A hug per day keeps the doctor away. Just like the apple.

Historically and evolutionary speaking, hugging was most likely the easiest way of sharing body warmth between individuals, including when warmth was life-saving. Anyway – both back then and today, hugging has much more power than that.

A hug is a universal way of sharing happiness, excitement, and sadness. Sometimes a tight, caring hug from a loved one is enough to feel good. 

Many researchers confirm the benefits of hugging and cuddling – a hug goes deep in your emotional world and improves your mental and physical health. 

Why is a Hug so Powerful?

Have you noticed how babies are reaching out to cuddle? They find immediate comfort and peace in mom’s arms. A study shows that when a baby grows up with an affectionate mother, it is happier, more joyful, less stressed, and more empathetic as an adult.

So, here is how a hug is a game-changer:

• A simple hug can reduce stress and make you feel more peaceful and comfortable. 
• It will increase the “bonding” and “caring” hormones in your blood.
• When you hug someone, you may notice how your muscles relax, and you may start feeling less tension in your neck and shoulders. 
• You instantly become peaceful, and you feel full of love. 
• Hugging improves your heart rate, blood pressure, and mental health. Plus, it strengthens your immune system!
  

This being said, one shall never underrate the therapeutic and healing properties of hugs. So, whenever a friend or a family member is going through a tough time, you can just give them a long tight hug to raise their spirits and remind them of the simple pleasures in life.

What Happens When You Hug Someone for 20 Seconds?

Every hug and physical touch helps maintain the feeling of closeness, intimacy, and trust in all types of relationships. Many scientific studies show that hugs lasting for 20 seconds or longer have the most powerful impact on your body and well-being. 

Some of the 20-second hug benefits are:

• Increased level of oxytocin
• Increased satisfaction and delight
• Lowered level of stress
• Improved connection and bonding
• Lower blood pressure
• A healthy heart 

There is something powerful and empowering in long hugs. And if it sounds odd and abstract – you can try hugging for 20 seconds a day with your partner and examine this sensation yourself. 

What are the Benefits of Being Hugged?

If you still feel unsure about how hugs are good for you, we’ve listed some of the hugs’ medical benefits below:

Hugs Protect you From Stress-Based Infections

When stressed, our immune system usually weakens, thus leading to different deficiencies and health issue predispositions. A recent study shows that if you hug frequently, it will lower the chance of getting infections based on stress. The more you hug, the less overwhelmed and anxious you will feel.

Cuddling Releases the Hormone of “Feeling Good”

When we have physical contact with a person we love, our body releases hormones responsible for feeling good. These hormones are oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Researchers found out that if you hug for more than 6 seconds, your body will release a high level of oxytocin and serotonin.

Hugging Improves Your Self-Esteem

Can you imagine that a hug plays an important role at a cellular level in your body? There are times when you feel down and not worthy. During these times, hug a beloved one. It is a form of social support, or exactly what you need to boost your self-esteem.

Hugging Reduces Pain  

In this study, people diagnosed with fibromyalgia start to feel less pain when a light physical touching of their body is involved. In addition, hugging helps you release physical strain in your body, reduce muscle tension, and even sleep better.

Why do Tight Hugs Feel so Good?

Tight hugs have a positive impact on your body and your brain. Getting a hug from someone you love gives you a sense of familiarity and protection. A tight hug communicates friendship, warmth, acceptance, and appreciation.

A long, firm hug makes your body produce more serotonin in your brain. This will elevate your mood and will reduce depressive and anxious feelings. It also beats the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger.

Tight hugs make you feel you can trust this person and you are in a safe zone. As a result, you become more mindful and present with the current situation. So – do your best to give tight hugs every time you hug someone – it means much more than a loose hug and says more than a million words. 

The Power of a Hug: Quotes

Do you think hugging and cuddling bring the greatest joy you can experience? You are not alone. 

According to the famous family therapist Virginia Satir: 

“We need 4 hugs a day for survival, 8 hugs a day for maintenance, 12 hugs a day for growth.” 

