This blog promotes holistic Christian living, as the tagline says: Informing Minds, Moving Hearts, Directing Hands. Drawing from God’s truth found both in His Word and His world (read through the lens of His Word), I provide resources that not only help Christians recover from depression, burnout, stress, backsliding, etc., but also help them flourish and thrive in every dimension of life — their bodies, their souls, their minds, their feelings, their churches, their families, their vocations, their relationships, and so on. In the course of my reading over the past week or so, I came across the following helpful articles from various sources, both Christian and non-Christian.
Healthy Bodies
Can Exercise Really Make You Grow New Brain Cells? | Fastcompany
This article summarizes neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki’s research into the connection between exercise and brain cell growth. You can read more in Suzuki’s book, Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better, which also explains “how to create a practical and sustainable exercise regimen that maximizes one’s brain health and happiness.”
How To Change Your Eating Habits To Have A More Productive 2016 | Fastcompany
How come I’m exercising and eating the right food but still feel exhausted? Brad Davidson, author of The Stark Naked 21-Day Metabolic Reset: Effortless Weight Loss, Rejuvenating Sleep, Limitless Energy, More Mojo, has researched this question and come up with four suggestions:
START YOUR MORNING WITH WARM LEMON WATER
In addition to promoting digestion, lemon water contains phytonutrients, which helps prevent oxidation, protecting the body against disease. You can see an infographic on this here.
FOCUS ON RE-ENERGIZING RATHER THAN RIGOROUS EXERCISE
Reducing the amount of time spent sitting, irrespective of the activity being done, can improve the metabolism and lessen the consequences of obesity.
KEEP YOUR BRAIN WELL-HYDRATED
Pilots who were as little as 1% to 3% dehydrated had a 57% decrease in their flight performance, a 26% drop in their spatial cognition, and had poorer scores when their short-term memory response time was tested.
THE KEY TO A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP: WHAT YOU EAT
Consuming complex carbohydrates like rice, sweet potatoes, and quinoa at dinner can help you get a better night’s sleep. “This calms your brain down. It releases serotonin in your brain so you can relax and sleep more easily,” says Davidson.
“Sleep is the fuel to your fire,” says Davidson. “Sleep is the biggest advantage I can give my business people to work well.”
Healthy Minds
Email Breaks at Work Reduce Stress, Improve Productivity | The Atlantic
Researchers found that when employees were allowed to read their email whenever they wanted, they changed screens twice as often had heart rates in a more stressed “high alert” state. On the days they were prohibited to correspond electronically, they experienced more natural, variable heart rates and reported feeling better able to do their jobs and stay focused on their tasks.
The conclusion? Organizations should consider sending out emails in batches to counter the belief that email should be answered as soon as possible and curb employees’ desire to self-interrupt. Or choose to limit yourself to 2-3 time periods a day when you open email.
The book that revolutionized my approach to email a few years ago was Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work
Just 6 Seconds of Mindfulness Can Make You More Effective | Harvard Business Review
Ignore the “mindfulness” verbiage, and simply learn the benefit of taking one long deep breath at various strategic points in the day.
Google Vice-President Karen May “developed the ability to mentally recharge by taking one ‘mindful breath’ before walking into every meeting. It takes her roughly six seconds, and in that time she brings her full attention to one breath, resetting her body and mind.
It lowers stress, reduces heart rate and blood pressure, and calms you down. The psychological reason is that when you put your attention intensely on the breath, you are fully in the present for the duration of the breath. To feel regretful, you need to be in the past; to worry, you need to be in the future. Hence, when you are fully in the present, you are temporarily free from regret and worry. That’s like releasing a heavy burden for the duration of one breath, allowing the body and mind a precious opportunity for rest and recovery.
I’ve been doing this for years just before preaching (without knowing the science of it), and I’m not going to let “mindfulness” gurus hijack it and claim it as their own.
