Are You Overwhelmed — Why Won’t You Ask For Help?

Leading by doing — we could write the book. We see the big picture, organize the details, meet the deadlines, and never let them see us sweat.

Yep, we’re on top of it all the time…except when a task veers beyond our arsenal of expertise. But that rarely happens. And since we’re so good at figuring things out, we soldier on, on our own. Until we can’t.

Sometimes the task is too foreign, the time too short, the energy too finite to pull it off. And then we’re stuck acting like a Lone Leader, trying to operate without the necessary support.

There are at least three reasons a Lone Leader prefers to operate solo, even when overwhelmed. Knowing which one you’re prone to is the first step toward being able to issue an SOS. Take our mini-quiz to find out your tendency.

Lone Leader mini-quiz
First, think of a time when you were in over your head but didn’t ask for help. Then quickly answer the following three questions:

How did you Feel when you had more than you could handle?
A. Vulnerable
B. Overworked
C. Isolated

What did you Think when you had more than you could handle?
A. I hope no one checks on this until I figure it out.
B. I wish I could clone myself.
C. If I had more clout, maybe I wouldn’t have to do this by myself.

What did you Do when you had more than you could handle?
A. Googled, tried something, Googled, tried something else, Googled…
B. Made a superhuman effort to get things as right as possible.
C. Did your best, knowing it wasn’t what it could be.

If you chose mostly A answers, read about Opaque Leaders, below. Mostly Bs, you’re likely an Uneasy Leader. Cs are Hesitant Leaders. If you had a mix of letters, you’re a hybrid, which means you’ll find parts of yourself in all three types.

After you learn about your Lone Leader tendency — and maybe spend a few minutes reflecting on past examples of it — go to our Help Yourself printable worksheet for an exercise to help shift your perspective on getting help when you truly need it.

When you act like an Opaque Leader
You’ve got it covered — literally. Your veneer of competence is more than skin deep, and everyone knows it. But those tiny fissures of inexperience worry you. What if someone notices that you’re not 100% all that? Would you still be respected? Would you lose your position? Rather than chance it, you draw the shades around your weak spot and carry on like the impenetrable expert you believe you should be.

You need to see how asking for help is a sign of confidence. Never saying you’re sorry. Never admitting you’re wrong. All that tough-guy stuff is hooey. The courage to request assistance lets people see your human side, the one that says, “I know what I don’t know, and I know you can help me change that.”

Get the exercise: What confidence really looks like

When you act like an Uneasy Leader
You’re happiest when things are on a steady simmer and within reach. That way you can adjust as needed to ensure a good result. It’s when you can’t fully control the situation that misgivings arise. Will someone else make the same decision you would? Will quality suffer? Better to triple your own efforts, you reason, than risk compromise at the hand of another.

You need to think about accepting help as a way to make things better.The beauty of collaboration (a.k.a. help) is you get a whole new set of ideas to play with in addition to your own. That’s not compromise, that’s creativity in one of its best forms. Hey, did ever see what happened when a fine artist let her four-year-old finish some of her sketches?

Get the exercise: Discover the upsides of collaboration 

When you act like a Hesitant Leader
No one would accuse you of being high maintenance. You keep the wheels turning almost single-handedly without much need for applause. Thing is, when you could use some assistance you’re reluctant to sound the alarm. Will they think you’re a pest? Will they have bigger fish to fry? Will no one answer at all? The imagined consequence of rejection is enough to keep you from raising your hand.

You need to believe that others want to help. Ask someone to help you and they are instantly flattered. Beyond the initial ego-boost, your potential helper experiences a sense of validity and purpose. It’s almost like you’re doing them a favor.

Get the exercise: Find out why people want to help

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE WORKSHEET: Help Yourself: How to get the assistance you need but won’t ask for
 

This article originally appeared on unstuck.com and was written by Unstuck

Boost Heart Health With Yoga

Yogis know the poses that “open” the heart, but did you know that regular practice can also help protect your ticker over the long term?


In honor of National Wear Red Day, the American Heart Association’s campaign to raise awareness of heart disease (the#1 killer of women), here are 5 ways that yoga keeps your heart going strong.

And don’t forget to wear red yoga pants on Friday to spread the word!

1. Love how you feel after class? That’s your stress melting away.

Stress may affect behaviors and factors that are proven to increase heart disease risk: high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity and overeating, according to the American Heart Association. Chronic stress may also cause some people to drink too much alcohol, which can increase your blood pressure and may damage the artery walls. A regular yoga practice, on the other hand, is likely to calm you down, making you less likely to lean on caffeine, sugar, fatty foods or alcohol to “numb out,” says Hazel Patterson, Urban Zen Integrative Yoga Therapist and teacher trainer at YogaWorks in Los Angeles.

“Moving with the breath, in other words linking expanding movements with the inhales, and contracting or softening movements with the exhales, starts to create a dynamic which calms the nerves and moves that stress energy out of the body,” she explains.

For your go-to bliss-out pose, Terrence Monte, a Managing Teacher at Pure Yoga in New York City, recommends the Seated Forward Bend. To make it even more delicious, place a rolled blanket or towel under your knees, and rest your forehead on a block or other prop placed on your shins.

