How to Handle Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

The Effects of Sun Deprivation

Walking the sunlit trails in Earl Bales Park in Toronto is a good antidote to winter sun deprivation

After getting through the -25 C (-13 F) cold spell last week, conversation among a few of us who live in the world's northern hemisphere turned to SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. The effects of sun deprivation in the long winter months can include:

• loss of energy
• decreased desire to socialize
• short-term memory loss
• fatigue
• depression

We don't always need to read an article to know that our energy levels are waning annually around mid February to early March. But Seasonal Affective Disorder is very real for people who experience prolonged depression every winter. Approximately 2-3% of Canadians experience the full effects of SAD, and 15% experience a milder form of it. It is estimated by NHS Choices that SAD affects about 2 million people in the UK, and more than 12 million people across Northern Europe. According to Psych Central, approximately half a million Americans are affected by SAD.

Sun deprivation is also associated with Vitamin D deficiency and declined serotonin levels. Hormonal Fitness explains that the sun is the main stimulus for serotonin production as well as critical for the production of Vitamin D. It describes further that "discoveries have been made recently about the effects of vitamin D and the consequences of deficiency - particularly in connection with immunity, osteoporosis, heart disease, and cancer. An article at lifestylelaboratory.com even suggests that "lack of sunlight probably kills many thousands more people in this country and others at similar latitudes than skin cancer."

How is SAD Treated?

Skiing in the middle of the city at Earl Bales Park ski hill in Toronto

Treatment for SAD usually includes medication or light therapy. But the Tech Times offers great solutions to dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder and the winter blues that are more natural. Natural remedies that avoid prescriptions or the use of light boxes are:

• taking advantage of the natural light whenever and wherever possible
• getting regular exercise
• opening up the blinds during daylight hours
• going out for a walk during the day
• doing yoga
• embracing the snow and enjoying it

Enjoying Winter

One of the best perspectives on how we really enjoy winter in Canada is a great documentary entitled Life Below Zero.

But stepping out to your local city parks in winter can offer some very interesting surprises. On Family Day 2015 I discovered an uptown urban ski hill that is a mere 20-minute walk from our home. This facility rents ski equipment and has a canteen. It may not be challenging enough for the advanced skier and, while it's true that skiing down it only takes a minute or two, it's a great way to enjoy the city sun in winter months.

Anger and Social Change

Angry Film Characters in Winter Sleep and Corbo Profoundly Affect Those Closest to Them

Haluk Bilginer in the Turkish film 'Winter Sleep' and Tony Nardi in the Canadian film 'Corbo'

In two completely different films produced in different cultures about different political eras, a deep-seated anger spills over to affect and take root in central characters who dominate the story. These two films share the same root element of misplaced anger causing social change that goes wrong. The anger, pain and disappointment in the protagonists slowly move central characters into zones of irrationality, while their own repressed anger causes them to carry on unaware of the effect that they have on people around them. The two films were screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in January 2015.

In Winter Sleep, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and set in a small village in Cappadocia, a failed actor controls others through his education and amassed wealth as a landowner, oblivious to the debilitating poverty around him. He has a particularly suffocating effect on his young wife. In Corbo, directed by Mathieu Denis and set in Montreal, a repressive father who was formerly discriminated against in Canada as an Italian immigrant after Mussolini declared war, cannot understand why his 16-year old son is not appreciative of the wealth and stability he provides the family as a lawyer. (The son, the main character in Corbo, becomes involved in the underground pro-French independence movement and later a radical terrorist in the FLQ).

How Anger Can Cause Things To End Badly          

The people who affect those who move the story along in both films are angry. The films are about a lot of things other than anger, yet without the rigidity and lack of communication engendered by anger these stories would have been very different. The complacence of these characters plays a part in the suffering of others around them, and when enlarged to a view of a whole society, is the very same complacence that provokes the desire for social change. But enacting social change doesn't work very well when inherited, repressed anger from unrelated sources is fueling it.