Flexible working can make you ill because you stay stressed all the time, say experts | The Guardian
Here’s a warning for those who take work home with them, or for those who do most of their work at home and find it difficult to switch off.
Professor Gail Kinman, a health psychologist at the University of Bedfordshire, said: “If you keep picking at work, worrying about it, your systems never really go down to baseline so you don’t recover properly….it fosters a a “grazing” instinct that keeps dangerous stress hormones at persistently high levels.” It also reduces the effectiveness of our immune system and the quality of our sleep.
How To Completely Change Your Thinking | Grow a Healthy Church
How would you like to fly 72 times in 10 months? Yeh, me neither. But that’s what John Finkelde faced. Here’s how he changed his negativity about that into a much more positive outlook.
What’s on your mind eventually becomes a mindset.
A mindset is a pattern of thinking that’s been developed by habitually thinking the same thoughts. It’s a default mode and it can be negative or positive, destructive or constructive.
Of course the powerful truth is that you can change a mindset.
The best Christian book I’ve found for this kind of mind-set changing is a little known British book, I’m Not Supposed to Feel Like This: A Christian Approach to Coping with Depression and Anxiety.
Healthy Emotions
Clemson center Jay Guillermo battles depression but returns to anchor Tigers | ESPN
You don’t often get athletes admitting to depression, especially not College football players. Key takeaway for the depressed: TALK!
The other thing about depression is, it’s never entirely cured. It’s always there, lurking in those dark places that Guillermo hopes to avoid. And the way he has done it is by talking. This doesn’t always come naturally, even if his down-home swagger and impish humor would indicate otherwise. But he understands the path he has walked, and he wants to share his story.
“Depression is a thing you have to talk about, because if you don’t, it will consume you,” he said. “And there are a few guys around here that have dealt with the same thing and have asked me about it, what did I do to change it.”
Three Emotions Pastors Bear Which Are Unknown to Most Congregants | Erik Reed
I have pastored for more than ten years. Many faithful pastors have much longer tenures than me. But in a decade of pastoring I have experienced the gamut of emotions and difficulties. I can speak directly about the things I have faced. I can also speak to things I have witnessed in other dear brothers that I am friends with or have mentored/coached.
The following are three things pastors feel, and regularly work through emotionally, that most—including their congregations—are not aware of. Following these three things, I give an exhortation to my fellow pastors and for congregants.
Healthy Pace
Taking Longer to Reach the Top Has Its Benefits | Harvard Business Review
As Karen Firestone says, “Career coaches don’t make a lot of money from encouraging people to ‘get ahead slowly.’ However, in terms of fulfilling our long-term goals for career success, patience can be an asset.” It’s written mainly to career women, but has obvious application to all. I’ve seen a few young pastors damaged by seeking “advancement” prematurely.
I’ve been running on empty—and what I’m doing to change that | Aaron Armstrong
This and You Can’t Keep Up This Pace by Erik Raymond tell how two different Christian men came to realize that they were running on empty and needed to adjust their pace. They both describe different ways they are trying to slow down and live with more energy and margin in their lives.
Building Margin into Your Schedule | Thinking Out Loud
On the same subject, here’s Paul Wilkinson’s Christmas message using an illustration from the graphic art and design industry: “If you don’t have margin, you bleed.”
If we don’t (literally) take the time to build margin into the busyness of the holiday season, we pay the price for it. If we try to do too much, there’s pain. If we fail to accomplish essentials we should have prioritized, there’s tears.
The gold standard book on this subject is Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson.
Four Reasons Burnout Is More Prevalent in Ministry Leadership | Eric Geiger
See especially #2:
In most roles, overwork feels sinful and neglectful. In ministry, overwork can wrongly feel holy. After all, you are “doing all these things for the Lord and for people.” Some leaders struggle to say no because doing so would feel like denying ministry to people. Leaders can justify all the hours in their minds, the neglect of their own souls, and the neglect of their families. Ministry can attract workaholics and give them a reason to justify their addiction.