2. It’s a feel-good workout.

Maintaining a normal BMI (body mass index) can help your heart, according to the CDC, and regular physical activity can help you maintain a healthy weight. Yoga, Monte says, is the “best resistance workout on the planet” —meaning it’s easy on the joints and uses your own body weight to build strength. Become a fat-burning machine by building long lean muscle—Monte suggests Plank Pose as all-over strengthener that does double-duty by targeting your core and shoring up your back.

3. It blasts belly fat.

Excess abdominal fat has been linked to increased risk for heart disease. By strengthening the large muscle groups in the body, such as the gluteals and quadriceps, yoga gets your body burning more calories, meaning you are less likely to store them as fat around your middle, Patterson says. “Standing poses like Warrior II held for a little longer than the mind is comfortable with is a great way to build these powerhouse muscles,” she says.

4. It “opens” the heart.

What does it mean to “open” your heart mean anyway? “Asana is the practice of putting your body in challenging shapes. Yoga, on the other hand, is the practice of integrating what you learn on the mat with what you do off of it,” Monte explains. “As you become more mindful about your body, your breath, your language in challenging poses, you become more aware about your own perceptions (read: misperceptions) of the world.”

Rather than the obvious heart-openers (Fish, Camel, Locust ), Monte suggests a pose that’s really challenging to stay vulnerable in, like Chair Pose. “Sit as low as you can with your lumbar spine as long as possible for as long as you can. Notice how your mind, your language, your perceptions change as the intensity increases,” he says.

5. It changes your diet.

A healthy diet (heavy on colorful fruits and veggies, fiber and heart-healthy fish and light on red meat, saturated fat, sodium, sugar and processed foods) is critical to heart health, and studies have linked regular yoga practice to mindful eating.

“As you connect to your body, breath and perspectives in challenging shapes on the mat, you connect more to what you do to it off the mat,” Monte says. “Suddenly, if you have to do yoga in the morning, it gets much harder to have that fourth martini, that fried whatever, that extra serving of needless sugar. You develop a sense of respect for this absurdly miraculous body that has developed over millions of years of evolution.”

Article originally appeared on The Yoga Journal. 
http://www.yogajournal.com/article/health/5-ways-yoga-opens-supports-heart/

Want to Improve Your Willpower?

While it makes sense that meditation would be linked to greater willpower, who'd have thought procrastination could also do the trick?

One of the key parts of our culture at Buffer is a focus on self-improvement. We each pick an area to improve on each week and share our daily progress and challenges, making it a social, supportive way to adjust, create or change our habits.

There’s still a lot of work to be done for self-improvement to be effective, though. I’ve been through a bunch of different improvement focuses in the last few months, including positivity, running, reading more and learning French. Each one has been fun to focus on, but it’s hard to keep more than one new habit going at a time—partly because it takes so much willpower.

What willpower is and how it works in the brain

Kelly McGonigal, PhD, and author of The Willpower Instinct says willpower is a response that comes from both the brain and the body.

The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, like file your taxes or go to the gym, but you’d rather do nothing.

The prefontal cortex (that section of the brain right behind your ) is the part that helps us with things like decision-making and regulating our behavior. Self-control, or willpower, falls under this heading, and thus is taken care of in this part of the brain.

To be effective at controlling our urges and making sound decisions, the prefontal cortex needs to be looked after. That means feeding it with good-quality food so it has enough energy to do its job and getting enough sleep.

How willpower gets depleted throughout the day

McGonigal points out that one of the most replicated findings about willpower is that it seems to be finite—that is, we only have so much and it runs out as we use it.

Trying to control your temper, ignore distractions or refuse seconds all tap the same source of strength.

We can look at willpower like a muscle—it can get exhausted by overuse, but just like our physical muscles, there are some researchers who believe we might be able to strengthen our willpower by training it.

How to increase your willpower

Okay, we know that we only have so much willpower and as we go about our day, stress and normal self-control depletes our resource. Let’s see what options we have for increasing the pool of willpower we have to draw from.

1. Increase your capacity for pressure: Learn how to manage stress

To start with, we need to manage our stress levels, says McGonigal. Being under high levels of stress means that our body’s energy is used up in acting instinctively and making decisions based on short-term outcomes. Our prefrontal cortex loses out in the battle for our energy when high-stress is involved.

McGonigal says that stopping to take a few deep breaths when we feel overwhelmed or tempted can be a great start in managing our stress levels and improving our willpower.

2. Encourage yourself to stick to your plan

To make it even easier, it appears that self-affirmation can even help you to have more self-control when you’re running out, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A good example of this is the difference between telling yourself "I can’t" and "I don’t." Taking back control of the situation using the phrase "I don’t" has been shown to be more effective at helping you to stick to your plan and break bad habits:

Every time you tell yourself "I can’t," you’re creating a feedback loop that is a reminder of your limitations. This terminology indicates that you’re forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do.

So try telling yourself that you don’t do that bad habit, rather than punishing yourself by saying "I can’t."

