Avoiding the Easter Weight Trap

When we’re slipping on anxiety’s slopes, it’s usually not pretty. We rant. We rave. We make blanket statements on the condition of our lives. When under pressure, inaccurate self-judgments are likely to creep in. We forget to factor in that we’re overworked, tired or just plain depleted. We lose sight that we’re resilient, and quite capable of coming up for air and regrouping once we’ve regained our footing. Psychologists call the tendency to zoom in on what we believe to be true confirmation bias, which becomes a dangerous path if we’re analyzing during peak anxiety moments. Beliefs born out of anxious moments can catapult us into an avalanche of messy cognitive distortions and self-sabotage. Here are four traps to watch out for when you’re saturated

It’s a question I’ve posed to clients and seminar attendees in the past: what direction or wisdom would you share with your younger self if you could go back ten, twenty, thirty years (or more)? The idea obliges us to think about the whole of our journey thus far – how we’ve viewed health or success, how we’ve valued our well-being against other commitments, how we’ve weighed instinct against authority – among endless other inquiries. The fact is, life teaches us. I’m not talking just about the assemblage of data – more information gathered, more studies skimmed. I mean the self-knowledge acquired – sometimes through hard-won means – as well as the priorities that have come into focus over time. It’s often about the