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One way to think about work-life balance issues is with a concept known as The Four Burners Theory. Here’s how it was first explained to me:
Imagine that your life is represented by a stove with four burners on it. Each burner symbolizes one major quadrant of your life.
The Four Burners Theory says that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.” [1] Three Views of the Four Burners My initial reaction to The Four Burners Theory was to search for a way to bypass it. “Can I succeed and keep all four burners running?” I wondered. Perhaps I could combine two burners. “What if I lumped family and friends into one category?” Maybe I could combine health and work. “I hear sitting all day is unhealthy. What if I got a standing desk?” Now, I know what you are thinking. Believing that you will be healthy because you bought a standing desk is like believing you are a rebel because you ignored the fasten seatbelt sign on an airplane, but whatever. [2] Soon I realized I was inventing these workarounds because I didn’t want to face the real issue: life is filled with tradeoffs. If you want to excel in your work and in your marriage, then your friends and your health may have to suffer. If you want to be healthy and succeed as a parent, then you might be forced to dial back your career ambitions. Of course, you are free to divide your time equally among all four burners, but you have to accept that you will never reach your full potential in any given area. Essentially, we are forced to choose. Would you rather live a life that is unbalanced, but high-performing in a certain area? Or would you rather live a life that is balanced, but never maximizes your potential in a given quadrant? What is the best way to handle these work-life balance problems? I don’t claim to have it figured out, but here are three ways of thinking about The Four Burners Theory. Option 1: Outsource Burners We outsource small aspects of our lives all the time. We buy fast food so we don’t have to cook. We go to the dry cleaners to save time on laundry. We visit the car repair shop so we don’t have to fix our own automobile. Outsourcing small portions of your life allows you to save time and spend it elsewhere. Can you apply the same idea to one quadrant of your life and free up time to focus on the other three burners? Work is the best example. For many people, work is the hottest burner on the stove. It is where they spend the most time and it is the last burner to get turned off. In theory, entrepreneurs and business owners can outsource the work burner. They do it by hiring employees. [3] In my article on The 3 Stages of Failure, I covered Sam Carpenter’s story about building business systems that allowed him to work just 2 hours per week. He outsourced himself from the daily work of the business while still reaping the financial benefits. Parenting is another example. Working parents are often forced to “outsource” the family burner by dropping their children off at daycare or hiring a babysitter. Calling this outsourcing might seem unfair, but – like the work example above – parents are paying someone else to keep the burner running while they use their time elsewhere. The advantage of outsourcing is that you can keep the burner running without spending your time on it. Unfortunately, removing yourself from the equation is also a disadvantage. Most entrepreneurs, artists, and creators I know would feel bored and without a sense of purpose if they had nothing to work on each day. Every parent I know would rather spend time with their children than drop them off at daycare. Outsourcing keeps the burner running, but is it running in a meaningful way? Option 2: Embrace Constraints One of the most frustrating parts of The Four Burners Theory is that it shines a light on your untapped potential. It can be easy to think, “If only I had more time, I could make more money or get in shape or spend more time at home.” One way to manage this problem is to shift your focus from wishing you had more time to maximizing the time you have. In other words, you embrace your limitations. The question to ask yourself is, “Assuming a particular set of constraints, how can I be as effective as possible?” For example:
This line of questioning pulls your focus toward something positive (getting the most out of what you have available) rather than something negative (worrying about never having enough time). Furthermore, well-designed limitations can actually improve your performance. Of course, there are disadvantages as well. Embracing constraints means accepting that you are operating at less than your full potential. Yes, there are plenty of ways to “work smarter, not harder” but it is difficult to avoid the fact that where you spend your time matters. If you invested more time into your health or your relationships or your career, you would likely see improved results in that area. Option 3: The Seasons of Life A third way to manage your four burners is by breaking your life into seasons. What if, instead of searching for perfect work-life balance at all times, you divided your life into seasons that focused on a particular area? The importance of your burners may change throughout life. When you are in your 20s or 30s and you don’t have children, it can be easier to get to the gym and chase career ambitions. The health and work burners are on full blast. A few years later, you might start a family and suddenly the health burner dips down to a slow simmer while your family burner gets more gas. Another decade passes and you might revive relationships with old friends or pursue that business idea you had been putting off. You don’t have to give up on your dreams forever, but life rarely allows you to keep all four burners going at once. Maybe you need to let go of something for this season. You can do it all in a lifetime, but not at the same damn time. In the words of Nathan Barry, “Commit to your goal with everything you have – for a season.” For the last five years, I have been in my entrepreneurship season. I built a successful business, but it came with costs. I turned my friends burner way down and my family burner is only running halfway. What season are you in right now? Work-Life Balance: Which Burners Have You Cut Off? The Four Burners Theory reveals an inconsistency everyone must deal with: nobody likes being told they can’t have it all, but everyone has constraints on their time and energy. Every choice has a cost. Which burners have you cut off? James Clear writes at JamesClear.com, where he shares science-based ideas for living a better life and building habits that stick. To get strategies for boosting your mental and physical performance by 10x, join his free newsletter. This article was originally published on JamesClear.com. FOOTNOTES
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Most of the women I speak with are tired. They are so, so tired.
