<ul><li>Solitude is the strength of being alone </li><li>Loneliness is the weakness of being alone </li></ul>

Solitude Vs Loneliness

Talk to yourself out loud whenever you liked the way you acted or you know you did it bad

Pinpoint Evaluation 

<ul><li>Care </li><li>Character</li><li>Competence </li><li>Consistency </li></ul>

4 Ways A Person Can Be For Us 

You can actually be spiritual and also strive for external things.

False Paradox 

Before Judging Someone Else’s Behaviors…

<ul><li>Breathwork: to come back into alignment</li><li>Visualization: art of visualizing what something will look like (the process)</li><li>Mantra: sound </li></ul>

Types Of Meditation 

Use it as a signal of what matters to you, not as a push that makes you do stuff you don’t want to do, or don’t do something you want to.

The Correct Use Of Fear 

They are not bad for us, what’s bad is how we react to them.

The Impact Of External Events

Stop waiting for someone to change your life, you have to change your life

Don’t focus on that. Instead, be obsessed with your pirposo

About Work - Life Balance 

<ol><li>Learn something </li><li>Launch something </li><li>Love something </li></ol>When you learn something you can launch it and then you learn to love it.

How To Be Happy

As an addition, not a substraction. You’ll always be learning something.

How To Look At Life

<ul><li>How do I feel about myself?</li><li>What do I do for money?</li><li>Who do I give my love to?</li><li>How do I serve on these</li></ul>

The 4 Most Important Decisions 

Would You Like To See More Like This? 

Amazing way of balancing hard work and pleasure on life 

Jay Shetty is the best-selling author of Think Like a Monk, host of the No. 1 podcast On Purpose, spiritual friend to celebrities from Ellen Degeneres to Oprah Winfrey, and a former monk. 




Jay is one of the most wise people I have ever met. Very few people can reach into depths of insight on suc…

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Religion & Spirituality

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Personal Development

mindfulness

Mindfulness

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Health

communication

Communication

‎The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: E119: Jay Shetty: The 3 Simple Things A Happy Life Needs en Apple Podcasts

In everyday life, it's easy to get sucked into the prevailing culture of presenteeism where we show up to work, even if we're mentally checked out. We know what's expected of us at work and what's acceptable and feel we can't take time off for lunch or go for a walk when we need a break. These office rules hold us back and limit our success.

Presenteeism

Do the opposite of what makes sense. For example, if you know your commute to work will be on a packed tube and won't give you the right frame of mind for the day, find another way such as a riverboat. It may be slow but it may help you to arrive at work more energised.

Do the opposite

Work from home can mean extended days and tasks that creep into the weekend. Every Friday, start clearing the decks around 3 p.p. to do something refreshing such as going for a walk, cycling, or reading a book.

Experiment with a "FriPlay" afternoon

Research shows that when we want to improve something, we add something. However, subtracting can be a better solution. Consider what you can remove in your work life to improve it.

Subtract, not add

Professor Francesca Gino taught two classes at Harvard Business School, where she experimented with her footwear. For one class, she wore dress shoes. For the other class, she put on her favourite red sneakers. She discovered that her students were more attentive and laughed more when she wore the red sneakers. The difference was that the sneakers made her feel more confident. What can you wear from your wardrobe to boost your confidence?

Wear your red sneakers

In his book In Praise of Wasting Time, Alan Lightman relates a story from a fellow student, Paul, who used to sit on a bench for hours, doing seemingly nothing. That Paul is Paul L. Schechter, now a famous astronomer and observational cosmologist and recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences. He got his ideas from sitting on that bench.

Sit on a bench

When you're working hard, it's vital to pause and celebrate how far you've come. If you're a freelancer or your company doesn't have an annual party, throw yourself one. Celebrate your work anniversaries, award yourself, deliver an address, or go out for dinner with a plus one.

Hold a party for one

How to get back on track if you feel mentally checked out.

career

Career

6 ways to shake a habit of presenteeism

Most of what people care about can be considered a skill. For example, well-being is a skill; not suffering is a skill; noticing and regulating your emotions is a skill. Start to practice the skill of mindfulness, which is learning to notice the nature of your experience without reacting. For example, say you fear public speaking, and the default position is to have anxiety and worry in advance about that experience. So you talk to yourself about these concerns and think you have no alternatives.Mindfulness is a way just to feel your anxiety and be indifferent to it.