Here are some other inspiring hug quotes you can use for inspiration:

• “I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.” – Ann Hood. 
• “However long a hug lasts, it doesn’t last long enough.” – Kyle Schmalenberg.
• “Be a love pharmacist: dispense hugs like medicine—they are!” – Terri Guillemets
• “The only cure for certain pain is an affectionate, pauseful, warm hug.” – Meghna Sodha 
• “Putting your love into hugs is much more effective than putting it into words.” – Maria Bastida
• “Hugging: the truest form of giving and receiving.” – Carol ‘CC’ Miller
• “Sometimes you have to hug yourself and squeeze your own shoulder and be thankful it is humanly possible.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
• “Love is hands, holding you.” – Caroline Kepnes

Celebrate the Power of a Hug!

Finally – we also have a special holiday celebrating the positive influence of a hug!

January 21st is an annual event dedicated to hugging. The National Hugging Day, created by Kevin Zaborney, aims to give us the tool for deeper connection, bonding, and affection. 

To celebrate the day, you can offer a hug to a beloved one… Or literally anyone! 

In recent decades, mental health awareness has been a focal point of multiple governmental and nongovernmental organizations aiming to understand society and its present-day challenges better. This includes both well-being evaluation and its following support programs for improving the mental health of people of all ages, regions, and social groups.

Mental health experts have been using tens of traditional and innovative ways to make a momentary snapshot of peoples’ emotional health. Nevertheless, professionals increasingly accept well-being surveys as the swiftest and easiest way to make a valid conclusion with minimum effort. 

What exactly are well-being surveys, why are they practiced, and how are their results used? We’re about to give you the basics in the paragraphs below. 

What is the Feeling of Well-Being?

To measure the level of well-being, we need to have a clear definition of well-being in the first place. Although the answer to this question is far from unambiguous, we could compare the level of well-being to the quality of life.

It’s about a person and their positive perception of life in multiple aspects. It goes from physical and emotional health, through satisfying social and romantic relationships, to work-life balance and financial independence.

All in all, the feeling of well-being is when you are satisfied with your personal state as a human being and with your social role in your society. However, this feeling is not static and may change for various internal and external factors. That’s when your well-being score fluctuates. And the more you are aware of the changes, the more you are able to react and regain your balance.

How Do You Rate Your Well-Being?

It would be hard for a non-professional to evaluate their own well-being without external guidance or expert surveying. So, the easiest way is to use ready-made surveys with multiple wellbeing survey questions that will take you through your internal realm in merely a few minutes. 

You can find these types of surveys online, in different well-being apps, and – of course – by reaching out directly to your mental health provider. After you complete such a survey, you will receive easy-to-read results, often followed by a thorough explanation of your score.

In RelaxifyApp, your well-being survey will be used as a base for developing your own well-being program with mental fitness games focused directly on your current pain points. 

What is a Well-Being Survey?

Now straight to the point. A well-being survey is a questionnaire that aims to assess your performance under different criteria – often emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and even spiritual. The questions may or may not be divided into different sections, and your answers can take anything from five minutes to half an hour, depending on the length and depth of the survey you participate in. 

You can decide to take the well-being survey by yourself. Also, it can be offered to you by state officials, research organizations, NGO-s, or even your employer. Staff wellbeing surveys are a huge part of corporate responsibility nowadays, as they provide grounds for optimizing internal processes and taking better care of employees. 

Well-being survey results can point out early signs of mental distress. They can also prevent burnout, help spot unproductive thinking patterns, and even help you rethink your social behavior. That’s why answering some questions is merely the beginning. And what follows is the proper reaction to whatever your answers reveal. 

What is Worker Well-Being?

Worker well-being relates to the individual satisfaction an employee receives in the environment they work in. This includes, but is not limited to the satisfaction from:

• Safety and quality of the physical environment in the workplace;
• Balance between personal life and professional responsibilities;
• Working hours and the possibility for flexible or remote work;
• Economic stability and independence granted by a competitive salary;
• Social benefits, reputation, and respect one receives from their profession;
• Social environment and relations in the immediate and larger team groups;
• Creative satisfaction, inspiration, engagement, and thrill from the job;
• Opportunities for growing, developing, and working on one’s talents;
• Respectful, considerate, and open-minded company management;
• Levels of stress in the workplace;
• Equality and diversity in the workplace, etc. 

