Boosts productivity. Daily meditation can help you perform better at work! Research found that meditation helps increase your focus and attention and improves your ability to multitask. Meditation helps clear our minds and focus on the present moment – which gives you a huge productivity boost.

Search for: What is mindfulness and why is it important?

Search for: Why should meditation promote feelings of well being and relaxation?

I hope you can find a greater sense of calm through them too.

• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World by Haemin Sunim.
• Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga by Sylvain Tesson.
• Collected Poems by William Wordsworth.

How can you relax your mind and body?

1. Take slow, deep breaths. Or try other breathing exercises for relaxation.
2. Soak in a warm bath.
3. Listen to soothing music.
4. Practice mindful meditation.
5. Write.
6. Use guided imagery.

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1. Breathe. Simple mindfulness techniques can be your best friend in tense situations and none is more straightforward and accessible than using your breath.
2. Focus on your body.
3. Try saying a mantra.
4. Acknowledge and label your feelings.
5. Take a break.

When you feel threatened, your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become sharper.

Easily agitated or alarmed. Apprehensive or anxious. Relating to or affecting the nerves.

Why do we feel nervous? Nervousness is a common feeling brought on by your body’s stress response. This involves series of hormonal and physiological responses that help prepare you to handle a perceived or imagined threat. Your body prepares to fight or flee a threat by boosting adrenaline production.

In the book, Cuddy outlines two key reasons why a moderate amount of nervousness can be helpful in stressful situations. For one, anxiety can be an adaptive response that keeps us alert to danger and things going wrong. Sometimes, Cuddy says, nervousness can also signal respect for the person you’re interacting with.

Being slightly nervous means you care, and you’re alive, and you’re taking some kind of risk. Hooray for being nervous! A friend told me to substitute the word ‘excitement’ for ‘nervous’. That way you acknowledge the physical feelings without putting a negative spin on things.

Even thinking about the situation can cause chronic worriers great distress and disability. Excessive worry or ongoing fear or anxiety is harmful when it becomes so irrational that you can’t focus on reality or think clearly. People with high anxiety have difficulty shaking their worries.

Physical symptoms of stress include:

• Low energy.
• Headaches.
• Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea.
• Aches, pains, and tense muscles.
• Chest pain and rapid heartbeat.
• Insomnia.
• Frequent colds and infections.
• Loss of sexual desire and/or ability.

When stress becomes overwhelming and prolonged, the risks for mental health problems and medical problems increase. Long-term stress increases the risk of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, substance use problems, sleep problems, pain and bodily complaints such as muscle tension.

These include school and workplace mental health programs, early childhood interventions, social support and community engagement, women empowerment, anti-discrimination programs, and other interventions that address the social determinants of mental health.