James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

I need a vacation.

I know I’m not the only one feeling this right now. It’s a sentiment I’ve been hearing a lot from friends and on social media, and it’s no surprise given the strange and stressful circumstances we find ourselves in. The unpredictability of the pandemic and the global economy, coupled with the strain of adjusting to new realities of work, childcare, and school, have almost everyone I know craving an escape.

Yet with travel restricted in many places, a carefree getaway isn’t in the cards for most people.

Still, vacations are an important part of well-being. One study, for example, showed that when men at risk for heart disease didn’t take annual vacations, they had a 32 percent higher risk of having a fatal heart attack than those who did. Likewise, a study of women showed that those who took vacation rarely — i.e., once every six years or less often — were eight times more likely to develop heart disease. Other studies have shown an increase in sleep quality and an improvement in reaction times of up to 80 percent after taking a vacation.

Still other research has shown that regular vacations are more important than money to overall well-being, so much that a regular vacationer making less than $24,000 a year might even be happier than a non-vacationer making more than $120,000 a year.

.

Avalon Nuovo

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Many parents of young children struggle to introduce new foods into their kids’ diets. About half of American children are picky eaters by the age of two; they are, in the vernacular of nutritionists, “food neophobic.” Our pediatrician once told me that one of our sons, who was a fussy eater, would need to try new food at least six times before the taste would no longer fill him with fear and loathing. My wife and I wanted to fight our son’s food neophobia for some practical, nutritional reasons, but more fundamentally, we wanted him to eat adventurously so he could enjoy this part of life. Openness to a wide variety of tastes and smells enhances the pleasure of eating.

This is an instance of a larger truth: Openness to a wide variety of life experiences, from visiting interesting places to considering unusual political views, brings happiness. “Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet, “will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

.

JAN BUCHCZIK

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

I have a tenet that I follow when it comes to social media conflagrations: Don’t add your air to someone else’s fire.

This rule has saved my butt multiple times. For example, during one social media snafu, a writer responded to a post I made of an article I’d written, saying she wanted to discuss our opposing views—in a Facebook forum of thousands of people. The wording and tone of her comment showed she wasn’t interested in a real dialog, so I didn’t respond. Had I agreed to the requestor made a snarky comment like “Get your own damn articles published,” I would have been following her playbook to gain attention for herself and undermine me and my work. Should I have done something else? I figured I’d check with the experts.

“You did the right thing by not responding,” says Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of Thrivers. “No response is a great response, and often the most powerful response. The person wants the attention, and you are not giving it to them. She clearly wanted to use and undermine you by hijacking your platform. If you shamed her, you would have lost credibility and would be in a position of defending yourself.”

.

Photograph: Artur Debat/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________