Transforming Stress Into Personal Power

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
—e.e. cummings

What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.
—Yiddish Proverb

I’ve used this picture and these quotes before, but I can always stand to be reminded. I’ve even been putting “Laugh out loud at least 5 times a day” on my Possibility List. I mean, how hard is it to say “ha, ha, ha, ha, ha” or “hee, hee, hee, hee, hee”? In fact, “hee, hee, hee, hee, hee” works best for me, because it forces my mouth into a smile, and I do notice the change in my body and spirits.

But, you might say, that’s not really laughing. We only really laugh when something strikes us as funny. Not so. It works the other way, too. If you laugh a lot you start seeing more humor in life, just like smiling can often change our mood.

In Cut Stress By Anticipating Laughter? Kelley Colihan says, “OK, take a deep breath. Now put your hand on your belly. Imagine your stomach jiggling, as if you are starting to laugh. You may have just taken a step toward reducing stress hormone levels.” One study has shown that merely anticipating a laugh can lower our level of stress.

My husband and I tend to laugh a lot, but it never hurts to keep ourselves tuned up. And that really paid off the other night. I was getting ready for bed when my husband came rushing in, saying, “Jean, there’s water all over the kitchen floor! I turned the faucet off and drained the sink, but we have to mop it up before it drips on our downstairs neighbor!” He was right, of course. I did mutter a short, “Good Lord, Jean!” to myself, because I was the culprit, but then I thought of my Garmin and said, “Recalculating. Recalculating.” I got out some sponges and buckets and we started to mop up. That didn’t quite work…it was like trying to bail out a boat using a tablespoon, so I got out two plastic dustpans and we used the sponges to sweep the water into the pans, which we emptied into the buckets. That was a lot faster.

Once we had a system that would clearly work, we started joking and having a good time. I’ll obviously try not to let the water run over again, but realistically there’s no way to promise. So we bought a water alarm that will go off if I do forget. Our motto is “Do the best you can with what you’ve got.” And if that’s not good enough, get some help. It’s a lot more fun to lighten up and enjoy life than to worry about our imperfections. As I said in last week’s post: we don’t have to be perfect to be awesome.

What about you? How do you lighten up when little things go wrong? Please share your experience in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe, Robert and The Constant Skeptic for commenting on last week’s post.

Thanks also to Square-Peg Karen for her posts, especially the recent one entitled You Smell. It definitely made me laugh out loud.

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This month the assignment for Robert Hruzek’s What I Learned From… series is to take two or more of the following topics and combine them in a post: School, Writing, Children, Television, Recreation, Movies, Relatives, Friends, Heroes, Planes, Food, Pets, Trains, Time, Space, Automobiles, Technology, Mountains. I can do that!

The Wedding
We just returned from an 11-day, 3150-mile trip to to Deerfield, IL for my daughter’s wedding, so friends, relatives and food are well covered. Kaitlin and Torben had an open house/party at their house Friday evening, with 40-50 friends and relatives present and with an elaborate assortment of food. Then Saturday evening they had the wedding and dinner at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and Sunday they provided brunch at their favorite restaurant. We were well-fed and had plenty of chances to reconnect with friends and family. It warms my heart to think of the friendliness and thoughtfulness of the whole weekend. I’m bursting with pride to be related to both of them. It’s not too much to say they’re my heroes.

Children were invited to all three affairs, and a baby sitter, children’s menus and entertainment were part of the wedding planning. One of the things that touched my heart was that Abby, Kaitlin’s eight-year-old next-door neighbor and flower girl, was so excited about the wedding that she insisted she and Kaitlin get their hair, face and nails done Saturday morning. Kaitlin good-naturedly agreed, even though she wiped most of the makeup off as soon as she got home. (Her exact words were: “Mom, I look like a clown!”) She didn’t like the way her hair was fixed…it wasn’t really “her”…but she left it alone until the next day for Abby’s sake. Yes, it was a kid-friendly affair. And yes, I’m awed by the thoughtfulness of the bride.

Kaitlin and Torben’s four pets (two cats and two dogs) couldn’t be physically present at the ceremony, but they weren’t forgotten. Each of the tables at the wedding had pictures of one or more of the pets, and the minister mentioned each of them by name.

Some of the guests came from as far away as Denmark and Czechoslovakia, so planes were the most popular way of getting there. But others were like us and used automobiles, and some even used trains. Also, many guests used the local Metra trains to sightsee in Chicago.

