Exploring Life Works When – A story of piecing happiness together for a successful life.

Now if you’ve read my parable on the happiness jigsaw of life you’d know self-care is one of the first steps to building a platform of wellness, so you can find and maintain a happier life. And if you have my book and completed the Happiness Assessment then the next few blogs are going to help explain and guide you through your jigsaw of Happiness, by exploring what those steps mean in greater detail. Have a look where you rated SELF CARE compared to the other pieces of the jigsaw. Is it something you need to rethink or balance in your life?
Recently I was at a friend’s book launch and her guest speaker said something that resonated with me. He said, “When people tell me they don’t have time, I hear that they are too lazy to make time.”

There were a lot of surprised (and perhaps resentful faces), at the implication that us time poor people could be labelled lazy. And yet I think he was right on the money.

What I think he meant was the effort and challenge to put aside time to do things that can benefit us, may take a little longer than a sound bite or reading an affirmation. We are very clever at shoving what we really need to do in the back of our minds if it requires a perception of too much effort. We fill our lives with distractions and ‘must do’ lists without thinking of allocating time and effort to other important things. Squeezing in our basic needs between other accomplishments we deem more valuable to our life progress. Like putting of reading a book that could improve our understanding of life or ourselves. We are masters at excusing ourselves from the hard stuff.

This concept of time, laziness and choice is integral to the idea of SELF CARE.

I chose SELF CARE as the first piece of the puzzle to HAPPINESS to draw attention to the importance of self-love, for without accomplishing self-love we struggle to cope with the blunt bruising world out there. And by self-love, I don’t mean self-obsession or self-promotion. I mean liking yourself, warts and all. Finding a softness in your vulnerabilities and mistakes. Seeing your soul in the mirror instead of only focusing on the body it came in. SELF CARE is the daily continued focus on looking after yourself. From what you eat and drink, to grooming and hygiene and even your surrounds. SELF CARE is taking time to care for yourself. Slow it down. See yourself as a whole being rather than parts. Stop defining your worthiness as how you look and expand it to include incorporating a kindness for the inside and out.

This means it is okay to step out of our hectic lives, down tools and look after ourselves. Find the time to love who you are.

Want to know a trick? Go and stand in the doorway of your room. Have a look at your environment, no not just outside, I mean around you. Slow down and really look. How clean and organised is your room? Our rooms are like our private mind, it is where the world rarely goes, and the place rarely seen by others. SELF CARE is reflected in this space. If you avoid caring for what you own with value and thoughtfulness, what does that say about your own sense of value? Equally, if your room is so pristine that it lacks personality, again what does that say about you? About the time you spend in your private world, mentally, physically and spiritually?

We have all seen a street with a house that is dishevelled and uncared for. Immediately we sense that the people living there don’t have time ( or maybe judge harshly are too lazy), to look after what they own. They don’t prioritise what they have, even if it is a rundown house. They are sending a message of the lack of self-care they have for themselves and their environment. And we read it easily and agree. SELF CARE is a statement of worth and when undernourished and abandoned seeps out into the world and into our environments. How we treat ourselves sooner or later is demonstrated by how we live and treat the wider spaces we live in.

How about personal hygiene? Do you groom and clean your physical self with care and love? Taking time to nourish the skin you are in? Find the time to maintain your wellbeing in basic ways?

What about that mind of yours? How often do you set aside time to expand your knowledge of self? Question your direction and purpose? Challenge your thinking and reactions to improve your interpersonal and self-development? None of us have all the answers and understand ourselves completely, so finding time to continue a quest for wisdom is important for our personal growth.

And don’t get me started on what we put into our bodies? Do you swallow a myriad of vitamins and concoctions to improve your health because it is quicker than spending time eating fruit or preparing a nutritious meal? Telling ourselves that tablets are time effective ways to nourish our bodies in our busy lives.

SELF CARE as the first piece of the HAPPINESS JIGSAW is a basic and important skill that will support you through life. It will help keep you physically strong, have a sense of your value, demonstrate to the world your own worthiness and create feelings of pride and accomplishment throughout your life.

So, let’s not be lazy with our time. Let’s create moments to SELF CARE. Check in with ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually to see how we are going. Look around our environment both personally and beyond to see and then create a true reflection of our worthiness. It is time to SELf CARE and make a statement that you are ready to build the platform of happiness to take you through this long and wonderful life.

And don’t forget to get my book Life Works When- A story of piecing happiness together for a successful life to follow and explore the other pieces of the jigsaw of happiness.

‘The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.’

– George Bernard Shaw

Now before you read on, this isn’t a ‘let’s hate Facebook’ monologue at all.
My own belief is that everything, when balanced, including social media, is good for us. For my generation, we are still safe from the intrusion of technology on our human skills. For the rest of you, well, don’t say you haven’t been warned. For all the social media and Facebook addicts out there, the data is coming in and it is not good news.

We are starting to get the results from research completed on our obsession with social media. There is a new problem diagnosed and it has a name – VIRTUAL AUTISM. Coined from research in France on autistic disorders and the impact of social media on babies and toddlers, the term virtual autism applies to the robbing of toddlers of normal social development by handing these new impressionable human beings, screens to occupy them. Screens instead of human interaction and learning. Screens instead of emotional facial reading and modelling. Screens instead of conversation, developing an understanding of eye contact, facial expression and tone of voice. The bad news is that introducing screens excessively is diminishing the next generation of toddler’s ability to read social language and understand facial and body language.

