How to Treat Your Spirituality Like a Fitness Regime

We recognize the importance of making time to keep our bodies and minds in shape, so why not our spiritual side? Here’s how and why a spiritual regimen can enrich your life — no matter what you believe in.

“Self-care” is the motivating buzzword that keeps on buzzing, used to market everything from face masks to the latest fitness craze. Under its influence, we’re relentlessly poked and prodded with reminders of ways to get better, stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, ad infinitum.

But what about our inner selves? We might look great on the outside, but all the planks in the world can’t give us the inner strength we need to give us hope and get us through tough times. Enter spiritual health and practice.

What is a spiritual practice?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “spirit” has many definitions, with the most relevant to this article being the “animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.” As such, a spiritual practice is something you do on a regular basis to access your own personal concept of spirit — or a sense of connection to yourself or the world — whether you find it on an altar of your own making, in nature, at a nightclub, in a mosque, in a synagogue, or in a church, etc.

But given all that we’ve got going on, is it actually beneficial to make space in our chaotic lives to develop a relationship with our intuition, higher power, God, the Goddess, Allah, G-d, Buddha, or whomever or whatever we might feel compelled to call upon to work on our spiritual lives? Does having a spiritual life even make sense? And if the answer is yes, then why does this aspect of our lives so often go neglected in favor of shallower pursuits of self-improvement?

Why you may not have a spiritual practice — yet

The Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Zen priest and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, says one common reason people find spiritual enrichment so easy to blow off is that the benefits of a spiritual practice aren’t tangible and may take time to be revealed. “It goes deeper, and there’s not like an instant payoff,” she says. “There’s not somebody that’s just going to say, ‘Now you have a great butt! Now you have a six-pack!’ It’s intangible, so it requires what some people may call faith, patience, curiosity, and an openness to allow something that is far more intangible than most forms of self-care we have evidence of.”

Another possible reason some may balk at the idea of spiritual development is its association with organized religion, but spirituality and religion are, in fact, two different concepts. “Spirituality tends to be more of an individual pursuit. In organized religion, there are rules to follow, and it tends to be much more rigid,” explains Tamara Goldsby, Ph.D., a research psychologist with the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at UC San Diego who studies the impact of meditation on well-being. “If one had a negative experience with organized religion in the past, one may generalize all spiritual experiences to this when, in reality, spirituality is quite different from organized religion. If one believes that the mind, body, and spirit are all connected, then it makes sense for us to integrate a regular spiritual practice, in whatever form suits us, into our lives. One does not need to follow an ideology per se to be spiritual. Connecting to a source greater than ourselves can be a powerful experience, and it reminds us that we are all part of a bigger picture.”

Why people monitor their spiritual health

As many as 30 percent of people identify as spiritual but not religious, says williams. A spiritual practice can give us a sense of agency over our own lives. “No matter what the practice, there is a very deep agreement that we make with ourselves when we have a spiritual practice,” says williams. “We take a sense of navigating our lives into our own hands rather than leaving it to chance, whether that’s by way of our relationship with a higher power through a regular, consistent practice. This agreement with ourselves is one of the most powerful things that we can do to have a sense of agency in our lives.”

How has spirituality fallen so far off our collective radar? “I think because 40 years ago, in the positive efforts and the good attempt to be inclusive, we as a society took religion out of the public square, and with it went the spiritual baby with the bathwater,” says Lisa Jane Miller, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and education and the founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City, and the author of The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. “We need to basically have a spiritual renaissance. We need to see each other as sacred, with ultimate dignity as souls on Earth, and we need to know each other as spiritual beings, to love and care for ourselves so that we awaken our spiritual brain and use what I call our awakened awareness.”

We need to know each other as spiritual beings, to love and care for ourselves so that we awaken our spiritual brain.

DianaHirsch//Getty Images

The benefits of spiritual health

Miller and a group of researchers have scientifically examined the benefits of cultivating one’s spiritual side, referencing a 25-year-long rigorously peer-reviewed study with findings that show how spirituality is “foundational” to recovery, moving through depression, moving through trauma with post-traumatic spiritual growth, and even potentially girding against subsequent depression. One MRI study her team conducted, published in JAMA Psychiatry and referenced in her book, revealed that individuals at higher risk for depressive illness who prioritized their spiritual lives actually had a thicker cortex in certain parts of the brain, and might be more resilient to the development of a major depressive illness.

In another study, her team examined the brains of those who told stories of feeling a deep connection to the universe, or “spirit.” Regardless of their religious or spiritual affiliation, each subject’s brain activated the same four neural correlates, or brain activity that produces a specific experience. She equates the first “loop” as something she calls “mindfulness plus,” or a spiritually driven awareness of being connected to love, guidance, and not being alone, adding that it activates the “bonding network,” or the same feeling as being held by someone caring for you.

The second neural loop shifts your perception of the world from a narrow one to the big picture. “Instead of being obsessed through a very narrow bowling-alley perception — I’ve got to get this thing I wanted, I’ve got to get that job, I’ve got to get that promotion, I’ve got to get into that graduate school — we shift, and we see a far broader range of life, an abundant life. That’s synchronicity,” Miller explains.

The third lends the recognition that we are all “whitecaps coming from one ocean,” Miller says. “We are magnificently synced and beautifully diverse, and all over different GPS coordinates.”

Miller describes the fourth neural loop as a greater sense of interconnectedness. “I could be walled-off lonely for months in my Covid apartment, and that isolation and depression is real, and still I sense, whether it’s through meditation, or prayer, or nature, I am part of the oneness.”

Interested in exploring your own spirituality? Here’s how to begin

Walk in nature

Something as simple and easy as a short walk in nature for 20 minutes can reboot the spiritual capacity of the brain, says Miller. “The very same wavelength of the awakened brain is a wavelength shared by nature; it’s alpha,” she explains. “Alpha is the wavelength from the Earth’s crust. We awaken the brain when we walk through nature.” But, Miller explains, it’s not enough to just mindlessly saunter by some trees — try to be present and engage with what you experience to feel the benefits. “Don’t just notice how pretty it is,” she says. “Think about the human life cycle. Listen when birds or animals are trying to show you something, and try to give them something back. Try to be in relationship with them.”

It’s not enough to just mindlessly saunter by some trees — try to be present and engage with what you experience to feel the benefits.

Julia Davila-Lampe//Getty Images

Research what resonates for you

When exploring spirituality, williams says she encourages people to “start dating” rather than feeling like they have to commit to one type of practice. Of her own experience, she says: “Be flexible and open. I represent one of the sort of anomalies. I didn’t follow the path of what might have ordinarily been expected out of a Black woman in America. It would be Christianity first, Islam second, maybe Judaism.”

Figuring out what type of spiritual practice works for you will be a process of trial and error. Just be willing to listen to your inner self, which in and of itself is its own kind of practice, and to explore what it is that you feel called to, williams says. “We’re very unique in terms of the structure of our internal life, and what responds to it is in many ways like love,” she explains. “We will respond to things that are beyond logic. People will explain it logically, but at the end of the day, what fulfills us and gives us gratification by way of our spiritual practice is completely ineffable. It’s beyond tangible. It’s not something that is quickly situated in a set of rules and instructions, which is why we are seeing an [upwelling] in the number of people that consider themselves spiritual but not religious. We actually want to have a connection; we don’t want to just slip on the spiritual hand-me-downs of our families and in our lineage. Which is why we should go ‘date.’ When something feels like it calls you, we can both respond, and we can say maybe this isn’t it, giving ourselves a little bit of room for questions not answers.”