The Trip
Clearly those three events were a form of recreation, and we also did some sightseeing in Arkansas on the way: Fort Smith, Hot Springs National Park, and Little Rock. Television played a part because when we were driving we watched the Weather Channel every evening to check for tornadoes. We were lucky and weren’t threatened by any, but one touched down in Eastern Arkansas the day after we left the region. There were some tornado watches on our way home, but they had already moved to the east of us. The only severe weather was heavy winds and driving rain between Springfield, MO and Amarillo, TX.

One of the biggest forms of recreation during the drive was using the new technology I brought along in the automobile. Just before the trip I bought my first GPS navigation device: a Garmin nuvi 200W. It’s not one of the fanciest versions, but it’s amazing what such a little device can do. My husband does the driving on our trips and I do the planning and navigating. I use Microsoft’s Streets and Trips ahead of time to plan the routes and the overnight stays, but the Garmin made it even easier to find our motels and restaurants in the evening, and it was invaluable in finding lunch places along the way. It’s also a great toy for someone like me, who has loved maps and geography since grammar school days. I now not only have a multitude of maps at my fingertips, I have the magic of being able to see our little car moving along on them. I had brought along a portable DVD player and some movies to watch, but I only used it briefly. The Garmin was too much fun.

We also used its calculator function to keep tabs on the gas mileage of our rental car…a Dodge Charger. We were a bit concerned that the estimated EPA was only 18 miles/gallon, so each time we stopped we noted the mileage and number of gallons, carefully writing down the numbers. It turned out we averaged over 30 miles/gallon on the freeway, and about 28.3 miles/gallon overall…not nearly as bad as we had feared. We always rent full-sized cars because we do take a lot of stuff with us, including a thermoelectric cooler which takes up half the back seat, and we need the space! I’m afraid our days of traveling light are far behind us.

I also brought along my first laptop, a Macbook, which I bought just before the trip, so I could check my e-mail and answer comments on my blogs in the motel. And I brought along my StressEraser, which I sometimes used if I had trouble sleeping at night. I was especially grateful for it that day between Springfield and Amarillo. We were passing a truck when it hit a big puddle and splashed enough water on us that we momentarily lost contact with the pavement. We almost slammed into the guard rail. As soon as we regained control I used the StressEraser and almost immediately restored my emotional balance. Apparently my practicing has payed off.

Lessons Learned
So what did I learn from the trip? I already knew what fantastic people Kaitlin and Torben are, but this trip certainly reinforced it in my mind. And the trip, as always, reinforced how much we love the mountains of Northern New Mexico. We have a good time on trips, but it’s always good to get back home. We did see some country we had never been to before, especially Arkansas, but that scarcely qualifies as a life lesson. No, the two life lessons I got from the trip involve the Garmin:

1. Whenever we took a “wrong” turn or went too far, the little voice never criticized or got upset. It simply kept repeating: “Recalculating. Recalculating.” That’s an attitude I’m going to try to cultivate for myself. Okay, so what I just tried didn’t work. Don’t waste energy getting upset, just figure out what to try next.
2. And the Garmin isn’t perfect by any means…it does make mistakes. That just shows we don’t have to be perfect to be awesome. So let’s appreciate all the things we do right rather than focus on our flaws.

This post is way too long, but I couldn’t resist the challenge. Do you ever get that way? Also, have you learned any interesting life lessons lately? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe and Shirley for commenting on last week’s post.

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I am thrilled by Linda’s work. As well as offering us extraordinary guidance toward reconnecting with the animal world, she shows us how to be more fully alive as human beings, by reawakening our faculty for touching. This is a great healing gift — to humans, to animals, and to Mother Earth.
— Paul Winter

The above quote refers to the work of Linda Tellington-Jones. I’ve used her Ttouch method at the local animal shelter, most recently with Clyde, shown in the before and after pictures on the left. As I mentioned in Finding and Bringing Joy over at Cheerful Monk, Clyde was vulnerable but trusting when I first gave him the Ttouches. He trembled the whole time, but he leaned against me for reassurance rather than trying to pull away. By the end of the first session he was smiling, and by the second session he was asking for more. That’s a common reaction, and I’m happy to oblige. The fact is, I get as much out of the sessions as the dogs do. They make me feel centered and fully alive.

Another nice thing about the touches…I can give them to myself when I start losing that feeling of centeredness and I don’t have time to go to the shelter. That isn’t as satisfying as connecting with another creature, but it’s a great method of self-care. You might try it yourself and see if it works for you.

What methods of self care do you use? What do you do to feel fully alive? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.

