Entries Tagged 'Stress Hardiness' ↓
April 20th, 2008 — Lifelong Learning, Stress Hardiness
Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
—Anonymous
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
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.
April 6th, 2008 — Love and Compassion, Stress Hardiness
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:
- I don’t like to sit very much…I would rather use my NordicTrack treadmill when I have free time, and
- I don’t have anyone to knit for, and the idea of knitting something for myself no longer motivates me.
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?
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.
March 30th, 2008 — Self-Worth, Stress Hardiness
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
They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
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.
March 23rd, 2008 — Lifelong Learning, Patience, Stress Hardiness
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.
March 16th, 2008 — Patience, Stress Hardiness
Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
—Anonymous
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
—Edward de Bono
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.
March 9th, 2008 — Stress Hardiness
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
—James Madison
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
—James Madison
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
—James Madison
This month the topic for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project is What I Learned From…the Law.
A gazillion or so years ago, when I was young and naive, I was driving on the Stanford campus one sleepy Sunday morning. I came to an intersection with a visibility of several blocks in all directions, and there wasn’t another car in sight. So I slowed to a crawl in the spirit of the stop sign, and proceeded on my way. Unfortunately, even though there was no other car in sight, there was a police car parked in a driveway behind some bushes. The policeman saw me even though I hadn’t seen him, so he stopped me and gave me a fatherly lecture about the danger of making “rolling stops”. He assured me that I was risking the life and limb of not only myself but of other human beings if I didn’t come to a complete and utter stop at every stop sign I encountered, no matter how many cars there were or weren’t on the road, and no matter how good the visibility. Being a sensible young thing I listened respectfully and thanked him for the warning.
Now I didn’t insult his intelligence by assuming he actually believed every word he uttered. I mean, it must have been boring for him just sitting there with nothing to do. I imagine my coming by must have been a welcome relief. On the other hand, I decided obeying stop signs would be less of a nuisance than getting a lecture or a ticket, so I would mend my errant ways.
I had a chance to test my resolve a couple of weeks later. I was driving on the edge of campus, on a meandering road that had one stop sign after another. There was no side traffic, but I dutifully stopped at each sign. I was comforted by the fact that the only other vehicle on the road was the police car behind me. I didn’t think of him as an enforcer, I would have been stopping anyway, but it was nice to know he was sharing my misery. Yeah, sure. After the second stop he turned on his flashing lights, went around me and sailed through the rest of the stop signs without even slowing down. He clearly had better things to do with his time. I had to laugh at my outrage. Of all the injustices in the world, this is the one that made my blood boil.
It didn’t change my opinion about rolling stops, though. Sensible or not, I obeyed the rule because I didn’t want to draw my attention to myself. Keeping a low profile around policemen struck me as a good strategy. Except for one time a few years later. I worked about ten miles from where I lived, and I couldn’t sleep one night. So about 3 o’clock in the morning I decided I might as well drive in and get something done. But once I was on the freeway, I wondered if that had been such a good idea. One car seemed to be following me…every time I changed lanes, so did the driver. I was a nervous when I took the off ramp, so I purposely ignored the stop sign at the bottom. I checked for traffic but scarcely slowed down.
There was some justice in the universe after all…a policeman was there to see me. When he pulled me over I told him what was going on, and he followed me to work and made sure I got inside safely. That incident more than made up for the previous two…the rule had come to my rescue when I needed it. I now had a much better appreciation for the law, although not quite in the way the police had hoped.
Lessons Learned
So what did I learn from those experiences with the law? Basically The Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People, especially Item 4: Life and people are imperfect, so don’t let it throw you. Have a long-term perspective and keep your priorities straight. Don’t waste your energy on things you have no control over. Focus on what’s really important to you and don’t be distracted by the foibles of other people.
What about you? What experiences have you had with the law? What have you learned from them? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.
Thanks to Ellen and bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
Thanks again, Robert, for doing this series once a month. I’m a loyal fan.
March 2nd, 2008 — Optimizing Stress, Stress Hardiness
We hear a lot these days about how happy people not only have more fun in life, they also live longer. Does that mean we should worry about our health when we’re unhappy? A recent WebMD article indicates it’s best to lighten up. It’s not being happy every single minute that counts, it’s knowing how to be proactive rather than being a passive victim in life.
Basically it’s the first three items in The Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People
1. They have a sense of meaning, direction, and purpose. They are value-centered rather than reactive and defensive. They understand that emotions are great sources of energy and motivation but are often poor guides for action. Instead these people use their values as guides.
2. They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
3. They don’t judge themselves or others harshly when things go wrong. They focus on what they want, not on what they don’t want.