Work your spiritual practice into your day

For your spiritual practice to build, consistency is key, says williams. “We have so many distractions, and it is easy for it to evade us,” she says. “Getting our attention to turn to something that has some intangible gratification for us, having a practice and being able to apply our own will to show up for it and to give it some time is one of those ways we can build it and start to actually feel the experience.” She recommends taking your contemplation or spiritual practice time in “small bites,” even if it’s just five or 10 minutes a day. Anchoring your practice to another routine part of your day (right when you get up, after you brush your teeth or work out) can help it stick. “The truth is we are habituated unconsciously to all sorts of other things; we’re habituated to watching Netflix, being on our computers, touching our phones all the time. If we want to have some kind of a balance to the other things that draw our attention and distract us in our lives, and we want to give room for the new lover that is our spiritual practice, we have to actually commit some time to it,” she says.

Change the conversation

Miller says, in exploring your spirituality, it helps to “change your conversation with life” by paying attention to signs and signals that present themselves to you. She explains: “Don’t ask what do I want and how do I get it, but rather ask what is life showing me, what can I learn and give back?” says Miller. “Be open to the dharma that we’re all on this journey. You know how people say to look for signs? People show up, books show up, and we are given gifts — oftentimes through multiple cultures, multiple faith traditions, spiritual and religious practices. Who comes to you? Why did this person speak with me now, just as I started wondering about this and that? Be open to synchronicity and the symbols in life that shift your way forward. Life is not a drop-down menu from which to order what we want. Life is an exquisite journey through which we discover a deeper nature and become more loving and become far more aware of one another.”

Goldsby says spirituality is definitely a journey, and it may take quite a while for someone to find a belief system that resonates for them — but the benefits make it worthwhile. “Think of this as a long-distance run instead of a sprint,” she says. “Important self-discovery takes time, so readers need to be patient with themselves and the process.”

How to Stop ‘Shoulding’ Yourself

Experts give some pointers on how to cultivate more grace and self-compassion so you can truly thrive in life.

A dear friend — a friend I admire for her ability to guide others — recently admitted to suffering from a bout of the “shoulds.” She pointed out that every time she told herself she “should” have done something or “should” be doing something, she was essentially flagellating and shaming herself.

Barbara Barna Abel, a media coach and the host of the Camera Ready & Abel podcast, is the friend I’m speaking of. “We get stuck into this idea of an endless list of things we should do in terms of life, career, how we live our lives, or what we believe in,” she told me. “My feeling is we get stuck in what we should feel and what we should do versus what we want to do, what makes us happy, what we’re good at, and where our passions lie.”

“Shoulds” are an inevitable part of everyone’s self-speak vocabulary, but this can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Barna Abel says the “shoulds” often feel burdensome to her because they imply obligation. “When [we’re] doing something because we feel we ‘should’ and it’s out of obligation, we also start to build resentment toward ourselves, other people, and situations that can lead to depression, a victim mentality, and all sorts of other [negative] things. When we’re doing things because we ‘should,’ we gloss over the idea of choice,” she says.

Kristin Neff, PhD, an associate professor at the department of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Fierce Self-Compassion, says though the “shoulds” can spur you into action temporarily, over-“shoulding” can carry negative side effects, like reinforcing fears of being unacceptable and a fear of failure. “This actually creates performance anxiety and [feelings of] failure, which undermines your ability to achieve in the long run,” she says, adding that procrastination and performance anxiety can make it harder for you to do your best, have grit, and stay focused on your goals.

A propensity toward a “should” mindset can come from early neural imprinting within fear-driven cultures, says neuroscientist Tara Swart, author of The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain. “Cultures can mean family, society, school, or religion. Even in adulthood, the ‘shoulds’ are about the things you had to do to survive without punishment, which can be literal or be shame, guilt, or humiliation.” Telling ourselves we “should” be doing this or “should” be doing that subconsciously brings up the shame or guilt that would have been the punishment for not behaving as expected during childhood, says Swart.

Though the word “should” in self-talk can seem — and sometimes is — innocuous, it can also signal that we’re being hard on ourselves, and that’s something to be aware of. Negative self-talk can lead us to perceive the world as an “unsafe and punitive place with scarce resources,” says Swart, which can feed into a victim mentality rather than a sense of agency over our lives, and keep us from taking healthful risks.

Positive self-talk can help change your perception of "shoulds."

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Science recognizes the harsh impact negative self-talk can have on our psyches, outlook, and health. In 2018, Neff, who has conducted tons of research about the power of self-compassion, examined how self-compassion affected academic performance for college students. It was associated with “reduced self-presentation concerns and increased student communication behavior,” implying greater class participation. “Self-compassion allows students to see themselves clearly, accept their mistakes and imperfections, and take action to correct mistakes,” reads the conclusion of the study.

Another randomized field experiment conducted by different researchers found that children with negative competence beliefs would often achieve below their potential in school. They also looked at whether engaging in positive self-talk would benefit the students’ mathematics performance. The researchers found that kids who weren’t all that confident but engaged in encouraging self-talk performed better and effectively “severed the association between negative competence beliefs and poor performance.” It seems they gave themselves permission to succeed by learning positive ways to self-reassure.

Negative self-talk can even take a physical toll on us if we aren’t careful. Swart says it reduces the DOSE hormones: dopamine for reward, oxytocin for bonding, serotonin for mood, and endorphins for the feel-good factor. “It leads to increases in the stress hormone cortisol, which puts our brain in survival mode and doesn’t free up resources for higher brain functions like regulating emotions or overturning biases, including those we have against ourselves,” she explains.

Neff says negative self-talk is often linked to depression and anxiety. “Self-criticism activates the sympathetic nervous reaction, which is your fear response (or your fight-or-flight response), and self-compassion activates the sympathetic response and calms it down,” explains Neff. “If you find a depressed person, they’re almost guaranteed to be very self-critical. A lot of anxiety is caused by constant self-criticism, and anxiety undermines our ability to perform if you’re totally activated.” An activated fight-or-flight response isn’t great for you physically and can contribute to health issues like high blood pressure.

So how can we best coach ourselves through a case of the “shoulds” like Barna Abel did?

Get to why you’re shoulding

Barna Abel says, situation permitting, her first step in quelling the inner “shoulds” is to check in with herself and ask what would it look like to let go of what she thinks she should do and actually start to do what she wants to do. “It’s just stopping and being honest with yourself about your resistance. A lot of times, what gets stuck in the ‘shoulds’ are things that we’re not good at. There are things you may have been putting off because they aren’t things you really want to do, or are things that you may find difficult,” Barna Abel says. Then, actually plot out your options. “Ask yourself: If I knew I couldn’t fail, success was assured, and money was no object, what would happen? This gets you to open up in terms of possibility and alternate solutions,” she adds.

Neff also recommends taking a beat to examine your motives. “A self-compassion break is like hitting the reset button on a computer,” she says. Acknowledge that you’re struggling in some way and validate your own feelings. “Whatever you’re feeling — be it shame or disappointment — voice the negativity and acknowledge the pain with mindfulness,” she says.

Give yourself compassion and grace.’,

Olga Zakharova

Remember our common humanity — and that humans make mistakes

“Compassion, in Latin, means to suffer with this inherently connected compassion,” says Neff. “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is imperfect. Tell yourself there’s nothing wrong with me for having this issue. Tell yourself you’re not the only one.”