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The relaxation response is a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress…. [it is] the opposite of the fight or flight response.
—Herbert Benson, M. D.

In my last post I mentioned I was experimenting with a biofeedback device called the StressEraser. It’s been helpful if I wake up tense in the middle of the night. Even better, it helps me sleep more restfully if I use it just before bedtime. It has also made me more aware of my breathing during the day, especially when I catch my breath … literally forgetting to breathe. I’ve been doing that surprisingly often. The big difference is I notice it now. That’s a big payoff for the small amount of time I’ve been spending with the device…averaging about 15 to 20 minutes a day.

What It Measures
What exactly does the StressEraser do? It uses an infrared detector to measure the the tiny changes in your pulse rate, which it displays as a wave. These changes are related to the state of your nervous system, so you can tell when you are becoming more or less relaxed. Figure 1 shows a screen shot of a person in a stressful state (notice the ragged graph and all the single squares), and Figure 2 shows one of a person in an ideally relaxed state. My waves aren’t that regular even when I’m getting good marks (3 squares) for being relaxed, but I can definitely see the difference.

Why It Works For Me
I’m a visual person, so I appreciate being able to see…right away… what’s going on. I also love to experiment, so I haven’t only been following the recommended procedure: focusing on my breath and counting how long it takes. I’ve been trying other things, like chanting, slowly saying affirmations while exhaling, etc. With the device I can see how my organism responds, and it turns the process into a game. It also lets me see which techniques work best for me.

And, as I said, I’m much more conscious of my breathing during the day. The StressEraser has taught me to notice how I’m exhaling. I used to think I had to take slow deep breaths to calm myself, but the device has taught me that all I have to do is exhale slowly and completely. If I expel all the air in my lungs, inhaling will take care of itself.

Would I Recommend It For You?
If you’re interested in a portable biofeedback device I would suggest reading about both the StressEraser and another device called the emWave at amazon.com. Read the descriptions and also the reviews from people who have used them. The devices are expensive and do require some commitment. Also different things work for different people, so I personally would buy one only if I could return it within a reasonable time period, usually 30 days.

Even if you decide against buying one of the devices, I would recommend experimenting with your breathing. If you focus your mind away from stressful thoughts and gradually start breathing at a rate of less than 6 1/2 breaths per minute, there’s a good chance you will easily slip into the relaxation response. At least that’s the way it works for me!

What about you? How do you calm yourself when your life starts to become hectic? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Images by StressEraser.

Thanks to bikehikebabe and Ellen for commenting on last week’s post.

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There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. —Vicki Baum

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Socrates learned to dance when he was seventy because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected.
—Anonymous

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
—Anonymous

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
—e.e. cummings

What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.
—Yiddish Proverb

OK, take a deep breath. Now put your hand on your belly. Imagine your stomach jiggling, as if you are starting to laugh. You may have just taken a step toward reducing stress hormone levels.
—Kelley Colihan, WebMD Medical News

A lot is going on in my life right now…nothing earth-shaking, and most of it fun. But I’ve been easily startled by noise and have been feeling “nervous”. So I looked in my bag of stress management tricks and have been experimenting with some of my favorites:

• Singing and dancing,
• Laughing out loud, and
• Using a biofeedback device

The device I use is called the StressEraser (I don’t get paid for this plug, but it does work for me.) I use it at bedtime to sleep relaxed at night, and to check how I’m doing during the day. As I said, I’m experimenting to see what works best for me. I’ll let you know what I find out in next week’s post.

In the meantime, what about you? What techniques do you use? What are your stress secrets? Please share your experience in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe, Robert, Mark, and Jackie for commenting on last week’s post.

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Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
—Anonymous
 
 
The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen.
—Anonymous

This month the topic for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project is What I Learned From…Odd Jobs. Robert wants to hear about the strangest, most unusual job we’ve ever had. Since I’m a volunteer at heart, I’m not restricting myself to activities I’ve been paid for. I figure if it was something that required commitment for a reasonable length of time, it counts.

My most unusual job, then, was listening to an acquaintance for at least two hours a session, two or three times a week for several months. The woman in question was in her late 60s, had worked most of her life, and was facing retirement. It was time for her to move on, but she couldn’t imagine what she would do without work to structure her life. So she tackled the problem by talking through it. And when I say talking, that was it. She wanted no comments or other interruptions from me. My job was simply to listen the whole time.

MicheKerr. Creative Commons license.

