Just a quick link to an interesting study on the changing values of new employees today.
A steady paycheque just doesn’t seem to cut it with the new recruits of today’s workforce. This new generation of workers expects employers to support them in achieving worklife balance.
Employers take note!
Perhaps it is that we have seen what our parents sacrificed in order to be succesful in their careers. Perhaps we know people whose priorities were dictated to them for whatever reason and were unable to pursue their dreams. Or perhaps it is just that we have been brought up knowing that we could do and have it all.
These may be lofty ambitions, but they’re not impossible.
When you know what you want, there’s no reason why you can’t have it.
Remember when you loved your job? Oh wait…Not loving your job now would imply that you did, at some point, enjoy your job and what it contributed to your life.
As a new recruit into the working world, I admit that I had idealistic dreams of finding my dream job; a job that would allow me to spread my wings and fly. Like I said, it was an idealistic dream.
As my peers and I have begun to make our own paths in the world, I notice that the confident, “bring it on” attitude that most of us had leaving school has now become more of a complacent, survival kind of attitude in the workplace.
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One Big Mac surely won’t hurt?
Some new research from the University of Calgary is telling us that it will.
Apparently after a high fat meal, our bodies become more prone to stress. We react with increased “blood pressure, [raised] heart rates and [increased] resistance of blood vessels” to situations that wouldn’t normally invoke such a significant stress response.
I guess a high fat meal doesn’t just mean an extra 30 minutes on the treadmill anymore! Eeps!!
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In looking for the simplest stress busters and easiest pick-me-uppers, I have come across something that is deceptively simple and surprisingly effective. It’s something that we all used to do as children. But, like many things we used to do as children, we seem to think we have outgrown it.
I’m talking about laughter! Laugh until your stomach hurts, laugh until you can’t catch your breath, laugh until you cry!
There have been numerous studies touting the benefits of laughter on your physical and emotional health. But do we really need a scientific study to tell us that laughing will make us feel better?
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I spent two weeks fighting off a cold that had threatened to knock me out if I didn’t stop and pay attention to my body. I was doing pretty well at keeping the cold at bay when one work day last week rendered all of my efforts moot.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try to keep yourself healthy, there are uncontrollable factors that can, and will, make you sick.
Dilemma: Can I afford to take a day, or two, off to rest and recover knowing the amount of work that awaits me at work and at home?
It’s a dilemma we’re all familiar with.
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Lately, I notice myself feeling stressed; sometimes very stressed. I don’t necessarily think that I am stressed about anything in particular, but it is there gnawing at my nerves from the moment I open my eyes in the morning until I close my eyes at night.
Despite having studied the physiology behind the stress response (fight or flight response), the positive and negative effects of stress on the physical and emotional body, as well as how to alleviate stress in our everyday lives, I am not immune to the effects of stress.
I catch myself feeling irritated with people, losing patience when tasks become more complicated than expected, having trouble concentrating at work. Not to mention the muscle aches, headaches, low levels of energy and chocolate cravings throughout the day.
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El Niño was the first time that I had really become aware of Mother Nature’s presence. Though what it is exactly, I couldn’t tell you.
In recent years, however, it seems that Mother Nature’s cries for attention can no longer be ignored: Ice storm of ‘98, Indonesia’s tsunami of 2004, the rapidly melting polar ice cap, Hurricane Katrina, and closer to home, Toronto’s snow storm of 2007 that just happened over the weekend, and which Toronto is still digging itself out of.
Global warming seems to be screaming at us to wake up and pay attention. It certainly seems to have caught the attention of global political leaders who attended the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the Kyoto Protocol in Nairobi, Kenya. It has also received mass media attention thanks to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth“.
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For many of us, losing weight is a matter of being able to fit into those old pair of jeans or into that new dress we bought “for when we lose weight”. But no matter how much you may want something, it doesn’t make the road to success any easier.
So let’s be honest here. Successful weight loss, that is losing weight and keeping it off, is not easy. In fact, I think it is likely one of the most difficult things to do; but not for the reasons you may think.
Weight loss is not necessarily difficult because your body can’t burn enough calories to lose excess pounds. If the total calories consumed is less than the total calories burned, weight loss will happen. All normal, healthy bodies know how to do this.
Successful weight loss is difficult because it requires you to change something intangible about yourself: your behaviour. It’s not easy to reach for just the banana rather than the banana and the ice cream!
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Yesterday a story about an 8 year-old boy, Connor McCreaddie, in the UK who may be taken away from his mother for being severely overweight hit the news. According to health and social authorities, the boy, weighing in at 14 stone (approximately 89kg or 196lbs), required an immediate intervention to save him from the abuse incurred by his mother.
Can childhood obesity be considered a form of abuse? I believe it can.
As a parent, is it not your job to act in the best interest of your child? Claiming that you did not know better, that your child wanted it, or that other people keep treating your child is no excuse for allowing such a detrimental outcome to occur.
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In a society that is focused on immediate and tangible rewards, there are bound to be repercussions.
For many of us, a delicious piece of chocolate cake is a “well deserved” reward after a long week (sometimes day…but who’s counting?) at work, after a quick workout, or after a week of bland but nutritious foods. As much as we may love this rewards system, we certainly do not love those expanding waistlines.So how do we lose what we’ve gained and prevent it from coming back?
The secret to successful weight loss is almost deceptively simple and I know that we have all heard it before: calories in must be less than calories out.
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