Have you ever done something you deeply regretted? We all have. Afterwards you probably asked yourself: how can I avoid doing that again? We can scarcely get through life without…

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As I’ve pondered more deeply about the question of creating a lifelong habit of prayer, I’ve thought about what encourages the development of a habit. Things that tend to become…

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Prayer need not be in words, but rather in thought and action. But if this love and this desire are lacking, it is useless to try to force them. Words…

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So many BahaiTeachings.org readers responded to and liked and forwarded and commended and recommended and tweeted and re-tweeted our New Year’s Day article on spiritual New Year’s resolutions that we…

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‘Think of two names in your diary today, and just pick up the phone to them. Call them to say hello and make them feel visible.’ (Photo: Other)

Sometimes, we sadly observe the unfairness in how certain sections of our society are marginalised. At times it is simply unconscious whereas, there are occasions where it is pure disregard.

I would love to hear more from the readers on the issues that are affecting them that warrant greater attention.

This week the issue that got under my skin is that of loneliness. I promised myself, I will steer clear of politics but the government is not paying attention to a looming epidemic, that is loneliness in different sections of our population. Covid-19 and ‘social distancing’ is just one example of factors that have exacerbated this problem.

If you put a post-it note on the wall to say, I must stretch today, every day you look at it but in time it just becomes part of the wall. Just like that we have become desensitised. I question are we doing enough to combat the causes, and provide support to those who need it the most?

The late MP for Batley and Spen, Jo Cox, noticed while on her rounds she was knocking on many doors which were rarely opened. That was in 2015. Many people whose votes were sought were in fact desperately isolated.

Loneliness does not just affect our elderly, even young students or single people feel it.

According to Age UK, 1.4 million older people in this country are often lonely. In this group there are many contributing factors that make this worse. I mentioned the pandemic and whoever invented the term ‘social isolation’ failed to see the obvious.

The factors that make loneliness worse in our elderly include the fear of falling. Fear of navigating public transport or getting into a taxi where the driver is not known.

AI is assumed to be for everyone, but how much of the AI out there is geared towards empowering the elderly? I remember getting my dad a mobile phone with big buttons, that was good, but how about the font on the iPad? Things have improved but an older person needs someone to show them how to use technology in the way it feels easy to them.

Story continues

So, what does help? As a mindset and leadership coach, I look at strategies for self- care and self-help.

Local neighbourhood networks are a fantastic solution to helping older people go somewhere warm where they will be welcomed with a cup of tea and more importantly provide them some company. In Leeds alone we have 37 such networks.

Smile regardless. This really helps to re-energise the happy hormones.

Invite friends over for tea.

Dance, I remember in the early days of my grief I used to dance clutching my dad’s photo to one of my favourite songs. Crazy, I know, but movement of any kind gets the energy flowing to lift our mood.

Visit the local library, we are fortunate to still have free libraries in our city. These places are warm with friendly staff. It can be comforting to go somewhere where you can read and see other people.

If you have someone who can, get them to teach you to use Zoom and Facetime to connect with your friends and family.

Volunteer with a local charity or the Church- helping others can make us feel less invisible, and engagement makes us feel valued.

Young people, the Generation Z, age 18-22, reported feeling loneliness according to a study by Cigna, and 71 per cent feeling lonely at times in a survey done by YouGov. Having nobody to turn to can lead to depression and poor mental health.

Debilitating long-term illness or disability can also compound a sense of loneliness. We all have physical health and we all have mental health. A feeling of loneliness is not age specific but by raising awareness we can all take responsibility for doing what we can to help others around us feel less lonely. Surely, that is within everyone’s gift, even mine. Ten minute GP appointments are unhelpful as often the only person you can turn to, to share how you are feeling is your GP. Stipulating that they can only talk about one ailment at a time means patients are deprived of asking for help.

My biggest bugbear is the rise in supermarkets of self-service checkouts. Good for improving profit margins but do supermarket owners appreciate their community responsibility? Checkout staff do more than just serve the customer, often they are the only person with whom the customer might speak to in that week.

The responsibility to reduce loneliness is not something we can outsource, we must own the problem and play our part to truly appreciate what is an avoidable epidemic.

If you take nothing else from this piece, think of two names in your diary today, and just pick up the phone to them. Call them to say hello and make them feel visible.

Daxa Patel is a solicitor, author and executive coach.

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When I started doing keynote talks a decade ago, my confidence wasn’t a problem. I loved presenting and I was passionate about the ideas I was sharing. I was committed to helping the audience with what I taught them and I wholeheartedly believed in everything I taught.

