Why You Need a Hobby and How to Get Started

What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time? Hobbies are more than an excellent way to pass the time. Studies show that engaging in a hobby has significant mental, physical, and emotional benefits. I love to garden, draw, and bake. I also enjoy reading and taking walks in nature. Finding a hobby that is right for you isn't as difficult as you might think.

Join me for this podcast as I discuss the benefits of having a hobby, the different categories that hobbies fall under, and how you can get started finding one that is fun, empowering, and meaningful.

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Happy New Year!

Hope you’re all well. Check out the latest episode of Alessandra’s Angle. I thank all of my amazing listeners for a great 2021 and take a moment to touch on a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and its impact on millions of people worldwide. Look for links to resources on SAD that I'll be posting in the next few days.

I wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2022!

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The Pros and "Cons" of Optimism

Is it possible TOO optimistic? Can too much of a good thing be bad for us? The answer to both questions is yes. While being positive has its benefits, too much or unrealistic optimism can be detrimental to certain situations. 

Join me for this episode of “Alessandra’s Angle”, where I discuss the advantages of being optimistic and the risks associated with being too rosy in your outlook. As the saying goes, "everything in moderation!"

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Harnessing the Power of Intention in Obtaining the Life You Want

The latest episode of “Alessandra’s Angle” is up! Join me as I discuss the power of intention and visualization in helping you realize your dreams, achieve your goals, and live the life you want. I also share my own personal experience with visualization and intention and how it served as a powerful driver in helping me realize one of my life's dreams.

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Has intention and visualization helped you? If so, please share your stories with me at ascavalluzzi@gmail.com.

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Reclaiming Your Power By Letting Go

Have you ever had a situation or event that happened that upset you so much you couldn’t stop thinking about it? Or a person who hurt you so severely that every time you remember or picture their face, all those emotions come flooding back? At some point in our lives, we will experience challenging situations and encounter people who upset us. If we want to stay healthy and avoid stress-related illness in the future, we need to take Elsa’s Frozen advice and just “Let It Go!”

Easier said than done, right? It takes work, but it CAN be done.

Join me for my latest podcast episode, “Forgiveness: How to Reclaim Your Power by Letting Go.” In this episode, I talk about how negative emotions associated with people or events from our past impact our well-being. Holding on to grudges and revisiting painful events robs us of our power. The act of forgiving is something that we do for ourselves. It helps us obtain closure and allows us to live a happier life with less stress and drama. Join me for this chat on forgiving, letting go, and reclaiming your power.

Click on the link below to go to the site for “Alessandra’s Angle” or listen on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, and other popular podcast apps.

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What I've Been Up To

Hi everyone!

I hope that you are all doing well. The last year has been tough for all of us as we continue to navigate the uncharted waters of COVID19. I pray that everyone is managing through this difficult situation as best they can, and most of all, I wish a speedy return to normal for all.

I continue to work on my podcast and have posted a new episode of what I've been doing during this time away. Like all of you, I have focused on staying healthy and keeping my family safe and healthy. I've also used this time to gain a few new skills and take up some different hobbies.

Here's a link to the episode. I will be posting another one soon as I get back into the groove of regular podcast episodes.

Wishing you all a great spring. The season of rebirth is nature's reminder that there is always an opportunity to start fresh and begin again.

Alessandra’s Angle Podcast:
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Alessandra's Angle: Episode 5 Show Transcript and Notes/Links

Mindfulness: How and Why You Should Practice Living in the "Here and Now"

Artwork by Alessandra Cavalluzzi

Hello, and welcome to episode five of “Alessandra's Angle.” Today we're going to be talking about the topic of mindfulness. I really am looking forward to discussing this with you because I find it to be very timely. I don't believe in coincidences, and I think that this topic is really one that will benefit us all during this time where we are coming out of a pandemic and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Many of us are beginning to go back to work and preparing for possibly schools reopening, and many other activities are starting to take place again. And there's a lot of uncertainty around these activities. There has been a lot of stress during lockdown, and now, as we come out of it, mixed feelings. Everyone is feeling optimism that we’re finally coming out of the pandemic, a little fear with regard to some areas seeing a resurgence of cases, as well as uncertainty and a little bit of stress around whether or not we should be going back to school and back to work, etc. So a lot of stress, a lot of worry around that, about the unknown regarding the future. And so it really is perfect timing because mindfulness is a great tool to help us to handle stress and to keep us focused and grounded in the here and now.