Tired of making grand plans about food. Tired of ruining those grand plans by eating four brownies. Tired of beating themselves up for eating four brownies. Tired of starting the cycle again with more grand plans… But how do you stop the cycle? Today I wanted to share with you four qualities that I’ve noticed in most people who make lasting change around how they approach food by learning how to trust their bodies and hungers, rather than dieting: 1. You are willing to examine your entire life. Food problems are rarely just about food. Once you start examining your eating from a truly holistic perspective…things are going to come up. Things like, “oh, I guess I’m eating at work because my job stresses me out and a cookie is the only way I get through the day,” or “oh, weird, I guess this person who I thought I liked makes me feel insecure and so I downed my spaghetti carbonara like it was the last supper.” I’ll be honest, I’ve had people drop out of the Dessert Club because they realized that this food work was actually about their entire life, and it just wasn’t the right time for them to deal with that. Are you ready for these realizations to come up? 2. Your weight isn’t your top priority. As long as maintaining a specific number on the scale is your top priority, it’s going to be hard for you to stop obsessing about what you eat. Why? Because worrying about your weight is likely what messed up your eating in the first place. Just because weight isn’t a top priority, that doesn’t mean that you’ll gain 5 pounds next week. It just means that you are choosing sanity, joy and comfort around food, joy and comfort in life, and maybe even your health, above being a specific weight. Even if, truthfully, weight is still a top priority, but you wish it wasn’t, that’s a good enough start. We can work with that. 3. You are willing to spend some time and energy. There are no two ways about it: change takes time and attention. If you can’t spend, say, 20 minutes a day or a couple of hours a week–to read some motivating books, keep a non-judgemental food journal, talk to a coach or any other practice–it is going to be really tough to deeply shift how you approach food. In my work with people individually and in groups, I see it time and again: no matter how lost or “messed up” or completely hopeless people start out feeling about this “food stuff,” it doesn’t matter. If you put in the time, you will change. Of course, everyone has her own process of change and takes a different amount of time. But putting in at least some time on a regular basis to truly examine yourself and try out some new practices is non-negotiable. 4. You are willing to try something different. Change requires admitting to yourself that what you have been doing isn’t working. And then looking for something or someone that can help. Personally, I spent a long time thinking that I could make this whole pseudo-dieting, worrying-about-my-eating-all-the-time thing work. I mean, I know that I ate too much dessert at dinner and felt like I was in a haze when I ate that muffin and cookie and egg sandwich at breakfast, but I can get a handle on this food thing. I’ll just eat only fruit for breakfast tomorrow. It took me a long time to finally admit to myself: No, this isn’t working. No, I don’t want to do this any more. And then it was a circuitous journey to finding what actually would work. A big part of why I write essays like this is because I don’t want other people to feel as completely lost as I did. – No matter what your answer to the questions above, it’s okay. Everyone has different priorities and is at a different phase in their journey. Above all, you do you. But if you want to not have to obsess about your eating or worry about going on diets or “falling off the wagon” all the time, but you don’t quite seem to be able to do it, it’s useful to re-visit these four prerequisites. Are you willing to put in the time? Let go of weight as a top priority? Try something different? Look at your entire life? I’d love to hear in the comments: Which of these come easily to you? Which have been more of a struggle? – Are you used to “having it together” in your life, but your eating + weight is the little piece that’s not going right? Check out Katie’s free “What’s Your Eating Style” ebook – a beautiful, 22-page ebook that lets you identify your eating archetype, and offers detailed, personalized practices to try TODAY. If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237. – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/2agMy5w via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29JUcUR via bastelanna.jimdo.com
When I was a kid, processed cheese was a family camping staple. It tasted great, melted beautifully and, most importantly, didn’t spoil easily. We didn’t think of it as “processed cheese food,” or wonder what exactly it was made out of. And we certainly didn’t suspect that the plastic it was wrapped in might be leaching hormone-disrupting chemicals into our campfire dinners.