So, it’s not enough to survey your employees, find out they’re angry and offer them Thursday afternoon games to relieve anger. Instead, it’s way more important to develop a general strategy for worker well-being that will not address poor results but avoid and prevent them in the first place. 

What Should I Ask in a Well-Being Survey?

Many employers and their HR teams often find themselves lost when having to design a functional well-being survey. In the best-case scenario, a psychologist or a psychotherapist will prepare the questionnaire for you. That’s the safest way to go because these people have a license to evaluate a person’s well-being by asking the right questions. 

The most popular format in mental fitness apps is the “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree” scale, applied to various statements. It’s about giving the person a simple and easy-to-understand declaration and asking them to show how it relates to them at the moment.

Examples of such statements in RelaxifyApp that you can use as employee wellbeing survey questions are:

• “I have people that I can talk to about my feelings.”
• “I have clear goals in my life.”
• “Other people acknowledge my accomplishments.”
• “I choose freely what to do and say.”
• “I feel really tired.”, etc.

Depending on the answers, you’ll be able to easily capture the overall situation of the individual. And then – to provide a solution for their challenges. Your solution can include anything from extra breaks to stress release games or even corporate access to burnout apps. 

At the end of the day, it’s imperative to know the challenge in order to address it. And well-being surveys will help you both in spotting problems and measuring how well you’ve managed to handle them.

The most common misconception about vulnerability is seeing it as a weakness. However, this type of thinking results from a general misinterpretation of the word vulnerable.

According to the definition, vulnerable means being susceptible to an attack or harm, which could be achieved by using a security hole from the person’s characteristics. So for someone with lower emotional intelligence, vulnerability would mean precisely the same as weakness. 

But this is not an accurate way of interpreting and connecting the meanings of those couple of terms. They have a deeper meaning, and we are about to discuss them in a bit more detail below. 

Can Vulnerability Be a Weakness?

From a psychological and emotional point of view, vulnerability is anything but a weakness. Just on the contrary – it is often considered a rarely found strength. 

Knowing how to be vulnerable is a very important factor on the path to becoming your best you. Being vulnerable simply means having the courage to:

• Be your most authentic self and not hide behind facades to impress others;
• Hold onto who you are without allowing shame or embarrassment to stop you from being real;
• Show your flaws without feeling like a failure and encourage others to show their letdowns without judging them. 

Or else said – vulnerability is the mindful determination to reveal yourself without fear and be self-confident enough to let others see you for who you are. 

How is Vulnerability Different Than Weakness?

Sometimes, it is hard to accept that someone wants to be good to us or express honest emotion with no second thoughts. So, normally, we keep our defenses too high, making it hard for us to form true friendships and alliances. 

This is where a vulnerability becomes a necessity for further growth. Being vulnerable is allowing someone else to know and love you purely. It requires you to be self-aware and conscious to improve your emotional intelligence. 

The most common vulnerability example seems to be sharing personal information that you normally would not share with someone. Vulnerability does not mean over-sharing – it’s a deliberate decision about who you are sharing with. 

How Can I be Vulnerable and Strong?

To be vulnerable means to let your guards down and be seen for who we truly are. There are a few steps you can go through in order to turn your vulnerability into your superpower:

Change Your Mindset

You are no longer playing the victim, and you need to stop using vulnerability as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself. That means deeply acknowledging a painful situation and your personal role in bringing it about without allowing things to define your identity.

Tear Down Those Walls

Reach out to others and share your story. When you stop playing the victim, you stop looking to others for consolation, and as a result, people will feel safer sharing their ideas because they won’t feel responsible for fixing you. So stop expecting others to swoop in and save you, and instead, use them as a source of inspiration. 

You’ll find that more people can relate to you than you think. And once you realize that you’re not the only one carrying a burden, you’ll feel its weight lift from your shoulders. Then, a sudden power that allows you to move forward will kick in. That’s the moment your vulnerability turns into a superpower.

