Getting Ahead This Year and Emotional Wellbeing
Happy New Year and welcome to the very first 2019 edition of TotalWellbeing, your guide to the 8 dimensions of wellbeing. To help start the year on the right foot, this edition will be focused on getting ahead and developing a “can-do” attitude. We hope that you find the resources this month, like our free webinar and info-packed articles, helpful for getting a head start on making 2019 a great year both personally and professionally. If you missed us last month, last year, or if you are completely new to TotalWellbeing, you can catch up on our newsletters page. Remember, this newsletter is aimed at providing helpful information about various aspects of your wellbeing and then connecting it all back to important and relevant parts of everyday life. Just like last year, we will focus on looking at each facet of wellbeing from a small, personal level and then examine how it connects to the bigger community level as we explore how our wellbeing is tied to the world around us in often surprising ways that you may not have thought about before. And as always, if you have questions or have ideas for topics you’d like to see don’t hesitate to email us using the link in the right column. To your total wellbeing, The MINES Team
Your Emotional Wellbeing Since we are headed into a new year it may be a good time for a refresher on what Emotional Wellbeing actually is. According to SAMSHA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration), Emotional Wellbeing is your ability to effectively cope with life stressors and create and maintain satisfying relationships. From this definition, it is easy to see how your emotional state and wellbeing could be connected to your ability to be productive, execute plans to reach goals, and nurture relationships. This is because before you can take care of others’ needs, you must first take care of your own. This year, as you plan on how to make 2019 a great year, first think about the emotional needs and barriers you may have that need to be addressed before you can begin exerting your energy outward. Then, once you are in a good place emotionally, think about how you can use that stability and positivity to channel your energy into productive and social ventures to build your external wellbeing. All of this will help create a foundation ripe for growth that will serve you for the rest of the year and beyond. Enhancing your emotional wellbeing can be hard. But the good news is you don’t have to do it alone. Call MINES any time of day to get set up with a counselor or wellness coach to talk about reaching your goals, countering stressors, and busting down barriers. Please call us at 1-800-873-7138 to get connected right away.
Question of the Month What are 3 goals that, if achieved, would help make 2019 a great year?
Quote of the Month “Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind, and spirit – the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an effect on our state of wellbeing.” – Greg Anderson
Community and Global Perspective Making the most of a day, a week, a month, or a whole year is largely a combination of goals, good habits, and your state of mind. However, not everything is in our control. There are plenty of things out there in the world that we encounter daily that can impede our personal efforts. Negative or positive news on TV, things going on in your social circles, work-based items that eat up a significant amount of time or cause stress, and any other number of things that life throws our way, can often distract and discourage us from our goals. This is why it is important to monitor your feelings and to think critically about how you react to things out of your control. By paying attention to this aspect of your mind you can identify sources of stress and counter them as they come rather than let things build up and compound the negative effect they have over you. Being aware of your feelings in this way is also great mindfulness practice that will become easier over time, and as you become more in touch with yourself you will reinforce your emotional resilience making you a stronger person overall.
If you or a member of your household needs assistance or guidance on any of these wellbeing topics, please call MINES & Associates, your EAP, today for free, confidential, 24/7 assistance at 800.873.7138.
This month’s webinar: Do Your Bucket List: 7 Ways to Focus on the Things that Matter MINESblog: Coming soon: National Law Enforcement Day post (Jan. 9th) New to TW? Check out our past Blogs! Important Links Visit our BLOG MINES and Associates 2018 Training Catalog Balanced Living Magazine LinkedIn MINEs Archives Contact Us Email MINES
		MINES does not warrant the materials (Audio, Video, Text, Applications, or any other form of media or links) included in this communication have any connection to MINES & Associates, nor does MINES seek to endorse any entity by including these materials in this communication.  MINES accepts no liability for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided herein, nor any additional content that may be made available through any third-party site. We found them helpful, and hope you do too!

