercise each day, said Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who has written several books on mindfulness.
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To Get From Experience to Emotion, the Brain Hits ‘Sustain’
Get cut off in rush-hour traffic and you may feel angry for the whole trip, or even snap at a noisy child in the back seat. Get an unexpected smile from that same kid and you may feel like rush hour — and even those other drivers — aren't so bad. ... "Sure, [a sustained signal] happens in emotion," says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. "But it also happens in all kinds of other instances," like when a person is concentrating or remembering.
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10 Things to Say When Someone Won’t Get Off Their Phone
Trying to talk to someone stuck on their phone is such a universal experience, there’s a name for it: “phubbing,” short for “phone snubbing,” or ignoring someone in favor of a phone. “Everyone hates it, but everyone has also done it,” says Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the upcoming book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. “When someone phubs you, you feel like you’re not important—that whatever is on their phone is more important than you.” Phubbing negatively affects mental health, relationship satisfaction, and overall well-being. That’s why it's worth speaking up about digital distraction.
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Midlife Women With Perimenopause Suffer From a ‘Lack of Awareness’ When It Comes To Disordered Eating
Sue Cody's decades-long battle with an eating disorder began when she was 22 years old and in love. That was when she suddenly became self-conscious about her figure. ... That prompted Gemma Sharp, the director of Consortium for Research in Eating Disorders, to develop an online resource for health professionals and those impacted by a midlife eating disorder. "Often the stories we've heard are people reaching out for support for eating issues in midlife and being met with, 'You should have grown out of this by now. You should know better by now.' And that is a completely inappropriate, unhelpful response," she says.
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You Don’t Know Yourself as Well as You Think You Do
... It can also feel like a vital part of life, as though if you’re not seeking self-understanding, you’re missing out. (Our old pal Socrates also said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”) “If you haven’t noticed how pervasive this message is in society, just pay attention for the next few days,” Rebecca Schlegel, a Texas A&M University social psychologist, told me. “It’s so baked into our culture that we almost take it for granted.” But the dream of perfect self-knowledge is unattainable, and chasing it too doggedly can leave you more confused and stuck than when you started.
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How to Stop Being So Hard on Yourself
If a friend is struggling with a big challenge or feels defeated, it’s usually our first instinct to offer words of comfort and understanding. But often it’s not so easy to do this for ourselves. ... Finally, self-compassion is sometimes confused with self-care, but it’s not just about soothing, said Steven C. Hayes, a clinical psychologist and the creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which emphasizes the types of skills that are useful for building self-compassion, like living in the moment and focusing on values rather than imposed expectations.