If you’ve ever been in a situation like that, you know how hard it is to be just a listening post, with all of your own experience, thoughts and talents pushed aside. I sometimes felt I could easily have been replaced by a tape recorder or by a friendly pet.
 

How did I get into that situation?
I didn’t expect it to be like that. I assumed she would be thinking on her own and wanted someone to bounce ideas off of. That’s what works for me. I find changes are more fun when I try things and share the results with someone else. When I discovered she didn’t want that, I did try to make the interaction less mind-numbing for me. I actually brought a timer and suggested we take turns talking and listening. That idea lasted about ten minutes. Then she ignored the timer and kept talking.

Why Did I Continue?
So why didn’t I just call it quits? I asked myself that question more than once, and the answer was always: it felt like the right thing to do. The sessions were clearly doing her a lot of good, so I decided to keep going until she had made her transition. She wasn’t talking for the sake of talking, she was seriously working towards something. The process wasn’t going to go on forever. And, in fact, after several months she was started in her new life. She signed up for some courses at the local university and became involved in causes that she cared about.

What I Learned From the Experience
What did I learn? I learned how much I care about making a contribution, something to make this world a slightly friendlier, more loving place. I had always believed that one of the best ways to do that was to listen deeply to another person. But after this experience I learned that I have to pay attention to my own interests and talents, too. So I started looking for situations where I could be more than just a warm body, a listening post. I’m not at all sorry I had this experience, but I don’t feel obligated to ever do it again. Instead I’m living by my motto,

Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.

There are all sorts of ways of making a contribution. And there’s no rule that says you can’t have fun doing it.

What about you? What has been your most unusual job? Do you have an urge to make a contribution? If so, how do you go about it? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.

This post is also part of Marcus Goodyear’s Lessons From Odd Jobs group writing project.

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Activities like knitting and crochet can cause a relaxation response similar to meditation.
—Knitting for Stress Relief

Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.
—The Cheerful Monk

I used to love to knit, but I haven’t done it for years because it hasn’t integrated very well with my present lifestyle:

Still, I’m about to go on a trip which will involve a lot of sitting. So that eliminates the first reason. And…I’ve discovered Knitting for Charity. I was especially taken by the Mother Bear Project, which provides homemade stuffed bears for African children with AIDS/HIV. What better reason to knit than to show a child he/she is loved?

With permission, Mother Bear Project.

To simplify things I’ve ordered a complete kit for one of the bears. So I not only have a chance to knit again, I have a chance to make this poor old world a slightly more loving place. I can’t pretend I’m being altruistic…projects like these soothe my nerves and warm my heart. But hopefully I’m not only giving myself a double dose of happiness, I’m giving some to someone else too.

What about you? How do you give yourself doses of happiness? Do you find it increases when you share it? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.

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Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article the other day: Why We’re Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data. Like many headlines, this one exaggerates for the sake of effect, but Gomez does present some food for thought. He suggests that the human mind is as hard-wired to notice new information as a cat is hard-wired to chase a laser spot. He says that explains why some people get “addicted” to the Web.

He talks in terms of websites, but the allure of new information also extends to e-mail, watching TV, listening/watching/reading the news, and even to chatting on the cell phone. We’re all different and have our favorite forms of stimulation. Mine happens to be solving puzzles/problems. Last week I mentioned I had started doing some Word Jumbles to warm me up for doing my income tax, but I really got hooked on doing them. I didn’t worry about it too much, I just indulged until I finished the book so it would no longer sit around tempting me. But that excitement was powerful.

And power like that isn’t bad. It’s simply motivation we can learn to use wisely. I turned my fascination with problem solving into a career. My favorite nightmare used to be that I had to go on a business trip and couldn’t pull myself away from work to go home, pack, and rush to the airport. By now I’ve learned to be careful setting goals and making To Do lists…I recognize my tendency to be compulsive and simply plan around it. The trick is to have more than one thing that can grab my attention. For instance, it’s easy to pull myself away from projects to exercise every day because I have interesting DVDs to watch while I use my NordicTrack treadmill. It’s simply a matter of balancing one pleasure against another to be highly effective.

I learned this trick years ago when I stopped a preoccupation with food by finding something I enjoyed even better than eating. It took quite a while to find it…as the saying goes, “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.” But it turned out learning to play the piano stimulated the pleasure centers in my brain enough to do the trick.

Item #2 of the Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People is

 
The first step is awareness, not only uncovering what we really want in life so we have a direction to go in, but also noticing what grabs our attention so we have the power to get there.

What about you? What grabs your attention? How can you harness this power wisely? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.

