Dr. Ryan Martin

What is the thing I can do to try and solve this?

And now all of a sudden that spiral becomes empowering.

That spiral becomes a, okay, so I actually have some power here to fix some of these things.

And even if it's just a little bit of power, even if there isn't a ton I can do, it's still better, I think, for people to take a little bit of ownership in the solution than to let it go.

Yeah, so there's a couple biggies that I really, really like.

One is actually the importance of spending time in nature.

And so spending some time...

On a walk in nature, honestly, it even just can work if you're not in a place where you're surrounded by nature.

It can even work to watch nature videos or to look out a window and just see some green space.

And

It works even better if you do that in a way where you are unplugging as much as you can.

And so if you can turn off your phone or not take your phone with you and really go out and spend that time immersed in the environment.

The other piece of this, too, is it works even better if you can give yourself a task that is sort of specific to the nature.

So the example that I really like that where we've seen some really interesting research on is birdwatching.

So if you go out not just to spend time in nature, but you say, I'm going to look for birds, or I'm going to try and identify plants, or I'm going to try and identify rocks, anything that will get you focused on the nature and out of your head is really, really valuable.

So spending time in nature is a biggie.

The other one that I really like is any kind of engagement with the arts.

And that doesn't necessarily, and I say this as someone who is not a good artist, right?

Someone who has zero real artistic skills or very, very little at least.

that spending time engaging in the arts, either by participating in some craft type workshops or things like that, or maybe spending some time with expressive writing or or just going to shows and performances, that those things can be really good ways to help