In Winter Sleep, it is difficult not to surmise that the arrogance of the angry character played by Haluk Bilginer is a direct result of his earlier failure as an actor. One wonders when his openness to ideas and people stopped. He acknowledges that his wife no longer loves him but lacks the flexibility to understand why.

Similarly, the repressed father in Corbo, played by Tony Nardi, actually believes that his sons will absorb his learned Anglophone liberal middle class values without absorbing his anxiety about having suffered at its hand as an Italian immigrant during WWII.

The theme of painful suffering developing into powerful control of others runs as a subtext throughout both Corbo and Winter Sleep, two totally different films produced by different generations and countries. Whether reacting to the dominant English culture in Canada or the crushing poverty of rural Turkey, it is the people affected by repressed anti-heroes who express the truth - a young wife crushed by a self-hating husband, or a young son angry without knowing why. We find out there are no easy answers in their personal stories.

Both films are well worth watching. Corbo is about the search for French identity in Canada. Winter Sleep is about the class struggle in the steppes of the Central Anatolia region of Turkey.

Who Defines Our Cultural Attitudes?

If older people stay engaged with mainstream society, experience will become a valued commodity

Making Life Experience Count

The large cities where we live are meccas of people from all over the world, yet our cultural attitude towards ageing is still dictated by a 1950s Madison Avenue advertising culture that slowly removed people over 40 from its depiction of relevant consumers. And that is still where we sit. According to our billboards, online or print ads, videos and articles, we are all perpetually somewhere between 21 and 38.

Taking Back Mass Media

The only way for people over 40 to see ourselves addressed by our own culture, is to take back the street. Keep working. Do not go and stare at a sunset somewhere - unless it's on a holiday. If you're in marketing, stay engaged in your brands and change the copy and the design to reflect your own demographic somewhere in the market, as you get older. Stay engaged at your clubs, restaurants and open spaces until you become a visible force. The more people over 40 are reflected in the mass media and included as a demographic in marketing, the more the elderly will slowly be looked upon as a group to respect. Since we are a consumer culture, each segment has to stay engaged with the marketplace just to earn a psychological place within it.

Countering Ageism

Whereas Native Canadian, Asian and many other cultures celebrate the wisdom and intelligence of their elders, in the dominant North American culture our underlying tendency is to consider non-earning members of our society as irrelevant to the marketplace - and therefore irrelevant to us. The upshot of this is that boomers control a huge portion of current spending whether they are currently earning or not. According to Mass Mutual Financial Group, senior women age 50 and older control a net worth of $19 trillion and own more that three-fourths of the nation's financial wealth. You would never know this by the representation of senior women in either our mass media or targeted messaging in our brand-oriented culture. Perhaps the brands currently serving the over-40 consumer group are quietly enjoying the financial rewards somewhere on a beach... and keeping the secret to themselves.

Venetian Vivaldi's Inner Order

Finding Inner Order: Revisiting Vivaldi Concerto Op. 3 No. 8 

Summer is often a time of clearing out the old, going through attics, clearing cottage relics, selling off contents of family estates, or just clearing out one's mind to find something new again.

Mining teen dreams that were packed away can inspire new projects as a baby boomer now

One of the best summer strategies in cleansing out what's old and renewing your energies with new inspiration is to return to what you loved before you reached adulthood. There lay hidden, unmined and often unrealized passions and dreams. If you touch back on something you experienced as a teen that was not quite of this world, you can probably absorb it now and make it work positively in your life. Since Vivaldi invented ritornello form where the theme keeps returning to the main line, returning to his music now seemed very understandable.

How Rediscovering Music That Touched Us Before Can Be Rewarding

Vivaldi's Double Violin Concerto in A Minor is Light and Bright with Soaring Phrases

That is what happened with me and Vivaldi's Double Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 3, No. 8 in the recording by David and Igor Oistrach. This recording informed several of my early teen years, rehearsing a ballet competition quartet at age 14, riding bikes and soaking blistered toes from pointe shoes, and watching our ballet choreographer translate Vivaldi's sustained phrasing into 8 outstretched arms reaching across the room horizontally in a perfectly-balanced continuum. How, as young dancers, we wove and intertwined like leaves with golden ribbons and bent torsos - then back to the continuum on which all things in life rest - not quite of this world. If wellness is about maximizing natural health within the framework that we've each got, what could be of more value to it than a perfect teen influence that had been folded into the recesses of the subconscious?