Well-being is a skill we can practice

Anxiety feels very similar to excitement. You feel these tingles. But the difference is the story you tell yourself. For example, you experience these feelings as excitement on a rollercoaster, but when you have an interview or are about to walk out on stage, you may feel it's unbearable. In these situations, just stepping back and realising the power of framing will help the physiology to dissipate.

The power of framing

Depression will tend to produce depressive thoughts, and the depressive thoughts will tend to feed back on the state. People may lose their commitment to doing everything that is good to do. You may have to push yourself to exercise and socialise and do things that you may not want to do. You feel kind of stuck. But that is the story you are thinking and telling yourself. You can reframe this continually and tell yourself a better story. You can change the code you're running.

The physiology of depression

Use gratitude. For example, when you're on your way to a job you don't like, and you're frustrated, you can think of all the negative things that could happen to you, and if you could just return to this moment, you would be thankful. Nothing about your reality change, but reframing how you think can let light in.

How to change the story you tell yourself

Eventually, we want to find ourselves in the usual position to effortlessly cooperate with creative and happy strangers. We want open conversation and have other people point out errors in our thinking and in the conversation we have with ourselves.

The generic state of being

Sam Harris gives an inspirational talk on overcoming anxiety & depression.

Sam Harris gives a truly inspirational speech on overcoming anxiety & depression. Follow this video's life advice and use meditation to seek happiness and change your future! Subscribe for Motivational Videos Every Weekday, Helping You Get Through The Week! http://bit.ly/MotivationVideos Subscribe to Tom Bilyeu’s channel for more inspiring speeches: https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu Follow us on: Instagram: http://bit.ly/2rhGNMY Facebook: http://bit.ly/2r85DC3 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2qir5TO Music exclusively created by BLU. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvzhTdrsG3Hnebu0a74eixA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blumusic_ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3acyitLt6zs7sGDwvDrTUw?si=WlHcL2UpQOSEACYtdNST4A ----------------------------------------­­------------------------- Footage licensed through Videoblocks and Artgrid. ----------------------------------------­­------------------------- Help us caption & translate this video! http://bit.ly/Translate4Motivation

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Mental Health

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Videos

Sam Harris gives a truly inspirational speech on overcoming anxiety & depression. Follow this video's life advice and use meditation to seek happiness and change your future!

Subscribe for Motivational Videos Every Weekday, Helping You Get Through The Week! http://bit.ly/MotivationVideos

Subscribe to Tom Bilyeu’s channel for more inspiring speeches:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu

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Music exclusively created by BLU.
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Motivation Madness

Sam Harris Life Advice Will Change Your Future (MUST WATCH)

Mindfulness is not rocket science, it is simply the act of staying in the present moment.

What is mindfulness

Have you ever seen monks and wondered 'How on earth are they always so calm'. It is just because they are mindful of the present situation.They never constantly think about the future or past, they justthink about the task at hand and hence are more calm.

Mindfulness helps you remain calm and happy

There are several advantages of mindfulness are:1) Reduced anxiety2) Less stress3) More concentration4) Reduced suferring etc.

Advantages of mindfulness

The best way to cultivate mindfulness is through long-term meditation.

How to cultivate mindfulness

<a href="https://selfdevelopmentfreak.blogspot.com/2022/01/mindfulness-it-changes-everything.html?m=1">Click on this link and learn more about mindfulness</a>

A little learning is a dangerous thing

This ideas tell you about how to remain happy and calm. Mindfulness is a meta skill that improves all other aspects of life

meditation

Meditation

Mindfulness - It changes everything

An overly intense focus on a goal can lead to what cognitive psychologists call goal neglect. That may seem counterintuitive to the average goal-oriented MBA or entrepreneur, but take, for example, the dynamic at work in micromanagement. 
Often, when leaders micromanage employees, an intense focus on task performance distracts those leaders from the larger goals of the company. They obsess over the trees and neglect the forest—and drive employees crazy while they’re at it.

Too Much Focus On The Goal

Where you direct your focus is a function of the brain’s attention system. This system has three subsystems:
<ul>
<li>The flashlight (or orienting system), which enables you to selectively direct and concentrate your attention;</li>
<li> The floodlight (or alerting system), which enables you to take in the larger picture;</li>
<li> The juggler (or executive function), which enables you to align your actions to your aims.</li>
</ul>

The Three Ways Of Focus Direction

Meta-awareness is the simultaneous awareness of your focus in the present moment and of the limits of that focus. 
It allows us to more fully understand where we sit within the situation. It is the firefighter’s consciousness of where his attention is directed in the moment, which, in turn, enables an awareness of what he might be missing.

