I was going to skip my daily swim the other morning. I had already walked three miles with a friend and taken my dog to the park for his exercise. I was really tired, my back was sore, I had a column to write and lots to do around the house.
But I knew from past experience that I would feel much better after 40 minutes of swimming laps. So in I went. And, yes, I did feel better — not just refreshed, but more energetic, clearheaded and better prepared than I would have been otherwise to tackle the day’s essentials.
Michelle Segar, who directs the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center at the University of Michigan, would say I had reframed my exercise experience, making it ever more likely that I would continue to swim — even on days when I didn’t feel like doing it — because I viewed it as a positive, restorative activity. Indeed, exercise is something I do, not because I have to or was told to, but because I know it makes me feel better.
Dr. Segar, a psychologist who specializes in helping people adopt and maintain regular exercise habits, is the author of “No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness.” Her research has shown that even people who say they hate to exercise or have repeatedly fallen off the exercise wagon can learn to enjoy it and stick with it.
Three years ago, I wrote about research by Dr. Segar and others showing that promoting physical activity to prevent or control disease, lose weight or sculpt one’s body, and prescribing doses as if exercise were medicine, wouldn’t get most people to do it and keep doing it.
“Health is not an optimal way to make physical activity relevant and compelling enough for most people to prioritize in their hectic lives,” Dr. Segar said in an interview.
Though it seems counterintuitive, studies have shown that people whose goals are weight loss and better health tend to spend the least amount of time exercising. That is true even for older adults, a study of 335 men and women ages 60 to 95 showed.
Rather, immediate rewards that enhance daily life — more energy, a better mood, less stress and more opportunity to connect with friends and family — offer far more motivation, Dr. Segar and others have found.
“I like to think of physical activity as a way to revitalize and renew ourselves, as fuel to better enjoy and succeed at what matters most,” she said.
In her new book, she describes strategies to get even the most sedentary people off their duffs, starting with ways to overcome past failures and negative feelings about exercise that make it feel more like punishment than pleasure.
Instead of the recommended half hour a day or 10-minute doses of moderate exercise three times a day on most days, Dr. Segar suggests focusing on the idea that “everything counts” — taking the stairs instead of the elevator, weeding the garden, dancing, even walking to the water cooler.
“We should count any and every opportunity to move that exists in the space of our lives as valid movement worth doing,” she wrote. She advocates adopting a food marketer’s approach to workouts: Enjoy “snacks” of exercise that can entice gradual increases in how much is “consumed.” And like the calories in food snacks, it all adds up.
Dr. Segar likens the choices to Baskin-Robbins’s 31 flavors: “There are so many options — ‘What do I feel like doing today?’ — then picking the ‘flavor’ of physical activity that feels right for that day and moment.” The neuroscience of reward has shown that this approach can foster and reinforce positive feelings about being active.
Also important is giving oneself permission to make self-care through physical activity a priority. Dr. Segar wrote: “When we do not prioritize our own self-care because we are busy serving others, our energy is not replenished. Instead, we are exhausted, and our ability to be there for anyone or anything else is compromised.”
People who make physical activity a priority don’t necessarily have more time than others. Rather, they make sure to schedule time for it because they know it enhances their performance and the quality of their daily lives. It has been shown, for example, that schoolchildren who are given exercise breaks are better able to to pay attention and learn.
Citing a “paradox of self-care,” Dr. Segar wrote, “The more energy you give to caring for yourself, the more energy you have for everything else.” She suggests viewing physical activity as a power source for everything else you want to accomplish. “What sustains us, we sustain,” she wrote.
To those who feel they are neglecting family to fit in exercise, she suggests taking them along. The routine can help foster a culture of physical activity at an early age. When my brother and I were young, my father took us on his weekend walks. He taught us to swim as preschoolers and launched a lifetime of enjoyment in the water. Now in our 70s, both of us continue to appreciate what physical activity brings to everything else in our lives. We feel like slugs when we can’t exercise.
Even those with the best intentions often set themselves up for failure by establishing rigid exercise goals. They try to do too much, and when they can’t keep it up they give up and chalk it up as another exercise failure. In place of a performance goal, Dr. Segar suggests setting a “learning goal” — learning to be flexible and cutting yourself some slack when needed.
Consistency trumps quantity when trying to establish a lifetime of fitness. When a last-minute task cuts into a planned workout, you should not skip the session altogether. Even 10 or 20 minutes of activity is better than none.
It also helps to anticipate challenges to your exercise routine, using an “if-then” exercise tool. If, for example, you are too tired after work to go to the gym, think about a replacement activity you might enjoy, like taking a sunset walk alone or with a partner, friend, child, dog or even a neighbor’s dog.
Or, in the future, go to sleep and get up a half hour earlier to fit in physical activity before life’s demands get in the way.