What Is It In Vivaldi That Is So Uplifting?

Embracing the Platonic classicism of baroque music enriched our ballet quartet then as much as it does now. What is it about Vivaldi that is so uplifting?

Well, Vivaldi was a priest and worked in theatre, for starters. He worked extensively with tonalities in all of the music he wrote for different instruments. According to James Leonard, Vivaldi transformed music of his time. "Preceded only by a set of Trio Sonatas in 1705 and a set of Violin Sonatas in 1709, Antonio Vivaldi's first published set of concertos, called "L'estro armonico," was the most influential and innovative collection of orchestral music of the first half of the eighteenth century. "L'estro armonico" (roughly, The Genius of Harmony) was published as his Op. 3 in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger and quickly completely changed the form from the more weighty Roman model of  to the lighter Venetian model of Vivaldi."

There is something easy about building and sustaining wellness when Vivaldi speaks to the calm of self-knowledge. This recording of Vivaldi offers the clarity of an order that helps us to feel calmness and peace. Its soaring with perfectly balanced violin lines blending in harmony is not easily forgotten.

Eating From Your Own Garden Promotes Wellness

Home-Grown Peppers and Tomatoes Keep You Healthy

Eating food that you grow yourself promotes your health and well-being

One of the best ways to promote health is to eat fresh from your own garden. Eating your own garden produce not only keeps you well physically, it also grounds you and promotes emotional health. Whether you live in the country or the city, there is nothing quite like the smell of fresh tomatoes, peppers and chives ready to be picked. And one day when Google invents wearable noses that convey scents online, we will have the bonus of being able to share the special aromas of fresh chives, dill, tomatoes, basil and sage with each other.

Growing Your Urban Garden on a Condo Balcony

Waking up to the dawn of the city surrounded by lovely flowers is a good way to start the day

A balcony garden is a feat, a fight to survive against the car fumes wafting up from the urban thoroughfare below. The glorious petunias in various shades of pinks and purples welcome you each dawn, a separation from the waking city beyond. For optimal results, nurture your balcony garden with high-grade potting soil, water it when the sun is down, and if you have southern exposure water it more than once a day.

Starting an Indoor Garden in the Autumn

Adapting outdoor garden techniques to an indoor garden takes skill

 Every summer as we get into August, thoughts start again about how to preserve this unique beauty that is an urban balcony garden. Will it be possible to continue my flowers indoors? Will vegetables grow inside a home? Should I get something that resembles a small greenhouse? Will my cat be safe nibbling at the leaves, and will my produce be safe if my cat does what cats do?

According to Pikes Peak Area Garden Help, the best way to create an indoor garden is the following:

• choose plants that can live on little light
• choose plants that will survive dry conditions
• grow herbs such as sage, basil, marjoram, oregano, and thyme (in sunny areas)
• cut most plants regularly
• give plants ample drainage, lots of water, and lots of light
• vegetables need a minimum of 6 hours of sun each day to thrive
• tomatoes, peppers and eggplants can all grow in potting soil, which is lighter than garden soil or topsoil and won't become too compact
• lettuce can grow indoors all year round, from seed
• some house plants act as air purifiers, like English ivy or spider plants

We would love to hear about your field gardens, balcony gardens, urban gardens or deck gardens. Send us your pictures and we will share them on our next post!

Ageism in the Workplace

Over 45 and Struggling At Work? You're Not Alone

Ageism discrimination against mature workers exists within corporations, despite what we think

You can find anti-bullying, anti-smoking, anti-racist and anti-discrimination groups of all kinds online, but regardless of how hard you look you will find little information on age discrimination laws that are in effect across every province of Canada. According to a 2013 joint CARP-Ceridian study, “ageism discrimination against mature workers exists within the Canadian corporate culture, despite how far we like to think we have come.”

