Wellness – The Big Words Blog Site

Working From Home: How to Improve Your Wellness

Three focuses of my blog are Career Discussions, Health/Wellness and Technology. Working from home has its advantages. While it was sparse years ago, more employers will be allowing it in the coming years even after the pandemic has subsided. There are drawbacks to it though that everyone should be aware of. The following contributed post is entitled, Working From Home: How to Improve Your Wellness.

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One of the ways that COVID-19 has impacted everyone’s lives is the need for many people to work from home. Once-flourishing offices have become desolate as many workers got told to work remotely using their home Internet connections and computers.

If you’re one of those individuals, you will be undoubtedly experiencing the challenges that working from home brings, such as loss of focus or concentration due to other family members being at home too.

You will probably feel somewhat isolated from your colleagues, and due to “stay at home” orders frequently produced by the government, your social interaction with friends has also been affected.

The purpose of this article is to give you some inspirational ideas and tips on how you can improve your wellness while you’re working from home. Here’s how you can look after yourself during these trying times:

Look For Ways To Relax

It should be no surprise that some folks develop anxiety and depression due to feeling isolated from their colleagues, friends, and extended families. With that in mind, you need to look at ways to help you feel more relaxed and not feel anxious about being at home.

As you can imagine, there are several methods that help which you can pursue. For example, you could consider using hemp extracts from places like bloomfarmswellness.com to aid relaxation, or you could look at using essential oils like lavender or chamomile. Some people find the ritual of making a real cup of coffee, laying out the coffee tools, grinding the beans, etc., before drinking a cup, to be surprisingly relaxing too.

It might take some experimenting, but you’ll soon discover which methods produce the best results for your individual needs.

Stick to a Strick Work Schedule

When you worked at your office, you would start and your working days at specific times. The only difference between then and now is that you’re working from home; you still need to carry out the same work as before.

You need to create a strict working from home schedule and stick to it with that in mind. For instance, you should make sure you’ve had a shower, got dressed, and eaten your breakfast by a specific time so that you’re ready to begin your working day.

Another point to remember is that your time for stopping work should always be the same. Don’t get tempted to overrun and work for a few more hours “because you’re working from home.”

When you create a strict schedule, you will ensure that you have time to maintain your family time or do things around your home. If you let work take over your life at home, you’ll negatively impact your wellness, and most areas of your life will suffer as a result.

Increase Your Contact With Family and Friends

One final tip to consider is increasing the amount of time you spend in contact with your family and friends. That might not be possible to do in person due to COVID-19 restrictions, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

The obvious solution is to use technology like Zoom to have video chats with your loved ones. Check out zoom.us to find out how to use the technology and set up an account. If some people don’t have Internet access, there’s always the good old-fashioned telephone!

Encourage Healthy Employees With These Wellness Strategies

The first principal of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and a key focus is Health/Wellness. No matter which kind of organization you’re running, a key component will be the wellness of your employees and staff. Helping them stay in top shape will all but assure that you will get maximum productivity out of them. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Encourage Healthy Employees With These Wellness Strategies.

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Did you know that healthy employees are one of the best assets that any business can have? It makes a lot of sense when you think about it – healthier employees won’t get as sick quite as often and so won’t have to take as many days off to recover from illnesses. That means that you won’t waste any money paying for employees to take days off. But that isn’t the only reason why you need to encourage good health amongst your employees. You will find that fit and healthy workers are a lot more productive, as they have plenty of energy and drive.

There are lots of employers who already know just how beneficial healthy staff are, and so have stepped up measures to encourage healthy choices both in the office and at home. Here are a few popular wellness strategies that work well with employees. Perhaps you will want to try some out with your own staff.

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Get Them To Ditch Their Cars

I’m sure that a lot of your employees will drive to the office. This may be the most time-efficient option for people, but it won’t be doing their health any good. It’s worth trying to motivate the employees who live close enough to the office to walk or cycle to work. There are a few ways you can incentivize these choices. For instance, you might want to install some bike racks outside your office so that cyclists have somewhere to keep their bikes safe and secure while they are working. To try to get their workers walking to work, some companies offer their employees wearable devices, like Fitbits to track their daily steps. Running weekly or monthly step competitions within your office will certainly encourage your workers to walk more!