The words we choose to use become the mantras of our life, and the energy we give off with these words influences what kind of a reality the Law of Attractionwill bring us. Positive phrases give off good vibes that attract a better life. Unfortunately, negative words and phrases give off lower vibes that attract negativity and unwanted realities.
So while some people may be suffering because of the words and phrases they choose to use, you can do the exact opposite and attract a better life.
Use positive phrases and expressions more often, and more positive things will be attracted to you. This creates a snowball effect over time, causing the good things in your life to grow and multiply. Using positive words and phrases is an easy Law of Attraction strategy that anyone can use.
With that being said, here are a few positive expressions you can use to improve the quality of your life. These are all common, everyday phrases, so it should be fairly easy to add more of them into your conversations.
21 Positive Expressions That Attract a Better Life
If you are a hard-working hustler, you may find yourself hustling in the wrong direction.
“The trouble with men today is that they simply don’t think.”
This quote, from the Nobel Prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer, really resonates with me. After all, it’s easy to distract ourselves from pain, boredom, or important questions. With mobile phones and tablets, we can stay connected 24/7 and consume information non-stop. The scary part is that the late great Dr. Schweitzer passed away in 1965, long before the personal computer and iPhone were invented. If the truth of this quote was evident in 1965, I wonder what the good Doctor would say about us now.
I’m as guilty as anyone. When I’m having trouble solving a problem, I find myself checking email again, subconsciously hoping that a distraction will pop up that prevents me from getting any real work done. Or I’ll open Facebook, and scroll mindlessly through the newsfeed. There are tons of tools and techniques that can help avoid this sort of behavior, all beyond the scope of this article.
Similarly, having a “hustle, hustle, go, go, move forward” mentality can be dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that work ethic separates great from good. Some of my greatest personal achievements can be credited to pure hard work and grit. But the assumption the people who are touting the “hustle” mentality often fail to mention is that you have to be doing something worthwhile, or on your best path to success. While my greatest accomplishments can be credited to hard work and determination, my biggest blunders and time-wasting episodes were the result of a strategic mistake. These screw-ups and failures I’m referring to were not a result of poor execution, but failure to choose the best strategic path from the beginning.
For example, when I launched full speed into the development (and marketing) phase of a software program geared toward Personal Trainers, I failed to realize that there was already a very low-cost, non-industry specific application that was popular with my target market. Apparently I didn’t do a good job of vetting the competition. This is an obvious blunder, but the same types of mistakes in strategy and prioritization can creep into everyday life. If you aren’t careful, you may find yourself executing on tasks and “hustling” like a mad man while ignoring your highest priority goals.
I’m not saying hustle is a bad word. What I’m advocating is spending at least as much time and energy on strategy as you do on “hustling.” When I reflect on the time and money wasted on terrible ideas or secondary priorities, I realize that there is no referee tallying up my “hustle points.” The hustle only has value if it breeds results — a fact so obvious that it gets forgotten.
The best way to ensure you are on the right path, and that your actions line up with your priorities, is to regularly zoom out. Other than an extended trip into the wilderness with no access to the internet, the best method I’ve tried is the Daily Priority Review.
If you are a hustler, you probably love To-Do Lists. Instead of launching into your list of tasks first thing each morning, review an attached Priority List first. The Priority List should be comprised of the top five most important things in your life, ranked from one to five in order of importance. Go as broad and obvious as you like. You’ll need to periodically reconstruct your list over time as priorities shift, and will find that you get better at articulating actionable priorities that align with your core values the more you do it. Try jotting your priorities down on a note card, and keep it next to (or attached to) the medium you use for task management (this works whether you use a digital device or good ol’ fashioned Sticky Notes.)
The point is to force yourself to become cognizant of the values, goals, and aspects of life that are most important to you and ensure that your daily “To-Do” list falls in line. I’ll stop there and leave the rest up to interpretation, because only you know what daily reminders will keep you focused on what is important. Otherwise, you are at risk for falling prey to the “hustle” mentality and hustling in exactly the wrong direction.
Having this kind of habit will make you a more successful exerciser
It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.
The most consistent exercisers, researchers found, were those who made exercise into a specific type of habit—one triggered by a cue, like hearing your morning alarm and going to the gym without even thinking about it, or getting stressed and immediately deciding to exercise. “It’s not something you have to deliberate about; you don’t have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work,” explains L. Alison Phillips, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and one of the study’s authors. Instead, it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue.
The researchers wanted to see whether this type of habit, known as an instigation habit, was better than another type of habit at predicting who stuck with a month of exercise. At the beginning and end of the monthlong study, they asked 123 university students and faculty questions that assessed how often they exercised and how strong their exercise habits were—whether they did it without thinking, for example. From these questions, they gleaned whether a person has a strong instigation habit—one where a cue triggers the instantaneous decision to exercise—and whether a person has a strong execution habit—that is, knowing exactly what kind of exercise they’ll do once you get to the gym, or being able to go through the motions of an exercise routine while being mentally checked out.
