As we start getting used to a post-pandemic lifestyle, it’s important to keep our health a priority. Before, we were stuck at home, living a more sedentary lifestyle and probably finding it harder to maintain life balance and stress levels amid increased anxieties over the unknown and isolation. These resources will help you with mindfulness, sleep, personal growth, and resilience during your time at Lynchburg.
Life Balance and Stress
As a college student, juggling day-to-day schedules can be overwhelming. Maintaining balance and making time to do things you enjoy can be difficult. Use these resources to learn how to identify your priorities and develop strategies to help you achieve your goals of balance.
- School-Life Balance (Johns Hopkins University)
- Academic Performance and Study Burnout (Albert Einstein College of Medicine)
- Perfectionism versus Healthy Striving (UT)
Resources
Office of Wellness and Health Promotion
The process of achieving wellness is constant and dynamic, involving change and growth, and practicing wellness is fundamental to our happiness and success as students, friends, and community members.
At the University of Lynchburg, we have a campus culture that promotes lifelong well-being through enhanced wellness services, outreach programs, and prevention resources.
Values Assessment Worksheet
Your purpose in life has a lot to do with what kind of impact you want to make in the world and the way you want to live. It’s also clarified and defined by your values. By taking a moment to define those values, you can begin to build life balance around what’s truly important to you.
Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator
In this hilarious and insightful talk, Tim Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes, and bouts of staring out the window — then encourages us to think harder about what we’re really procrastinating on before we run out of time.
All it Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes
When was the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment.
Work-Life Balance or Work-Life Integration?
Defining your who, your what, and your how can help you find your purpose. Consider finding a balance between your defined sense of self and a career that matches that purpose.
How to Make Stress Your Friend
Stress — it makes your heart pound, your breath quicken, and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
The Habits of Happiness
What is happiness and how can we all get some? Biochemist-turned-Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we can train our minds in habits of well-being to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment.
TimeTune: You can use TimeTune as your daily task reminder, activity manager, habit creation tool, student calendar, timetable manager, schedule organizer, routine optimizer, time manager, or daily planner. Available for download free on Google Play.
Balanced: Struggling to make time for all the little things that matter? This app helps you stay motivated and focused on what’s really important in your life. Available for download free on the Apple App Store.
RescueTime: An automatic time and attention tracker that helps you monitor how much time you spend in your mobile apps and phone calls, reporting back to you your efficiency score and top distractions on your mobile device. Available for download free on Google Play.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is simply paying attention with purpose in the present moment, without judgment. Practicing mindfulness can improve our mental health, physical health, and overall well-being. Learn more below about mindfulness — what it is, how you can practice it, and how it can help you as a student.
Resources
22 Mindfulness Exercises, Techniques & Activities
From PositivePsychology.com, this page offers many different videos, recordings, and activities to practice mediation in your daily life.
All it Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes
When was the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment.
How to Start Meditating in 6 Simple Steps
Want to begin a meditation practice but don’t know how? Here are the must-know basics to get you started!
Why Aren’t We Teaching Mindfulness?
This TED Talk gives us insight into mindfulness and its benefits, along with its intersections with trauma.
Mindful Meditation Podcasts
Take a moment with these meditations from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. Each week has a different theme and usually includes some introductory comments, a guided meditation, some silent practice time, and closing comments. Each session also offers a new daily life practice you can try out for the week.
Breathe: Breathing consciously can be a wonderful tool to help you relax, reduce stress and anxiety, sleep better, and live a mindful life. Take a couple of minutes a day for yourself and you’ll notice that life really does come in pretty colors. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Headspace: Ease into mindfulness with guided meditations suitable for all levels from Headspace. Meditation can help improve your focus, exercise mindful awareness, relieve anxiety and reduce stress. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Liberate: Culturally sensitive meditation practices and talks to promote healing among communities of color. Content is curated from 40+ teachers of various cultures and heritages with diverse backgrounds in lineage, perspective, and approach. This offers resources for common experiences like internalized racism and microaggressions. Available for download free on the Apple App Store.
Sleep
Getting enough good quality sleep can be challenging in college. Sleep has a direct and significant impact on our memory and learning, emotions, mood regulation, and physical development. Use the following links, resources, and apps to learn more about sleep and how to develop and maintain healthy sleep habits.
