Memories of Student Holiday Nights Happening Right Now
Weekly Wellbeing Zest #1 - The Most Unrecognised Wellbeing Articles On Substack
The title will always be a creative meshup of thematic aspects from the 5 articles for the week - so yes, sometimes a scrambled mess of my mind!
What is this? (If you KNOW, just scroll past this section!)
In this weekly “zest” (noun: great enthusiasm and energy) (1) I try to highlight some of the writing here on Substack that I think could be beneficial for your wellbeing.
It might be about some cool, chic or simply interesting piece of knowledge in the areas of physical, mental, emotional, social or spiritual health (totally professionally categorised by myself with no particularly specific method, rules or paying too much attention to any specific wellbeing canon). Possibly thought provoking in a way where you might get either a rare light bulb moment for yourself, or at least you might think about something from these texts in relation to yourself and your own life for a while.
Ok, maybe just like hopefully for 1 minute – but that is something, right!?
Or some of the writing might just be entertaining and fun to read – I am trying hard not to be too serious of a writer, as we got enough of that going on in health and wellbeing (and clearly that has not been working that well, judging by our populational problems). What ever it ends up being, I want to focus on articles, insights and thoughts that I believe might be somewhat overlooked and underrated and undervalued – generally content you might not consider, at least directly, if you are interesting solely in getting healthier, fitter, better, weller, more poggers, cooler or whatever the newest trendy word is.
As I read many different areas, and attempt to not just be stereo typically stuck in the health & wellness or education sections, you might be confused at some of the choices. Do not worry, in this article every week I give you a short abstract about why I picked each article – and how I think it relates to our 5 different wellbeing capacities, as well as what connection I see there to some Zen Buddhism teachings.
If any of my ramblings here spark some curiosity, please go read the original articles.
Like, do not hesitate, click the links and focus just on reading.
If you then enjoy the article, find it interesting, or maybe even “controversial” for yourself, do not hesitate either, go leave a kind and courageous comment to start a conversation! I find that this works surprisingly well here on Substack.
If you then still remember me, and that you got to that article through the Weekly Wellbeing Zest – well, you are welcome! Please come back and leave a comment, or restack, or something, and let me know that what you embarked on reading and how it was for you. I truly want to know – and I will answer you and take up the conversation, I promise!
Ok, here we go for week 1 in the Weekly Wellbeing Zest (in no particular order of significance or preference):
(Dr Marcin’s category: spiritual health)I believe that this great write-up and personal story by Ritvik will on one side immediately connect with many people, while also “uncovering” a maybe somewhat unnoticed reality for many others. In an intricate way it shows how often we “lie” to ourselves, or at least blindfold ourselves willingly, even if our own identity and spirit is at stake. This is not necessarily a total failure or bad thing, not at all. To be frank, this is rather normal – a book called “Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception” by Daniel Goleman (2), albeit a bit older, goes into some details about how we continuously “lie” to ourselves, especially when it comes to memories. So neither Ritvik, or you, if happen to experience anything similar yourself, are doing anything that is not on some fundamental level just “human”. This one feels like a strong statement for our spiritual health (for those new to my writing, this does not necessarily mean religious, but more serving our own identity and driving our values and purpose).
Every Time, I Underestimate The Dark by
(Dr Marcin’s category: physical health)Now, I have designated this under “physical”, albeit and as so often, we could easily transfer some of these insights (and personal revelations) made by Laura here, across almost all 5 areas of wellbeing. Maybe there is some inspiring comparison here to the “oneness” in Zen Buddhism, but I simply cannot put anything together – as I believe this is true for many, if not all aspects, of our health. Yet, the change in seasons, but especially the change in light, is physiologically an enormous, humongous, gigantic, and still completely underrated, stimulus for our body. How often I have seen people just hand-wave and “no worries”-it when talking about daylight savings? Yeah, too often! And I have to pay attention not to get too emotionally and intellectually invested in these conversations. This mainly stems from my amazing experience in Perth, Western Australia, and the comparison to how I felt to anywhere else where I lived and live now. Laura, I can only share your experience, and I hope more readers at least try to be prepared for their seasonal and light changes!
