Everyday Vitality

Sharing my learnings from the book, Everyday Vitality by Dr. Samantha Boardman

Everyday Vitality by Dr. Samantha Boardman

In Everyday Vitality, psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman shows readers how to find strength within their stress and how to transform full days into more fulfilling days. Drawing from scientific research and her own clinical experience, she shares strategies for cultivating vitality—the positive feeling of aliveness and energy that lies at the core of well-being and at the heart of a good day. 
 
You will discover how increased vitality boosts productivity, builds coping skills, and enhances your ability to manage negative emotions. Dr. Boardman demonstrates how to override counterproductive responses to the onslaught of daily hassles and to respond with flexibility and fortitude instead of fear and rumination. Rather than disengaging from the world while you “find yourself,” she shows you how to boost your vitality by living well within the world.
 
As Dr. Boardman explains, the three main wellsprings of vitality are: meaningfully connecting with others; engaging in experiences that challenge you; and contributing to something beyond yourself. These activities foster resilience by boosting emotional stamina and generating uplifts—the counterparts to daily irritations and annoyances. Whether it is having a good conversation, doing a favor for someone, going for a walk, or reading an interesting article and then calling a friend to talk about it, commonplace experiences and micromoments serve as the building blocks of everyday resilience. Everyday Vitality explains how to identify them in your life, develop them, and use them as a foundation on which to thrive. 
 
Whether you are twenty or eighty, Everyday Vitality will give you the tools you need to get the most out of each day and to live your life to the fullest. 

• completely stress-free day will probably never arrive. But rather than giving up on the parts of your life that challenge you, you can learn to coexist with your difficulties.
• If you manage to cultivate vitality, you’ll find that challenges, hard work, and even stress itself can actually be sources of strength
• “Velcro” people remain stuck in difficult situations, catastrophizing and spiraling into more negativity. They tend to pull away from others and indulge in what he terms “cotton candy” activities for the soul, like overeating or binging TV shows. These are things that may seem good initially, but don’t do any actual good in the long run.
• The “Teflon” crowd demonstrates vitality. They make plans but remain flexible. They stay engaged and deliberately plan to do things daily that make them feel good and strong. They’re even supportive of others in their times of need. 
• The key is “doing.” What you do helps you build vitality – not what you think.
• Those who display vitality recognize the importance of these three things: Autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They are proactive and make plans. They go out and do things. And they draw strength from doing things with others. 
• desirable difficulty – people enjoy working especially when the work is challenging.
• The answer to stress is not to give it up completely. the engaged, uplifting feeling of moving toward a goal is just as important as the glow of achieving it.
• To reap the benefits of a positive outcome without the struggle, you need to develop vitality and resilience.
• The first step in cultivating vitality is to choose it intentionally. This works because you made a conscious, precise decision to act a certain way, and prioritized achieving that result. 
• Comparing yourself to others all the time robs you of joy in your own life.
• Choose to see the positives in your life, big or small. Thinking about positives can generate uplift, and a series of these small acts of grace can feed on themselves and create a spiral of positivity.
• loving and being loved can actually shield you from some of life’s hardships.
  • Create a decontamination protocol to wash off the tough day at work before joining your family so you don’t take your stress out on them. When your partner tells you something, respond with active constructive responding (ACR). This means responding with wholehearted, genuine enthusiasm, including eye contact, follow-up questions, and focused attention. ACR can literally make the other person feel more loved. When loving communication translates into action, it can become an even more powerful source of strength
• Better conversations make people happier. That’s real conversations that involve a significant exchange of information, not just small talk.
• some of the world’s most successful people are constantly learning new things. 
  • Start by questioning your assumptions. Allow yourself to feel disappointed rather than rationalizing your way out of the problem. Put what you’re feeling into words and pinpoint why something bothers you. Understand that ambiguity exists and learn to coexist with it.
  • challenge yourself to go out and do something new and interesting – something that increases your knowledge, broadens your perspective, and helps you do even more new things.
  • The flow is that wonderful feeling that comes when you are so immersed in something that you almost transcend yourself and become one with the thing you are doing. Doing activities that can lead you to this point will almost certainly build your vitality.
  • challenge yourself to become healthier in general.
  • Make sure to exercise.
• Context matters when you’re building vitality. 
  • those who did something nice for others had positive feelings that lasted longer than those who did things just for themselves. 
  • To help put your choices in context, think about what is meaningful to you.
  • Cultivate vitality by rejecting a pessimistic lens through which to see the world. Don’t go out of your way to look for bad news, and don’t be that person who’s eager to share the latest litany of disasters with others.
• Cultivate vitality by rejecting a pessimistic lens through which to see the world. Don’t go out of your way to look for bad news, and don’t be that person who’s eager to share the latest litany of disasters with others.