The Hard-Knocks Restaurant World Discovers Wellness →
It's good to see the workplace is changing in favor of the workforce over profit margins. This piece highlights a few restaurants taking a better approach to keeping employees happy and healthy. Depression is estimated to cause +/- 200 million lost workdays each year at a cost of billions to employers. These proactive approaches may seem more expensive near term but pay off significantly down the road.
In ways both big and small, a new concern for the health and wellness of workers is seeping into the anxiety-ridden, run-till-you-drop world of restaurants, where for years nobody blinked if a day at work included screaming chefs and substance abuse.
As a whole we have a long way to go still. The article also mentions the most recent National Compensation Survey which reports only 40% of hotels and restaurants in the U.S. offer health insurance and 29% offer retirement benefits. Being a member of the gig economy, health insurance and retirement are my biggest stressors.
Ecological grief: I mourn the loss of nature – it saved me from addiction →
During a period of ill health Lucy Jones struggled with depression and addiction, three of the four elements that helped her recover were psychiatry, psychotherapy, and the support of others. The fourth was walks in nature.
Even though I was usually alone when I walked, I never felt lonely. I was realising that I belonged to a wider family of species, the matrix of life, from the spiders to the lichen and the cormorants to the coots. Nature picked me up by the scruff of my neck, and I rested in her care for a while.
She started gardening and got dirty.
I began to plant things to watch them grow. One of the first things I noticed was that after gardening, digging my hands deep into the soil, I felt happy, upbeat, less stressed and generally more positive. Reading up on this, I saw that there may be a biological reason for it. One of the species of bacteria found in soil, M vaccae, has been found to affect the brain and increase stress resilience.
After years of research she wrote a book on the importance of maintaining a connection with nature, Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild.
In this piece for The Guardian she shares a fair amount of the scientific data that supports our need for nature and the positive impact getting dirty has on our mental and physical wellness.
We need a new relationship with the Earth, one that positions us not as conquerors, but co-tenants with wildlife and rivers and mountains and trees, respecting and caring for natural spaces because it is the right thing to do – and because we need the rest of nature for our lives and for our sanity.
Busyness is Laziness →
I suffer from chronic busyness so this post resonated with me. The proficiency of my busyness astounds me at times. I can sit at my computer bouncing from one task to another, hopping from a desktop application to another on my iPhone without skipping a beat and while working on another project in my head. But, at the end of the day I often feel as though I've gotten little to none done.
This, you see, is what busyness does to us. It prevents us from remaining focused on the most important work that we need to do.
Finding Happiness →
Many of us spend our adult lives searching for happiness without ever feeling like we’ve found it. This fleeting state of being can feel so out of reach, we wonder how to obtain a firm grasp on it.
Sanmao, the Desert Writer, Inspired Millions of Asian Women to Adventure →
HIGHLIGHTS FROM MY KINDLE
A person cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and warm shelter; and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life. One cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship.
The Science of Getting Rich: Discover the Secrets to Wealth, Wallace D. Wattles
The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it. Anxiety quickly demoralises the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; while impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system.
Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigour and grace.
As a Man Thinketh, James Allen