So I'm going to start off with the definition of mindfulness for those who may not be aware. Mindfulness is defined by Miriam Webster as the inclination to be aware. Being present, being attentive, bringing your attention to the “here and now.” Why this is so important is because as humans, our human nature is, we tend to be wrapped up in things in two ways: either we tend to focus on or live in the past, reliving or rehashing something that may have happened, a falling out that we had with someone or something that didn't go our way. We usually think back to it, and we tend to rehash or replay the situation in our mind and keep beating ourselves up over a situation over and over, or we're nostalgic. And we live in the past and wish for a time or a place or a person that we once knew and wished that things had gone differently. The flip side of that is we also tend to obsess about the future sometimes and worry about things that might happen or  the unknown. The “what if.”  We'll play out scenarios in so many different ways and obsess over or stress over things that haven't happened yet and likely will not happen. So what mindfulness does is it helps us to stay centered and focused on what we are doing right now - on today -because the issue with living in the past or obsessing about the future is that it robs us of our TRUE PRESENT. It keeps us from engaging at the moment that's right in front of us. We obsess about things that we can't change or things that haven't happened yet, and that likely won't happen. And what we're doing is we are not living our days fully. We are wasting our days away stressing over things that we can't control when we can be taking that energy and applying it productively to the here and now because that is what we CAN control.

 

Again, mindfulness is the practice of purposely focusing our attention on the present moment; and, most importantly, on accepting it without judgment. This is a practice that has been around for a very long time. In fact, there are many different faiths that use mindfulness as part of spiritual practice in meditation. And this thought of being present, being mindful, is now being examined more scientifically for the benefits that it brings both psychologically and physically and to our overall wellbeing. What's been found is that mindfulness through lots of research, Harvard Health actually did an article on this entitled “The Benefits of Mindfulness: Practices for Improving Emotional and Physical Wellbeing,” what's been found through these studies is that mindfulness is a key element to stress reduction and overall happiness.

I'd like to talk a little bit now about the health benefits, and then I'm going to walk you through some practical applications of mindfulness, how you can apply this philosophy and practice to your life to help you both in your personal well-being, physical and mental wellbeing, help you with work situations and just overall to help combat stress and also handle emotions that sometimes tend to influence our actions and make us do and say things that sometimes we wish we hadn't said and done, which bring undue stress into our lives.

So let's start off with the benefits of mindfulness as far as overall wellbeing. When we focus on the here and now, it makes us less likely to get caught up in worries about the future or regrets over things in the past. We're less preoccupied with concerns about success and self-esteem, and we're better able to form deep connections with others. There was a book written years ago by Dale Carnegie entitled “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” It was a bestseller and continues to sell tons of copies because of the philosophies that Dale Carnegie laid out in his book way back then; I think it was published in the 1940s, if I'm not mistaken, thereabouts, still apply today. And there's a piece in there that actually talks a bit about what we call mindfulness today. Carnegie talks about living life in “Day Tight Compartments,” meaning living day to day and only worrying about what's happening today because that's all that you can control.

In fact, what the research found was that of all the things that we worry about, only 8% of those things actually happen. So think about that. Most of the things we worry about never happen. In fact, 40% of the things we worry about never happen, and 30% of the things we worry about already happened. We can't control that. So it goes to show that living in the here and now is important because that's all we can control, and if we spend time worrying about things that haven't happened yet or obsessing over something that happened already, that we just can't change because it's already done, then we're wasting all that energy and all that time. Our days are being filled with things that we have no control over, and it's detrimental to our health because we're stressing over something that we can't control.