Give your words a positive spin

Swart suggests getting to the root of what drives your “shoulds” — and making the opposite thought your mantra. For example, swap “I should be famous/employed/rich by now!” for “I am exactly where I’m supposed to be in my life and will continue to work toward my goals.” For another way to redirect negative self-speak, Neff recommends asking yourself if you’d use the same language you use to chastise yourself and direct it at someone you really care about. If the two don’t match, write down what you’d say to your loved one and try saying it to yourself.

Show affection toward yourself

“Physical touch is one of the ways to change the nervous system — it actually helps you calm down and reduces cortisol,” says Neff, who adds that a simple self-soothing gesture, like putting your hands on your heart, is a surprisingly simple and effective way to help you calm down and feel kindness toward yourself.

In closing, Barna Abel says that redirecting her “should” self-talk freed her up to be even more productive. “Letting go of resentment is very personally empowering,” she says. “It really starts to switch the energy from ‘should’ to choice.” And who wouldn’t enjoy more choice?

How to (Try to) Quit (Almost) Anything

Whether quitting candy or something stronger, the process starts with understanding why we lean on habits in the first place.

“New year, new you” is an adage that escapes almost no one. This shift in the Gregorian calendar often signals us to reboot our lives, and one way to do that is by leaving our not-so-good-for-us habits behind. But as we all know, the process of quitting — or more constructively put, changing — our habits isn’t easy.

Changing a habit starts with understanding how we form that habit. Timothy W. Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, a co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, and the director of the UCLA Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, says people come to rely on chocolate, food, coffee, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, or what have you because they aren’t sure how to self-soothe when experiencing uncomfortable emotions like anxiety.

“For whatever reason as a society, we’ve been told we should be able to learn to calm ourselves down on our own. We feel we deserve to feel pleasure 100 percent of the time, and the goal is to never experience any sort of pain,” Fong says. “Along the way, we learn that certain things feel really good because they help soothe pain. That’s where we’ve gone wrong over the last 30 years — to put a Band-Aid on any kind of anxiety. Everyone wants life to be fun 120 percent of the time, but it’s not going to be that way. We should not fight the fact that our bodies and our brains respond to little morsels of pleasure — that’s what it’s supposed to do. And we have to embrace that pain, anxiety, suffering, and all that stuff is part of human life, and we need that, probably more than we need pleasure.”

New York-based writer and professor Susan Shapiro says it was pivotal for her to recognize that addiction isn’t about pleasure-seeking as much as it is about pain denial when quitting alcohol, weed, and cigarettes. She wrote a few books about her journey, including — along with the therapist she says “changed her life,” clinical psychologist and addiction specialist Frederick Woolverton, PhD — Unhooked: How to Quit Anything.

As such, Fong says humans run into problems when quitting habits cold turkey. “That’s why New Year’s resolutions all fail — they’re always absolute,” Fong says. “It’s not that people don’t have willpower, it’s that they don’t know how to handle feeling emotionally distressed or emotionally vulnerable. Early arguments would say, ‘When you want to quit something, stay motivated!’ All that positive psychology sounds good, but it doesn’t work. It’s not about motivation and wanting to quit; it’s about learning how to manage both positive and negative emotions.”

It’s not about motivation and wanting to quit; it’s about learning how to manage both positive and negative emotions.

Peter Dazeley//Getty Images

Humanize your habits

To manage your feelings, Fong says it helps to humanize your relationship to your habit, accept that you’re drawn to it, and acknowledge there are limits to how much you can engage with it. “Don’t run from your emotions; embrace them,” says Fong. “It’s much better for you to indulge in smaller amounts of multiple things than to do one thing excessively. There’s a huge difference between people with pure addiction — they can’t have just one drink because one drink opens up the floodgates — and someone who doesn’t quite meet the clinical criteria for addiction.”

Shapiro did meet that criterion, and understanding her limits helped her to leave her addictions behind. “It’s endless. Nothing will fill in the hole,” says Shapiro. “I have such an addictive personality. The minute I quit one bad habit, I would get addicted to something else. So, I had to be hyperconscious of everything: eating, sleeping, exercise. Twenty years clean and sober, and I can still get hooked on things very quickly, so I have to take action. For example, I’m sick right now with a sore throat and was putting too much honey in my tea, so I threw it out. I know myself, and if it’s not in the apartment, I’m better off.” Shapiro adds that this reminder helps her stay on course: “Beware all excitement because it takes you out of yourself, and you always have to go back to yourself.”

Substitute one feel-good behavior for another

To leave bad habits behind, Fong says it helps to replace them with more constructive, pleasurable pursuits you genuinely enjoy, like an afternoon walk. “So many times, the first step in quitting X is to start Y,” Fong says. “These things won’t take away triggers or vulnerability, but they’ll add tools to your arsenal to help you deal with those feelings and provide you with another option. You might not have a choice about what you’re addicted to, but you do have a choice to build up your menu of options to cope with the s--t of life. It doesn’t necessarily feel good to cope with uncomfortable feelings, but it does feel good to know that you have different options to deal with stress and emotional pain.”

Goal-setting (she wanted to write a book — she’s since published 17) and walking (along with weekly therapy and nicotine patches) helped Shapiro stay on track. “I had to be more selfish and take care of myself first,” she explains. “Going out for drinks or to dinner all the time like I used to wasn’t good for me because it was too hard to be around drinkers, overeaters, and bread baskets. So instead, if a friend, colleague, or student wanted to get together, they could come over and speed walk with me for an hour around the local park. I started calling it my ‘walking office hours.’ That way, I felt much more happy and productive and could still devote time to connect with people I cared about.”

To leave bad habits behind, it helps to replace them with more constructive, pleasurable pursuits you genuinely enjoy, like an afternoon walk.

Susumu Yoshioka//Getty Images

Prioritize pleasure

Choose a positive, pleasurable behavior that will help you manage emotional pain or distress. “Walking versus reading, talking to a friend, taking a bath, smoking a joint — they’re not all the same neurobiologically or neurochemically; they do different things. That’s why we have to have a diverse set of human activities to maintain mental health and wellness. Instead of saying, ‘Instead of smoking, I’m going to needlepoint instead,’ it helps for the new positive habit to stick if it stands on its own without being tied to the more destructive habit,” says Fong. “Don’t worry about quitting X to start Y. If you do five different things that are Y, eventually that’s going to mean X may not be gone, but X will be less intense or prevalent. Eventually, you’ll strengthen your emotional core so that the situations that drive smoking are handled in a different way.”

Set attainable goals

Choose new pleasurable habits that are attainable and that you’re willing to invest time in. “Any time you want to change behavior, you’ve got to start really slow with something you know you can master. Let’s say you want to start running. Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to go out there and run three miles right now’ — you’re not good at it, you haven’t done it, why would you be able to do it? It’s going to be painful, unpleasant, and it’s not going to be a fun experience. But you can go out right now, and you can run for three minutes. That’s the starting point of making the behavioral change to add something to your life,” says Fong. Eventually, with effort and time (like a month), he says these new practices will become habits themselves.

Don’t beat yourself up

Fong says if you slip, it’s counterproductive to beat yourself up. “When you try to quit anything, the goal shouldn’t necessarily be to quit 100 percent,” Fong explains. “It should be to reduce the harm that the behavior has been doing to you down to as little as possible. Ten cigarettes a year isn’t going to be harmful to you in the long run — it’s not going to raise your level of cancer or create an elevated risk of heart attacks. If you went from a thousand cigarettes a year to 10 a year, your habit of smoking isn’t gone, but the harm is. Your focus should not be so much about winning or losing, but when you’re making changes, reducing the harm from that habit.”