Meta-Awareness

We know we can become aware of where our mind is, but oftentimes it’s triggered by some external thing, like taking the wrong exit off the freeway and realizing, ‘Oh my gosh, my mind was totally somewhere else.’ What we want to do is elicit that checking-in quality in our minds with more regularity.Leaders, especially, don’t want to have to make mistakes to align their focus. Instead, they engage in mental practices that train them to watch their minds, moment by moment.

Becoming Aware Of Your Awareness

Imagine sitting on a riverbank on a big boulder that’s sturdy and stable, and watching the contents of your conscious experience flow by as if it were the water itself. You’re not going to go chase every leaf or every fish or whatever you see flowing down the river; you’re going to watch it passing by. You hone meta-awareness by watching your stream of consciousness.

The River of Thought

Like many mindfulness exercises, the River of Thought feels at odds with the decisive, action-driven orientation often ascribed to great leaders, but that is the whole point.It allows us to take a very different stance toward our experience. It’s very rare that we experience something as neutral observers. We usually have a story or an opinion about it, and we’re jumping to action. That can serve leaders poorly. If they make up a story that’s incorrect or jump too quickly in the wrong direction, it’s going to mean trouble.

The Non-Action Approach

Watching your mind wander without engaging is easier said than done. But learning to be more conscious of where you are directing your attention—and ensuring that wherever you are focused in a particular moment is the right place to be—seems well worth the effort.Really exceptional leaders are aware of where their mind is moment by moment, and that means they know when they are vulnerable.

The Bottom Line

University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha explains why and how leaders should hone their meta-awareness.

productivity

Productivity

Pay attention to your attention

Wordle, the online game — a puzzle that tasks players with working out a mystery word — has quickly become a viral sensation, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/11/wordle-creator-overwhelmed-by-global-success-of-hit-puzzle">with around 300,000 players</a> at the start of 2022. By late January, that number had surged to nearly <a href="https://theconversation.com/wordle-how-a-simple-game-of-letters-became-part-of-the-new-york-times-business-plan-176299">3 million</a>. It’s been deemed a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/01/13/wordle-word-game-pandemic/">“drug”</a> and an <a href="https://theconversation.com/codecracking-community-and-competition-why-the-word-puzzle-wordle-has-become-a-new-online-obsession-174878">“obsession,”</a> and was recently bought for at least $1 million by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/crosswords/nyt-wordle-purchase.html">New York Times</a>. Wordle’s now-iconic grid has been used in ads for <a href="https://twitter.com/dominos/status/1486853886489026560">Domino’s Pizza</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MadOMarketing/status/1490534128743108610?s=20&t=Leyu_-sIU5bkmZis-7F46g">Guinness</a> beer alike. It’s even inspired imitators, like the cheekily-named <a href="https://brdl.glitch.me/">BRDL</a>, which asks players to guess the correct “banding code,” or four-letter nicknames for birds.

Wordle: The Game Everyone Is Playing

The game’s concept is simple enough: Once a day, players are given six chances to guess the correct five-letter mystery word. (If you guess a letter correctly, one of the tiles in the game’s grid turns yellow; if you guess the right letter in the right place, it turns green.) The same word appears for every player, anywhere in the world. And much like its game design, Wordle’s appeal might seem similarly straightforward — a dependable diversion for our <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.21.21263740v1">pandemic-addled brains</a>, releasing a rush of dopamine each time the game’s coveted green boxes pop up.

The Concept Of Wordle

As we get closer and closer to the answer with each new guess, we get a little bit more confident that we’re on the right track.Our brains are probably computing the likelihood that the next guess is right. Then, when those five green letters are revealed at the end of the puzzle — even if you didn’t guess them correctly — it gives players a boost that psychologists call a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721410388803">sudden influx of fluency</a>. In other words, that satisfying ‘aha!’ moment that feels so good, and that we’re hard-wired to chase.

The A-Ha Moment

Another of Wordle’s uniquely compelling aspects is that a new puzzle is only offered once a day. That helps keep the experience fresh and novel and allow players to really relish the experience. Because you know that there’s only one [puzzle a day], maybe there’s some scarcity involved.This may be the only fun little thing you’ll do today, so maybe people savour it.