Little did we know that research now points to chemicals in food packaging as yet another hidden threat to our health from America’s industrial food system. It’s challenging enough to avoid the pesticides, artificial food colorings and added sugars that are part and parcel of so much food in America. But even the most diligent among us would find it hard to avoid a class of toxic chemicals called phthalates, which can seep into food from plastic packaging and equipment used in food processing. (“Food processing,” Oregon Department of Agriculture, via Flickr) Phthalates make plastic supple. They are used in plastic wrapping as well as plastic tubing, workers’ gloves and other food processing equipment. Phthalates leach into the foods they come in contact with, and because they’re chemically attracted to fat, they are especially likely to leach into fatty foods like cheeses and meats. Phthalate exposure is a serious health issue. Even at low levels, they can interfere with human hormones. Animal studies have linked phthalates to a host of serious health concerns, including birth defects, allergies and damage to the male genitals. While phthalates are also used in other consumer goods, diet appears to be the primary way people in the United States are exposed to these dangerous chemicals. Since these phthalates get into food from packaging or processing, they will never be revealed on the label, which makes it almost impossible to know if phthalates have leached into your groceries. The FDA currently allows 30 different types of phthalates to be used in food packaging and processing equipment–and thus allows phthalates to sneak into your food. The agency’s approval doesn’t take into account the growing body of research on phthalates, which has linked at least two types–DEHP and DiNP–to cancer, male birth defects and impaired reproduction. To protect against these harms, Earthjustice and our partners recently filed a petition to the FDA asking the agency to withdraw its approval of all 30 phthalates in food contact material, including those that are not well studied but are chemically similar to phthalates known to cause harm. We must ban these chemicals from use in food packaging and processing in order to protect ourselves and our families. You can speak out against phthalates, too, while the FDA considers our petition. Fertile Grounds is a blog series that examines the challenges and opportunities in ensuring access to healthy, sustainable and affordable food for all. We talk about the entire lifecycle of food–from seed selection and planting to consumption and disposal–because there is potential for improvement throughout. We’re informed by the expertise of our many clients and allies and by Earthjustice’s years of work to ban harmful pesticides, encourage sustainable farming methods, reduce pollution, support farmworker justice and promote a healthy relationship between farmers and communities. – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/29KvgiQ via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29NQ22c via bastelanna.jimdo.comHow’s this for a quandary: There is a new brand of shorts coming to market that may help improve a man’s sexual performance. However, even if they work, they are ugly enough that they may make some potential partners decide against having sex with you. The boner-building biker-style shorts are the creation of VylyV (vill-live), a start-up that plans to raise funds soon via Kickstarter. The shorts supposedly work by recording your movements throughout the day and sending that info to an app that designs workout plans and guidelines to improve your pelvic floor muscles doing butt-squeezing kegel exercises. And, yes, men can benefit from doing kegels, too. Strengthening those muscles improves blood flow to the sex organs, according to the Mayo Clinic. Not sure what that means? The makers of the product hope you’ll get the hint from this subtle and tasteful shot of a fizzy soda bottle. Of course, not everybody thinks these undies will turn you into a porn star in the bedroom. Dr. Paul Turek, a board-certified urologist with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, says the claims made by the shorts’ manufacturer are “dubious science at best.” “There is a relationship between pelvic muscles and incontinence, but there’s no evidence of a clear benefit between strong pelvic muscles and strong erections,” he told HuffPost. The company hasn’t responded to HuffPost yet about when the shorts will go on the market, how much they will cost, or, most important, if they will ever be stylish. However, they are attempting to arouse interest with this YouTube video that features the model saying totally studly things like “Yeah babe, just put your seatbelt on, we’re