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Thank you John Oliver and your staff for a significant public service on your show this week! Your commentary and excellent coverage of a major problem in substance use disorder and alcohol treatment will have an impact far beyond what the insurance and professional communities have been able to do.

MINES has patients who have gone out of network, received poor care, the payors have received outrageous bills, the patients are stuck with bills that can only result in medical bankruptcy and as you noted, people die in these disreputable facilities.  A major component that you pointed out is patient brokering. When people Google substance abuse/use treatment, the top 20-30 are facilities, mostly in Florida and California, or are patient brokers. Reputable facilities in the person’s community do not even make the list. Then the facilities sometimes even pay the airfare to fly the patient to their facility and if the patient does not meet medical necessity for that level of care, the facility turns them out on the street to find their own way back to the state/community they live in.

You mentioned addictionologists as a resource for finding reputable care. In addition, Employee Assistance Programs as well as managed behavioral health services (insurance) are knowledgeable and informed about substance use and alcohol treatment. They know which facilities and programs are in network with the insurance and which ones do a good job.

Evidence-based treatment supports the use of a continuum of care from outpatient, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, residential and detox (medical and social detox). There are medications that also contribute to sobriety and health.

These are chronic illnesses/conditions that require the patients to cope with all their lives. Learning relapse prevention and adherence skills are essential.

If you decide to delve into this national problem further in a future episode, I would be happy to consult with you and your team.

The following clip may be not suitable for some work environments:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y]

Resource:

This is a link to a pdf of an article published by the Self Insurance Institute of America on predatory treatment facilities and managed behavioral healthcare strategies for helping the patients and the payors. http://www.minesandassociates.com/documents/Predatory_Facility_Article.pdf

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Dr. Robert Mines (chairman and psychologist) and Dr. Dani Kimlinger (CEO) from the MINES Team were honored to contribute to an article by Bruce Shutan in this month’s issue of The Self-Insurer. The article is called Beyond Opioids and covers how EAPs, like MINES, and good benefit-plan design can help treat addictions and other substance use issues in an employee population as well as control overall health care spending.

The issue can be viewed here:

Check out other Self-Insurer publications here: https://goo.gl/2TjaUV

And check out other MINES publications here: www.minesandassociates.com/about_staff_publications.html

To your wellbeing,

The MINES Team

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So, to commemorate the occasion, we wanted to reconfirm our solemn promise to our clients, past, present, and future, to continue to work in every way that we can to serve the good of those organizations and individuals/families. MINES continues to strive to apply the latest evidenced/research-based practices for the wellbeing of our clients. We do this with compassion and loving kindness to relieve their suffering and enhance the quality of their lives.

As a practical matter and update moving forward, we have rolled out a brand new website at www.minesandassociates.com that will significantly improve the ability of individuals to access our services and information about our program through mobile devices. We have a number of changes to our Provider Portal that will streamline our billing and reporting processes. We’re upping our social media game to provide great content on facebook and twitter (so make sure to check it out!) And we have a number of projects underway that will be rolling out in 2016 that will make it easier and more enjoyable to access services with MINES.

We want to thank all of our clients for their partnership over the years and look forward to the next 35 years! Have a great 2016 and, as always, “to your wellbeing!”

The MINES team

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The integration needs to occur at the strategic/systems and tactical levels. On the tactical side, there are already case studies in the public healthcare sectors and in Kaiser Permanente of placing mental health professionals in medical clinics and offices so the doctors and nurses can just walk a patient down the hall to see them once a psychological component has been identified. At MINES we are piloting a wellness coaching model for individuals who are identified by their healthcare provider as a pre-substance use disorder patient, through a Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) grant awarded to Peer Assistance Services.