Take it from Shapiro. “I wrote a piece about quitting guilt that started, ‘I spent the last two years saying no,’ and in those two years I got everything I wanted,” she says. “Here’s a line that helped me: ‘When you get rid of a toxic habit, you’re leaving room for something more beautiful to take its place.’”

Why Art Can Offer Us Catharsis and Healing

Artists like Adele and Taylor Swift channeled their pain into their work for us all to relate to. Here’s how making and enjoying art can also help heal us.

Adele's latest, long-awaited album, 30, is far more than just another gorgeous piece of work from the songstress. It’s referred to as her “divorce album” because she admittedly used her talent to express her feelings and heal from her separation from Simon Konecki, with whom she has a son, Angelo. When it was released in November 2021, 30 resonated so deeply with the zeitgeist that tweets galore validated how, yet again, Adele was able to reduce an audience to emotional rubble via her music.

Likewise, when Taylor Swift released her re-do of the break-up record Red (Taylor’s Version) last month, she not only invalidated an earlier version of the album that profited famed music manager/executive Scooter Braun — who managed Kanye West during his feud with Swift and came to own all of Swift’s masters — but rerecording her music and marketing it to her (very) loyal audience afforded Swift the opportunity to take back her power and heal the injustice. In its early weeks, Red sold over 600,000 units, staggering for a rerelease, and found listeners floored by Swift’s emotive, honest lyricism, on full display in tracks like the 10-minute version of breakup song “All too Well.”

Since the Lascaux cave paintings, artists have used their preferred artistic media to work through interpersonal issues and find catharsis and healing through the process. “As mammals, we are inherently social, and we rely on information from each other to survive and enhance our ability to make sense of the world,” says Girija Kaimal, Associate Professor in the PhD program in Creative Arts Therapies at the Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions in Philadelphia. “In order to do that, we have to keep communicating with each other and express ourselves.”

Kaimal says the expression of pain through art is a way of seeking connection and validation while externalizing complicated feelings. “We take some of the sting, and incomprehensibility and pain, and convert these intense emotions into a container outside of ourselves so it can be shared with others,” she says. “We invite empathy and compassion — all the things you need when you're struggling. A big part of what any kind of artistic expression does is, when you've had a life experience that makes you feel really alone and isolated, the art sort of pulls you back and reminds you that you're not the first person to have been through it. It might not replace the feeling of loss, but it may bring you comfort from those who respond to the work.”

Expressing pain through art is a way of seeking connection and validation while externalizing complicated feelings.

Marina Parahina / EyeEm//Getty Images

Another benefit of channeling your emotions into your creativity is what you can learn about yourself in the process. “The upset or the stress we put into art serves as sort of a mirror, telling us about some aspect of our experience that we haven't addressed or is probably still a trigger — something we haven’t figured out,” Kaimal says.

The process of using art to work through challenging emotional issues is reflected in Kaimal’s thoughts about Adaptive Response Theory (ART), a framework for the practice of art therapy. She theorizes that creative endeavors allow our brains to use the information to make predictions about what we might do next. “Art-making — or any creative-expressive activity — helps us to concretize and externalize an idea we have imagined in our minds,” Kaimal says. “When we do this frequently, we keep practicing our ability to imagine the future and feel a sense of control over our ability to make things happen.” In other words, we may not be able to control the outcome of our situation, but we can control how what we make inspired by those emotions comes out, and that, in turn, empowers us with a sense of agency we didn’t otherwise have.

Along with gaining a sense of control over emotions, we can make art to gain a feeling of catharsis, or an aha moment in the processing of our emotions, which offers us some clarity and distance from the situation. Rod Thomas, known musically as Bright Light, Bright Light, says channeling difficult or trying emotional states into his music has helped him find balance while bringing him to a more positive and healthy place. “I used my last album, Fun City, as a way to express troubles facing the LGBTQ+ community as well as celebrating some of our love and achievements,” says Thomas. “Rather than screaming into a void, I was able to make a record that focused on what is happening, what I want to happen, and how history repeats for both better and worse. I found that making the album infinitely helped my mental health during those months and years, turning deep negatives into eventual positives. I guess it's the ability of music to flip a switch! Creating something out of despair adds a tiny silver lining to darkness, and creating something that others can be involved in helps relieve loneliness, so music is in many ways a savior for me.”

“When you can channel emotion into a piece of work, it draws in others and they get what you are going through. It brings us back to a feeling of not being alone.”

Another benefit of channeling your anger, sadness, misery, or frustration into your art is the ability to lower stress — and if you’re coming out of a stressful situation, that’s a good thing. In one small study, Kaimal and a group of researchers measured the cortisol levels — cortisol being the hormone that helps the body respond to stress — of 39 healthy adults while creating art, and found the process significantly lowered cortisol levels regardless of ability.

As far as those of us who viscerally weep along when listening to Taylor, Adele, or Bright Light, Bright Light, Kaimal says we can pick up on the depth of emotion that goes into a piece of art, which helps us to further connect with it. “It's almost like a magnet,” she explains, “because when you can channel emotion into a piece of work, it draws in others and they get what you are going through. It brings us back to a feeling of not being alone.”

Some theorize that art brings on a visceral emotional response because mirror neurons are pinging around our brains; we reflexively reflect back whatever emotional landscape we’re subjected to. Though Kaimal describes mirror neurons as an overused concept, she says they work as a “primitive mechanism” that incite a reflexive, unconscious mirroring of behaviors.

“The purpose of our brain is to keep us alive from moment to moment. Mirror neurons evolved as a way to attune ourselves to our surroundings and each other from that evolutionary need to be really quickly responsive, which means that it's not connected to our sort of motor systems — it activates and fires almost instinctively,” she explains.

Using this theory, without being conscious of it, we sense the deepest of feelings in the music we listen to, the art we observe, the films we watch, and the writing we read and reflexively feel those feelings ourselves. And, in the end, that can be an incredibly healing experience. “What happens when we cry is we release endorphins along with our tears,” Kaimal says. “Endorphins are the body's natural painkiller, so crying actually reduces the feeling of pain. It's really important for us to allow ourselves these emotions. All emotions are transient anyway.”

Stacy London’s Change of Life

London talks to Shondaland about how an existential crisis inspired her transition from style host to CEO, and how she plans on helping women move through their own changes.

Whether sharply and candidly examining the indignities of an outfit on TLC’s What Not to Wear or the indignities experienced by women in our culture, Stacy London always tells it like it really is. A warm and hilarious straight shooter, she’s unflinchingly honest about the winding road that was her post-What Not to Wear journey. A deft essayist, she’s written about how, in 2016, she found herself in financial hot water and coping with depression during a difficult recovery from spinal fusion surgery, what it was like to deal with the loss of her beloved dad in 2018, and, most recently, taking over as the CEO of a lifestyle brand called State Of — a company created to address the needs of women in menopause, which was born out of what she calls an “existential crisis.”

