Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Today is: National Girlfriends Day!

-jmj
Hey Gurlfran! (best if read in your best ghetto impersonation)

While catching up with my blog news, I learned an interesting fact! Today, August 1st, is National Girlfriends Day! I loved this email that Shannon Brown @ life in general shared! It's quite accurate. And being a Psychology major myself I quite enjoyed it....

          THEY teach it at Stanford 
 A thought to share...and so true… 
 "I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection-the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? - rarely. Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged--not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking! So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health."
The funny thing is that there is a day set aside to appreciate our girl friends. But in reality they are so much a part of our everyday journey. At work, at school and at church, they always bring joy to my life! Whenever I think about how one of them has impacted my life I feel overwhelmed with joy, peace, and contentment. Because through my girl friends I truly experience God's love.

So God, please let me never take advantage of the gift that girl friends are!

So if you are one of my girl friends reading this, thanks! I appreciate you so much, and all the ways that you have impacted my life, both big and small.

Love you! and all the nicknames you have given me too!

Michela

1 comment:

  1. When the article said gal pal, I totally read val pal. It makes sense: 'So every time you hang out to schmooze with a val pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health!"
    Why yes, yes it is good for your health to hang out with valpal.


    Thanks for sharing chela.

    ReplyDelete