The good news is the solution is to take the screens off them and replace it with parental and carer interactions and games (think peek-a-boo). This teaches our toddlers and babies how to read our emotions through seeing our faces and interpreting the facial expressions. Okay, there may be a tantrum or ten, but change will always be a challenge. Even if you are five.

The thing is, if you don’t get on to it now, it doesn’t stop there. Once we introduce screens as a natural part of our social and interpersonal evolution, it becomes normalised for all interactions. Ending in an emerging generational problem of underdeveloped social skills.

When I told my daughter this, she was quick to defend her cohort of Facebook users as having good social skills. ‘We do communicate in person,’ she pouted at me. I wanted to, (but selected not to), remind my daughter her ‘horrible’ mother refused to allow Facebook or social media or iPhone until she was 15. Cruel, I know. But the method to my madness. The result is she does have very good communication skills. She reads facial and body language exceptionally well and is a great negotiator in conflict. (Yes, alright, sometimes having a psychologist as a parent can help, not hinder!). The point is, her social brain was allowed to develop naturally without the overload of ‘social screen interpersonal replacement,’ that can be detrimental to learning and using facial, body and language skills. And she survived, begrudgingly of course, without a screen in her hand 24/365.

I am sure anyone under 21 will be equally offended by this article, as my daughter was in that moment. But hold on a minute. Before you dismiss what I’m saying, stay with me. Facebook and social media (including online gaming) have positive outcomes for our social self in terms of increased interactions and bonding. They also provide vital social access for isolated, disabled or other individuals who find real-life social activities difficult or overwhelming. But like anything that stimulates the brain, too much of a good thing creates problems and increases dependency.

New research by the University of the Sunshine Coast, comparing 200 individuals born into a world obsessed with social media (think particularly Facebook and include Snapchat or Instagram ) against those who grew up without social media, has shed disturbing light on the possible loss of a generation of some vital human skills.

The results indicated that those who spend a large amount of time on social media, particularly Facebook, were exhibiting traits similar to people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. This is serious. Most notably the significantly important skill slowly vanishing from our abilities was the capacity to read facial expressions and emotions, accurately. Anyone starting to panic yet? I mean, how can we lose the art of basic communication so easily?

Now, if you’ve met me you’d know this has been a topic of growing concern with under 21-year-olds for some time. A large percentage of my clients seeking psychological support has focused on increasing anxiety (social) and depression (isolation). Most, but not all, of the issues of anxiety are centred on a growing generational inability to accurately read social cues, understand social language and interpret social body and facial language in real life. Poor skills in this area contribute to feeling isolated, inadequate and devalued.

What is left is misunderstanding, miscuing and misinterpretation. In turn, this leads to social confusion, unrealistic and wrongly applied grudges, unresolved conflict due to inability to read situations effectively and increased arguments based on poor communication. The inability to understand what went wrong and have the skills for successful repairing interpersonal problems is a massive issue, in as far as being an effective and happy human being.

In my book, Life Works When – A story of piecing happiness together for a successful life, the piece of happiness called Belonging is a major part of finding happiness. Any reduction in our ability to communicate effectively with each other impacts on our sense of belonging and desire to belong. Unresolved this social fallout impacts our social, psychological and physical well being. Our mental health suffers, depression creeps in and social isolation develops.

Dr Rachael Sharman, a senior psychology lecturer at USC, said in a recent interview, she believes our brains are not ready to ‘deal with the dramatic shift in technology’. Yet, technology is not going to slip into neutral gear while we all catch up. We are ill prepared to understand what serious social media use will have on us long term, on the interpersonal interactions and behaviour of the next generation. What we know now is the ability to read facial expressions and emotions, accurately, is one human skill we are forfeiting for screen dependency. And these dying skills are connected to our levels of social anxiety and depression.

Is it time we introduce Human Skills into our education curriculum to balance the social eradication of being able to read each other’s expressions and emotions?

Are we becoming too literal as our skills for the abstract and the use of the creative places of our minds are replaced by text and twitter speak?

What is the future impact of a generation of people more at ease communicating through a screen than in person?

What correlation does the diminishing of real-life human skills have on our mental health?

Where we lose the ability to read each other in social settings with accuracy, we lose the art of compassion, communication, conflict resolution and creative thinking.

So what can we do? Like with the toddlers, the solution is relatively easy.

  • Limit your screen time to balance with real interpersonal interactions.

  • Make sure your social skills are updated and accurate.

  • Re-train in your human skills.

  • Call instead of text, to practice your communication ability in real time.

  • Avoid or seriously limit giving any children under 10 screens as a substitute for other natural interactions or learning.

  • Say no to screens, you are the adult, not the child, so the authority to make the choice.

  • Model effective social skills, if you don’t know how to seek advice and training.

  • Check your own obsession with your social media.

  • Don’t assume everyone understands facial, body and language cues, including yourself.

  • Be strong enough to cope with the tantrum to children and adolescents who demand excessive screens and social media use.

  • Seek help if you struggle to implement any of these.

If you want to know if your screen time is excessive and impacting on your wellbeing, subscribe to my email and you can complete the screen checklist and find out.

Until then, turn off and tune in to the real world for a little while.

The benefits will be lifelong.