Only One Word A Day: Creating Scarcity

Those grey, green and yellow boxes populating your social media feed aren’t just visual clutter — they’re a testament to the game’s built-in shareability. Since everyone is trying to guess the same answer, Wordle has quickly become a virtual water cooler, allowing players to share scores with colleagues, friends and family members with ease. In short, it creates a <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html">common in-group identity</a>, which helps us forge stronger bonds with others.

Social Comparison: Those Squares On Twitter Feeds

There’s another reason that sharing our Wordle grids with others — and seeing them shared back — feels so good. It’s a striking example of what psychologists call the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-21802-010">shared reality theory</a>, or our need to align our own internal, subjective experiences with the experiences of others.  We want verification that our experience is similar to the experience of those we care about.

Sharing Reality

Unpacking the psychological science behind the popular puzzle game that's taken the internet by storm.  

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

product

Product & Design

Can't Stop Playing Wordle? Science Might Be Able to Explain Why

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

Jiddu K

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort

To understanding what freedom is actually and life in its totality 

Born in poverty in India, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) became a leading spiritual and philosophical thinker whose ideas continue to influence us today. George Bernard Shaw declared that he was the most beautiful human being he had ever seen and Aldous Huxley was one of his close friends. Whether debating politics with Nehru, discussing theories with Rupert Sheldrake and Iris Murdoch, or challenging his students not to take his words at face value, Krishnamurti engaged fully with every aspect of life. He is regarded by many modern religious figures as a great teacher, an extraordinary individual with revolutionary insights; Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra are all indebted to his writings. Freedom from the Known is one of Krishnamurti's most accessible works. Here, he reveals how we can free ourselves radically and immediately from the tyranny of the expected. By changing ourselves, we can alter the structure of society and our relationships. The vital need for change and the recognition of its very possibility form an essential part of this important book's message.

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Motivation & Inspiration

books

Books

Born in poverty in India, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) became a leading spiritual and philosophical thinker whose ideas continue to influence us today. George Bernard Shaw declared that he was the most beautiful human being he had ever seen and Aldous Huxley was one of his close friends. Whether debating politics with Nehru, discussing theories with Rupert Sheldrake and Iris Murdoch, or challenging his students not to take his words at face value, Krishnamurti engaged fully with every aspect of life. He is regarded by many modern religious figures as a great teacher, an extraordinary individual with revolutionary insights; Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra are all indebted to his writings. Freedom from the Known is one of Krishnamurti's most accessible works. Here, he reveals how we can free ourselves radically and immediately from the tyranny of the expected. By changing ourselves, we can alter the structure of society and our relationships. The vital need for change and the recognition of its very possibility form an essential part of this important book's message.

J Krishnamurti is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. J Krishnamurti has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. J Krishnamurti's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

J Krishnamurti

Freedom from the Known

If you want to draw energy for life from somewhere, choose passion and, most importantly, do not consider it as another activity that you will be doing, but as a rest from everyday life filled with duties.

How to find a passion? 

Passion does not tire. You can stay awake, and if you do this, you can devote yourself wholeheartedly to her. Think about what you like to do, what you might be doing until you are out of breath all day long. Passion is something that may seem trivial at first glance. It grows with you. Even a tiny little thing that you care for can become a goal in your life.

What's not bothering you doing?

The most important thing in finding it is having ambition, motivation, and the will to act. Their lack will prevent you from discovering the passion dormant in every human being.

How to discover passion?

Think if there is anyone or anything that inspires you. Try to do what someone else does. Do not explain to yourself that you are not suitable for this. In passion, it is essential to interact with it and not to compare it to the skills or achievements of others. It is your passion, even if it has the same name as your neighbors. Remember that when discovering it within you. You can do it by trial and error.

What or who inspires you?

As a kid, we did many different things. Some we were allowed to do, others we were rebuked or not allowed to. Maybe you are now able to develop any of your childhood interests and turn them into a passion? Indeed there was something in your childhood that gave you satisfaction. Now you can implement it into adult reality, frame it with maturity and experience, and enjoy it like a child, being an adult. This is how passion affects a person.

Go back to childhood

It is essential for me - to become a full-time writer who publishes the best quality content - and at the same time -has a positive approach and is professional.

How passionate life is...

We are often told to find a job we're passionate about to sidestep a dull career. The idea is that you should pursue a passion in your career above fair compensation or job security. But passion goes further. It is loaded with the idea that you'll do whatever it takes, and this can lead to exploitation and inequality in the workplace.

