Category: Health & Well Being

Do you have friends? Sure, you do. Most people do. The number of friends one has is relative to their stage in life, age, social status and personal beliefs. I’ve known some people who have claimed to have “no friends” but ultimately they still have people they hang out and associate with. And maybe one would be inclined to believe that this isn’t REALLY a friend, but a friend is defined as “a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.” So basically, someone who isn’t your partner or a member of the family that you spend time with BECAUSE YOU WANT TO.

Friendship is an important aspect of any one person’s life, because it allows you to have someone you can share in the good times with, discuss and vent about the bad times and allows you some much-needed time outside the home (which everyone needs on occasion, whether they choose to admit it or not). As children, we usually have tons of friends. When I attend an event at my son’s school, EVERY kid he points at is one of his friends. And it’s usually just that easy for kids. Everyone within the same environment and basic age range can be a friend. Childhood is simple. Wish I’d had one. But I digress…

The point is, friendships are beneficial for both parties as they can help you to cope with the difficulties of life, traumas, illnesses, death in the family… They can also be there for the good times and share in your successes, your victories and your good times. And cracking a few cold ones while sharing some idle chatter? Don’t even get me started! Friends also help you develop a sense of belonging.

So how many friends does one have? And no, I’m not referring to social media followers… Well, depending on what source you consult, the average North American adult usually maintains four or five friendships. For the purposes of this post, I refer to a friendship as a relationship where you speak and/or hang out with the person in question at least once a week or more. Anything less than that falls under the category of casual acquaintance. As a young person, that number might have been significantly higher.

I bring this up because in a recent application, I was asked to provide twenty references who are not family or related. TWENTY! I don’t think I had that many friends even when I WAS a youth. I mean, whatever happened to the good ol’ days of two professional references and two personal references? I’m not sure why any employer would be of the opinion that they need twenty people as reference for one single applicant, but what do I know?

It got me to thinking… I keep a pretty tight social circle. I mean, REALLY tight. I don’t maintain many friendships, and even the long-term friendships that I’ve had for decades are on the other side of the country so we don’t exactly catch up over beers every week. I spend the majority of my free time with my wife and children, which if one consider the true meaning of wealth, makes me extremely rich. But I’m lucky enough to have two or three people that I call friend. And since real life isn’t a rom-com where people do cheesy things like telling each how how important they are to one another, I hope those couple of friends know how important they are to me. Friendship is a genuine gift, worth its weight in platinum! ☯

I was doing dishes a week ago and thinking about a particularly difficult situation that a colleague is going through. While contemplating some of the associated policy and rules behind what he would be facing, my wife noticed my lips moving and realized that I was talking to myself. To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed I was doing it at the time. But I admit its a practice I’ve indulged in a lot. And so should you.

During our infant and childhood years, we indulge in self-talk a great deal. Whether it’s to act out whatever game we’re playing or simply to babble on (in my son’s case, he effectively never shuts up whether there’s a person in the room or not), it’s a part of who we are. Our brains don’t differentiate between actively thinking or speaking those thoughts out loud.

However, as we reach adulthood most of us tend to eliminate the practice from our lives or keep a tight lid on it. Maybe from embarrassment or negative correction from a parent or influential person in our lives, there’s a societal stigma against talking to yourself. For the most part, if we see someone talking to themselves we tend to associate it with mental health issues. But believe it or not, it’s perfectly normal to talk to oneself and can actually have some benefits.

According to an article posted by Big Think entitled, “5 reasons talking to yourself is good for you,” they touch on a few of these reasons and they seem to make a lot of sense. Especially when you consider that some of them were taught to me by teachers in high school and college. These reasons include the fact that self-talk can help augment your cognitive performance, helps you to encourage yourself and can be an effective means of talking yourself down.

The article also goes on to explain how self-talk can be a means of developing self-control, but the one that sticks in my mind the most is that it reinforces memory. Whenever I would have difficulty with something I was studying in college, my professors would encourage me to read the material out loud. This helps the reader to retain the information more effectively as it involves an active participation in the absorption of information.