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Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.
—Barbara Sher

I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.
—Anne Wilson Schaef

There’s an old Sufi story about accepting imperfection:

Mulla Nasrudin decided to start a flower garden. He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of many beautiful flowers. But when they came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers but also overrun by dandelions.

He sought out advice from gardeners all over and tried every method known to get rid of them but to no avail. Finally he walked all the way to the capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik’s palace.

The wise old man had counseled many gardeners before and suggested a variety of remedies to expel the dandelions but Mulla had tried them all. They sat together in silence for some time and finally the gardener looked at Nasrudin and said, “Well, then I suggest you learn to love them.”

An Experiment in Loving the Weeds

Learning to love the weeds in our lives…that’s an idea worth playing with. The big challenge for me this week was working on income tax. So to get in the proper frame of mind I thought of my new role model and asked, “What would a dolphin do? How would he handle it?” Another way of asking this question is “How can I get this done and enjoy the process?” Once I looked at it this way, the answer was easy. I love puzzles such as such as Word Jumble and Sudoku, and parts of doing income tax isn’t that much different. It’s just figuring out what part of the tax code applies to us and where to put the information we’ve accumulated during the year.
That’s mostly a word-logic puzzle, so I did some warm-ups with Word Jumble…it seemed to activate the same part of the brain that I would be using. And it got me into the ideal problem-solving state: a curious mind in a relaxed body. I also cleared off the dining room table so I could spread out my papers and not have to fumble through them to find what I needed. And I allowed myself plenty of time so I could take a break as often as I wanted.

Results
On the whole the experiment worked well. I enjoyed it, and I didn’t get frustrated when I had to think for a while to figure something out. That meant the process probably went a lot faster than if I had been pushing to get it done.

The only downside was I got hooked by Word Jumble and spent more time playing with that than I had intended. But that’s a topic for next week’s blog! I think it went so well not just because I approached it with the right attitude, but also because I’ve been practicing that mindfulness…a curious but patient mind in a relaxed body… a lot this past year. All those hours working on my two blogs (this one and the one at Cheerful Monk) have really paid off.

So, can we enjoy the weeds in our lives? As we can see from the pictures above, dandelions can be beautiful if you stop to look at them rather than being upset because they’re “ruining” your garden. And I dare say, there are probably a lot more things in my life that I can enjoy if I just stop fighting them. So I suppose the stress-hardy thing to do is take Nasrudin’s attitude—by all means try to get what you want. But if that doesn’t work, do your best to love life just the way it is.

This site is presented as food for thought. Please share your views in the comments section.

Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.

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Leo Reynolds. Creative Commons license.

 
I came across a delightful story about a dolphin this past week. Two pygmy whales, a mother and calf, were disoriented and stranded off a beach down in New Zealand. Rescuers had been trying to help, but the whales were getting more distraught, and the situation looked hopeless. Then Moko, a local dolphin, came in. She pushed herself between the humans and the whales and led the whales out to sea. In just a few minutes she accomplished what the humans had failed to do in about an hour and a half.

The story reminded me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where Hobbes the tiger says, “It makes you wonder why humans think they’re such big, screaming deals.” It also reminds me of an article, written by a dolphin trainer, I read years ago. He said he was just starting to train a new dolphin and brought over some fish to feed it. The dolphin was a quarter way around the pool and indicated the trainer should come over there to do the feeding. The trainer insisted…no, the dolphin had to come to him. So the dolphin good-naturedly did, and the trainer felt pleased and in control. Except that about a week later he suddenly noticed he was feeding the dolphin exactly where the dolphin had been that first day. There was no contest of wills. The dolphin had just patiently and subtly gotten his way. Even though the trainer didn’t use Hobbes’ exact words, you could tell from the article that he agreed with the sentiment. We humans do have an exalted opinion of ourselves. It would be more appropriate to lighten up and have a bit of humility.

My New Role Model
In What I Learned From Being Downsized I said I had learned:

• Be optimistic and have a sense of humor
• Always keep learning and growing
• Be patient and bide your time when it’s appropriate
• Generate new ideas and opportunities for yourself
• Enjoy the adventure of life and have friends to share it with

It seems to me that dolphins come by that naturally. So in the future if I start to get thrown by difficult people and situations, I’ll just ask myself, “How would a dolphin handle this?” Hopefully that will quickly get me back on track. Let’s face it, life is a lot easier and more fun if we have a bit of humility and a good sense of humor.

Please share your experience in the comments section.

Thanks to Robert and Jackie for commenting on last week’s post.

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