So mindfulness improves well-being and physical health in that studies have shown it helps to relieve stress. It helps to lower blood pressure, helps to improve sleep because if we’re not stressing, we're sleeping better. It has also been shown to alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties, and  that must be tied to the stress factor cause when you're stressed, it also implicates and impacts your body. It also helps with our mental health in that mindfulness meditation helps to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders. Psychotherapists have also turned to it to help treat problems such as substance abuse, eating disorders, and also conflicts in relationships between spouses and significant others. So there's a lot of benefit. There's a lot of research and data to back this up. Lots of studies have been done about it.

It's very important that we keep that in mind and that we try to strive to be mindful as much as possible. It isn't something that's difficult to do, but it's definitely something that requires practice. I can personally speak for myself in saying that I've been making a concerted effort to live more mindfully over the last several years. And I've noticed that it has definitely had an impact on the way I view situations and how I handle stress. Now, it's hard. It's not easy, and, from time to time, I do lapse back and do have those moments where I let a situation overcome me. But I have to say that I have noticed the time that I stress over something is significantly shorter than it used to be. There was a period of time, years ago, where I could obsess over something in the past that happened that I wish hadn't happened that way. I would let it eat away at me for a while, and it's very stressful. Or, if I had something coming up in the future, say a speaking engagement or something work-related, for example, where I had to give a big presentation. My mind would go off on tangents in all different directions – “what if I bomb?” “What if I fail?”  “What if they laugh at me?” And obviously, it's something that never happened, never came to pass, but I would let it bother me. I would think about it, and I would obsess over it, and it would make me very nervous. Whereas now I'm able to identify that as just fear and let it go and realize that it's likely not going to happen. I had a situation years ago where I was speaking in front of a group of over 500 human resources executives down in Manhattan.

I had to give a speech about Corporate Social Responsibility and how it's important to companies. In preparing for that, I was getting stressed. I was starting to worry about it. I mean, it was a big crowd of 500+ people. It ended up being many more than that, standing room only. I was worried about it leading up to it, and it started to really eat away at me. And I started thinking of every possible bad scenario you could imagine. I was thinking, “what if I trip up the steps and fall flat on my face?”  “What if I forget what I have to say?” “What if I open my mouth, then no words come out?” “What if they think I sound ridiculous?” I mean, you couldn't even imagine the things I was thinking.

And then I stopped myself, and I said, “You know something? I'm thinking about something that hasn't happened. I'm getting myself worked up over something I know is not going to happen.” So I identified what I was feeling. It's fear. It’s just the jitters. And I let it go. And every time the thought would come into my head, I would just think to myself, “this is just the jitters. It's nothing, this is not going to happen.” and I would let it go. It really helped me to gain control of the situation. Of course, I gave the presentation. It went extremely well. It was well-received, and what I feared never happened. So that's my personal little tidbit/sidebar on how I use mindfulness in helping me to stay in the present moment and letting go of whatever negative thoughts, and redirecting my thoughts in a positive way.


But let me get into some of the other techniques that you can apply. Emotional mindfulness practice is basically just identifying, as I just explained, what the emotion is, labeling it, and accepting it without judgment. In other words, not judging yourself for feeling it. So if you feel afraid about something, just say “this is just fear” and not saying to yourself, “I'm ridiculous for being afraid. Why am I afraid? I can't believe I'm doing this.” Don't judge yourself for feeling it. Just recognize it as fear and letting it go. Let it go and redirect your thoughts to “it's not going to happen. I'm going to do great” and just letting it go. Identify even positive emotions. Get into the habit of doing it. If you feel happy, say, “this is happiness. This is me feeling happy, and it's because of this, this, and this,” and let it go. And so when you start labeling emotions, it kind of diffuses them, and then you can release them more efficiently or easily.

The other type of mindfulness meditation is Sensation. Noticing your body sensations, such as if you feel a tingling in your fingers or your hands, or an itch on your arm or pain in your leg, Focusing your mind on that sensation, or sitting quietly and doing a whole scan of your body starting from your head- what are the sensations you feel in your head? What are the sensations you feel in your chest and your arms and your hands, etc.? It just brings your awareness to the present moment.

