Creating Healthy Habits - Part 2: Mindfulness

Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that arises when we pay attention in the present moment, on purpose, and non-judgmentally. To understand how mindfulness is involved in forming habits, let’s learn about two systems of the brain and how they can impact your behavior.

Creating Healthy Habits - Part 1: A New Approach

Many of us are dealing with unhealthy habits that we started during the pandemic. Even though we know what we need to do to make changes, we are finding it challenging to commit to healthy habits. We continue to "stress eat." WHY do we do this and WHAT can we do about it?

Humor: An Antidote to Stress

"I've gained so much weight during the pandemic that I need to go out and get new work pajamas." An abundance of research establishes humor as an effective means of coping with adversity, reducing stress, and promoting a positive mood (Strick et al., 2009). Most of us don't have the time or the desire to take a stand-up comedy class. Still, there are things we can do to enhance our ability to reframe stressful or difficult situations. Read about it here…

Pandemic of Loneliness

The concept of loneliness is complex and has many different causes, and its symptoms vary among people (Lim et al., 2020). Social isolation is one factor that increases loneliness in many people. Here are some tips to help you in “the new normal”…

COVID-19, Behavior Change, Relationships, LonelinessSaundra SchrockApril 26, 2021Pandemic, COVID-19, Anxiety, Loneliness

Making Mindfulness a Habit

From the beginning, the Levelhead approach to developing a mindfulness practice was based on the assumption that people have busy lives and need to be able to practice whenever, wherever it fits their lifestyle. We realize that people are time-starved and have a limited desire for practices that require more than 5 minutes. Take a look at what recent research says about what is needed to develop a mindfulness practice…

Gratitude as a Habit

Recently, I saw a study that captured my attention because it aimed to understand the extent to which participants could establish a habit of gratitude thinking before sleeping (Lo & Leung, 2020). The researchers defined gratitude as an inclination to appreciate and savor daily events and experiences. Here is what the researchers found.

Shaming Others

As I recover from having COVID-19 late last year, I am stunned by how much shaming I hear and see. I'm sure I am sensitive to this because of my experience, but it seems that there is a lot more shaming than compassion and care. Let’s find out why people resort to shaming and what to do about it.

COVID-19, Relationships, Shaming, Behavior ChangeSaundra SchrockJanuary 28, 2021COVID-19, Relationships, Shaming, Behavior Change

Magical Thinking

It's January, and it is time for us to put into action all the promises we made to change our behavior in 2021. Even though we have known long before the new year what we needed to change, we gave ourselves permission to continue these “bad” habits until now. Logic would say that if you're going to change a habit or behavior, any time is an excellent time to start. However, year after year, we pick arbitrary times like Mondays or the quintessential day of January 1 to begin. Why?