How To Beat Loneliness
Article Round-Up: 5.26.24
Enjoy this week’s curated round-up of articles, podcasts, and more from the web to help you live a healthier, happier life.
Coaching Conversations: Food Choices, Guilt, & The Licensing Effect
Takeaway: As your coach, I don’t care if you decide to indulge in your favorite treats or consume alcoholic beverages, even if it means missing your nutrition targets. But only if it was an intentional decision made with full understanding of the trade offs.
This intentionality is how you can minimize guilt around your food choices.
*Edited for anonymity*
Fitness Fortunes: “Be on the alert for new opportunity”
This fortune highlights the importance of having a positive attitude and mindset.
Take the analogy of the sunglasses:
Your mindset acts like a pair of sunglasses. If you put on yellow-tinted sunglasses, everything you see has a yellow hue. Similarly, if you put on red-tinted sunglasses, everything looks red.
This is the same with your mindset. Whether positive or negative, the lens you use shifts your perception of the events in your life.
In our lives, things are going to happen—bad things included. That's just the nature of life: it's dynamic, chaotic, and ever-changing. We have very little control over many things, so bad stuff will inevitably happen.
Adopting a positive mindset isn't about eliminating the bad.
If we wear a negative mindset lens, everything—good and bad—will have a negative undertone. We might dismiss a compliment from a stranger as insincere or interpret a miscommunication at work as someone trying to sabotage us.
Therefore, it's crucial to remove the negative mindset lens and work to put on a positive mindset lens. This doesn't mean everything will be devoid of negativity, but rather that we can find new perspectives and appreciation even when things go wrong.
We can view challenges as opportunities for growth and learning, ensuring that similar situations don't happen again.
Training ourselves to adopt positive lenses allows us to recognize the opportunities that already exist around us.
Adopting a positive perspective helps us see opportunities that we might otherwise miss. The idea of "being on the alert for new opportunities" speaks to the importance of maintaining a positive mindset to identify and seize the opportunities around us.
So, keep working on putting those positive lenses on. You'll likely find there are more good things around you than you initially thought.
Published This Week:
How To Plan Your Next Solo Trip
Takeaway: Traveling solo can be intimidating, but it will be life changing. Use the simple framework of “Lodging, Logistics, & Leisure” to cover all your bases and feel more confident self-planning your next big solo trip!
If You Want To Belong, Find A Third Place
Takeaway: With levels of reported loneliness reaching an all-time high, the idea of a third place is increasing in popularity. A third place is a regularly visited location outside of the home (the first place) and work (the second place). It’s a location where you see familiar faces, recognize and are recognized; providing a place to connect with people of different backgrounds that share similar interests.
This has become a priority for me in the last year. Having moved my entire life to a new state without knowing anyone, rebuilding a community has never been more important.
I’ve leaned into my dancing hobby these past few months. In doing so, not only do I have fun to look forward to every week, but that fun also allows me to connect with fantastic human beings from all walks of life.
Artists and musicians.
Consultants and entrepreneurs.
Teachers and mechanics.
Dancing is my third place; a place of belonging.
As we get older life’s responsibilities weigh us down. Friends get busy. They start families. It becomes an afterthought to make time to nurture these important relationships.
And that leads to loneliness.
Never before have we been so connected virtually, but disconnected personally.
You can fix this by dedicating some time to nurture these relationships. A third place helps systematize this process to keep you consistent.
Reader Question:
Why does whey protein hurt my stomach?
This varies from person to person, but if you have problems digesting whey it comes down to lactose intolerance.
A quick summary about how whey protein supplements are made. There are four key steps:
Milk Separation: Milk is first separated into curds and whey during the cheese-making process. This is usually done by adding enzymes or acids to the milk.
Whey Collection: The liquid whey is collected and filtered to remove the remaining fats and carbohydrates. This process involves microfiltration or ultrafiltration, which uses membranes to separate the whey protein from other components.
Concentration: The filtered whey is then concentrated. This step increases the protein content by further removing water and some of the lactose and minerals. The resulting product is called whey protein concentrate, which typically contains about 70-80% protein.
Drying: The concentrated whey protein is then spray-dried to create a powder. This involves spraying the liquid whey protein into a hot air chamber, which evaporates the water and leaves behind fine protein powder.
Many people don’t realize that whey protein is a dairy product. If you have problems with dairy, whey protein concentrate powders may also cause problems.
However, here are a few alternative options at your disposal to help increase protein intake:
Try a whey protein isolate. This is a more filtered version of whey concentrate and contains even lesser amounts of lactose. It is more easily digestible by most.
Plant-Based protein powders. If you are ultra-sensitive to lactose, consider instead a non-dairy protein supplement. There are many options on the market today that make it even easier to go dairy-free.
Make a more concerted effort to get all protein needs from whole foods. While protein supplements make achieving protein needs easy, turning to whole food sources can alleviate the digestive issues you experience with supplements.
P.S. Speaking of connecting, I want to connect with you. I’m restarting my coffee chats. These are informal virtual meet-ups to chat about whatever topic you’d like.
Want to catch up on life? Talk through a challenging decision? Share a good story? I’d love to spend some time getting to know you better.
Always great advice. Thank you!