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Help Them Fight Personal Injury Battles

No matter how fit we may be, it can still be possible to end up in accidents and injured. If an employee does end up injured, they may be forced to take a considerable length of time off work. There are ways you can help them speed up their recovery, thankfully. One thing some companies do is build a relationship with a personal injury attorney who they can then get to represent their employee in court. You can contact Sachs Waldman for more information about these kinds of attorneys. Getting a good lawyer on board will greatly improve their chances of winning compensation which they can then use to invest in their rehabilitation and healthcare. Before you know it, the employee will have returned to a full bill of health and will be back in the office.

Encourage Healthy Snack Choices In The Office

Healthy eating goes a long way to helping us maintain good physical and mental health, so you should try to encourage your employees to opt for healthy snacks whenever they feel a pang of hunger. The best way to make sure that everyone reaches for a piece of fruit instead of a chocolate bar is to offer some free healthy snacks and drinks in the office kitchen. A large bowl of fresh fruit will go down really well, especially with those workers who want to satisfy their sweet tooth. It’s also a good idea to offer some cereal bars and other healthy snacks that aren’t too calorific, sugary, or fatty. As well as offering the usual teas and coffee, make sure there is some bottled water and fruit juice for your employees as well.

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Promote Social Connections Between Coworkers

Lots of research has suggested that employees who make friends with their colleagues and coworkers often enjoy being at work than those who don’t. It makes working together a lot easier, and employees who are friends will often support and help their friends a lot as well. So, it will be really beneficial for you if you promote the creation of social connections between your workforce. There are many ways you can do this, but one of the easiest is organizing office drinks on a Friday evening every so often. Most companies host these drinks every two weeks or on a monthly basis.

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Offer Support To Staff With Mental Health Troubles

These days, we all know how difficult it can be to maintain good mental health. Some studies have shown that employees who are emotionally supported in the workplace often find it a lot easier to maintain better mental health than those that aren’t. So, it’s really worth rolling out some top support strategies to all of your employees, especially those who really struggle with serious issues like depression. For instance, some companies like to welcome a councillor into their office once a month, and offer their employees the chance to book a session with them. You should also prevent the development of any workplace bullying and make sure that no one is ever overstretched with their workload.

Offer Gym Memberships As A Perk Of The Job

You will already be offering your employees plenty of perks of the job, but do you already offer them a free monthly gym membership? More and more businesses are now offering this to employees, as most gym memberships are too expensive for individuals to buy on their own. Once you do offer a membership, you will find that your workers are a lot more likely to go to the gym on a regular basis. As a result, they will quickly get fitter and their overall health should also improve.

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Install Office Showers

If you have the space in your office, you should think about installing some showers. This should encourage more employees to run or cycle to work. Lots of people are put off from getting to work in these ways because they will have to spend the day sweaty at their desk. But once showers have been installed, they will be able to take a quick wash so they are fresh for the day ahead.

Once you use these wellness strategies, you should notice a difference in your staff!

3 Ways to Make Money with a Wellness Business

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“Wellness is now a $4.2 trillion industry worldwide. If you’re an entrepreneur, it makes sense, then that you would at least consider the possibilities of getting into this market.”

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Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Health/Wellness. Wellness businesses can be lucrative if run the right way. If you’re thinking about running this type of business, or if you’re running one right now, it’s important to know how to make money with them. The following contributed post is thus entitled, 3 Ways to Make Money with a Wellness Business.

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Wellness is now a $4.2 trillion industry worldwide. If you’re an entrepreneur, it makes sense, then that you would at least consider the possibilities of getting into this market. A lot of people shy away from doing so because wellness seems to be everywhere, and they think that the market must be saturated by now, however, there are always opportunities to be had and as long as you’re willing to work hard and create a unique brand there is no reason why you could not launch your own wellness company and succeed.

If you like the idea of running your own wellness business, but you don’t know where to start, here are just some of the ways you could make money in the wellness business right now:

Sell Your Skills

If you’re looking to start your business on a shoestring, think about any skills you may have and see if you can monetize them. What would you use to form the basis of your startup pitch deck, in other words? The only costs you will incur doing this are your marketing costs and with the use of social media, these could be pretty minimal.