In the U.S. the Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids employment discrimination against anyone at least 40 years of age, and in the EU a ban on age discrimination was introduced with varying consequences.

Age of the Worker Does Not Define Capability

There is no truth in the assumption that our flexibility, capability and knowledge is defined by our age. When I first studied Multimedia Computer Design Applications over age 35, I was concerned that my age would preclude my being able to achieve a successful career in multimedia, but I forged on anyway because I loved the creativity of the digital design field.

After working in digital design for six years in a medium sized city, I moved to a larger city and had to start at the bottom again. I had a design portfolio of decent print and web work that I showed to prospective employers, but initially I could only find work as an administrative assistant with some design responsibilities thrown in. People at the downtown consulting firm that first hired me made it clear that my boss had had an affair with my predecessor, and it was inferred in my hiring that they would be safer hiring someone my age.

Determined to refute any accusations that my worries about ageism appeared victim-like, I forged on with a positive attitude. However I did not experience much that was very different over the next decade even though I upgraded my digital design and marketing education and kept honing my skills. I studied web design and digital marketing management at both Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. After designing corporate engineering brochures that were promoted to all architects across town, I moved on to design the websites and brochures for an established window fashion firm, then a series of flash websites for a national property management firm, then handled all digital marketing for a reseller of barcode scanners, printers and industrial automation devices. I optimized hundreds of magazine articles for SEO for a publisher, project managed client interactive work, managed e-marketing campaigns in the corporate logowear industry, blogged, built social communities, managed organic and paid search campaigns for brands and sub-brands. In every normal sense, this would be called building one's career by performing good work and improving one's own expertise.

Ageism in the Workplace: A Builder of Personal Character?

By my late 40s I was a digital marketing manager with a strong digital design background, and I can definitely attest to the existence of ageism discrimination in the workplace, however subtle and difficult it is to either prove or change. Since everything has a positive side, ageism in the workplace has definitely been a builder of my personal character.

Most people my age do not change jobs or work on a contract basis, but I had established a solid marketing network and was convinced I could overcome the now-familiar biases. I was also a baby boomer operating in a field that I knew was created by and dominated by millennials, who I found refreshingly unconventional. But if age discrimination laws are in effect in Canada, why can't competent, experienced people over age 40 pursue careers of their choice in fields that they are passionate about and good at? There should be room for everyone to contribute in some meaningful capacity, and biases and prejudices should not rule.

It is clearly up to our corporate leaders to set the stage for people of any age to be able to pursue their careers in the corporate world and not experience ageism. Unfortunately, the field of digital marketing is one of the few fields of which corporate managers often declare their ignorance and then proceed to appear almost proud of the fact. There is no explanation for corporate management over age 45 who didn't grow up with "digital" showing such little intention of ever becoming acquainted with it. Digital marketing and digital media are, after all, primary tools used in the way the world works now and in the way their companies work. The result of ageing senior managers abdicating digital and glibly remaining in this comfort zone is that digital marketing is up for grabs or takeover by anyone, regardless of their knowledge or qualifications - as long as they are young. 

Ross Mayot, vice-president and general manager of CARP, a Toronto-based association that advocates for people age 45+, said “Mature professionals are often overlooked based on assumptions that they are too old to keep up with the times and may cost a company more in terms of benefits.” But those assumptions aren’t true, he said. “Employers need to realize that the age of the worker does not define capability, negate the willingness to learn or adapt, or automatically mean increased benefits costs,” he said.

For information on ageism discrimination against mature workers please see:

The Workplace Institute

Grey Matters

Top Employers for Canadians Over 40

CARP

Age-Discrimination Lawsuits
50 Is the New 65
Is Your Workplace Ageist?
Forced Out, Older Workers Are Fighting Back

How Meditation Increases Productivity

Meditation and breathing techniques bring us into the present moment, helping us to manage stress

Meditation Helps Us To Manage Our Stress Levels

Mindful meditation gives us clarity, helping us to focus on the information that makes us the most productive - and leaving behind the inessential data that may be cluttering our thoughts. With so much information coming at us all day through an assortment of different media, it's worth finding a meditation technique to calm the mind and sift through what  is and isn't necessary to get on with your day and your life. By bringing us into the present moment, meditation makes us more productive.