“No one was asking me to be on television anymore. I wasn’t the flavor of the month or a social-media influencer. I felt a loss of identity in terms of decreased earning potential,” London tells Shondaland. “I really felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore. I thought, I’m either going to lie down and not get up again, or I’m going to figure out another purpose for my life. This pivot was as much about my being engaged and having purpose as much as anything else. When I look back at my career, if I’m being really honest, I feel very lucky that a lot of things fell in my lap. That doesn’t mean I didn’t work hard. Those opportunities came very fast and furiously for me. Working with other women on What Not to Wear trained me to be empathetic and compassionate, and I knew I could put that empathy and compassion somewhere else. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes really does make all the difference — even if they’re flats.”

It was London’s own experience with and the conversations she had around menopause that led her to discover State Of. “I don’t sugarcoat this like, ‘You got this! Go, girl!’ A lot of the issues in menopause are difficult,” she explains. “They affect you in terms of your capacity to work, in terms of your capacity to love and be loved. There’s a lot here at stake, but none of it is impossible. I still have hot flashes; I still have night sweats. My brain fog is worse than ever, and I’m 52. I stopped getting my period at 47. The issues last a lot longer than most people understand. It can take six months to 20 years, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Like every transition we go through, change is scary, change is weird, but once you relax into it, you can see the opportunity that surrounds it.”

When the State Of opportunity knocked, London was stuck at home during Covid and had the space and time to listen. She noticed a gaping hole in the marketplace for products that help women cope with the long list of physical symptoms that come with menopause. So, London connected with State Of, began beta testing its products, and eventually took over the joint.

“The more I learned, I was like, wait, there’s not menopausal anything,” she says. “There are very few companies that are trying to address menopause that aren’t medical, that are over-the-counter, and are easily accessible in trying to address this. There’s nothing in the market that isn’t about vanity. What about function? What about all the things we can do to help mitigate some of the issues that you experience in menopause? I can’t stop them from happening to you, but I can certainly make a cooling spray that’s going to make your hot flash a lot easier.”

With State Of, London’s larger goal is to provide women with a contextual commerce platform that shifts the current narrative crammed down women’s throats since, well, forever. “Part of the reason I feel so strongly about the information and education part of this is I’m not just building a company for us; I’m building a company for Gen Z,” she says. “When they get here, they’ll have plenty of options and will know exactly what to do. We are a baby company, yet I have a big bullhorn, and I want to use it as much as I can, not just for the sake of the company but for the sake of the issues that surround [menopause]: sexism, racism, ableism, socioeconomic disparity.”

“Everyone keeps talking about ‘middle age’ — it’s not the Middle Ages! It’s not a dark time. Middle age is just the middle of the book — it’s the best part of the plot.”

“I want to turn my crisis into a renaissance. I want to be a curator for menopause,” London says. Everyone keeps talking about ‘middle age’ — it’s not the Middle Ages! It’s not a dark time. Middle age is just the middle of the book — it’s the best part of the plot. Why aren’t we behaving that way? It’s all through this bulls--t patriarchal lens. You are culturally taught that you are no longer relevant, and while you’re having this external invalidation, your body starts to wreak havoc in a way that makes you believe that invalidation is valid. It’s a double whammy.”

London continues, “All these women who are like, ‘Bulls--t! I’m a baller!’ Yes, we’re healthier and wealthier now at 50 than we were in the ’80s. The Rue McClanahan/J.Lo meme, I get. The fact is, any woman who says they haven’t had to reckon with the aging process is lying. Whether you’ve done it and succeeded and feel better or it’s something you’re still reckoning with, that reckoning comes whether you want it or not. That isn’t just menopause. It’s everything about the way we look at age in our society.”

I ask London what scared her most about helming a company. “Everything!” she replies. “I’m not a traditional CEO, I didn’t go to business school, I don’t know that much about e-commerce. I do know something about B2C [business to consumer]; I’ve done a lot of creative brand direction. But I would say everything about this terrified me, and it was part of the reason to do it. It’s been a long time since I’ve been terrified and had to do anything challenging.”

Now immersed in the world of women’s health, London is understandably frustrated at the paltry research and funding devoted to menopause. “The FDA categorizes menopause as a disease, yet there’s literally no medical support system for it. Look at erectile dysfunction and hair loss. When you think about the medical equivalents available to women, they’re hardly used. Women don’t ask for them, doctors don’t prescribe them — it’s insane, the lack of funding. The FDA approved Viagra within 6 months, while it’s taken years to get approval for any kind of menopausal drug. If you’re going to talk about limp dicks, I’m going to talk about dry vaginas. This, to me, is the bigger fight. There’s something about the social and gendered inequity of this that is not just about getting the care that we need — it’s that the dollars aren’t being put behind us. Our health-care system for women is broken, and it’s worse for women of color and women below the poverty line. It’s astounding to me that we don’t get the care we need at all, and that has to change.”

So, what advice would she offer women in the midst of their own existential crisis? “A midlife pivot does not have to be an abandonment of everything you know or have done thus far in your life. It can be small, incremental changes that take you from where you were to where you want to go,” she says. “Even if you have involuntarily been taken out of a position, take your time to notice. Notice the things you love to do. Notice the things you’re good at. Sometimes they are the same thing; sometimes not. The point is, at this stage of your life, you have more agency and know yourself well enough to draw outside the lines. Our lives are no longer linear. The one thing that it took me a while to get over was I had an incredible amount of success in my 30s and 40s, and I thought once you make it there, you just get to stay there. It never occurred to me that I would somehow not be in the same position, not have the same amount of choices, and not make the same amount of money. The path you take does not have to be permanent, nor does it have to be singular. A midlife pivot should feel like an adventure and a challenge. I truly believe that’s what purpose is about and what we seek to create in new ways at this stage of life,” she says. “I know that the only way to do this company, the only message worth imparting, is you do have to let go of who you were to become who you are. Not just become who you are — be who you are. That’s why I took on menopause. It’s a stigmatized, icky, ugly subject that nobody, certainly with my background or platform, is going to take up. Which is all the more reason to do it.”

How to Deal With the Chronic Bailer in Your Life

Coping with the other kind of “cancel” culture.

Bailing on plans with friends once in a while is unavoidable and perfectly understandable. We’ve all had good reasons to bail on occasion — we might feel sick (emotionally or physically), a kid or partner might need us, we might be really run-down or overscheduled, or we might be dealing with a legit emergency. Then again, we’ve all got that chronic “bailer” in our lives who takes the bailing a little too far: You make plans with mutual enthusiasm, you arrange your schedule accordingly, you look forward to said plans, then the bailer cancels, predictably, with an unceremonious text. For every time you actually manage to see each other, there are three rescheduled attempts to see each other.

It’s almost at the point where most plans with friends have an implied bailing caveat. Though bailing has been normalized and even celebrated on social media and in a vast assortment of memes, to leave the same friend hanging more than a couple of times in a row without adequate lead time, an expression of regret, or an offer of an alternate date and time that might work is still disrespectful of the friendship and the friend’s time.

“Most of us realize that life happens and that people need to cancel on occasion, but when one friend does it habitually, it’s a problem,” says Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist based in New York City who teaches at Columbia University. “Texting has made canceling less of a personal dilemma for those who don’t value the time or feelings of others.” She says those who chronically bail for a better offer are “flaky” and “self-centered.” Whatever the reason, chronic canceling isn’t a good look.

It wasn’t always easy — or acceptable — to bail at the last minute. Once upon a time in the days of yore before cell phones, you absolutely had to show up if you made plans, or call to cancel or reschedule with enough notice so the bailee wouldn’t be left standing on a street corner or in a restaurant somewhere. Today, the option to bail has become a socially acceptable, built-in, de facto escape hatch from commitment. “When you don’t see people face-to-face, there’s more of a psychological distance, and it’s easier to do something that could potentially hurt someone’s feelings,” says Mahzad Hojjat, PhD, a professor of social psychology and the director of the master’s program in research psychology in the department of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. “Now you just send a text, and it’s much easier to do it because you don’t have to face the person. But it really doesn’t help your friendship.”

