Emotional Health. Managing your personal attitude about life and your resilience in dealing with life's challenges depends to a large degree on your emotional well being. Here are some recommendations for meeting your emotional needs.
- Improve Relationships. We generally find our greatest emotional strength in relationships. Take time to nurture the most important relationships in your life: your immediate family, your extended family and your friends.
- Learn to Manage Stress. Eliminating stress is not the goal here. After all, most of us only rise to the occasion in our lives when stress is applied. The key is to manage stress and our response to it.
- Serve Somewhere. Often in today's busy world, we are so focused on our own needs that we forget there is a world around us. Find someone to serve. One great resource for finding service opportunities is a website called Volunteer Match. Here you can enter your zip code and find opportunities in your local area to serve and contribute to your community.
Spiritual Health. Whether or not you belong to an organized religion and whether or not you even acknowledge a "Supreme Being," spirituality really involves connecting with your values and the "center" of your being. Some suggestions for sharpening the saw spiritually include:
- Reading great, inspirational literature. Taking some time to read and ponder the great literature of the world is a great way to reconnect with your center. Whether it is the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, or even great philosophical writings, a regular focus on something beyond the daily grind is important.
- Listening to inspiring music. There is clearly something about music that soothes the soul. I remember one of my friends when he was doing his medical residency was under tremendous stress and pressure. We stopped to visit him and his family one evening just as he was getting home from a 24 hour shift. He stepped in, said hello, and asked if would excuse him for 15 minutes. He went over to the stereo, plugged in his headphones, and listened to a favorite musical selection. At the end of that period, he was refreshed and we had a great evening visiting.
- Develop a Personal Mission Statement. A life with a mission is an important component of personal spirituality. If you haven't written one, consider doing it now. If you have written one, then take time to review and update it. This is one of the best centering activities of which I am aware.
Mental Health and Wellness. The mental dimension of our lives involves strengthening the mind. Sharpening your mental saw has repercussions in all other areas of your life. Here are a few ways to get your mind moving effectively.
- Read great books. Try finding a challenging classic novel like The Count of Monte Christo (one of my favorites) and read it over a summer. Look up any words you don't understand. Connecting with well written literature will stimulate the mind.
- Focus on a hobby. Whether it's fishing or golf or pottery or hiking, try to learn all you can about your favorite hobby. Learning about these topics about which you feel a passion is relatively easy, but broadens your mind and experience.
- Turn off the television. For the most part, popular television programming is mind numbing rather than mind expanding. However, certainly there is good educational programming which can be of benefit. Just be wise and prudent in your use of this powerful tool.
- Commit something to memory. A really good way of stretching the mind is to memorize things. Consider some favorite quotations, poetry or prose, or stories. Committing these types of things to memory can be very useful to training your mind.
Putting It All Together. Many years ago, I learned from a wise friend the idea of what he called the "Golden Half." He dedicated one-half hour each day to personal development and saw sharpening. No two half hours were the same, but each one was planned and scripted. He enjoyed jogging, so he got a personal tape player and headphones and listened to inspiring speeches while he jogged for a half hour. Another day, he would read and work to memorize poetry. Another day, he would write a letter of thanks to his wife or one of his children and express his love for them. I thought this was incredibly wise counsel and have tried to implement it in my own life.
For myself, I try to take an hour each Sunday to review my goals, plan my week and prioritize my goals. I also try to plan my "Golden Half" for each day. I am not yet spending the time and energy I want to spend in keeping my life in balance, and some days I fail. But I feel that I and my family are better off for working to balance these personal needs and take time regularly to sharpen my saw.