Over time, as my business grew and evolved, so did my clientele and audience size. I found myself working with well-known brands and speaking to audiences of over 1,000 people. I even got invited to deliver a talk on television. This is when things got a little nerve-wracking and I knew my confidence needed a boost.

Questions of self-doubt tried to cloud my mind: Who am I to share anything useful? Why should they listen to me? Why did I sign up for this? Even though there was no truth in them, they felt real.

Yet, nothing had changed except my clientele and the number of ears listening to me. I had the same insights I’d had before and I actually had even more experience. I really had no logical reason to doubt myself, but I did. Why? Because they were new challenges.

Being a positive psychology practitioner, I dived into the array of tools I was already familiar with. I also went looking for more. I tried and tested many to find a series of confidence-building exercises that worked without fail. Now, whenever I feel nervous, I put them to good use. I encourage you to do the same.

These steps can build your confidence in various situations: professional or personal. They can help you feel calmer and more focused when delivering a presentation, doing a job interview, or approaching a new task that scares you. They can help you before a first date, a new class at the gym, or meeting the in-laws for the first time.

They will move you from simply surviving to thriving, enabling you to perform better and even enjoy overcoming the challenge you’re faced with.

Whatever the challenge is, these steps will help you approach it feeling empowered, confident, and calm.

1. Take it step by step.

Take the tiniest step you can to move forward in facing the challenge. Then take another one. Make each step as tiny and easy as possible so taking them won’t be so daunting and you’re guaranteed to succeed. With each step, you will feel more confident than with the previous one. Before you know it, you’ll have flown past the challenge with success.

2. Remind yourself of your why.

Why are you in the situation you are in? What is driving you? What is your motivation for being there? Maybe you’re passionate about the message you’re about to share or excited about being interviewed for your dream job. Perhaps you know that what you’re doing will help others and people are counting on you to get it done. Maybe it gets you one step closer to your long-term goal, whatever it may be. Whatever your why is, remind yourself of it, because it will motivate you through any moments of doubt and make you even more passionate about the performance you’re about to give.

3. Think of your past successes.

Identify situations in your past when you have succeeded under stress or pressure. It’s easy to forget how much you’ve already overcome, and hindsight can help you realize how much you’ve already grown. Remind yourself of when you were nervous about doing something, did it, and succeeded. Trust that the world only offers you situations you are ready for, and trust in yourself and your abilities to overcome them.

4. Practice positive self-affirmations.

By telling yourself that you are confident and brave, you will feel more confident and brave. The more you engage in positive talk with yourself, the more you build yourself up and reinforce the neural pathways in your brain that fuel your confidence. Here are some examples of affirmations you can say to yourself:

• I choose to believe I am confident.
• I believe in my abilities.
• I value my strengths and use them well.

5. Ignore the naysayers and surround yourself with the yaysayers.

Unfortunately, you will sometimes have pessimistic people around you. They might tell you that you can’t do something, that you’re not capable, or that you need more experience. Ignore them. You have every right to go for it and you absolutely can. Even if you don’t succeed, you will learn heaps, which will make you more likely to succeed the next time. If you can, surround yourself with a cheerleading team of positivity who will help you to aim high and go for it.

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If you’re suffering with low mood, you might decide to seek out a formal treatment such as counselling or cognitive-behavioural therapy. But this can take time, and motivation, to organize; and, once organized, can take time to start working.

While you wait, here are 12 simple ways to lift your mood. You may already be doing some of these things, and you certainly don’t need to be doing them all. Just try the ones that feel most natural, or that are easiest for you.

As your mood begins to lift—and sooner or later it surely will—you can make more and bigger changes to your routine. And if you can hold on to those habits once your mood has lifted, you will, I promise, feel better than ever before.

1. Spend more time with sympathetic friends and relatives. Talking about our feelings helps us process them, put them into perspective, and obtain advice and support. Don’t be afraid to tell people that you need their time, or feel guilty for taking it. If you’re uncomfortable talking to relatives and friends, or are unable to do so, you can phone a helpline instead. Even if you don’t want to talk about your feelings, spending time with others, for example, playing sports or cooking a meal, can help to lift your mood.

2. Do more of the things you normally enjoy, even if they no longer seem appealing. Re-read your favourite childhood book, re-watch your favourite romcom, go shopping or to the cinema, prepare a delicious meal, renew with an old friend—anything that removes you from your negative thoughts is likely to make things that much better.

3. Get out of your home at least once a day, even if only to fetch milk or walk in the park. Bright daylight, fresh air, and the hustle bustle of everyday life can all be helpful, as can the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. If you can, try to take some mild exercise such as a 30- or 60-minute walk—if possible, through some greenery, on a stretch of coastline, or past some beautiful buildings. Close your eyes and listen to the birds and the wind.