going for a ride” to an attractive female in red stilettos. – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/29Kv6Yt via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29JU6g1 via bastelanna.jimdo.comWhen you’re faced with heartache, author and former pastor Rob Bell suggests asking yourself one admittedly weird question. Have you gotten in the habit of breathing? What makes this question so profound, Bell says, is not what it means on the surface, but what lies deeper within its linguistic connection to the past. “Across so many ancient languages and ancient cultures, the word for ‘breath’ and the word for ‘spirit’ were the same word,” he explains. “This ancient understanding [is] that the breath that you’ve taken is what keeps you alive, but that breath is a picture of a deeper spiritual reality, which is, ‘You have received this gift of life.’” As Bell says, knowing this and then asking yourself that question can help offer you a nuanced perspective when you’re in the midst of experiencing pain, loss, heartbreak or trauma. “Sometimes, we’ll talk about a stressful situation in which we had to stop and catch our breath. That breath was a gift,” Bell points out. “This next breath is a gift. The breath after it is a gift.” With that perspective, he continues, the path toward healing breaks wide open. “Now, the pain, the loss, the heartache, the betrayal ― all of the stuff that comes with life ― if it exists within this larger embrace of gratitude, now you may actually be able to get through it,” Bell says. “That’s the path.” Another important reminder: Everyone: It’s actually pretty easy to become a force for good in this world – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/2agN2IZ via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29NQ6Pe via bastelanna.jimdo.com
By Gigi Falk, Duke student
I have focused my meditation in these past days on the art of breathing, as I use my breath to draw every corner of my wandering, sleepy, or agitated mind back into my current moment of existence. By continuously drawing my attention to nothing but the rising and falling of my chest, I train my mind to notice the subtlety of every passing moment, building an association between my breath and the feeling of present moment awareness. Basic classical conditioning. Then, as I walk the monastery grounds, my breath gently guides my entire being into the calm, spacious energy of bare awareness. My heartbeat slows as my eyes soften, and I settle into greater recognition of the space around me. Through an inextricable entanglement of each of my senses, my mind and body absorb every bit of information that each moment has to offer. In this state of awareness, I peer past the doors of standard perceptions, as the overlooked intricacies of our world expose themselves to me. I don’t just see a tree to my right, as I walk from the meditation hall back to my room at 6 a.m. I see sinuous roots erupting from the ground and soaring dozens of feet above me. Part of the earth and part of the sky. The animated patterns of bark climbing the trunk are only put to shame by the sudden dispersion of branches that scatter like repelling magnets over my head. And as the branches taper, the sun and wind mingle to illuminate the flurry of dancing green leaves, imbuing the structure with a sense of life and breath.
Utter beauty can arise from meditation, but often times the seated practice itself is a frustrating confrontation with the depths of my own mind, as I fight the urge to entertain myself with stories of the past or future. Recognizing this urge is a benchmark in my meditative practice, as I become able to watch these tendencies from a distance, simply noticing my mind’s desires to entertain itself. I am no longer fighting. If I am aware enough to detect the fullest and emptiest feelings of my lungs, then I am devoting enough attention to my breath, and the thoughts that enter my mind during this time are received with a sense of distance and acceptance. Eventually, with gentle focus on my breath I calm the chatter in my head. I am no longer retelling stories from the past or planning for the future, and I softly release everything but the moment I find myself in. In these scarce moments, I relinquish my entire world. As I sit alone in silence with closed eyes, nothing exists outside of my own mind. And when I am no longer lost in mental titillations, I am left in a moment with absolutely nothing but the filling and emptying of my lungs. As I renounce thought, I let go of everything that existed before that moment and everything that exists after it, completely detaching from my past and my future. I see their intrinsic insubstantiality, and with this comes a strong desire to live wholeheartedly in the moment I am in.