But what do you do if you’ve found yourself with a friend who is constantly canceling plans? If you’re fed up with the flakiness, here are some steps to try to rectify noncommittal behavior.

Consider your relationship

When you’ve been bailed on by the same person a couple of times, you can’t help but wonder if there’s something more going on. “The first question to ask yourself is how much does this person mean to me in my life? Is this chronic bailing the person’s only flaw, and are they otherwise a good friend?” says Hafeez. Though it can feel awkward to hold a close friend accountable for a behavior that’s become kind of socially acceptable, if their chronic bailing puts you out, a close friend deserves to know.

Whatever you do, don’t call a constant bailer out over text. “It is so easy for emotions or words to be misconstrued via text.”

d3sign//Getty Images

Have a talk

“Instead of accusing them, see if their behavior is something they’re cognizant of. Say something like, ‘Do you realize that whenever we have plans, you almost always end up canceling on me?’” recommends Hafeez. “Stress how much you value your friendship and that when they perpetually cancel on you, it hurts your feelings and poses an inconvenience.” But whatever you do, don’t start this conversation over text. “It is so easy for emotions or words to be misconstrued via text,” she says. Then, both Hojjat and Hafeez recommend asking your close friend if there’s something else going on that’s causing them to withdraw socially. “Maybe they’re going through a hard time, and they may not want to discuss it unless you ask,” says Hojjat.

Wait and see

Ultimately, it’s not worth sweating a chronic bailer if they’re a casual friend — after two strikes, it’s time to lay back and let the bailer come to you, says Hojjat. “After that, honestly, they’re probably not interested in hanging out with you or don’t care so much about the relationship. I probably wouldn’t say anything or pursue it. I may not want to make plans with them, because instead of building a friendship, they’re not committing,” she says. If the bailer apologizes but doesn’t give a reason for the bailing, Hafeez recommends accepting the apology and adopting a wait-and-see approach. “You need to reevaluate if you want that friend in your life. Friends need to be dependable,” she says.

If you’re guilty of chronic bailing, Hojjat says the best approach is to apologize, offer to make up for it — and make a point of keeping your word. “Friendship is kind of like a garden,” says Hojjat. “If you want to maintain your garden, you need to regularly water your plants and remove the dead leaves. If you leave it unattended, it’s going to get out of hand. You can’t neglect your friends. People are very busy, but you can’t make promises and break them continuously — it’s better not to make them and just explain that it’s a hard time, but show you still care in other ways.”

The Emotional Security Blanket Afforded by Holiday Movies

There’s a reason some people watch them throughout the year.

My mom is obsessed with Hallmark Christmas movie marathons — she even watches them in July! They play on loop whenever she’s bored or can’t sleep and swears it helps. And this obsession is more popular than one might think. Though these festive flicks are generally predictable and formulaic, with the past couple of years we’ve had, who could blame her for leaning into the cozy comfort and simple pleasure afforded by a seemingly endless loop of holiday cheer?

She’s hardly the first person I know to watch a holiday movie in July — holiday movies are, indeed, a vibe. Regardless of what you celebrate religiously, the predictable plots involving unexpected romances, family reconciliations, or friendships lost and found, all with snowy backdrops and lots of green and red, represent various forms of redemption, and bearing witness to redemption can be comforting.

“Although holiday movies are notorious for their over-the-top acting, cheesy tropes, and predictable story arcs, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that the ending will always be happy,” says Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist based in New York City who teaches at Columbia University. “At any point throughout the year when things may feel overwhelming or chaotic, you can always count on a Hallmark movie to end not only in happily ever after but bring hope for what’s to come. The guaranteed happily ever after can offer a break from chaotic realities.”

Holiday movies also provide viewers with the opportunity to ease into a warm bath of personal nostalgia. “I think people experience feelings of positive emotions connected with celebrating holidays,” says Mahzad Hojjat, PhD, a professor of social psychology and the director of the master’s program in research psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. “Holidays can put people into a good mood. They might bring you back to a time when things were simpler. You just want to go somewhere else, think about something else, and be completely absorbed into this movie and give your mind a rest from stress.”

And all that predictability? While it might deter some people from watching these films regularly or even during the festive season, believe it or not, holiday movies actually work on our brains in the same way as antidepressants. “Holiday movies can release something referred to as the ‘feel-good’ hormone or dopamine,” Hafeez explains. “There’s a neurological shift that occurs in our minds during these films that can actually produce happiness.”

This is all to say that, as corny as you might think these movies are (and, indeed, sometimes that’s the point), romantic epiphanies under the mistletoe, holiday miracles involving Santa and his reindeer, and a small town coming together to save the local candy-cane shop can cheer you up while soothing you into a half-lidded puddle beneath an emotional weighted blanket. And doesn’t that sound kind of nice right now?

Because, let’s face it, sometimes we just need an escape hatch from reality, and because holiday movies aren’t nearly as messy as real life, we can count on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, Netflix, and countless other networks and streaming services to provide that for us. For a few hours, we get to suspend disbelief and bear witness to simplistic solutions to problems we may be facing ourselves: the unrequited crush finally returning affection; some form of a grinch having a magical change of heart in a single moment; the parent and child in a long-estranged standoff somehow becoming so bewitched by the holiday spirit, they at last manage to finagle a moving reconciliation. It all ties up trauma neatly with a big red bow. Is that how it normally goes in life? No, probably not. But all the better, then, to disappear into the hope and happiness these movies provide for an hour and a half, maybe right when we need it most. “These movies can also reduce stress and anxiety by making us feel more optimistic, especially when depression rates are at their highest,” Hafeez explains.

So, if you can’t get enough of The Preacher’s Wife or Love, Actually or are psyched to hunker down with the Hallmark Channel, know that you’re doing your part to perpetuate a ritual of serious self-care. After all, it’s the biggest gift we can give ourselves.

How and Why a Change of Scenery Can Shift Your Outlook

The science behind mixing up your physical locations.

During a phase of my life when I felt as if I were stuck on a hamster wheel (we all had one last year!), a friend of mine mentioned an old Hebrew adage that translates to “Change your place, change your luck.” It basically means shifting your actual physical location can help shift your qi — your energy — or your state of mind, if you will.

I couldn’t deny that travel always infused me with enthusiasm and a new and improved outlook — not just because I had a break from my daily responsibilities, though I don’t deny the obvious psychological benefits that also come with that. I started to notice how even incremental shifts in routine, like working in a coffee shop for part of the day instead of at home, or walking home from errands a different way, could have a positive effect on my perspective.

As it turns out, a recent study co-led by Catherine Hartley, an assistant professor in New York University’s department of psychology, and Aaron Heller, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, found daily variability in physical location to be associated with increased positive affect (kind of where attitude meets mood) in humans. Basically, for most people, the more variety of experiences in your daily routine, the happier you are.

How your brain processes “novelty”

How did it work? Hartley told Shondaland that she and Heller had a large number of people in New York City and Miami install an app on their mobile phones and tracked them on their daily activities to measure the daily variability in their locations, or their “roaming entropy.” The more they moved around town, the higher their “roaming entropy.” The participants also had to rate how happy they were. On days when individuals had more variability in their daily movement patterns (according to their own histories), they reported being happier. The researchers also looked at how often the participants visited new locations within four to five months and found more-novel locations were associated with a higher degree of positive affect, or feeling happier.