4. Fight off negative thoughts. Make a list of all the positive things about you and your life (you may need help with this), keep it in your bag, pocket, or wallet, and read it to yourself every morning or as needed. However bad you may be feeling, remember that you have not always felt this way, and will not always feel this way.

5. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Try to reduce your stress levels. Simplify your life, even if it means doing less or doing only one thing at a time. Break down large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, and set realistic deadlines for completing them. Don’t blame yourself for “doing nothing;” you are merely giving yourself the time and space that you need to get better. Look upon it as an investment into yourself. For now, you are your main task, you are your priority.

6. Practice deep breathing. Low mood is often associated with stress and anxiety, which respond well to deep breathing. Deep breathing simply involves regulating your breathing: Breathe in through your nose and hold the air in for several seconds. Then, purse your lips and gradually let the air out. Exhale as far as you comfortably can. Carry on with this cycle until you are feeling much more relaxed. Try it now and see if you notice the difference.

7. Listen to some good music. Music boosts levels of dopamine, a feel-good chemical messenger in the brain. From a more psychological point of view, music can help us to recognize, express, and process complex or painful emotions. It elevates these emotions and gives them a sense of legitimacy, of context and perspective, of order, beauty, and meaning. I don’t think that music has to sound uplifting to be uplifting, so long as it helps us to work with our emotions.

8. Get as much sleep as you can. Sleep, said the Dalai Lama, is the best meditation. Sleep enhances mood and cognitive function—one reason why we “sleep on it” and “sleep it off”. A single night’s sleep, or even a nice nap, can make a world of difference to the way we feel. For most people, there is no such thing as too much sleep.

9. Be patient with yourself. Improvements in mood are likely to be gradual rather than sudden, and you may even get worse before you start to get better. The road to recovery is a bumpy one, and there are going to be good days and bad days. A bad day that comes after a good one may seem all the worse for it. Don’t blame yourself for the bad days, and don’t despair. As with an English spring, the bad days will gradually become fewer.

10. Avoid making or acting upon important decisions. Now is not the time to split from your partner, quit your job, or spend large sums of money. While in the throes of depression, thinking errors are likely to impair your decision-making. Check your reasoning with people you respect and carefully consider their advice—especially if you don’t agree with it!

11. Seek professional help. Tap into your family doctor or a mental health professional for advice and support. Maybe ask your doctor for counselling and take things from there.

12. Establish whom to call in an emergency. This may be a relative or friend, your doctor, or a helpline. Think of a backup in case your preferred option is unreachable. Save their contact numbers into your phone so that they are always at hand.

Neel Burton is the author of Growing from Depression. New edition out on 1 June.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory

Facebook image: tommaso79/Shutterstock

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It’s been a long wait for mental health providers and advocates who have pushed the state of Indiana and its leaders to seriously invest in mental health and treatment.

The wait is finally over.

The Indiana General Assembly earlier this year passed a slew of mental health-related bills, including Senate Bill 1 that offers $100 million over the next two years to expand access to mental health resources to Indiana residents.

The bills were hailed by Gov. Eric Holcomb as a “sea of change” for the state and garnered near-universal support from the General Assembly.

Dr. Carrie Cadwell, the president and CEO of the community mental health center 4C Health, described the moment as “a phenomenal starting point” for the state.

“In the course of my 20-plus years working in behavioral health, it’s been really rare — it’s actually been a very rare occurrence — to see any type of substantial funding going toward mental health and substance abuse efforts,” Cadwell said.

While the passage does mark a considerable and historic change of direction in how the state and organizations across the state will tackle mental health issues, the total funding amount is lower than the $200 million over two years State Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield and author of SB 1, was seeking. It’s also lower than the approximately $260 million over two years it would cost to fund a truly statewide crisis system, according to an estimate by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA).

The FSSA said that with the $100 million about half the state will be covered. The agency is aiming for statewide coverage by 2027.

“Although this is not where we need to completely end up to have a high quality of system across all areas of the state, the reality is this is more than I’ve ever seen invested in my entire career,” Cadwell said.

THE NEED

Indiana, like many other states, has chronically underfunded its behavioral health system, and the results have not been pretty.

U.S. News and World Report’s 2021 “Best States” ranking listed Indiana 35th in mental health. The nonprofit Mental Health America last year ranked Indiana 42nd in treatment.

The suicide rate in Indiana is above the national average and drug overdoses grew more than 100% over the last decade, which, in turn, has caused the state’s life expectancy to decline, according to researchers at Indiana University.