One of my favourite perspectives comes from Dr. Jessica Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist who was quoted in an article by NBCNews.com as saying, “If we speak out loud, it forces us to slow down our thoughts and process them differently because we engage the language centers of our brain.” I’ve noticed this effect when I’m reading bedtime stories to my son. It always seems as though my mind is taking in the words and processing them WAY faster than my mouth can spit them out, and it often causes me to skip over entire paragraphs.

My son’s too clever to let me off the hook and usually has me back it up a notch, but sometimes we need to slow ourselves down and talking to oneself can be an effective way to do it. Just to be clear, we’re talking about an ACTIVE participation in talking to oneself, not the result of a mental health issues or hallucinations. If you decide it’s a good idea to have a conversation with your microwave at two in the morning after eating magic mushrooms, we’re in a different arena of discussion and you should probably re-evaluate your life’s choices.

Talking to yourself can also be an extremely effective way of preparing for something that causes you anxiety. Anytime I’ve had to do something that would involve speaking for long periods in front of people such as giving presentation, providing guided tours or teaching any kind of a session to someone, I’ll usually “present” to myself in order to be prepared to do it to others. This not only acts as a sort of rehearsal before speaking in front of others, it can also allow you top time yourself in real time, since our minds process faster than we speak.

The bottom line is that talking to yourself is not only normal, it’s healthy. It can lend a number of benefits and even though most people don’t admit to it, almost everybody does it. My grandfather always used to say that it’s perfectly fine to talk to yourself… as long as you don’t start answering yourself! ☯

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy the smell of incense. I particularly enjoy the smell of an incense that’s available locally called “Ocean.” But there are number of more traditional scents, such as sage and sandalwood. And I once read somewhere that the word “incense” is based on the latin term meaning “to burn,” which is kinda cool.

Incense incense burning is usually done in order to produce a particular scent within the surrounding room, but it’s been long associated with the martial arts, religious practices and ceremonies and rituals. In fact, while growing up in the Catholic church I would often attend services with my family where the priest would walk around and “bless” the congregation by shaking a device called a “censer,” which contains burning powdered incense.

Some religions will use burning incense as a way of blessing things, warding off bad spirits or during ritual practices. Most convents and temples of varying faiths will usually have incense burning for one reason or another. Some people burn it within their home just for the pleasant scent (pleasant being a relative term, since my wife tolerates the incense I use but isn’t a huge fan if it).

Is incense a good idea? Like most things in life, there are good and bad aspects to incense burning, especially within one’s home. First of all, let’s agree that burning incense creates smoke. In all cases, breathing in smoke of any kind is never a good idea. This isn’t a new concept; the medical world has been talking about the dangers of smoke inhalation for decades. Ever sit too close to a camp fire? Once the breeze conveniently turns the smoke towards you, breathing easy is the last thing you get to do.

Depending on where you purchase/obtain your incense, they’re mostly made from natural ingredients. This doesn’t mean that it’s any better for you. After all, tobacco and marihuana are natural products but they’re no better for your lungs. But modern incense that you buy at your local retail chain can contain preservatives, chemicals and artificial products that can release carcinogens into the air.

You can Google some research initiatives that were done in the past twenty years. increased levels of incense burning has been linked to certain forms of lung cancer, asthma, tissue inflammation and even rashes. I have no idea how much incense you’d have to burn to be affected by these hazards and ideally, you should be burning incense in a well-ventilated area.

At the end of the day, incense has been around for way longer than we have. Make sure to light and burn it safely, since it is a fire hazard and try not to use it in confined spaces. I have a bad habit of lighting a stick of incense during my workouts in the basement of my home. It’s not so bad when I’m doing forms, but it gets a little hard to breathe when I’m doing something intense like a circuit workout or weights. Actually, that’s kinda what led me to write this post. Burn with care, folks! ☯