“In some ways, it’s consistent with what we know about what novelty does to the brain,” says Hartley. “There are regions of the brain, the hippocampus in particular, that are extremely sensitive to environmental novelty. This region of the brain has projections to the ventral striatum, another region of the brain involved in reward processing. It’s thought that this circuitry enables novel things to be experienced as rewarding. It may be that I walk a new route through my neighborhood, and the new things I see there make me happier. But it could also be that I wake up in a good mood, and that drives me to go explore more and walk a novel route around my neighborhood. It could be that happiness drives exploration, or novelty drives our positive affect — our data suggests it’s a little bit of both,” Hartley says.

When she said this, I felt so seen.

On days when individuals had more variability in their daily movement patterns (according to their own histories), they reported being happier.

Tim Robberts//Getty Images

Change “wakes up” your brain

Amy Johnson, a psychologist and the author of the upcoming book Just a Thought, suggests that the idea of switching things up in your daily routine can “wake up” the brain. “Suddenly, our brain has to work a bit more to take in the new sights and sounds of our new environment, to scan for potential threats, and to make sense of, and tell a story about, what’s going on,” she explains. “When you change things up, your brain is forced to be a little more open, receptive, and outside of the box to some degree. This can absolutely affect our mood and our outlook. You’re thinking thoughts you didn’t think yesterday. This is why something as simple as working from a new room in your home can feel like it brings on a burst of creativity, or walking outside during a heated argument can feel like it clears your mind and brings new perspective,” she explains.

Even small novel experiences can give you a boost

I asked Hartley if incremental changes of scenery (working at a coffee shop) could have as much of an impact on your outlook as larger changes (visiting another country). “It didn’t matter how far you traveled,” she said, referring to her study. “What did matter was that you were visiting new places, so it suggests that walking a different route to the subway on your commute, that taking a walk around your neighborhood and not going the same path that you might [take] on a Saturday afternoon, that introducing some degree of novelty into your daily routine should be capable of producing these kinds of boosts in positive emotion. The question of whether this extends to other kinds of novelty — eating new foods, reading a new book, learning about some new topic — there’s no reason to believe that those forms of novelty shouldn’t produce the same effect.”

Forcing a little change of scenery can help us feel invigorated and more creative, as it forces our brain to process new surroundings and think in new ways.

Novelty isn’t for everyone

I ask Johnson if the reverse holds true — if getting into ruts, or visiting the same places, or doing the same kinds of things every single day (hello, pandemic!), could bum us out or dull our senses after a while.

“It could,” she says. “But I also want to say that it doesn’t necessarily, and it doesn’t for everyone. Our brain is an incredibly efficient machine. In order to be as efficient as possible, it habituates most of what it does, and it loves to go back to the same familiar, safe, efficient thoughts and ideas it recognizes from the day before. When we feel like we’re on autopilot, this is what’s happening. Our brain is staying in its comfort zone. Nudging it out of its comfort zone is scary for the brain but can be really great for the human’s creativity, perspective, and mood. If you find yourself feeling uninspired, bored, or fantasizing about getting out, try it! At the very least, forcing a little change of scenery can help us feel invigorated and more creative, as it forces our brain to process new surroundings and think in new ways.” She also mentioned that she sometimes tries to work in a coffee shop when she feels her brain waves stagnating.

Hartley also mentioned a smaller subset of people for whom this type of variability had the opposite effect — it made them less happy. She plans on looking into whether this discomfort with the unknown might be related to our overall emotional health in some way.

So, if you’re feeling like you’re figuratively asleep at the wheel, be it at your desk or in some aspect of your life, do what you can to change things up — whether it’s something you wear, some place you go, or something you eat. See how you feel, and let us know. You might just get a boost of well-being and a flash of inspiration you didn’t know you needed.

Swimming Gives Me the Weightlessness I Crave

One writer on the healing power of water.

Though I’m a fire sign — an Aries — I have what’s known in astrology as a water-dominant chart, which in celestial speak means I have more prominent planets and placements in water signs than in any other element. To me, this designation makes perfect sense because a) I can be empathic and sensitive, and b) I’ve always felt happiest near and when immersed in water, as if I’m finally in my natural habitat.

I consider the pruned fingers that come with being waterlogged a personal win. Nothing parallels the euphoria I feel when immersed in a body of water. Once it hits 77 degrees, every weekend without fail I plan how, where, and when I can pull off a swim. Otherwise, I feel like a fish flopping on pavement, gasping for breath.

To me, swimming isn’t just about splashing around after being hot and sweaty, though that is a total blast for most people. It’s more about the sudden ease I feel that pulling my limbs through water gives me — and ease of movement is a high I chase with determination every single chance I get.

I once tried to describe how much joy swimming gave me to a friend. “You get to be weightless,” she said. “With all of the responsibilities that weigh you down as a mother, a writer, a partner, and a human being in this crazy world, swimming is a chance for you to feel weightless — even if just for a few moments or hours.”

"Still, I’m grateful for everything I can do, so I stay focused on those things and count my metaphorical blessings."

Matt Henry Gunther//Getty Images

She was absolutely right about the emotional weightlessness I so desperately needed. But I wasn’t only addicted to swimming because I was chasing the metaphorical feeling of weightlessness it gave me. While floating, I feel free, not only from the myriad responsibilities that come with a couple of dependents, a business, and a partner, but free from the burden of pain.

My (usually) invisible disability is caused by something called degenerative disc disease (DDD), which basically means the gel in the discs of my spine are drying out as my spine becomes arthritic and atrophies, as it can with old age. Generally, DDD really isn’t a big deal unless your discs start popping out of place, sometimes hitting or squashing the nerve roots that run along your spine. Possibly aggravated by a shift in the shape of my cervical spine from a car accident in my early 20s, the degenerative process began early for me, in my late 30s. No one really tells you why DDD can get out of control for some people, but there’s no question you feel it when it does.

While floating, I feel free, not only from the myriad responsibilities that come with a couple of dependents, a business, and a partner, but free from the burden of pain.

Unfortunately, my first severely slipped disc happened during a quick grocery run just two weeks after the birth of my second kid, rendering me unable to walk home and in relentless, excruciating, brain-searing, beg-for-mercy pain. I couldn’t use my right leg. The only solution was surgery. I was instructed not to lift anything over five pounds, so we had to hire a helper we couldn’t afford to lift our premature newborn out of her crib and hand her to me to nurse.

Just a couple of years later, I wouldn’t be able to pick her up again. I would go on to have three more spinal surgeries in the span of 10 years, including a cervical fusion, which means I have titanium screws holding my neck upright and my bones off my spinal cord, sparing me from quadriplegia. An innovation called disc replacement has gained prominence since my surgeries, providing patients with more mobility and a faster recovery, but each surgery took about three months to bounce back from, and even longer pain-wise.

Fortunately, some forms of mild nerve damage can heal over time (a long, long time), and I’m so much better now. Luckily, there’s a lot I can do physically, but there are also many things that are too risky for me to ever attempt again. Jumping out of a plane and riding roller-coasters are out. Attempting the black diamond as a novice skier may not be the best idea. Deadlifting is off my agenda. I can’t even carry a heavy suitcase or heavy bags of groceries. Though these types of activities don’t exactly top my bucket list to begin with, knowing I can never do them again feels restrictive. Still, I’m grateful for everything I can do, so I stay focused on those things and count my metaphorical blessings.