One of the best things about meditation and breathing exercises is that you can do them on your own in a place you choose, and it doesn't require any special equipment other than comfortable clothing. Just like a clear, tidied up space after cleaning, the mind becomes more able to focus on important items with clarity after you meditate. Sifting through information is like cleaning out a garage or bin of old clothes - some of the stuff you need, and some of it you don't.

Achieving a Calm Awareness

The meditation technique I practice is something I do at the beginning of my yoga practice. Simply sit in the lotus position with your chest open and held upright and focus on slow, deep breathing while concentrating on your breath and emptying all other thoughts from your mind. While breathing in and out slowly (trying to take the same amount of time to breathe out as to breathe in), try to be aware of how different parts of your body feels as you are slowly breathing. When breathing out, the chest is kept upright and open, so that the sensation is that as you are breathing in and out your chest is expanding out to the sides and back in again.

When meditating I notice changes in my body. One thing I always notice is that after about 8 or 10 breaths, my hips start to loosen and my knees naturally fall downward toward the floor slightly while being in the lotus position. While noting these small changes mentally, I try to let go of any stressful things on my mind - just let them fly away.

The way I do my deep breathing exercises before doing yoga is similar to Mindful Meditation. But to get a real step-by-step guide to the proper way, follow these guidelines.

Mindful Meditation Increases Our Cognitive Abilities

Mindful Meditation makes you think better. Five other benefits are:

• stress relief
• increase in energy
• self-awareness
• calmness
• management of pain

Benefits of Walking to Work

Benefits of Walking to Work Go Beyond the Physical

Since the start of our day dictates the rest of it, the benefits of walking to work go far beyond the physical. What's your daily routine like between the time you wake up and time you start work? Maybe you're a night-hawk who savours every last drop of sleep and then makes a dash for it at the last minute, arriving at your full cup of coffee and a flood of emails popping onto a screen. Or maybe, like me, you are up before dawn, treasuring quiet solitude where your time is still your own before the rest of the city invades it. Either way, we all arrive at the work places where we all intersect 5 days a week, more or less at the same time, usually in silence, not always aware how far our minds are travelling from where we actually are. Perhaps muddleheadedness would be a term.

Join the clear-headedness of walking

For the last two weeks I've been walking 45 minutes to work, and often walking home too. The reason I suddenly decided to try walking was that one day I found myself opening a negative conversation with a co-worker who suggested I'd jumped way out of character. I realized I was arriving at work pissed off by the 2 over-crowded bus rides I took to get there each day. So one day I decided to walk instead. Unlike the peppy ones who just arrived from the gym or who already did their daily jog before the workday, we who walk to work are the more grounded segment. We're not on an adrenalin rush, we're just calm and focused. Whether I walk or take the 2 buses to work, it takes 45 minutes each way. Now I feel my clothes loosening, my gait more lively, and my energy higher too.

How to arrive at your job calm and focused

A walk is subjective. You are behind the movie camera, creating your own vision as you walk, depending on what color, tree, house, body of water, or architecture catches your eye. There is a multitude of greenness in everyone's yards, and the lushness takes you to what's green and fresh in your own mind. If you're walking through a commercial area to get to work, the innovative enterprises and lifestyles will inspire your thoughts for the rest of the day. And if you are lucky enough to walk the boardwalk alongside a lake on your way to work, the fresh wind will sweep across the water and give you tons of oxygen. 

This is a great frame of mind to arrive at the workplace in. So park further away and walk to work, or get off a few transit stops further and walk to work. You will be glad that you did, because the benefits go beyond the physical.

