The Breakroom
How do you bring entrepreneurs together?
Create a community hub to provide professional and personal development (and a B2B sales funnel). Launch it a week before COVID begins; watch it become a crisis hotline and business lifeline. Tend it carefully a safe space to share, and a resource to help manage both finances and fears. Sample content:
[Self-discovery Week]
Monday
The Art of Reframing:
Changing the way you look at your life can change your life.
Reframing is a time-honored, psychologist-recommended way of creating less stress and a greater sense of peace and control by changing how you look at something and how you experience it.
Turn a stressful event into a challenge to be met.
Turn a bad day into a naturally low point in a wonderful life. Turn a difficult experience into a learning experience.
Reframing can change your physical responses to stress.
When you perceive a threat, your fight-or-flight response kicks in, and it can remain triggered long after the threat has passed. Reframing can minimize stressors and ease the process of relaxation.
Notice your thoughts.
Catch yourself slipping into overly negative and stressful patterns of thinking. Becoming more of an observer makes it easier to simply notice your thoughts rather than get caught up in them.
Challenge your thoughts.
Are the things you’re telling yourself even true?
What are other ways to interpret the same set of events? Replace your negative thoughts with more positive thoughts.
When looking at something negative, see if you can use less strong, less negative emotions.
See if you can view it as a challenge versus a threat.Look for the 'gift' in each situation.
See stressors on the more positive edge of reality that still fits the facts, but is less negative and more optimistic.
Tuesday
Trauma May Have a Silver Lining:
PTG (Post-Traumatic Growth)
You’ve heard the term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but we’ll bet the term post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a new one for you. About half of Americans say the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health, and it is a major life event stressor that is increasing our anxiety and depression due to fear, upheaval, loss, and uncertainty – likely crossing into what we think of as capital ‘T’ trauma.
While the costs of trauma are well-studied, the idea that some good could come out of even the most traumatic hardships is far less understood. After analyzing those who had experienced significant negative life events, two psychologists gave this concept of positive growth after struggle a name: post-traumatic growth (PTG).
Post-traumatic growth occurs when the circumstances you face seriously challenge your understanding of the world and your place in it. This kind of positive change tends to occur in one of five areas: how you relate to others, embracing new possibilities, personal strength, spiritual change, and a newfound appreciation of life.
For those who experience PTG, a trauma shattered previously held ideas, overwhelmed the initial capacity to cope, and a new narrative was reconstructed. We like to hold the assumption that good things happen to good people to give us a sense of safety, but for many of us, that illusion of safety has been shattered.
PTG is not the same as resilience, or psychologically bouncing back from a highly negative event. PTG refers to a change that occurs from the struggle that goes beyond what existed before that struggle.
In short, resilience is the bounce-back and PTG is the transformation. Take some comfort in the possibility.
Wednesday
Look Back Before Looking Ahead
Before you head into 2021, take a look back at 2020 and make note of all you accomplished, learned – and struggled with and suffered through. While our vision can get tunneled as we put one foot in front of the other day to day, take a moment to stand still, take stock, and consider the milestones on the journey behind you.
Ask yourself:
What goals did I set and how well did I meet them?
What are 3 things I accomplished that deserve celebration?
What was the most important lesson I learned?
What was the best thing I did for someone else?
What was the best thing I did for myself?
What resources do I need to move forward?
What is one word that describes the quality I wish for the coming year?
Friday
The Ideal Diet?
Have you been so busy that you’ve eaten your lunch in a minute flat?
A. Guilty
B. Not guilty
C. Lunch? What lunch?
The Journal of the American College of Cardiology makes the case that a pesco-Mediterranean approach paired with elements of intermittent fasting is a strong contender for the healthiest diet science has yet identified.
Plant-based foods – vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains – form the foundation of the diet. Fatty fish and other types of seafood, along with “unrestricted” helpings of extra-virgin olive oil, round it out along with modest helpings of dairy products, poultry, and eggs. Red meat should be eaten sparingly or avoided. Low or moderate amounts of alcohol – preferably red wine – are acceptable, but water, coffee, and tea are preferred.
The diet also advocates for time-restricted eating, which calls for the day’s calories to be consumed within an 8-to-12-hour window to reduce total calories and regulate inflammation and hormones.
Here are a few tips to help the stylists-on-the-go:
Calorie-sorted snacks
Little bags of pretzels and cookies are easy to carry but hard to get nutrition from. They don’t fill you and leave you wanting more.
Make Mealtimes
Give yourself an appointment: Set aside a 30-minute window.
Make Shopping Time
Make time to shop so you can make lunch at home and take it to work.
Keep Healthy Car Snacks
Drive right on by that drive-through. Save even more time with a stash of protein-rich nuts.
Eat Slower
Eating too quickly leads to overeating because your brain doesn’t register that you’re full. Slow it down some!
Thursday
The Longest Night
The Winter Solstice (December 21) marks a pivot point in the year when the darkness is deepest, and the day is shortest. Ancient celebrations on this day predate modern religious celebrations Hanukkah and Christmas.
The Winter Solstice is a powerful time to sow seeds – to set intentions and think deeply about what you wish to achieve with the next turn of the wheel into Spring and beyond.
Light a candle or build a fire, and make your intentions tangible in some way. Incorporate objects that represent grounding or the earth to you. Write them in a journal, or on a collection of pebbles; bake something and add wishes with each ingredient (then eat it and literally embody them). Plant some winter bulbs – narcissi, crocuses, tulips – as symbols of your own blossoming once Springtime comes.
Revel in the darkness – and welcome the returning light.
