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Coaching

Building A Routine for Mental Health

January 19, 2021 by Claire Brandon

Studies have recently been showing that people who stick with and find value in a routine can find more meaning in their lives. This often translates into a more positive perspective in life and outcomes that result in a higher quality of life. It stands to reason that if routine can build a better life, it might be beneficial to use in our mental health goals. 

Find your “peak hours.” Peak hours are when you feel the most focused and most able to get things done. Peak hours shouldn’t be used for routine or mundane tasks that don’t require a significant amount of your brain’s attention. I’ll use myself as an example. My peak hours happen to be quite early in the morning (5:30-7:30am) for 2 reasons. First, it’s extremely quiet at 5:30am. When there isn’t a ton going on, such as emails or phone calls, focus doesn’t get diminished as quickly. Once those emails start, it’s tough to find time for ourselves and by evening, I’ve used a ton of my brain energy capacity. Second, I have created a routine where I enjoy my coffee while doing things like writing podcasts, books, or reading for my continued education. 

Make lists. Don’t just write out everything you need to do in broad strokes. Break it down into manageable items in order to make more traction on it. Let’s look at an example. If you are tasked with writing up a proposal on a product you’ll be pitching to your executive team, writing down “do Project X” will generally result in feeling overwhelmed. You don’t know where to start. Instead try breaking down “Project X” into larger pieces. 1. Outline, 2. Competitive research on current landscape of similar products, 3. The Why of investing in this product, 4. The slide deck. These get broken down even further. What places will you search for research on the landscape. Where will content for visuals come from for your presentation, etc. Doing it in a small bites approach makes it much easier to get started, because you can do one thing and start to build momentum. 

Triage that list. Once you develop your list, you also need to triage it. We use the word triage in medicine a lot. It means figure out what is most urgent and do that first. This is especially true in the emergency room. We have criteria for how we need to triage certain patients and how much time we have to get that done. If we apply this idea to personal life and work, consider what time line you’re looking at and what is actually urgent. For example, do you have a due date for something tomorrow? Then don’t clean the bathroom that you might be able to do another time. You also need to triage what you’re actually capable of doing in the time period you have at any given time. You don’t want to commit to 17 hours of work in a day if that’s not going to happen and then feel like you let yourself down when it wasn’t realistic in the first place. 

Reflect. Reflect on the hard work you’ve put into the work you’ve done over the day, week, month. Reminding yourself about what you’ve accomplished helps to predict your future success and keeps your mind focused on being able to successfully accomplish your goals rather than focusing on the things that don’t go perfectly. 

Everyone uses routines differently, find one that works for you and try to put it into practice for a few weeks to see how it impacts your view on life. 

Filed Under: Anxiety, Coaching, Happiness, Mental Health, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Wellness, Work From Home, Work-Life Balance

Flight Anxiety. Don’t let it get you down.

June 13, 2019 by Claire Brandon

An image of an airplane wing, depicting and symbolizing flight anxiety

While my travels are over, for now, I am excited to keep sharing what I learned while I was away. Travel can be exciting for many people, but others are distressed and at times held back from travel due to their flight anxiety, up to 70% of people, in fact!

While we might not know for sure what makes the difference, when I travel I like to try to troubleshoot for my patients who struggle with flight anxiety. These are a few tricks I find to help decrease flight anxiety.

Target your automatic thoughts of catastrophization. Statistics tell us that flying on a commercial airline is probably the safest way to travel. This is because the level of monitoring done on airplanes far exceeds that of what we monitor about cars and trains.

Another interesting statistic is that if you were in the unfortunate event of being in an airplane accident, it is likely that you would actually survive based on the most likely accidents that occur.

How To Deal with Flight Anxiety

What happens in the air though, even knowing all of these statistics? One issues is the lack of feeling grounded and in control. As humans we like to feel as much control as possible, being on an airplane, you have to give up that control. One idea is to try to take back control of your body with a few different exercises that might help.