Another type of mindfulness practice if you feel stressed or you feel your mind wandering is to sit quietly, if you have the opportunity to do so, and focus on your breath, your breathing. Breathing in, breathing out, and letting your mind just focus on the rhythm of your breathing. It centers you, keeps your mind focused on breathing, and prevents you from wandering - from your mind wandering. It’s also very relaxing. So it helps you to be calm in a stressful situation. This comes in handy at work as well. If you're having a stressful day at work, I've done this, close your office door or go someplace where it's quiet – a conference room - and just sit for a few minutes breathing in and out and focusing on your breath. It's an easy meditation to do. It doesn't require sitting still for 15 or 20 minutes. A few breaths in and out, focusing for a minute or two, will help you to calm and diffuse the stressful situation. It's always good to take a step back and to breathe. To literally take a breath before saying or doing something that might escalate a situation. Some people like to add a mantra to their breathing meditation. So you breathe in, breathe out and recite a mantra at the same time. A mantra is a spiritual invocation, a prayer, saying, or word, something that helps you to keep focused. One of my favorite mantras is “Om Shanti Om,” which is a mantra for world peace. I will recite it while I'm meditating or while I'm doing tasks during the day. It keeps my mind centered, and if I find myself wandering thought-wise into areas that are a little bit stressful, it just helps bring me back. It helps me calm and, at the same time, saying that mantra over and over puts that peaceful energy out into the world, which is something that we certainly can use today, for sure. 

Another technique that is good to do as another way to practice mindfulness is Sensory mindfulness. This is focusing on the senses. Noticing the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, and touches, and actually naming them. So if you're looking at something, you’d say “that's sight,” if you hear something “that’s sound,” if you taste something, labeling its taste, and so on. Something easy to do while you're eating to be more mindful: focus on the texture of the food, the taste of the food, the flavors, what you're experiencing when you're eating it, how does it make you feel when you're eating this food? Do you feel good? Notice the emotion. This is a happy emotion. Why? Because I'm eating something delicious. Or this was something that was made with love by your significant other or someone that you care about, your mom or somebody in your family. You think about that, and it helps to bring your mind focus to the present moment.   

If you're out and about walking in nature, another way to be aware of the present and being present is to take at the things around you. What are you looking at? Look at the colors, the sights. If you hear sounds, are there birds chirping? Do you hear an airplane overhead? Are there cars passing by? Do you hear a dog barking? These are ways that you focus your attention on the now. You can focus on your breathing. If you're running, focus on your breathing or focus on your footsteps while you're walking.

Something that I like to do that helps me to stay aware while I'm walking and at the same time keeps my mind from wandering is to identify the different sounds that I'm hearing while I'm walking. So I may hear birds chirping, and at the same time, I hear a car passing by, and I'll actually say in my mind,” birds chirping, car,” and then every new sound I hear, I'll add it to the inventory of sounds. So it'll be “birds chirping, car, dog barking” if there's a dog barking nearby. Now, why is this good? First, it keeps you focused on the here and now, but then it also keeps you from being distracted insofar as your surroundings - and it's good for safety. So if you take inventory of all the different sounds that you're hearing, say on a walk on a trail somewhere in a park, for example, You hear birds chirping, and you’re focused on “birds chirping, my footsteps, and wind rustling in the trees,” and then you hear a dog barking - well that's a new sound that wasn't there before. So it will make you look around and say, “Okay, where's the dog?” or now there’s a second set of footsteps on the trail. You can turn around and look and see if there's someone else around or behind you. It’s the same anytime you notice a different sound that wasn't there before. It's easier to do this when you're mindful, and you're labeling every sound that you're hearing because if you're distracted thinking about something in the past or something that angered you or worrying about something in the future that didn't happen yet, it’s likely you're not going to hear all of these things or be aware of everything the way you would be if you're centered and focused on your surroundings.

So it's important, even from a safety standpoint sometimes, to practice mindfulness. I do it all the time when I'm out walking somewhere, especially if I'm alone. I will do that practice of labeling different sounds and things for both the benefit of just being present and also for being hyper-aware of my surroundings. So these are the different techniques and things that you can do to help stay mindful and in the present. And I think, again, especially now with so much worry and uncertainty in the future with what could happen coming out of the lockdown and COVID, I think that practicing mindfulness is especially important now to keep us from stressing over things that we are not able to control. And it's very easy for our minds to go to very bad places, especially when we're dealing with the pandemic.