Commit to the New Mindset

A good mindfulness routine is a perfect countermeasure. When you feel that victim mentality creeping up again, try doing some stream-of-consciousness journaling, gratitude journaling, meditation, and track your sleep to ensure you get those eight hours. These strategies lead to a heightened awareness of the good things in life that, when recognized daily, can stop you from falling victim to the bad kind of vulnerability.

Knowing how to be vulnerable requires you to analyze yourself, identify your existing capacities and focus on your desired ones. This process is called a capacity assessment. It will help you understand your personal needs and where you need to expand your capacity. Vulnerability and capacity assessment play an essential role in personal development.

Why is Vulnerability so Hard?

As we mentioned earlier, you need to take your guards down to allow yourself to be vulnerable. But it is not comfortable letting your guard down and allowing someone else to see your not-so-good side. That makes it hard. And that’s why vulnerability takes courage. 

Try to observe your conversations with your friends and family, for example. You may notice that most of them are so shallow, basic topics. They don’t go deeper. If you want to build deep connections with people around you, you need to have the courage to be vulnerable.

It is hard and embarrassing to tell people what you’re bad at. You will probably not feel comfortable in these emotions. But we all know that growth does not come from a comfort zone. We are constantly amazed by an example of failure we’ve read about. And still, we don’t want to experience the same things. We are afraid to share our own mistakes, often because of our pride and ego.

But if you open up about your mistakes, you will connect with other people on a deeper level. Your failures are not a big deal. What matters here is what you have learned and how you’ve struggled. This will shape your personality, emotional well-being, and your ability to feel a genuine connection with the people surrounding you. You will enter a new world where you don’t feel shame for what you’ve been through in life. 

Instead, life will become a safe place to exchange experiences. And that’s something worth giving a shot!

We all overthink situations in our day-to-day life. But if you overthink too much for too long, this might be a sign that you are an extreme overthinker.

If your thoughts are on repeat if you are worrying and ruminating, or even if you overthink about overthinking, then you’ll have plenty of hands-on advice in the paragraphs below.

So, how to stop overthinking and improve your overall well-being?

How to Get Rid of Negative Thoughts?

Let’s say it how it is – people are rarely overthinking about their happiest moments, and overthinking is seldom associated with calmness and peace. So – how are you supposed to stop the automatic negative thoughts from creeping in?

First of all – try to rephrase.

The moment you catch yourself thinking about something negative, try to rephrase it in your head. For example, when overthinking, your negative thoughts might sound something like, “I’m alone, I feel lonely.” Try to restate this and replace it with “I will make time for myself to enjoy my company and practice self-love.” This technique will help you to see things from a different perspective. 

Also, allow yourself to ask for help. It is not embarrassing to see a therapist. We often make it through school and into our careers without ever being taught how to build and maintain healthy relationships with ourselves and others. And this is what a counselor or therapist can do for you.

What Triggers Overthinking?

You are overthinking when you want to protect yourself from your fears and past traumas – even if you don’t do it consciously. But it is very important to deep dive and understand what stands underneath your overthinking patterns.

Think about what wounds and fears you are trying to protect yourself from. It could be a fear of abandonment, rejection, embarrassment, fear of not feeling good enough, and so on.

Normally, you start overthinking, hoping it will safeguard you from fears and negativity. But in reality, you don’t feel protected in any way. Instead, it leads to quite the opposite – when you overthink, you are actually sabotaging yourself and your thoughts; you are not protecting yourself.

What is Overthinking a Symptom Of?

People who suffer from depression, anxiety, ADHD, and eating disorders share a common overthinking symptom. It is a narrative in your head you can’t stop playing over and over again.

When you are overthinking, your mental health and well-being begin to decrease. It lowers your confidence and increases your sense of indecisiveness.

As a part of your self-awareness journey, you need to be aware and accept that overthinking is not serving you in any way. It is not helping or protecting you. Instead, it consumes you by preventing you from growing, having self-confidence, and building healthy relationships.

Is Overthinking a Mental Disorder?