3. Get more sleep to help your brain manage energy better

McGonigal also says getting enough sleep makes a big difference to how efficiently our prefrontal cortex works:

Sleep deprivation (even just getting less than six hours a night) is a kind of chronic stress that impairs how the body and brain use energy. The prefrontal cortex is especially hard hit and it loses control over the regions of the brain that create cravings and the stress response.

Luckily, McGonigal also cites studies that have shown we can make this work in our favor by ensuring we get enough sleep:

When the sleep-deprived catch a better night’s sleep, their brain scans no longer show signs of prefrontal cortex impairment.

And if you’re wondering how much sleep is enough, here’s a rough guide: one of the most acclaimed sleep researchers, Daniel Kripke, found in a recent study that "people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, live the longest, are happier and most productive."

4. Meditate (for as little as eight weeks)

Meditation has also been linked to increasing the reserve of willpower we have available, as well as improving attention, focus, stress management, and self-awareness. McGonigal suggests this can even give fast results:

And it doesn’t take a lifetime of practice—brain changes have been observed after eight weeks of brief daily meditation training.

5. Better exercise and nutrition: The most ignored route to higher willpower

Another great way to train the brain, that is often easily ignored or undervalued, yet can make you a lot more resilient to stress, and thus boost willpower, is regular physical exercise. Both relaxing, mindful exercise like yoga and intense physical training can provide these benefits, though McGonigal points out that we’re not sure why this works yet.

As I mentioned earlier, what you feed your body affects how much energy the prefrontal cortex has to work with. This is why nutrition is so important:

Something as simple as eating a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes energy more available to brain and can improve every aspect of willpower.

Not only will exercise and good nutrition improve your willpower, but they’ll make you feel better as well. Exercise in particular is known for making us happy by releasing endorphins:

These endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise, block the feeling of pain and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria.

6. Postpone things for later to gain focus on what’s important now

Postponing something you really shouldn’t have can be effective if you’re trying to break a bad habit. In Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Roy F. Baumeister explains that people who tell themselves "not now, but later," are generally less tormented by the temptation of something they are trying to avoid (his example is eating chocolate cake).

A treat for you, since you waited this long

One last thing. You might have heard of a famous experiment using marshmallows to test kids’ willpower. What happens is a child is left alone in a room with one marshmallow for an undefined period of time. If they can resist eating the marshmallow, they’re rewarded with a second marshmallow at the end of the experiment. If they eat the marshmallow before time is up, they only get that one.

Written by Belle Beth Cooper

For more information:
http://www.fastcompany.com/3032513/work-smart/6-scientifically-proven-ways-to-boost-your-self-control

Anxiety Helped with Kinesiology

10 year old’s anxiety about going to the Toilet at School

This anxious young man attended me for Systematic Kinesiology with a view to finding out why he feared going to the toilet at school. The background to this case was that there was building work going on at the School and the children were not allowed to use the toilets during school hours for health and safety reasons. This situation manifested greatly in this young man’s mind and he developed a fear that he would have “an accident” at school and would go to the toilet 3 or 4 times before leaving home every school morning. As a result, his bowel movements became irregular – one day constipated the next diarrhea, all of which was accompanied with severe cramping, he also suffered joint pain and headaches. He had become a very restless sleeper.

In recent weeks he had braces applied to his teeth and this was causing a swallowing problem. I carried out a Systematic Kinesiology Balance treatment to determine where the problem was originating. We have 15 systems in our bodies and in order to find out where and why a health problem is existing, a muscle test to each system is carried by using the muscles of the arms and legs. The limbs are put in various positions and a gentle pressure is exerted on the limb. When a “weakened” muscle is found – it does not mean that there is a serious problem. However, in Systematic Kinesiology, we have lots of options to help find the answer – Nutrition: is there a food causing the problem? Is the weakened area working properly – for example – is the digestive system producing enough enzymes to break down the food. Is there an injury to the area that would be causing the problem or is the problem stress related?

In this particular case, the area supporting the Large Intestine showed to be the main problem and nutrition was the reason for the weakness. As well as this, his Temporal Mandibular Joint (Jaw joint) needed to be balanced. I carried out the full food sensitivity test, – a number of foods showed him sensitive to – the main ones being wheat, yeast, and sugar, chocolate. I also checked to see if a nutritional supplement would also support him. To help this young man to feel more grounded and secure in himself, I showed him how to do an exercise called – Cross Crawl. This was to help his concentration, his general energy, and his confidence. I suggested that he do this three times daily. To complete the session, I checked his Energy Centres or Chakras all of which needed to be balanced.

A few days later, his mother rang me to say how pleased she was with the Systematic Kinesiology session, that she now had a “different child”- one who was much happier in himself and had little or no anxiety now about toilet visits. He told his Mum that he felt “lighter” as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. There will be follow up visits necessary to ensure that this young man’s digestive system is working properly, and that he is able to absorb and digest his foods correctly.

If you have a child who’s worrying about issues at school, the Systematic Kinesiology approach looks for solutions in a holistic way, not only focussing on the worry itself, but supporting the child energetically, nutritionally, simple movement exercises and physically working with the body’s balancing reflexes.

Article originally appeared Kinesiology.ie and is written by by Mella Britton, DipAK, practitioner in Donegal