So staying focused helps us to stay healthy, helps us to keep from being overly stressed, and at the same time to care for ourselves, for our families, for our children, and overall for our mental and physical wellbeing. It's relatively easy, but it does require practice. So it's not super hard. What I would say is if you like one of these particular ways that you can practice mindfulness, pick one and then start with that. So maybe start with the breathing exercises and the mantras, and then move on to other things. And you can incorporate a number of different ways into your life, even something as simple as while you're cooking dinner, focus on the task at hand. Focus on what you're doing- “I'm chopping vegetables right now,” “I'm cooking pasta right now,” you know, focus on the aromas in the kitchen. Or even something as simple as washing the dishes.  Focus on the act of actually washing the dishes. How does the water feel on your hands? The temperature of the water, the suds, the soap suds on your hands. How does that feel? Gardening-the feel of your hands in the dirt, focus on that. The cool dirt, the look of the plants, the colors. What are the plants? You're looking at the texture, the flowers, focus on the scent of the flowers in your garden. There are so many ways to bring your attention back to the present moment that is simple but yet very powerful and very effective in helping us to redirect our thoughts to a positive place while helping us to de-stress and get ahold of those emotions that sometimes can overpower us: fear, anxiety, depression. There's so many ways that we can help to manage that. I will be posting links to the Harvard Health paper that you can actually print as a PDF. There’s a lot of great information there as well as links to books and meditations on mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness. There are mindfulness meditations from famous people like Deepak Chopra that guide you through the practice of mindfulness. There is a great book called “The Miracle of Mindfulness” by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a famous Buddhist monk, a writer, and peace activist. You may be familiar with his work and wonderful books. The one on mindfulness, I happen to really love. I will post the links to all of these things, as well as the Dale Carnegie book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” It's an awesome book. The philosophies and the principles are timeless. They're just as relevant today as they were back then. In fact, the Dale Carnegie Institute still exists today, and they use that book, as well as many of his other books, to help people in the business world handle stress; but also it can be applied in a day to day life as well. It’s universal in its effectiveness. So get started! Start practicing.

To recap, mindfulness is very important in helping us to manage stress. It has mental benefits in helping us to cope with depression, anxiety issues that can really take away from our health as well as physical benefits. Scientists have found that it helps to lower blood pressure, improve sleep, help with heart disease, improve gastrointestinal issues, and alleviate chronic pain. So lots of benefits. It’s important to practice, practice, practice. Don't beat yourself up over it if you lapse, or if you start to go back to stressing over things, and it takes practice - years of practice. This is something that it's not going to flip a switch, and you're going to change overnight, but the more you practice, the better at it you'll get.  Practice just redirecting your mind gently to the positive, to the sensations in the present.

When you start wandering into daydreaming or obsessing over what could possibly happen, just remember that only 8% of the things that we worry about actually happen. The rest we either can control, or they never happened, or they're not really things that are worrisome at all. We're just, you know, sometimes making mountains out of mole Hills. Keep that in mind: only 8% of the things that we worry about actually come to pass. So don't stress over things that you can't control, live in the here and now as Carnegie said, live in day to day compartments and only worry about what you can worry about today -what's happening today - because that's all you can control.  Keep trying, keep practicing, and you'll find that practice, as they say, makes perfect. 

That's the end of our chat for today. I hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope that you are all doing well and faring well during these uncertain times. I wish you all the best for you, your families, and your loved ones, and I hope that you'll join me next month when our topic will be boosting your brain through creativity.

 Until then, take care of beautiful people!

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Link to audio of Podcast below or access from the “Podcast” tab on this site:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/894373

Links to articles and books referenced and discussed in this podcast: 

Harvard Health: The Benefits of Mindfulness

https://www.health.harvard.edu/alternative-and-complementary-medicine/two-mindfulness-meditation-exercises-to-try 

https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Mindfulness-Introduction-Practice-Meditation/dp/0807012394

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-stop-worrying-and-start-living-dale-carnegie/1100370319

https://www.dalecarnegie.com/en/resources/ebooks

Deepak Chopra on Mindfulness

 

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