In fact, the state’s life expectancy of 77.1 as of 2018 is 1.9 years lower than the U.S. average and places the Hoosier state 40th nationally, only in front of largely southern states, such as Tennessee, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama.

The Indiana Behavioral Health Commission, created in the 2020 legislative session and tasked with the job of examining the state’s behavioral health system and recommending ways of improvement, found that approximately one in five Hoosiers experience mental illness each year.

In addition, an estimated 40% of estimated people who are incarcerated have a mental illness, and nearly half (45%) of the state’s homeless population have a mental illness. Of those who do have a mental illness, 80% of them are unemployed.

The 24-person commission pegged the economic cost of that at a staggering $4.2 billion a year in direct and indirect costs. That includes $708 million in direct health care costs and $116 million in direct, non-health care costs, including $106 million in costs to Indiana’s criminal justice system.

In indirect costs, mental illness leads to $1.5 billion in premature mortality, $885 million due to productivity losses and $407 million in unemployment to those unable to work.

For context, the sale of corn in the state had $3.8 billion in sales in 2018.

In its report published in late 2022, the Commission recommended the state using the 988 suicide and crisis line as the foundation of a comprehensive crisis response system; the state make a concerted effort to transition to the federally supported Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) model; increase the number of mental health courts; implement a $1 surcharge on phone bills to provide longterm funding for mental health care; look at Medicaid reimbursement rates and consider a student loan/ tuition reimbursement program to attract more, quality individuals to work as behavioral health professionals.

THE RESPONSE

Flush with statistics on Indiana’s poor health rankings and with recommendations from both the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission and Governor’s Public Health Commission, state legislators filed a number of health-related bills.

All the major ones passed.

Senate Enrolled Act 1

State Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, speaks at the Indiana Roundtable on Mental Health Summit on May 16. Crider was author of SEA 1 and the bill that established the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission. 

Provided photo

In essence, Crider’s bill is an expansion of the state’s relatively new 988 crisis hotline. Under the bill, the hotline would be expanded into three parts: 1.) The 988 hotline itself is to be established and maintained. 2.) Create mobile crisis teams across the state that would respond to calls and 3.) Create crisis stabilization units across the state where people in need can go for up to 23 hours to receive care.

SEA 1 passed with a 46-0 vote in the Senate and a 96-3 vote in the House. It was signed into law by Holcomb.

The idea is for the 988 system to work much like calling 911 does but for someone experience suicidal thoughts, having a mental health crisis or experiencing a substance abuse issue. While law enforcement would still respond to the scene, a mobile crisis team could also respond and work to either deescalate and stabilize the situation at the person’s residence, help that person get connected to the care they need or admit them into a nearby stabilization unit or hospital if needed.

Thanks to a federal grant, 4C Health has already started operating such a mobile crisis response team, which initially covered Cass, Miami, Fulton and Pulaski counties. Just recently the organization expanded into Howard, Tipton and White counties.

Progress is slow in the newly expanded counties, but 4C Health has been operating in its original counties for two and half years now. In that time, the mobile crisis response teams have conducted more than 3,000 calls, and 4C Health says it has been able to “stabilize over 65% of crisis calls,” avoiding costly options such as emergency rooms or inpatient care.

That mobile crisis response team, paired with community stabilization centers and hopefully more Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics opening in the state in the next couple of years or so, 4C Health believes this model can have a transformative effect on the state’s treatment of mental health.

House Enrolled Act 1006

The General Assembly passed House Enrolled Act 1006, a major piece of legislation that ensures people experiencing a mental health crisis that don’t need to be in jail get treatment in local hospitals and not prisons or jails.

“Jails are not the place for the mentally ill and they’re not able to be treated as they properly should,” Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, said on the House floor Jan. 31.

Previously, family and law enforcement officers could take people to mental health facilities, but hospitals said they didn’t receive payment for the care they administered and were expected to assume liability for the person.

HEA 1006 clarifies that Medicaid and health insurance can be used to pay hospitals and clarifies liability. A change made late in the legislation process also states that while a physician assistant or nurse can examine the person, only a doctor can sign off on actually admitting the person for care.

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This week Microsoft unleashed a massive array of product announcements (50 in total) around the use of Copilots throughout our daily lives. And while we all may understand the idea, now these tools are real. And it’s clear to me that Microsoft has gotten their groove and is executing quickly with a laser focus.

While there were many things launched, the most significant to me are the introduction of a Copilot for Microsoft Windows (making AI available to a billion PC users), a Copilot for PowerBI (essentially making data analysis an out of the box exercise), a new Microsoft Fabric big data lake, and a set of tools to help developers build their own Copilots and add plug-ins from third party systems.