The only factor that predicted how often a person exercised over the long-term, they found, was the strength of their instigation habit.
It got stronger with time, too. “When people started exercising more frequently over the month and became more active, I saw that their instigation habit strength increased with that frequency, but execution habit didn’t really change in relation to frequency at all,” Phillips says. Zoning out mentally during exercise didn’t have a negative effect, but it didn’t help a person adhere to a regimen, either.
That’s good news for newbie exercisers who might be intimidated by the same routine day in, day out. “In the long term, it seems beneficial, or at least not harmful, to have variety in your routine,” Phillips says of the results. “A lot of people might shy away from starting to exercise because they think, oh man, I can’t possibly imagine myself doing this forever. They might think of one boring routine—running on the treadmill—and to them it sounds like torture, so they give up before they even begin.”
Some repetitive behaviors do reinforce exercise, she says. “When you’re just starting to develop an exercise routine, I think it might be helpful to engage in the same behaviors, to have this patterned action.” But sticking with a cue—instead of clinging to the same tired routine—appears to be what will get you back to your workout again and again.
For too many of us work is associated with stress, unhappiness, and anxiety, but world-renowned neuroscientist Richie Davidson and his colleagues show TODAYthat through a few simple steps, we can increase our well-being.
Davidson works to find connections between the brain and our happiness, and his research has shown that we can intentionally change our brain and learn to be happier. Davidson explains:
“By focusing on wholesome thoughts, for example, and directing our intentions in those ways, we can potentially influence the plasticity of our brains and shape them in ways that can be beneficial.”
One method for learning to be happier that Davidson and his colleagues at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds recommend are three daily tasks that are simple, easy, and rewarding. And Richie Davidson has research to back them up.
The first step is five minutes of meditation every day. This can help you go into your work day feeling more energized, relaxed, and ready to tackle the day. You can check out our Getting Started page to learn more if you are interested in starting a meditation practice, even if it’s only five minutes.
The next step is to make a list of three good things that happened in your day. They can be anything from a really good cup of coffee or a compliment from your boss. By listing good things in your day, you are focusing on the positive aspects of your work, which can help you feel happier.
The last step is to perform one random act of kindness. Not only is this step helpful in making you feel happier and more rewarded at work, but also gives someone else a hand and a smile to cheer up their day.
And there’s some research to back this up. People who did this practice for just twenty minutes a day from 30 days had gained new gray matter in their prefrontal cortex, which is the area associated with attention, emotion regulation, and executive decision-making.
Twenty minutes a day doesn’t seem like much, but these practices can be powerful tools in reshaping your brain and boosting your happiness.
To learn more about Davidson’s groundbreaking work, you can check out this infographic about all the different spheres that his research has influenced, including early childhood education, PTSD treatment, and treatment for individuals who suffer from depression.
Negative & Positive Effects on People Who Drink Energy Drinks
Energy drinks have become increasingly popular since they were first introduced into the European market in 1987 and then in the U.S. about 10 years later. Manufacturers of these products claim to increase energy, endurance, burn fat and improve athletic performance. The medical community has begun to question the amount of sugars, and safety of caffeine levels and other supplements in these beverages.
Caffeine
Energy drinks contain high levels of caffeine, at 80 to 500 mg per can when compared to 65 to 100 mg for a cup of coffee. Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant and diuretic. Three cups of coffee -- about 3 -- offer a maximum recommended daily amount of 250 mg of caffeine. Another ingredient often found in these types of drinks is guarana seed extract, from a plant that is native to the Amazon. Guarana is high in caffeine content.
Positive Effects
Caffeine is the main supplement in most energy drinks. It is an appetite suppressant, and has been used effectively in the treatment of migraine headaches and to combat short-term drowsiness and fatigue. According to a UC Davis publication, Guarana has been scientifically linked to increased energy, appetite suppression and athletic performance enhancement.
Negative Effects
Caffeine or guarana consumption can result in increased heart rate, sleeplessness, nausea, anxiety, depression, nervousness, irritability, abnormal heart rhythms -- arrhythmia and late-term miscarriage. Some drugs can interact with either supplement and should be considered prior to consuming energy drinks. A study by the American Heart Association showed significant increases in heart rate and blood pressure with energy drink consumption during sedentary activities. A concern was raised that combining energy drinks with higher levels of physical activity could pose a risk for people with high blood pressure or heart disease.
Safe Energy Drink Consumption
While the FDA has set a caffeine maximum level at 71 mg for a 12-oz. soda, According to "The Journal of The American Medical Association," it has not set maximums for energy drinks. Further studies on caffeine’s effects are under way with many medical organizations advising adults to consume energy drinks in moderation; and for children and teens to abstain altogether until their safety can be established. New studies have also been concerned with alcohol-based cocktails that include energy drinks. A study published in the February 2011 issue of "Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research" indicates that energy drink-laced cocktails spur continued alcohol consumption because of the stimulating effects of these beverages.