Overthinking is not by itself classified as a mental disorder. But it is a symptom of a mental illness like depression and anxiety. For example, people who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder tend to fall into overthinking habits more often than not. It leads to restlessness, lack of concatenation, and irregular sleep. 

Though it might be easier said than done, a crucial first step for mentally healthy overthinkers would be to learn to let go. Don’t try to control uncontrollable things – instead, try to focus on things you can control, which is your current, present reality. If you train yourself to manage your perspective, beliefs, thoughts, and actions, overthinking can start slowly easing, and your quality of life will change drastically. 

How to Stop Overthinking in a Relationship?

It takes time to build mindfulness habits. But it is absolutely worth it if you wish to have a joyful, peaceful, and deeply connected relationship with your partner.

Your mind is an amazing network of unlimited energy and pathways, and they can lead you straight into relationship hell if you don’t know how to rein them in.

So, how to proceed?

Complete the story in your head and be okay with the outcome

Your mind wants to see the end of every story you play in your head. And if you don’t finish the narratives, your mind will bring them up over and over again. At the end of the day, this will become a rather negative and draining background in your head. 

Sometimes, the story in your head can be one of self-hate, where your mind tells you that you are not good enough for your partner. When you take a narrative to completion, your mind will know what happens at the end and how worse things could be. Your mind will know what fear it might be dealing with, and – paradoxically or not – you might feel way better where you are now. 

The stories in your head are all fiction

You need to be self-aware, and you need to come to a realization that the stories in your head are just thoughts. They are not real. They are all fiction. Your mind is creating them. That is its job. 

So – it would be best if you could stop identifying reality with your thoughts and stop assigning so much significance to your imagination.

Talk to your partner about your concerns

Be assertive in your communication so that you can work things out together as a team. This way, you will be building up respect, trust, and openness in your relationship.

The more honest you are – the better, even if it means you’ll show up as vulnerable. 

Ways to Stop Overthinking 

As we already clarified above, people often overthink to protect themselves from their own fears and suspicions. Allow yourself to feel these emotions, and don’t rush to oppose them right away. As long as you resist, they will persist. 

One way of accepting your fears and wounds is looking at the situation from a different angle. Force yourself to change the perspective of the negative thought – instead of feeling guilt or shame, ask yourself if you are facing fear from your past or the current reality. Often, these thoughts and stories are past traumas that you are projecting onto your present life. If you recognize this pattern, do your best to control and overcome it.

Long story short – when overthinking, we live either in the past or in the future. We miss out on our current reality and cannot be fully content and present. So remind yourself that you can’t change your past, and you can’t control your future. Try to be grounded and present as much as possible, and always bring yourself to the current moment when you start to overthink. 

Reading, writing, and meditation are also very helpful in building mindfulness. Eating healthily and exercising are crucial for overcoming this bad habit, and some daily exercises in Relaxify App like positive affirmations will also bring you to create more beneficial inner dialogues. Because change comes gradually, and the results are worth it!

Have you ever heard about intentional living? Except for core values, standards, and beliefs, it is about the ability to look out for the simple pleasures in life – all those little things that make life more magical, meaningful, deep, and fulfilling. 

These simple pleasures in life can inspire us, keep us charged with vitality, and make us feel genuine delight and satisfaction. So below, we are digging a bit deeper into why and how we should intentionally let ourselves love the world every now and then.

Is Happiness Something Extraordinary?

More often than not, people create a vision of happiness in their heads – an image or a “perfect-case” scenario taken out of a fantasy or a romantic novel. We know exactly what happiness should be like… But it seems like we have forgotten what it truly is.

We usually tend to aim for big, powerful, large-scale events in order to be delighted in life. But, as a result, we overlook the simple pleasures that surround us – ever expecting something tremendous and ever neglecting all that’s left. 

So, do we know how to be happy in everyday life? Or else put – can we be happy if nothing super intriguing and fascinating happens in our day-to-day lives?

The paragraphs below are a kind reminder to seek out simple pleasures in life. This means you don’t have to experience extraordinary, large-scale events in order to be comfortable with yourself and feel fulfilled. 

