There is a saying that you are the average of the five people you spend time with and research backs this up. We are greatly influenced by our friends, for better or for worse. Good friends are the cornerstone of wellbeing while toxic ones can take a toll on our mental and physical health.
If you have a toxic friend—someone who is a negative influence, who doesn’t wish you well, who makes you feel weak or inadequate, or who is untrustworthy, it might be time to remove that person from your life. Sometimes people just grow apart. Just because you were friends in college does not mean that you must be friends forever.
But before you cut that person out of your life entirely, be sure that a misunderstanding is not at the heart of the problem. In the same way that communication matters in romantic relationships, it is important for friendships as well. If you don’t want to talk it out or you know there is no point in engaging the person in a dialogue, take some distance before making any hasty decisions.
Unless the person has done something egregious, a gradual unraveling may be easier on everyone involved. Do your best to leave other friends out of it and to minimize incurring your ex-friend’s wrath. Above all, be kind and try to minimize hurt feelings so you can both move on.
In wellness, there’s no one-size-fits-all regimen. In fact, the first step on the path to a better, healthier, happier life, is choice.
In a classic study, researchers placed two rats in a cage. Rat A was free to do whatever he liked. He ate whenever he liked, he hopped on his tiny treadmill to do a few laps whenever he was in the mood, and he slept whenever the urge to snooze came upon him. Basically, Rat A lived the rodent high life, and his brain bloomed with new brain cells. Rat B, who was yoked to Rat A and had to do whatever Rat A did, didn’t have it so good. Even though Rat B was on the same “healthy” schedule as the first rat, he lost brain cells. Unlike his thriving counterpart, he lacked one critical factor: Control.
A number of companies are hopping on the wellness bandwagon and using incentives to encourage their employees to adopt healthier lifestyles. Others are going even further and trying to enforce mandatory healthy lifestyles. Adopting a no-tobacco policy at work and at home, offering cash-incentives and gift cards, reimbursing workers for gym memberships and offering insurance premium discounts to those who meet health standards and surcharges to those who don’t, are among the many ways employers are nudging — or should I say “strong-arming” — their employees to make better choices.
As the rat study highlights and as psychologists have known all along, having a choice matters most of all. Activities that are supposed to lower stress can in fact cause stress if done in the wrong spirit or under duress. Recent research further underscores the importance of autonomy. A study from the University of Toronto shows that when employees have freedom over what to do during lunch breaks — either engage in relaxing activities or work through them — they experience enhanced positive affects and were more relaxed and less fatigued. Contrary to expectations, working through lunch can be restorative, but only if employees choose to do so themselves.
Bottom line: Nobody likes to be told what to do. As mentioned, there is no “one size fits all” especially when it comes to health and stress management. Discover what works for you and build more of it into your day.
For every suicide that occurs there are 300 attempts. I share some tips and guidance for helping someone who is depressed and suicidal find their way to treatment or therapy.
Please putAmerican Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republicby Victoria Johnson at the top of your summer reading list. The book tells the captivating and forgotten story of Alexander Hamilton’s and Aaron Burr’s personal physician, Dr. David Hosack. In addition to being present at the duel that ends Hamilton’s life, Hosack was a world-class botanist and visionary. He conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States and his famous garden/lab lies buried beneath Rockefeller Center. It is a feast for the mind.
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
It’s actually a question: “What is this an opportunity for?” I learned it from one of my mentors, and I pass it on every semester to all my students.
WHAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED IN HIGH SCHOOL?
That you can conjure up a living, breathing character and her or his entire world through great writing.
WHAT DO YOU WEAR THAT MAKES YOU FEEL STRONG?
I have a necklace made from a small medal struck in the 1830s to honor David Hosack, the hero of American Eden. The medal depicts his life’s great passions: nature, medicine, books, music, and art. I feel connected to him across two centuries when I wear it.
WHAT IS ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?
Piles and piles of books! I’m currently rereading Elizabeth Gilbert’s sweeping botanical novel The Signature of All Things, which is set at the same time as American Eden.
WHAT GIVES YOU GOOSE BUMPS?
Seeing David Hosack on a Broadway stage in the Hamilton musical after several years of researching his life story.
WHAT IS YOUR BAD DAY BACKUP PLAN?
My motto (see above) gets me through a bad day with my optimism totally intact.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS?
Having a career—writing and teaching—that feels both playful and meaningful.
WHAT MAKES YOU FORGET TO EAT?
Archival research. When I’m hot on the trail of a historical figure through old letters and documents, I feel possessed—like I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.
FAVORITE WORK OF ART?
A gorgeous painting of persimmons that hangs above my dresser, done by my sister Jessica Honigberg. She is a classical musician AND a talented painter.
FAVORITE BOOK?
Fiction: any of the novels by my sister Elizabeth Kostova, who has been writing since we were little girls. Her novels have the fine-grained beauty of poetry. Nonfiction: Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, an absolutely riproaring biography of the great nineteenth-century scientist Alexander von Humboldt.
WHAT FICTIONAL CHARACTER DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON?
Can it please be on a non-fictional character? Because the more I learned about David Hosack, the more I came to love his boundless curiosity, sense of humor, compassion, and commitment to helping his fellow citizens live happy, healthy lives. Otherwise: Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.
Graduation speeches, self-help books and well-meaning therapists preach the gospel of “following your passion.” It is predicated on the belief that if you follow your passion, you will be happy, and you will become successful in whatever you do. This is actually terrible advice. Stay with me.
2. If you match this passion to your job, then you’ll enjoy that job.
3. There is the perfect job somewhere out there waiting for you.
Research shows that many people don’t have preexisting passions and moreover, that workplace satisfaction is far more complex and more nuanced than simply matching innate interest with one’s job description.
Rather than following your passion, Newport argues that passion is something to cultivate and build. Hard work and mastery are the gateways to passion, not the other way around:
When you hear the stories of people who ended up loving what they do, this same pattern comes up again and again. They start by painstakingly developing rare and valuable skills — which we can call career capital. They then leverage this capital to gain rare and valuable traits in their career. These traits lead to a feeling of passion about their working life…Stop worrying about what the world owes you, it says, and instead, put your head down, and strive to become so good you can’t be ignored. It’s this straightforward goal—not some fairy tale about dropping everything to pursue a dream job—that will lead you toward a working life you love.