  1. Write your name in cursive with your non-dominant hand over and over. 
  2. Utilize progressive muscle contraction to distract your body from the feeling of turbulence or take off. This might be squeezing your hands to make fists, or squeezing your legs and glutes repeatedly.
  3. Make conversation with the person next to you. You’d be amazed at who you meet on airplanes, and if 70% of people statistically have some level of flight anxiety, you are likely to find someone that is interested in being distracted as well.
  4. Listen to music that makes you happy and channel the confidence that artist has while you listen. 

Let me know if you enjoyed it on my Instagram page!

**This blog is not to be treated as medical advice, please discuss with your physician if you have any concerns.**

Filed Under: Anxiety, Brain Body, Brain Body Connection, Coaching, Depression, Flight Anxiety, Happiness, Mental Health, Panic, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Travel, Wellness, Work-Life Balance

Happiness?

March 20, 2019 by Claire Brandon

Hundreds of balloons being released into the sky, symbolizing happiness

Happiness is often thought of as a status that we’ve accomplished something and we have something to be happy about. However, happiness is really more of a mental state that we must practice every day to keep it strong, just like our muscles.

It can be easy to see the things that make us unhappy and often our minds, trained through evolution for survival, make us consider all the bad things around us with more attention than the good things. What if we practiced more positive psychology, how would that affect life? Here are a few easy steps to help train your brain to see the things to be happy about. 

1. Write 3 good things. No matter how big or small, writing and acknowledging that 3 good things (or maybe more when you get on a roll) are happening to you on any given day.

2. Develop a mantra. Whether you want to be happier, calmer, or something else, saying it to yourself over and over again throughout the day starts to ingrain this philosophy in your head. 

3. Be fully present. Instead of being half on your phone and half-aware of the conversation you are in, be fully there and engage. Look into someone’s eyes as they are speaking to you and connect, for happiness and feeling a sense of togetherness. 

**This blog is not to be treated as medical advice, please discuss with your physician if you have any concerns.**

Filed Under: Anxiety, Brain Body, Coaching, Depression, Happiness, Mental Health, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Wellness

Procrastination Station

February 27, 2019 by Claire Brandon

Signs that depict the corner of procrastination and homework

Often find yourself burning the midnight oil? We use it a lot, the idea of procrastinating, sometimes to joke about habits we think we cannot break and sometimes to make ourselves feel better. But what exactly is procrastination and can we break it?

Procrastination by definition is a delay or putting off something we probably know we should do.

It can encompass a wide array of things from going to your doctor’s appointment to finishing a work project. We put it off, try not to think about it, or tell ourselves we have plenty of time, so one more episode of that show we’re watching won’t hurt. But the truth is, at least partially, procrastination usually is found in scenarios that often require a significant amount of work to get the eventual payoff. Defining goals that are really important to us can help keep us on track. If your goals seem difficult to reach, it may be necessary to redefine the outcome or the path to regain motivation.

What thoughts might cross our minds that we tell ourselves to pursue delayed gratification? Maybe some of the following thoughts sound familiar. 

  • You think that you work better under pressure. 
  • You give up believing that you get easily distracted.
  • It’s difficult to prioritize.
  • You blame perfectionism.
  • Estimating the amount of time needed for the task is always a little off.
  • You believe the task will take too much effort. 

These are all examples of distorted thinking. Try calling yourself out on these excuses and ask the questions about how much you actually want the goal you’re going after. And then take steps:

How To Deal With Procrastination

  1. Write down your goals. Putting goals down on paper helps to make them real and easier to visualize. 
  2. Schedule your goals. Schedule time to work on your goals, whether that is going to the gym or spending time practicing a foreign language, putting it in your calendar and setting alarms helps reinforce that you are making it a priority. 
  3. Break it down. Figure out the smaller pieces of your goals so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by the big picture. One step at a time.
  4. Pick a goal that makes you happy. Working on goals is hard. Working on a goal that you think other people would admire or that you think makes you feel more important versus one that is actually meaningful to you is harder. Pick something that excites you and even through the hard work, you’ll have fun.

**This blog is not to be treated as medical advice, please discuss with your physician if you have any concerns.**

Filed Under: Coaching, Mental Health, Procrastination, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Wellness

Personalized NYC Mental Health · Dr. Claire Brandon

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