In whole, these announcements put Microsoft far into the lead in bringing the power of Large Language Models (OpenAI GPT) to all sorts of business applications, including the day to day life we lead dealing with meetings, messages, documents, and spreadsheets. And to build on this strength in tools, SuccessFactors, the largest HR platform in the world (by users), just introduced Copilots into their suite and a deeper integration with Azure AI.

What Does All This Mean?

As I discuss in the attached podcast, these Copilots are highly intelligent “Prompt Engineering” tools that let you access your own information (security protected with the Microsoft Graph) to read, ask questions, analyze, and produce content you need to do your job.

Consider a Copilot for sales that lets your sales people directly look up pricing, discount rules, and product information by simply adding your product documentation into the corpus and then enabling it with your own Sales Copilot. Your sales force and sales enablement team will jump for joy! Ditto this for customer service, HR, and dozens of other applications.

So not only can we use these tools to better understand and use all the Microsoft tools, but we can now build applications for HR self-service, onboarding, training, leadership development, recruiting, and much more with the out-of-the box Copilot development stack. The actual LLM (GPT4) is simply available as a platform service, and Microsoft protects your security and performance management behind the scenes.

We have built our own Josh Bersin Copilot (come see the preview at Irresistible 2023) and in only a few weeks we now have full conversational access to more than 20 years of research, more than 600 blogs and articles, our 100+ podcasts, and soon the Josh Bersin Academy. You can literally ask it any question and 90% of the time it delivers a perfect, easy to understand answer – right out of our large corpus of research, case studies, vendor analysis, and data. It’s unbelievable to tell you the truth.

Thanks to Microsoft, this is likely to revolutionize IT and many vendor offerings. As I discuss in the podcast, these tools don’t only make us more productive, they help software developers to radically simplify their user experience. Consider the following: Yahoo vs. Google from around the year 1998.

Yahoo’s website tried to design a user interface to find everything, and it got messier and messier over time. Google, by contrast, got simpler and simpler while the underlying search got smarter and smarter. The Copilot (powered by OpenAI) gives you this power.

Consider your own applications. Rather than click around through Workday, SAP, or your corporate portal to find things, we’ll be asking the Copilot for help and it will immediately show you precisely what you want to see. Our Copilot, for example, has a simple command line interface, and once you type a question it immediately gives you access to 50,000+ pages of comprehensive research in only a few seconds. I can’t wait to show it to you.

Microsoft is very focused on this solution now, and it’s going to transform how we do HR, implement HR technology, and develop IT systems in general. I can speak directly from our experience: our use of a Copilot is totally transformational to our users. Listen to this week’s podcast for many more details.

Additional Information

Microsoft’s Massive Copilot Announcements

Microsoft Build 2023: all the news and announcements from the developer conference

Microsoft Build 2023: Five Top Announcements

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott thinks Sydney might make a comeback

Microsoft Goes All In On Plug-ins for AI Apps

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Step 1: Recognize the Symptoms

The first step in overcoming anxiety and depression is recognizing the symptoms. Symptoms of anxiety can include excessive worrying, restlessness, irritability, muscle tension, and difficulty sleeping. Symptoms of depression can include feelings of sadness, hopelessness, loss of interest in activities, fatigue, and changes in appetite or sleeping patterns. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, it is important to seek help and support.

Step 2: Seek Professional Help

The next step is to seek professional help. There are many mental health professionals who can help you overcome anxiety and depression, including therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. They can provide you with the tools and strategies you need to manage your symptoms and develop a plan for recovery.

Step 3: Develop Coping Strategies

Another important step in overcoming anxiety and depression is to develop coping strategies. These strategies can include deep breathing exercises, mindfulness meditation, physical exercise, and talking to a trusted friend or family member. It is important to find coping strategies that work for you and to practice them regularly.

Step 4: Take Care of Yourself

Taking care of yourself is also essential in overcoming anxiety and depression. This can include getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, and engaging in regular physical activity. It is also important to avoid alcohol and drugs, as they can make symptoms worse.

Step 5: Stay Positive and Keep Moving Forward

Finally, it is important to stay positive and keep moving forward. Recovery from anxiety and depression can take time, and there will be setbacks along the way. However, with the right support and strategies, it is possible to overcome these disorders and lead a fulfilling life.

In conclusion, anxiety and depression can be challenging to overcome, but it is possible with the right support and strategies. Recognizing the symptoms, seeking professional help, developing coping strategies, taking care of yourself, and staying positive are all important steps in the process. With time and effort, you can take control of your life and overcome anxiety and depression.

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