In terms of wellness, there are plenty of skills you can sell from teaching meditation to helping people start running, to life coaching. If you don’t already have these or similar skills, learning them can be very affordable, and building a business very doable.

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Capitalize on Cannibis and CBD

It isn’t for everyone, but cannabis is now legal in many states and it is doing big business in all of the places you can buy. You might think that getting into the industry involves too much red tape, but you don’t actually have to sell cannabis yourself. In fact, you could potentially make a lot of money by simply selling cannabis accessories. If you visit trimleaf rosin press guide, for example, you will see that there is far more to this business than you might think and the accessories are numerous. If you don’t like the idea of cannabis at all, then consider the possibilities of CBD, which is non-hallucinogenic, completely legal in most places and a huge wellness trends which many people use for stress and pain relief regularly.

Now, with the cannabis scene being relatively fresh, it’s like staring at a crystal ball trying to figure out how it will unfold, particularly considering resources related to this field, such as the Daniel Fung arrest article. There are no guarantees in the CBD business. But here is the kicker: your local demand. It’s best to figure out how to stand out and ride this cannabis wave while ensuring you’re operating within your area’s regulations.

Slow Fitness

The slow fitness movement has been ramping up for a few years now, and it’s just about set to explode, which means it’s a really good niche to get into if you’re looking for a new business venture.

The slow fitness movement is all about taking it easy and taking recovery seriously when you have worked out hard. It’s all about foam rollers magnesium baths and percussive therapy tools such as Hypervolt, which you can read about at https://hyperice.com/hypervolt, and which can massively aid recovery and wellness. The good news is there is plenty of room for new and similar products to hit the market, especially if you can develop something which is even better at aiding recovery, and these products can be sold at a premium. This option will likely involve a greater investment but the rewards could be huge.

Whatever you decide to invest in, wellness is not going away and you have the potential to do very well for yourself!

James Tate discusses fitness, health, wellness and his new book: Kool Kids & The Land Of The Giants

One of the goals for my blog is to help expose for other individuals with new and novel ideas/projects of their own which is in line with my principle of “Creating Ecosystems of Success” – a major part of which is health and wellness. Occasionally my alma maters will show up in my writings, and in the spring I conducted an interview with Robert Ridley, President of Johnson C. Smith University’s DC Alumni Chapter regarding our “150 and Beyond Campaign” to raise money for our scholarship endowment.

I recently heard about a children’s book created by another fellow JCSU alumnus; James “Big Dogg” Tate, who has his hands in numerous projects relating to health and wellness. I thought interviewing James would be make for a compelling interview for both of us, and would further be educational for any readers based on his passion and knowledge of health and fitness. In the following interview, James talks a little bit about his background, and his new book Kool Kids & The Land Of The Giants.

Anwar Dunbar: Hello James. First, thank you for agreeing to do this interview and discussing your new book, Kool Kids & The Land Of The Giants on my blog. It looks like you’ve created something really positive and helpful here. I graduated from JCSU in 1999, so I vaguely remember seeing you on campus. Where are you originally from?

James Tate: I was born and raised in Washington, DC.

AD: Where did the nickname “Big Dogg” come from?

JT: I had many nicknames growing up, but that’s the one that stuck. Because I was an overweight child, teen, and adult, I had nicknames like “Fatz”, “Biggie”, “Big Daddy”, “Pooh”, etc. – but “Big Dogg” has stood the test of time, through different schools and states.

AD: What did you major in at JCSU?

JT: I’m a 2002 graduate of JCSU. I majored in Computer Science/Engineering. I am also a member of the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

AD: A couple of years ago, you were the featured speaker at our JCSU DC Alumni Club’s monthly meeting where you gave us a powerful talk about diet, health, and fitness. With your training at JCSU being in Computer Science/Engineering, what got you into health and fitness?

JT: I was actually forced into health and wellness. I was an overweight child, an overweight teen, and an overweight adult. I was involved in an accident that left me immobile for a year. After that year, my weight was over 400 pounds. I then had three years of physical therapy. My doctor told me that my injuries would never heal unless I lost weight. With me being overweight my entire life, I didn’t think it was possible.