At the strategic/systems level, integration has significant utility and challenges for self-insured organizations whether as an individual entity or a multi-employer trust. At this level, a key component is the ability for the various vendors to cross-communicate on these types of patients. This involves the ability to do data mining to identify the patients, having an intensive case management behavioral health specialist to be the point person, regular communication between the TPA, pharmaceutical vendor, medical utilization review, behavioral health utilization review and the medical/psychological personnel responsible for treatment. An obvious challenge is getting buy-in from all of these stakeholders. There is no incentive other than good patient care for any of these groups to cooperate with each other. To rectify this, incentives would need to be financial or contractual. Employers have leverage on the contractual side as it is their health benefit and their money. At the time of this blog, there are case-studies of organizations moving this direction; however, specifics are a long way from full integration due to the complexities required.

I would welcome your discussion and wisdom on this issue.

Have a day filled with extending loving kindness to all those you encounter,

Bob

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D., CEO

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How much is enough? Ratey stated that walking is enough. Low-intensity exercise is at 55 to 65% of maximum heart rate, moderate is 65-75% and high intensity is 75-90%. “The process of getting fit is all about building up your aerobic base” (p.251). Ratey goes on to discuss the role of strength training and flexibility as important elements of optimizing your brain chemistry and hormone levels.

What does this have to do with optimizing your performance at work and in all areas of your life? Everything! Get started today and stick with it.

Have a day filled with optimal brain chemistry,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.
CEO & Psychologist

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According to this site, Bill W., the founder of AA, was successfully treated for depression with 3,000 mg of niacin a day. Unfortunately, this information has not been widely discussed or published in the media. I would be interested to hear from any of you who have used niacin as a means of treating depression or alcoholism and what your results were. Please let us at MINES know.

Have a day filled with mindfulness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.
CEO & Psychologist

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Do each of your employees get held accountable for the results or just the managers?

All businesses and organizations get to address these questions and do their best to implement solutions depending on the answers. Elliot Jacques and Stephen Clement wrote an especially helpful book, Executive Leadership, which addresses these questions and many more. This posting will address a few of the many nuggets in their book.

One of the recurring BizPsych questions we get to answer and intervene on relates to individual differences in performance.  Jacques and Clement argue that role theory accounts for performance more than individual differences such as personality. They add that people perform to their role in very predictable ways. There is a significant amount of social psychology research to support this. Yet in many businesses, individual personality characteristics are looked at for explanatory hypotheses related to performance over clarity of role. Role clarity for a manager – from Jacques and Clements point of view – would include an adequate organizational design, an assumption that the manager has the knowledge, skills, commitment, values of the organization, and cognitive complexity to do the functions of the role. In the role of manager they would  have formal accountability for results and authority to allocate resources including staff, budget, and decision capability related to the complexity of the  tasks in their role. In addition, they have the interpersonal skills to develop a team of people who think they add value as a manager and are enthusiastic about accomplishing the goals of the business unit. The role clarity for a manager includes organizational support to veto an appointment (their manager has the authority to fire the employee if no other suitable position can be found), decide task assignment, decide personal effectiveness and merit awards, and decide to initiate removal from a role.

If the above conditions are satisfied, Jacques and Clements would predict a higher performance level from that business unit versus those that have role confusion. In our BizPsych division we encounter organization after organization that are addressing these topics in their design. If it comes to dealing with human performance, we are all in continuous recalibration mode.

Have a day filled with loving kindness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

The post Psychology of Performance – 15 Business Unit Effectiveness, Management and Leadership appeared first on MINES and Associates.

Negative emotional states arise from expectation violations and then get potentiated by adding judgments about the negative feelings. Does “whipping yourself” help you improve? I had the opportunity to play in the DAD’s day (Dollars Against Diabetes) golf tournament sponsored by the Colorado Building Trades today. Golf is a wonderful laboratory in which there is a richness of self-talk, expectations, and emotional states  available to observe in myself and others. A feature of golf is that each shot actually is independent of all of the other shots one makes (much like many aspects of our work). As we let our self-talk build, it can decrease performance; but, the mind has a wonderful ability reset itself in the moment and let go of the thoughts about the previous shot. Practicing a mindfulness meditation technique of just observing the thoughts, feelings, and physical experiences without judging them and then visualizing the shot (performance) you want can go a long way in improving your performance.