As I witness the seamless flow of each moment into the next, I develop an eerie sense that nothing outside of the present truly exists. The passing of time is a strange phenomenon. We are all strapped into a train that never stops or turns back, staring out the window at an ever-changing scene. What we see and experience through the window changes ceaselessly, leaving the last scene to our memory and the next one to our imagination. Most of us desperately fight this fate, peering ahead to predict the next turn or staring back helplessly as the train distances from our object of focus. The scene right in front of us is all that truly exists, but something that transforms every moment is incredibly difficult to trust, so we dwell in the past or the future, which paradoxically feels more substantial. But if we simply look straight out the window and practice seeing only what is in front of us, we can take each moment in stride, loving it, letting it go, and welcoming the next one. With just over a week of focused contemplative practice, I settle into a new perspective, as I attempt to understand my existence as a succession of singular events that appear and disappear endlessly. With greater clarity I recognize that to experience a life where I feel sincerely alive, I must learn to exist in the fluidity of the moment I am in. Letting go of thoughts from other times or places, even for just an hour, gives me a taste of what it’s like to be alive right now. Learning to live mindfully is truly just learning to live. Gigi Falk, a sophomore at Duke University, is studying cognitive neuroscience with a focus in contemplative sciences. She is interested in exploring the intersection of mindfulness and neuroscience, in order to foster a deep and thorough understanding of meditation as mental training for a more fulfilling life. By exploring happiness and fulfillment as something that is internally driven and supporting such claims with science-based evidence, she hopes to contribute to the dialogue surrounding western meditation with a distinct voice. – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/2agMNO9 via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29JUcEF via bastelanna.jimdo.comThe topic of forgiveness received a great deal of attention when parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina forgave the assassin who slaughtered their pastor, friends and family in the Methodist Episcopal church on June 17, 2015. The churchgoers seemed to know intuitively what has been proved scientifically: forgiveness is good for our health. Holding a grudge and vindictiveness causes health issues like high blood pressure and heart disease. Forgiveness increases our life span. (For details, please refer to these articles in the Huffington Post and Johns Hopkins.) In forgiveness, we acknowledge our own fallibility, a trait we share with all people. It is the key that opens the door to the human condition. But, how do we arrive at forgiveness? First let’s ask what forgiveness is and what it is not. It is not condoning a person’s actions. For example, we certainly don’t condone murder or child abuse. (Yet we benefit by forgiving the murderer or abuser. ) It is not forgetting that a heinous act occurred. It is not saying the mourning process is over. A person may suffer consequences of another’s actions and still be able to forgive. Forgiveness is: Letting go of grudges. Releasing resentment. Turning away from vindictiveness. Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray,“ "Children begin by loving their parents, as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” Forgiving our parents may be one of the most important factors in our sense of well-being. When we don’t forgive our parents, we don’t forgive ourselves. We can’t extricate them from our lives, from our psyches. The psychological term introjection refers to the messages we have incorporated from them that have become our own. Sorting out the introjected thoughts that help us from those that hinder our progress is one of the major tasks of psychotherapy. Some parents try hard to be good-enough parents; others don’t. When they don’t meet the grade, we have to mourn the loss of a good-enough parent. (We’re not alone; sadly many others share this tragedy.) In his heart-wrenching memoir, Not My Father’s Son, the brilliant actor Alan Cumming speaks about the abuse he experienced in the hands of his rejecting father. Finally, he is able to write, “Thank you, Alex Cumming, for siring me and ensuring I will always have lots of source material. I forgive you.” We can’t force someone to forgive. Therefore, the road to forgiveness may also involve understanding the person who has harmed us. This requires starting off on a journey that may entail a close examination of the person we need to forgive. The journey can be long and torturous. In Mona Simpson’s novel, The Lost Father, the protagonist, Mayan, spends years searching for the father who abandoned her. When she finds him, and knows who he is, she can forgive. She also asks for forgiveness from those people who have helped her during her search and whom she may have harmed in the process. Conclusion: In forgiving another, we ultimately forgive ourselves. Holding a grudge hurts us and shortens our life span. Letting go of resentment is like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. – This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. from food4 http://ift.tt/2agMIKk via bastelanna.jimdo.com from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29NQ1uZ via bastelanna.jimdo.com |
AuthorMichelle Meyers, a well-know physician, author, and professor of physical therapy at the University of Kentucky, published analysis for both the layperson and for educational on fat loss nutrition topics, including gluten-free, low-carb and paleo. Archives
February 2017
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