Don’t forget, too little stress is as harmful as too much stress. Don’t try to live in a little cocoon of completely positive thoughts. Notice what’s going on in the world and in your life. Sure, that will cause you some stress at times, but the goal isn’t to eliminate stress it’s to optimize it. Notice what things you have control over and what you don’t. Focus on those areas where you have some influence. Know what you truly value in life and use the energy of stress to help you express those values in the world. That’s the attitude that leads to both health and happiness.
So, what about you? How do you focus your energy and your attention? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to Sue, Ellen, bikehikebabe and Joseph for commenting on last week’s post.
February 24th, 2008 — Stress Hardiness
If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it change your attitude; don’t complain.
—Maya Angelou
In the comments to last week’s post, Life Isn’t the Way It’s Supposed to Be, we discussed the joys of complaining. When my favorite job went down the tubes with a change in management, I had a great time complaining to my husband for almost a year. He was a great listener, and quite frankly, it was a fun and easy way of getting attention. Finally one evening he gently said, “You’re really letting this get to you, aren’t you?” Oh, oh. It was fun while it lasted, but it was time for me to move on.
That incident points out one good reason to stop complaining–it’s boring to the people around you. It was still fun to talk about what was going on at work, and my husband agreed. Things were as crazy in his division as they were in mine. So we started sharing funny stories riding home together. I would say, “You’ll never guess what happened today….” He would top my story with something even crazier, and we would laugh. We started looking forward to finding and sharing stories. That was years ago, and we’ve continued the tradition by trying to focus on the absurdities in situations we have no control over. The great truth is, laughing is even more fun than ranting.
But don’t take my word for it, experiment with a no-complaining rule and see how it works for you. Find a buddy to share it with if you can. If not you might try reading this article and these testimonials. Then try joining a complaint-free world for a while and share your experience in the comments section.
February 17th, 2008 — Stress Hardiness
Life isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
—Virginia Satir
The woman in the cartoon is a great example of Items #4 and 5 of the Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People. She’s tolerant of imperfection and has a sense of humor. She doesn’t waste energy on things she has no control over.
What about you? Are there areas of your life where you get stuck in the complaining trap..where you get upset because life isn’t the way it’s supposed to be? It’s fine to see things that can be improved and figure out how to take action, but it’s all too easy to get stuck complaining. I find it takes vigilance to avoid that trap. What about you? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.
Thanks to Robert, bikhikebabe and Dina for commenting on last week’s post.
February 10th, 2008 — Lifelong Learning, Stress Hardiness
This month the topic for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project is What I Learned From…People. The person who comes to my mind was actually named John Rieber, but I’ll always think of him as “the blob in the black sweater”. I had a few classes with him my freshman year in college, and I don’t recall seeing him after that. He got his nickname when I was walking with friends one day and he went by on his bicycle. He said, “Hi, Jean.” I said, “Hi, John,” and my friends stared at me and asked, “How did you know who that was? You can’t see.” They were right, of course. At the time I was foolishly heeding the advice of my mother and sister and not wearing my glasses unless I absolutely had to. But that didn’t stop me from knowing who it was. “Oh”, I answered. “He’s the blob in the black sweater. I saw him in my English class today.”
But that’s not why I’ve been grateful to him all these years. We had both been put into the honors calculus class, a small, intense class with an illustrious professor and about 12 students, 10 guys and 2 gals. During the course of the year we all bonded, and towards the end of the year the guys decided we should all have dinner together…at the freshman boys’ dorm. Now not only was this before dorms were coed, but at the time the ratio at Stanford was two boys to every girl and there was a no-cars-for-freshmen rule. The idea was that we should concentrate on our studies and learn to adjust to college life. In practice it meant the freshman girls had a grand time dating the older boys, and the freshman boys spent a lot of time thinking about girls. So when two girls suddenly appeared in the dining hall, we got a lot of attention. I was extremely shy at the time and turned a bright red, and I mentioned it was embarrassing to have everyone looking at me. Fortunately the fellow I mentioned it to was the blob in the black sweater. He got a disgusted look on his face and said, “Oh, Jean, no one’s interested in looking at you!”
That was one of the transforming moments of my life. Oh, yeah. It had nothing to do with me. It was just the situation. Lighten up and stop being so self-centered. It took a long time and a lot of practice to get over my self-consciousness, but the first step was taken that night. From then on whenever I started to feel self-conscious I would remember to get my ego out of the way. I would focus either on the people around me or on the task at hand. And if I had to give a speech I would focus on what I wanted to share with the audience. It wasn’t about me, it was about them. Thanks, Blob in the Black Sweater. As I said, I’ve never forgotten you.
What about you? What are your favorite lessons you learned from people. Please share your thoughts and experience in the comment section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe and Todd for commenting on last week’s post.
And thanks, Robert, for doing this series once a month. It’s great fun.