What’s Considered a Simple Pleasure?

Let’s say you buy something very common and typical for breakfast – like eggs, for example. You will feel nothing truly special, right? Eating eggs four times a week has already exhausted your fascination, and you’re considering it nothing but a dull routine. 

But suppose you buy some caviar for breakfast. In that case, you will be having something rare, exotic, and different, which will bring you happiness and satisfaction; you will feel like you are a successful person even if you are not currently working.

The same thinking pattern is applied at large-scale events like getting married, buying a house, and career growth – we are happy only during the period of these events. As a result, we are deeply pleased only when something extraordinary happens. And if not – we tend to feel miserable, unsuccessful, and unhappy. This is among the main problems in thinking patterns, leading to anxiety and depression.

A simple pleasure, on the other hand, is a great pleasure for you and not necessarily a significant one for others. It doesn’t need to receive a collective acknowledgment, and sometimes, it can’t even be communicated – it is a brief delight you feel inside of you that bright up your day.  

This pleasure may look very brief and simple – like eating a strawberry, having a nap, seeing a rainbow, smiling at a stranger as you are passing by, or scanning childhood photos. Yet, these sorts of things may be among the most moving and satisfying ones we can ever experience.

What Are Examples of Simple Pleasures in Life?

People can be deeply moved by different small details that mean nothing to others. So, there is no such thing as a universal list of simple pleasures that go equally well for everyone. 

Anyway, there are quite a lot of repetitive delights that people share, and some of them could be:

• Popping bubble wrap
• Seeing a rainbow
• Walking on a beach
• The first sip of coffee
• Cuddling
• Enjoying a meal
• Cleaning up a mirror
• Looking at the clouds
• Having a warm aromatic bath
• Listening to the rain
• Sneezing
• Watching a good movie by yourself
• Afternoon naps
• Lighting a candle
• Painting or writing
• Being called beautiful
• Smelling clean sheets
• Sleeping an extra hour
• Talking to a grandparent
• Someone playing with your hair
• Discovering a new favorite song
• A spontaneous haircut
• A perfectly sharpened pencil
• A great hair day
• The warm breeze, etc.

This list is potentially limitless. There are many simple pleasures in this world to be happy about, and it’s absolutely okay to find yours – even if it has nothing to do with others’. 

Why are Simple Pleasures in Life Important?

Often, when we are feeling stressed out, or life gets really, really busy, the first thing that goes out of the window is looking out for those simple pleasures. We forget how important they actually are and as time goes by, we even stop noticing them. (1)

But when we stop detecting all the good things, we start noticing all the bad things instead. They start to slowly build up and bring us more stress and anxiety. We see the world as a very negative place. We become very negative, defensive, and skeptical. Often, we start subconsciously looking for things that are not favorable, which can spiral our lives down into a very gloomy loop.

When we consider positive things, obviously, our life gets a more optimistic focus than when we focus on negative things. So to protect ourselves from habitual negativity, we need to be more self-aware and start noticing when our life is headed toward that negative spiral. 

Then we have to do our best to push ourselves to the positive side. To do that, we can use the power of these simple little pleasures, which means we need to make it a priority to consciously think about them.

We can go outside and search for the little things surrounding us at any given time. We need to open up our senses so that we can enjoy these little everyday blessings. They are always there. It is up to you if you can see and cherish them as often as you deserve to. 

Once we train our brain to do this, it will really shift our whole paradigm. People who can look out for simple pleasures and enjoy them have more meaning, depth, and happiness in their lives.

Or Else Said…

Being able to appreciate small pleasures means trusting our own responses a little more. That means we don’t need to wait for everything interesting and charming for us to be approved and appreciated the same way by others. Instead, we have to trust our senses, open up to the muted signals we feel, and allow ourselves to relish the little life treats without worrying if they make sense to others.

At the end of the day, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to bring your conscious awareness to seek out these experiences, enjoy them, and appreciate them. Soon, you will notice the level of satisfaction in your life will go up to an incredibly elevated span. Staying in this positive mind space will help you continue on the path of your goals and feel much more motivated and fulfilled.