Pursuing your passion

Prioritising passion is a relatively new career concept. In the 1940s and '50s, career advice centred around stability, and workers were encouraged to find positions that would support them and their families. However, self-expression as the main motivator took over during the 1970s - 90s. At the same time, industries that provided long-term, stable employment started to outsource their labour. Currently, workers don't stay at one company for long. The idea is that passion should fuel workers, not job security.

Passion hasn't always been a priority 

Steve Jobs and many of his peers famously followed their passion and pursued business ideas that were hugely successful.
However, finding success after following your passion is not guaranteed. We don't hear the stories of people who failed when they followed their passions. Research shows that wealthier families are more likely to have stable jobs in line with their passions than people from less affluent backgrounds.

When we praise passion, we reward privilege

People motivated by passion are more likely to work harder, but they may not be paid more. Sometimes, the lack of compensation is on purpose. Many employers what to hire people who are passionate because they think they'll work harder without demanding a pay increase.

Employers can take advantage of workers who work for passion

People who work in education, health care, social work, journalism and other fields that prioritise passion are known to work long hours, which can lead to burnout, resentment, and resignation. Separating your sense of dedication from the number of extra hours you put into the job can be good in the long run. When an organisation give workers more rest and control over their schedule, they'll be more productive and creative.

Pushing passion doesn't guarantee better work

Keep in mind that passion wasn't always a priority for workers. If you don't feel passionate about your job, it doesn't mean you can't perform well, nor does it mean that you can't live a happy life. Instead, ask what things excite you outside of work and how can you invest time and energy into that.

You don't have to nurture your passions through work

Passion and work often feel inextricably linked, but that's a fairly new phenomenon — and maybe it shouldn't be the expectation. Sociologist Erin A. Cech talks about why the career-passion combo favors privilege and can lead to burnout.

It's OK to not be passionate about your job : Life Kit

<ul><li>Stress is harmful only to those who feel it is.</li><li>People with a positive view of stress are happier and healthier</li><li>Most of the harm associated with stress may be a result of trying to avoid it.</li><li>You can learn to activate particular responses to stress.</li><li>Some stress responses foster energy, confidence and connection to others.</li><li>You always associate stress with something that’s important to you.</li><li>Dealing with stress is a necessary step in finding meaning in life.</li><li>Connecting with and helping others is one of the best strategies for managing stress.</li></ul>

The Upside Of Stress: Key Takeaways

Most health experts preach that stress is dangerous. Learn to manage your stress, they say, or invite such consequences as heart disease, depression and addiction. These experts say that managing stress means reducing it, either through relaxation techniques or by reorganizing your life to lessen the pressures affecting you.The latest science reveals that stress can make you smarter, stronger and more successful.

Stress Can Be Good

Three decades of research suggest that stress offers rarely recognized benefits. These findings show stress can make you smarter, more confident and more empathetic. Stress can even improve your health. The best way to manage stress is not to fight it, but to embrace it.Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake. It earned a bad reputation from research on rats in the 1930s. New research paints an entirely different picture, and most people’s daily stresses are not as severe or capricious.

Embracing Stress

Humanity’s primitive ancestors evolved the stress response in an environment far more dangerous than today’s civilized workplaces. Humans’ evolutionary responses no longer match their daily reality. The ancient fight-or-flight response – wherein stress provokes an accelerated heartbeat, tightened muscles and the release of adrenaline – impelled early humans to either flee a predator or charge into battle. The mismatch theory recognizes only this kind of stress response, but evolution has not stood still.

Evolutionary Stress Responses: The Mismatch Theory

Your body is smart enough to distinguish between a lunging lioness and a looming deadline. When you face a nonlethal threat, the body can initiate the challenge response, a mix of hormones that boosts confidence, focus and motivation. You come out of these stress experiences feeling more assured and self-reliant.

The Challenge Response

This response stimulates the release of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes emotional connections to others. It suppresses the flight instinct, giving you the courage to face the source of your stress. You become more likely to seek others’ support and to offer your support to them. Oxytocin is heart-friendly, helping the organ regenerate cells and repair “micro-damage.”

The Tend-and-Befriend Response

The latest science indicates that, far from being a toxic goad, stress can become a valuable resource in difficult moments. The stress response enhances performance. Under stress, businesspeople hold more successful negotiations, students do better on tests, athletes become more competitive, surgeons improve their dexterity and pilots handle simulated emergencies more effectively.

