Category: Self-Care

I recently discovered Vanderhacks, the newsletter of writer Laura Vanderkam, on “little ways to take your day from great to awesome.”

As we acquire greater knowledge and understanding of life processes as a society, we learn about cause and effect relationships between various phenomena. With this knowledge, we start to understand various issues in terms of root causes that we can identify, address and remediate (i.e. a child’s behavior). This can be an empowering perspective and no doubt extremely useful. It …

The menstrual cycle, occurring over approximately 28 days, has four phases, characterized by the hormone levels driving the activity in each phase. The phases are: follicular, when ovarian follicles are maturing an egg for ovulation (high levels of estrogen, which helps prepare your uterine lining, and FSH, which stimulates the follicle); ovulation, when a surge of the hormone LH triggers …

Quick housekeeping note: if you are receiving this post to your inbox, I just want to let you know that I won’t be sending out emails for the foreseeable future because it has given me some tech issues — I realize that I never sent out an announcement about that so here it is a few weeks late! So sorry …

A little resilience-boosting tip I wanted to share: When something happens that isn’t quite as you’d want it, add the word “experience” to the name of the event. For example, a Missed Train Experience. Or a Wrong-Shoes-For-The-Weather Experience.

This seems like an obvious solution to a long-standing problem but I hadn’t thought of it until today. Problem: Throughout the workday, I find myself with pockets of free time (ex. a client cancels) and I tend to fill the time by flitting from one half-activity to the next without actually getting anything I want to get done, done with …

I’m listening to Benny Friedman’s “A Yid” on repeat these days. It is giving me a lot of chizuk.

As I’m trying to prevent workaholism-creep and a repeat of last winter, I’ve been thinking about productivity culture and the pressure to be “busy.” I have to be honest. I feel a lot of internal pressure to do a lot, for multiple reasons: I’m afraid of missing out on opportunities, I have a really hard time saying no in general, …

This quote from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, referencing creative inspiration, made me think:

This is a helpful graphic that visually depicts wellness across eight dimensions: physical, emotional, social, existential, intellectual, environmental, vocational, and financial. In a class I took recently, we wrote about the one or two wedges of the pie that we are neglecting most right now and what we can do to nurture ourselves in those dimensions. I think this could …