Resources
Caffeine Calculator
Caffeine and sleep are closely linked. Use this tool to calculate your caffeine intake.
Sleep Diary
While there are several apps that can track your sleep, this sleep diary can help you capture more helpful information about your sleeping habits. Tracking your sleep can help you and your health care providers identify ways to improve your sleep.
The UX of Getting Good Sleep
A compilation of free resources that can help you optimize your sleep and sleep space to rest better, work better, and learn better.
Why Do We Sleep?
In this TED Talk, Russell Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages, and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health.
What Would Happen if You Didn’t Sleep?
In the U.S., it’s estimated that 30% of adults and 66% of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience — staying awake can cause serious bodily harm.
The Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep
It’s 4 a.m. and the big test is in eight hours. You’ve been studying for days, but you still don’t feel ready. Should you drink another cup of coffee and spend the next few hours cramming, or should you go to sleep? Shai Marcu defends the latter option, showing how sleep restructures your brain in a way that’s crucial for how our memory works.
Sleep Cycle: Normally, your alarm clock is set for a specific time. You may be jolted awake at any point during your sleep cycle, which can make it hard to fully wake up. The Sleep Cycle app performs sleep tracking to record your sleep habits. Using the sleep cycle theory, the alarm wakes you during light sleep. To achieve this, you set a window of time to wake up. The sleep app senses your sleep movements and rings to wake you at the optimal time in your sleep cycle. This allows you to wake up feeling refreshed. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Sleep Cycle Power Nap: Research shows that napping can do a world of good. The Sleep Cycle Power Nap app allows you to set the timer for a short 20-minute power nap or a full nap of 90 minutes. Your phone’s accelerometer senses when you fall asleep and then sets the alarm to wake you up. This sleep app also has various sounds to help you fall asleep. Available for download free on the Apple App Store.
Buddhify: This app can help you bring more calm, clarity, and kindness to all parts of your life. Whether you’re looking to reduce stress and anxiety or get a better night’s sleep, Buddhify has easy-to-follow guided meditations to bring mindfulness to all parts of your life, with exercises for whatever you’re doing, wherever you are. Available for download for $4.99 on the Apple App Store and $3.99 on Google Play.
White Noise Lite: If you want to fall into a deep, blissful sleep while listening to ocean waves and soothing sounds, White Noise Lite may be the best sleep app for you. The app comes loaded with several looped sounds, such as a burning campfire, swaying boat, and thunder. You can also set a gentle alarm (guitar strum, chime, violin, and more) to wake you up. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Personal Growth and Resilience
Whether it’s overcoming obstacles, setting new goals, or identifying areas for self-improvement, we all have opportunities to grow. Resilience, despite what many think, is a learned skill.
- The Road to Resilience (American Psychological Association)
Resources
Blocks to Taking in the Good
We can all experience blocks to taking in the good in our life. This resource reviews some of the blocks you might be experiencing and ways you can address them.
Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve
Carol Dweck researches the “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet?
Every Person Has Infinite Worth
Dr. Kent Hoffman talks about how each of us carries within ourselves the gift of infinite worth. Find out what it means for us to walk in relationship with others while feeling a new sense of interconnectedness.
Fostering Resilience
Adapted from The Positive Youth Development movement, learn how focusing on the seven Cs of resilience can help foster your growth and ability to overcome: competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.
Getting Stuck in the Negatives
This talk is all about understanding how people think and how they can think better. Learn how certain ways of thinking about an issue tend to stick in people’s heads.
Reflections on Rejections
“At some point in your life, you have been, or will be, rejected.” Abigail Lipson’s compilation of personal stories about rejections and the opportunities that sprung from those rejections can help you see the silver lining in any rejection.
The Surprising Science of Happiness
Dan Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
A collection of talks given by author Pema Chödrön, this book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties.
Happier: This helps you stay more present and positive throughout the day. Use it like your personal mindfulness coach: to lift your mood, take a quick meditation pause, or capture and savor the small, happy moments that you find in your day. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Happify: How you feel matters. Whether you’re feeling sad, anxious and stressed, or you’re dealing with constant negative thoughts, Happify brings you effective tools and programs to take control of your emotional well-being. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Coach.Me: Free tracking tools to help you set and achieve goals. Review your progress and celebrate milestones you achieve. Available for download free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.