Stress As A Resource

Imagine you are about to give a speech. If you’re like most people, you experience the physical symptoms of nervousness: dry mouth, sweaty palms and an accelerated heartbeat. Conventional wisdom says you won’t perform well unless you find a way to calm down and tame that anxiety. But if you dampen that stress, you’re cutting yourself off from a powerful ally. The symptoms you interpret as anxiety are actually the result of a challenge response. You feel more focused. Your brain processes information faster. The world even looks brighter – because your pupils have dilated.

The Focusing Mechanism Of Stress

Stress arises only in situations that involve something that is important to you. By pursuing your values, you inevitably encounter stress. Don’t interpret stress as a sign that something is wrong. You wouldn’t expect to reach a big goal, like climbing Mt. Everest, without encountering stress. You accept that hardships are part of the challenge, and you face them because you value the goal. You won’t feel like a failure because you’re exhausted from the cold or anxious about scaling yet another ice mass. You’ll see stress as a sign of failure only when you avoid it, not when you use it.

Defining A Stressful Situation

Research suggests that trying to avoid stress may be more harmful to your health and emotional well-being than stress itself. In a Japanese study, students who tried to dodge stress experienced a diminished sense of community. In Zurich, those students who tried hardest to avoid pressure reported a loss of focus, vitality and discipline. A US Department of Veterans Affairs study tracked more than 1,000 adults for a decade. Those who said they tried to avoid stress reported more incidents of depression, increased discord at home or on the job, and more negative outcomes, such as divorce.

Don't Dodge Stress

Those who try to avoid stress concentrate on dulling the discomfort rather than dealing with its source. They might use unhealthy means of escape, like alcohol. They also may isolate themselves from relationships or withdraw from their careers to avoid the pressure. Such avoidant behavior increases stress and robs people of resources they could use to handle the stress instead.

Let There Be Discomfort

The best way to deal with stress is to embrace it and deploy it to support your effort to reach your goals. To do so, you must change your mind-set about stress. A mind-set is a “core belief,” a part of your fundamental understanding of how the world works. As in the placebo effect – in which a sugar pill produces whatever results the patient expects from actual medication – a mind-set can spark physiological or neurological responses.

Accepting Stress

Present the new mind-set in a short lecture, video or reading. For instance, psychologist Greg Walton conducted an intervention to help Ivy League freshmen feel that they belonged in the student community. Walton had the students read comments from juniors and seniors about how they struggled with feeling like outsiders at first and how that feeling changed over time. The next steps:<ul><li>Do an exercise that encourages you to adopt the mind-set.</li><li>Share the idea with others.</li></ul>

Mindset Intervention: Learn The New Point of View

The stress of daily hassles – such as long lines at the supermarket – can have the most negative impact because these stressors feel random and meaningless. Instead of appearing as challenges, they feel more like “intrusions” – stumbling blocks that prevent life from running smoothly.When you write about your values, you see problems as more manageable and are more likely to face challenges than avoid them. Select a personal value and write a short essay about it. Explain why you find this value meaningful and describe its role in your daily life.

Remember Your Values

To manage stress, learn to trigger an appropriate or beneficial stress response. For instance, if you have to give a speech, you may feel so nervous that you trigger the fight-or-flight response. But fleeing or throwing punches isn’t the most practical way to handle this stress. People tend to trigger fight-or-flight when they believe they lack the resources – the skills or fortitude – to handle a situation

Manage Your Stress Response

Even small acts of kindness stimulate the release of chemicals that support confidence, focus and empathy. Purposefully do a good deed to trigger the tend-and-befriend response, and then transfer the benefits to another challenge. By learning to manage and leverage your stress response, you will find that stress is more than just a handy resource: It is the key to a meaningful life. After all, we only experience stress about the things we feel matter most.

Don't let workplace stress get you! Tips for a healthier work-life without burnout.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Managing Work Stress

According to conventional wisdom, stress is a killer – a Pandora’s box of threats to the mind and body. Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal offers a rare contrarian look at stress based on new research that changed her mind about its impact.

Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits. You hear it all the time: stress causes heart disease; stress causes insomnia; stress is bad for you! But what if changing how you think about stress could make you happier, healthier, and better able to reach your goals? Combining exciting new research on resilience and mindset, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, proves that undergoing stress is not bad for you; it is undergoing stress while believing that stress is bad for you that makes it harmful. In fact, stress has many benefits, from giving us greater focus and energy, to strengthening our personal relationships. McGonigal shows readers how to cultivate a mindset that embraces stress, and activate the brain's natural ability to learn from challenging experiences. Both practical and life-changing, The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a toolkit for getting better at it—by understanding, accepting, and leveraging it to your advantage.

The Upside of Stress

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