7 benefits of walking

• Walking increases blood flow to the brain and calms the mind
• Walking reduces risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes
• Walking increases calorie usage and trim waistline 
• Walking makes you more flexible and coordinated
• Walking causes increased bone density
• Walking helps you to save money on gym fees
• Walking helps to improve sleep

The Nourishing Nature of Manitoulin Island

Being in Nature is Good For Wellness

Getting away from it all and spending a few days in the wilderness has a nourishing, regenerative quality to it. Whether you sleep under the stars or in a tent, there is nothing quite like the inherent communion with nature that happens when you go camping.

Manitoulin Island is just a 3 hr drive north of Toronto including a ferry ride (with cars on it)

Swimming in Lakes

During the last 20 years or so of camping, our family has spent days reveling in the incredibly white sands of Grand Beach, marvelled at the cleanliness of the northern shores of Lake Ontario at Sandbanks, felt the silky waves against our skin in Muskoka, and gazed in wonder at how far down you can see in the crystal clear water at Manitoulin Island.

Manitoulin's Untouched Quality Recalls a Time Gone By

Manitoulin Island has everything transported to it by boat, so there's a retro feel of going back in time when you experience its untouched quality. The icecream is home-made. Everything is a little slower there. The buildings quaintly recall a time gone by. And the combination of Northern Lights and lush sunsets are out of this world. It's hard to believe that clear skies like this occur just 3 hours away from the third largest city in North America.

Inner Peace From Being in Nature

There's something healing about cooking over an open fire, eating outside, swimming or hiking all day, or just relaxing for hours and watching the star-filled skies at night. I admit, my back always hurts in the morning after sleeping on a thin mattress in a tent, but it's worth the sense of peace with oneself that comes with giving up all of the creature comforts of the city.

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Brings Out the Dancer in Everyone

Dancing on the Street is Good For the Soul

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Avenue July 14, 2013

Toronto’s famous Salsa Festival on St. Clair opens up the street to Latin life, food, music and dance in a participatory way. It’s not a performance, it’s natural theatre art better than anyone could create for the stage.

Age No Barrier in Street Dancing

Looking at today’s turn-out of urbanites happily stepping up their Salsa moves with partners, people of all ages sweating it out in 32° street heat with joyful abandon, there are many, many men and women who are doing salsa and loving it. They are young, old, from every corner of the world, mixed ethnicities, good dancers and bad dancers all strutting their stuff on the Toronto summer streets. 

Anyone at all can turn their romantic sides on and try to move to salsa music. Yesterday and today St. Clair Avenue, the street in my neighborhood where I buy my groceries in Toronto, was turned into a Salsa Festival, and the music transformed our hood into a South American paradise. It was soul-healing and uplifting to watch the whole city click up its heels to such joyful music. 

College After Age 40 is Good For Wellness

Am I Too Old For University or College?

Students who go back to college after age 25 often worry about not fitting in or being “too old”, but what about going to college after age 40? I was surprised to find how many positive and inspiring stories there are about people who get a college or university degree after age 40 or 50. Among these stories is one about a student who started her BA in International Studies at age 55, maintained a 4.0 GPA, was on the Dean’s list, and received a national scholarship after years of being excluded from jobs because she had no degree.

A huge part of studying over age 40 is learning how to recover from failure and make mental adjustments to one’s approach. I had always felt that university only rewards people who follow the rules. I preferred to learn by “doing” (than by studying), and I found that this was the largest hurdle to overcome. In the 1970s I had left my second year university Russian language and literature studies to learn the language first-hand by travelling to the Soviet Union and then living there for an extended period of time. I believed that learning a language by immersing oneself in a foreign culture was much more interesting than sitting in a classroom and learning the grammar.  But it turned out that this approach was not beneficial when it came to getting a good job.

I ended up switching my field of study to digital design. After upgrading in multimedia and web design to further my career and learning a lot about digital marketing on the job over the years, I still found that I was being screened out in the application process for the better jobs because I didn’t have a BA.  So in my 40s I returned to evening study at the University of Toronto to finish my BA.