Yes, I do write more than just these “lists” - although I like to think more of this as a highlight reel. If you are interested though in more of my writing (and receiving these lists regularly), the please subscribe - I am looking forward to writing with you one way or the other:
Your Holiday Survival Guide: Part 1 by
(Dr Marcin’s category: ALL of them!)Everything and everyone might be talking about wellbeing, or at least the newest fitness and sports trends (which in all honesty simply get repackaged as “wellbeing” nowadays) – the significance of mental wellbeing, breathing techniques or the newest wellbeing dashboard that Apple is going to show you on their devices after asking you some actually well established mental health questions. It gets a lot people quite excited, and apparently, suddenly very serious about their own health future. Yet, we lovely ignoring the solid, proven, and established advice. The stuff you can truly DO every day to prevent bad things from happening. You know, being pro active and preventive, yadda yadda. Thus, Lucy does a great job to outline some of the most proven principles of wellbeing that could be even described as the “foundations of wellbeing” (in this case “festive season edition”). It also shows how we are ONE as a human being, something that is called the heart-mind in Zen Buddhism (3). We cannot just live, survive and thrive, by looking after only 1 of our wellbeing capacities. Finally though, remember what Lucy points out: it is completely fine to indulge and enjoy!
How I Grew My Substack from Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months by
(Dr Marcin’s category: emotional health)Before you jump ship here: yes, this one was particularly helpful to myself. I am starting out with this “writing stuff”, particularly here on Substack, and while having done various types of content creation for almost 15 years, writing is definitely not something I know how to do! Plus, I simply appeared to have a natural aversion against writing – at least that is what I used to tell myself. However, besides highlighting some very practical and useful journey steps for other writers, Jeannine also makes strong point about work and focus generally: the only thing we can truly do is just do the stuff right now. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course this goes well with the Zen koan dwell in your breath, but there can be a bit more to that in our modern life. Goals, rewards, plans and such are somewhat overrated, and I am personally quite a big proponent to reassess our own lives in these regards. There is also a breadth of data on how all of these impact our emotional health; not necessarily positively though (more on that soon!). With a continuous rush for time, apparent busyness, deadlines, instant gratification, reward- and external based motivation, career vs. personal life discrepancies, and so many other long-term developments of how we “live” every day, I would like you to consider an alternative. A life taken slowly, with little to none attention given to time, and lots given to just doing stuff right now. Jeannine’s journey shows that she has done this quite well! There is so much more I want to write on this particular topic, but hang in there, please subscribe, or just follow along, and you will get to see some of them insights about it soon.
As I just highlighted that I do not really know how to write (properly), I should probably make a good effort in the future to try to attend Connie’s classes (somehow, because you know, I am in NZ). Why I think her writing here has a potential for impacting our mental health? It mainly relates to the fact that I am a quite opinionated and strong proponent of the idea that we need to provide more support and tools for our youth and young adults who are finishing or quitting school, transitioning into tertiary education, apprenticeships or straight into work-based life. We do a terrible job at supporting them, and maybe we also have done a terrible job. But after working with various youths across 3 continents, I see so much of my own struggles from the past that have not been addressed or improved at all. If anything, it has only become harder in that transition period of teen → adulthood to get a grasp on life. No wonder countries like here in NZ are having some of the highest teen suicide rates in the OECD – if we did support them with more than “life will teach you herpderp!”, we would directly improve their mental health capacities. Likewise, Connie does exactly that for her students confidence, as well as cognitive and writing skills.
This is all for this week! What a crazy bunch of good writing to start out this Weekly Wellbeing Zest thing!
If you read all the way here, I would like to share:
There seems to be an increasing amount of great writers here on Substack who, on first glance, have nothing to do with health, wellbeing, nor spirituality. With this regularly “best of” reading list I am a bit scared that people might think this is not that well related to health and wellbeing. I truly hope that maybe I can suggest to you to channel your “beginner’s mind”, and be a bit more open to other authors from completely other fields. In other news, one of my puppies (he ain’t by age, but by soul) ate a little bit of a plastic frisbee today, and I am way more scared about that.
Thank you, and aku mihi (best regards),
Dr Marcin
References
Feel free to checkout references for all my articles in this document.
I'm new to Substack. This is a cool post. Makes me wonder if I could / should start a similar roundup as I start to read more and more Substack authors. Checking these out now! Thanks!
Also, the section where you wrote "There is also a breadth of data on how all of these impact our emotional health; not necessarily positively though (more on that soon!)." caught my eye. I'm glad to hear that you'll be expanding on that. I bet you could write a bunch of interesting articles on that topic. Looking forward to it!
Thank you, Dr Lipski, for the kind mention.