"With all of the responsibilities that weigh you down as a mother, a writer, a partner, and a human being in this crazy world, swimming is a chance for you to feel weightless."

Peter Cade//Getty Images

By all expert accounts, swimming is one of the safest and best forms of exercise to build strength and increase mobility for someone like me. The thing I love most about swimming is that it’s something I can work on improving. In the pool, I’m just as capable as everyone else. I can swim just as fast and tread just as long without being in pain, which I feel after just about any other intense physical activity. Swimming also works out the kinks in my back while building back muscle, so I stand a little taller and walk the Earth in less pain while the effects of a good swim last.

The fusion surgery happened unexpectedly, forcing us to reschedule a long-awaited trip to New Orleans during spring break. It seemed like every single one of my friends and neighbors was scuba diving in Turks and Caicos or afloat with a festive drink in a pool in Palm Springs. New York was how it always is in April — damp, a little chilly, and rainy. When I was recovering from the fusion, as I sat upright in bed (recovery only allows for sitting straight upright or flat on your back) weaning myself off heavy painkillers, I perused New Orleans hotels with pools, transfixed by the ease of movement I would finally feel by the time I got in them. It was the biggest lesson I’ve learned about endurance and keeping your eye on the prize. After three months of slow, deliberate movements, awkwardly trained muscles, and feeling like a dried-out Tin Man, the elation I felt when finally easing into the glorious pool we settled on was akin to winning a whole lot of money. My husband honed our kids’ diving technique while I spent hours in between thunderstorms and sightseeing afloat in chlorinated bliss, weightless again at last.

Intelligence Doesn't Just Boil Down to IQ and EQ

A look at multiple intelligence theory, and how it can help you utilize your deepest talents and passions.

In the immortal words of soul songstress Nikka Costa, everybody’s got their something. For decades, researchers have worked to debunk the antiquated notion that there is a single way to be intelligent — known as IQ (intelligence quotient) — which was often defined by academic excellence or mathematical and linguistic fluency. There's been much emphasis on emotional intelligence (EQ) in recent years as a predictor of success in the classroom, the workplace, and life in general, perhaps even more so than IQ. But the reality is we are all likely to possess not just one intelligence, but a platter of many.

For example: Learning instruments or even just understanding the concept of song structure may come naturally to you, while your kid can instantly solve math problems that make your eyes roll back into your head. Your partner effortlessly manages to inspire a group of people to team up and run a marathon, while your sister can compose an email in five minutes that takes you two hours.

Musical ability, kinesthetic proficiency, and interpersonal skills are among the skills, or “intelligences,” defined by Howard Gardner, an esteemed research professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, in his widely celebrated theory that distinguishes eight types of intelligence called “Multiple Intelligence Theory.”

“Multiple intelligences are a set of computers, which, I hypothesize, all human beings have in their head,” Gardner explains in a Harvard Graduate School of Education video. On his website, Gardner elaborates: “The intelligences constitute the human intellectual tool kit. Unless grossly impaired, all human beings possess the capacity to develop the several intelligences. At any one moment, a human being will have a unique profile because of both genetic (heritability) and experiential factors.”

Thomas Hoerr, PhD, a scholar in residence at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, Gardner’s colleague, and a “master educator,” says that for too long, there was a “small path” to being seen as smart. Gardner’s theory changed the way educators looked at their students — and teaching in general.

“What Howard Gardner did with his conceptualization of the theory of multiple intelligences has widened what it means to be smart,” Hoerr explains. “It’s a very pragmatic theory: Intelligence is problem-solving, and there are lots of different kinds of problems. When you write a song, that’s solving a problem. When you are nurturing animals or working in the garden, that’s solving a problem — even though they don’t require coding like in math, or syllables like in English.”

To be clear, we all have varying intelligence in every single one of these areas, and, like with our skill sets, some areas simply get more practice or are more developed than others.

“I think we have this mindset that there’s one way to succeed,” Hoerr says. “The more we look at multiple intelligences as a way of portraying what strengths we might have, the better off we are because we can use those strengths to succeed.”

The types of intelligence Gardner outlines in his theory

Linguistic Intelligence

Poets, editors, avid readers, writers, and Words With Friends obsessives are considered among the linguistically gifted, as are those who pick up languages easily.

Logical/Mathematical Intelligence

This is about the capacity to conceptualize the logical relations among actions or symbols. Scientists, accountants, mathematicians, physicists, and people who generally do well on standardized tests are strong in this type of intelligence.

Intelligence can also lean into the more logical and rational.

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Musical Intelligence

Have a decent pitch? Those with an ear for melodies, tones, and rhythms who make and/or deeply appreciate music are considered musically intelligent.

Spatial Intelligence

Good at Tetris or chess? Can you draw and/or sculpt? Architects, visual artists, surgeons, chess players, and pilots can easily conceptualize and manipulate large-scale spatial arrays.

Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence

Athletes, dancers, swimmers, artisans who use their hands, and those who have natural physical ability are considered to have kinesthetic intelligence.

Interpersonal Intelligence

This type of intelligence relates to how you play, read, motivate, and cooperate with others. Interpersonal intelligence can be used to manipulate (upsell) or to motivate (encourage).

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Intrapersonal Intelligence

This has to do with how well you know yourself and use that knowledge to navigate the world and create your own happiness.

Naturalist Intelligence

This type of intelligence is embodied by pet whisperers and those with green thumbs, as well as those who have an empirical view about living things — Darwin had naturalist intelligence, says Hoerr.

Hoerr says educators (like him) have embraced Gardner’s theory to teach children in different ways. “Too often there is a very narrow pathway to learning, and we wonder why kids get turned off from school and they’re not motivated. If I’m a teacher who gets multiple intelligence, I don’t just look at who’s the best reader and who’s the best writer. I also look at who’s the good artist. Who’s a good musician? Who’s really good with their hands? And how can I use that to help children learn? If we say the goal is to learn about the causes of the Civil War, there are lots of different ways to do that — you can learn that through dance, song, art, building things. If you do, you’re going to find more kids learning, motivated, and excited about school.”

What’s more, figuring out your intelligence requires no online quiz — it’s as simple as considering what you’re into doing in your spare time. “When you look at what you choose to do and use those strengths at work, you’re probably going to prosper. We should all reflect on what are our intelligences. What do we do well? How can we bring that to bear with our daily tasks, whether that’s at work getting a paycheck, raising kids, or being a friend?” says Hoerr.

“If you’ve got a day job that doesn’t allow you to use your strengths, you’re probably going to feel like you’re beating your head against the wall. We need to look at what we do for fun and ask ourselves, is there a way that could be a part of what I do during the day as well? How can I use what I like to do to succeed?”

On how best to use these insights, Gardner says on Big Think that the answer lies within: “If we lived forever, we could probably develop each intelligence to a very high degree — but life’s very short. If you devote too much attention to one intelligence, you’re not going to have much time to work on other kinds of intelligences. The big question is, should you play to strength, or should you bolster weakness? That’s a value judgment — scientists cannot give you an answer to that. If you want to be a jack of all trades and be very well-rounded, then you’re probably going to want to nurture the intelligences which aren’t that strong. On the other hand, if you’re dead set on really coming to the top of some particular heap, you’re probably going to find the intelligences that you’re strongest at and push those. It’s a question of values, not of science.”