Overcoming Failures is a Positive Benefit of Going Back to School

My first return to academia in 2005 was in an evening French course at the University of Toronto that I dropped after dismally failing the first test. Time to regroup, I thought. So I re-enrolled in a Canadian Short Story course taught by Professor Sarah Caskey, was very inspired by her encouragement, and did well in the course. Successful courses in European history and Russian language followed. Now I’m on a dual track at university, chipping away at my BA completion through evening literature courses at University of Toronto and pursuing a Digital Marketing Management Certificate in evenings through University of Toronto Continuing Studies. 

Cookie-Cutter Approach to Education Doesn't Always Produce the Best Leaders

I still maintain that following a cookie-cutter approach to education will guarantee you a safe life and not necessarily encourage you to become a progressive, fair-minded leader who empowers others.  Some of the other hidden benefits to returning to university or college over age 40 are:

• The hopefulness and positive energy of students with their whole careers ahead of them is contageous
• What you are learning is valuable for your own well-being and knowledge as well as for improving your job prospects
• You stay current by getting in tune with a younger mindset
• You avoid the pitfalls of just putting in time at a job to pay the bills
• If you have a bad day at work, you can switch your focus to your studies and new career prospects
• Your frame of mind leans towards concepts and ideas, keeping you intellectually stimulated
• You become more open to different ways of doing things as your circle becomes broadened by people outside your usual sphere

The Importance of Mental and Emotional Balance

Emotional and Mental Strength Needed to Handle the Death of People Close to You

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking discusses cognitive loss after trauma

After reading the book "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, I wasn't sure whether to be glad she
had the mental acuity to reflect so deeply on the loss of her husband, or whether to feel sorry for her for being so emotionally dependent on one person during her whole life. Didion is a New Yorker Magazine essayist who documented the various levels of pain and loss she experienced after the death of her husband.

One of the themes of the book is the cognitive effects of experiencing a trauma such as the death of a loved one. Didion states that the brain simply stops functioning for a fairly long period of time while you heal from the emotional loss. Another thing she points out in the book is how death-averse we are as a culture, and that  current social norms do not condone mourning - essential as it is to overcome a close person's death. Learning to cope with the repercussions of death is something that everyone over 40 experiences sooner or later, and the greater mental & emotional balance we have in our lives, the better we will be equipped to handle it.

How To Maintain Wellness Over 40

As a boomer, I am healthier now than I was at any point between age 17 (when I left home to attend university) and my mid-40's. When I recently summed up the reasons why, I realized that they all revolved around diet, exercise, stress management, yoga/meditation/therapeutic massage, mental stimulation, emotional connectedness/satisfaction, and finances. In fact, I would even put them in that order. And here's why:

1. What we eat seems to dictate how well we feel and how well we handle things - never mind all of the other associations connected to diet.
2. Exercise also has equal weight to food when it comes to being well - and this seems to increase with age.
3. Stress, or over-stress, is a wellness-killer. It eats up all of the mileage we get from eating well and exercising, so it has to be managed and kept in check.
4. Yoga, meditation, massage, dance, tai chi, and other forms of spiritual physicality are all tools to connect the mind and body and they all increase wellness.
5. Mental stimulation is not talked about much, but it's pretty well "use it or lose it" (use it and be well, or lose it and don't). Mental stimulation is more important for wellness than we think.
6. Emotional connectedness and satisfaction with oneself and others doesn't keep us well without the other 6 factors, but it plays a key role in keeping us well-balanced.
7. Finances are talked about a lot in this part of the world as an elixer to all troubles, but you can be a wealthy, top performing, emotionally connected individual who is positively challenged by your job and interests, but if you don't take time to unwind, exercise, keep your stress in check and eat right, these unattended elements will catch up with you. That's not to say finances aren't important, they are. But over age 40 the other key points start to matter just as much when it comes to wellness.

Stay tuned to Wellness Over 40 - we'll be discussing each of the 7 elements from the personal point of view of someone who found meaning and value in all of them. We will be telling stories of fantastic people and resources for achieving and keeping your own wellness, your own way.