I rededicated my life to Christ at the New Year’s Eve service going into the 2010 year. I prayed for help, and I started studying scriptures about health and wellness. I read Christian wellness books, and attended Christian wellness group meetings. By the end of 2010, I had lost over 200 pounds naturally. I then went to nutrition school and finished with my first certification. I currently hold six wellness certifications and own my own wellness practice.

AD: Wow, that’s amazing. I too was overweight as a child for a little while until my mother stepped in and made me get more active and controlled my portion sizes; so we share some common ground there. In middle school I had some nicknames that I wasn’t too fond of myself.

Before we talk about the Kool Kids, I started reading SALT: Black America’s SILENT KILLER. I pretty much knew about kidney dialysis, but Dr. Surender Reddy Neravetla also went into graphic detail about cardiac bypass surgery – specifically, how high blood pressure can persist even after the operation, and how the surgeon can only prescribe more blood pressure lowering medication at that point. There’s a definite mental/quality of life cost to having conditions like diabetes, and heart disease. There’s a financial cost as well to the individual and to society. With all of the debate here in Washington, DC about the Affordable Care Act, I think there is something to be said here about preventative care/lifestyle. I mean who wants take 10 medications and go on dialysis if they don’t have to? Can you say anything about the financial costs of being unhealthy in terms lifestyle – maintaining a poor diet and not staying physically active.

JT: That’s a great question. Healthcare starts in your kitchen and obesity costs our country a lot of money annually – roughly 200 billion dollars depending on the source reporting the dollar amount. Many of us don’t consider the cost of obesity and obesity-related diseases. We only consider the cost of the food we purchase today. Because we think this way, we go for the cheapest, most convenient options, not thinking about the long-term effects of that food. I like to say that people will put 93-Octane fuels into their $50k car, but will consistently put 87-Octane (regular) foods into their multi-million dollar bodies and expect them to run at an optimum level. Ironically, they’re shocked when their bodies eventually break down. For African Americans, 95% of the chronic illness that we suffer from today are caused by poor food choices. That means that a lot of what we suffer from is preventable.

AD: How did you come up with the idea for Kool Kids & The Land Of The Giants? Just briefly, without giving too much away, what’s it about?

JT: The Kool Kids are a group of Christian kids who will motivate, educate, and inspire you and your family to defeat the giants in your life/land – giants such as Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Depression, Debt, etc. We have become comfortable living with certain diseases and have even given them cute nicknames like calling diabetes, “A touch of sugar.” I wanted to remind people that diseases are monsters and we should treat them as such. Also, it’s been said that this is the first generation of children that will not outlive their parents due to obesity and diseases related to obesity. So I want to teach them about health and wellness in a new and fun way with characters that they can relate to while including biblical principles. I was unable to find any health and wellness books that were biblically based that starred super heroes of color, so I decided to create one.

AD: Wow. That’s a great idea James. Are you envisioning any sequels?

JT: Yes. The Kool Kids is a series and in each book they will take on a new giant.

AD: Where can people purchase the Kool Kids?

JT: You can order a copy of The Kool Kids from my web store, http://store.beyondw8loss.com. You will also find Kool Kid merchandise there as well.

AD: Do you have any parting words?

JT: First, thank you for interviewing me, and I thank everyone who takes the time to read this interview. It’s my prayer that we learn to take our health seriously. Again in terms of the chronic illnesses that we suffer from, especially as African Americans, 95% are caused by poor food choices. We can change and reverse so much just by paying attention to what’s on the end of our forks.

AD: Well James, thank you again for agreeing to do this interview. I’m going to get a couple of copies Kool Kids for some of the folks in my own network.

Thank you for taking the time out to read this interview. If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and or leave a comment. To receive all of the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site or add the link to my RSS feed to your feedreader. Please visit my YouTube channel entitled, Big Discusssions76. Lastly follow me on Twitter at @BWArePowerful, on Instagram at @anwaryusef76 and the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page. While my main areas of focus are Education, STEM and Financial Literacy, there are other blogs/sites I endorse which can be found on that particular page of my site.