This works in the rest of our life as well

It requires gently returning to this technique each time as the old thought habit patterns return with force until you learn to to redirect and focus on the outcome you want, not the outcome you do not want.

Have a day filled with mindfulness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

The post Psychology of Performance – 14 Negative Emotional States appeared first on MINES and Associates.

1. Spend More Time with Family and Friends
Recent polls conducted by General Nutrition Centers, Quicken, and others shows that more than 50% of Americans vow to appreciate loved ones and spend more time with family and friends this year. Make plans to meet up with friends for an evening of comaraderie at a favorite restaurant or take the family to a popular place for family fun. Work shouldn’t always come first!

2. Fit in Fitness
The evidence is in for fitness. Regular exercise has been associated with more health benefits than anything else known to man. Studies show that it reduces the risk of some cancers, increases longevity, helps achieve and maintain weight loss, enhances mood, lowers blood pressure, and even improves arthritis. In short, exercise keeps you healthy and makes you look and feel better.

3. Tame the Bulge
Over 66 percent of adult Americans are considered overweight or obese by recent studies, so it is not surprising to find that weight loss is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Setting reasonable goals and staying focused are the two most important factors in sticking with a weight loss program, and the key to success for those millions of Americans who made a New Year’s commitment to shed extra pounds.

4. Quit Smoking
If you have resolved to make this the year that you stamp out your smoking habit, over-the-counter availability of nicotine replacement therapy now provides easier access to proven quit-smoking aids. Even if you’ve tried to quit before and failed, don’t let it get you down. On average, smokers try about four times before they quit for good. Start enjoying the rest of your smoke-free life!  Locally, there are a variety of free support services, hotlines and smoking cessation classes to help you kick the smoking habit.

5. Enjoy Life More
Given the hectic, stressful lifestyles of millions of Americans, it is no wonder that “enjoying life more” has become a popular resolution in recent years. It’s an important step to a happier and healthier you! Consider a holistic healing centers for products designed to bring balance to your body, mind and soul. Or just get out and try something new! Take up a new hobby or try your hand at skiing. Go to a theater performance, or head to the local spa.

6. Quit Drinking
While many people use the New Year as an incentive to finally stop drinking, most are not equipped to make such a drastic lifestyle change all at once. Many heavy drinkers fail to quit cold turkey but do much better when they taper gradually, or even learn to moderate their drinking. If you have decided that you want to stop drinking, there is a world of help and support available.  There are also a number of treatment-based programs, as well as support groups for families of alcoholics.

7. Get Out of Debt
Was money a big source of stress in your life last year? Join the millions of Americans who have resolved to spend this year getting a handle on their finances. It’s a promise that will repay itself many times over in the year ahead.

8. Learn Something New
Have you vowed to make this year the year to learn something new? Perhaps you are considering a career change, want to learn a new language, or just how to fix your computer? Whether you take a course or read a book, you’ll find education to be one of the easiest, most motivating New Year’s resolutions to keep. Local YMCA’s offer great recreational training for beginners of all ages. Most local colleges and universities offer distance and adult education programs.

9. Help Others
A popular, non-selfish New Year’s resolution, volunteerism can take many forms. Whether you choose to spend time helping out at your local library, mentoring a child, or building a house, there are many nonprofit volunteer organizations that could really use your help.  Or if your time is really in short supply, maybe you can at least find it in you to donate the furniture, clothing and other household items that you no longer need, rather than leaving them out by the curb to fill up our landfills.

10. Get Organized
On just about every New Year resolution top ten list, organization can be a very reasonable goal. Whether you want your home organized enough that you can invite someone over on a whim, or your office organized enough that you can find the stapler when you need it, these tips and resources should get you started on the way to a more organized life.

Ian Holtz
Sales Executive

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