What's Your Stress-Management IQ?

Sometimes we just can't seem to catch a break - stress happens. And for some of us, early life experiences can pump up even small stressors into seemingly insurmountable challenges.


The good news is that a recent study suggests that nearly 25% of our overall happiness is related to our ability to manage stress.


How are your stress management skills? Dr Robert Epstein's article in this month's Scientific American MIND lets you measure your stress management IQ (also available on line: http://mystressmanagement.com/). He finds that the most effective skills are related to prevention: Identify stressors in your daily life & make small changes to reduce them; Organize your space; Keep lists of what you need to do and spend a few minutes every morning planning your day; Commit to the positive; and Immunize yourself through daily relaxation practices, exercise and thought management.

Take a Lesson from Lucy

"Chronic, uncontrollable stress changes animals, making them different than normal." --Dr. Jooseph Garner

A famous television skit shows Lucille Ball wrapping chocolates on an assembly line.

As the pace of the belt speeds up, Lucy melts down.   The resultant chaos is a hilarious.  It is also a metaphor for the pain of being tethered to a job over which one has no control.  Because stress from events beyond our control is the most challenging stress of all.

You Learn Something New Every Day (video)

mas·ter·y/ˈmast(ə)rē/ Noun
1. Comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment.
2. The action or process of mastering a subject or accomplishment.

A sense of mastery fosters confidence, and makes us more resilient. Recent research has found links between mastery and well-being in Norway, Australia, and among older adults in America.

Key to mastery is leaving our comfort zone to stretch our brains and our abilities to learn something new.
Need inspiration?  Watch Rick Mereki's beautiful short video  LEARN.  
LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Emboldened by his vision I myself  hopped aboard an (SUP)  standup paddleboard today. See? You learn something new every day.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Children "have to fall a lot and get back up again." --- Dr. Ken Ginsburg

Kate Greenaway 188

"Ring-around-the-rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down."  In this ubiquitous children's game, kids clasp hands, circle, and tumble to the ground at rhyme's end. 

Dr. Ginsburg (Photo Tom Gralish)

David Costello, Headmaster of St. Peter's School asks parents for a show of hands, "How many of you want your children to be good problem solvers?"

Elephants Adapting

Resilience is the ability to roll with the punches.--Mayo Clinic

© 2011 The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

12 feet tall. 22 feet long, 6 ton strong, African elephants are the largest animals on land.  Huge, resilient, they  thrive in varied terrain, forests, savannahs, and bush.  But it's not just their size that protects them from adversity.  Elephants survive habitat encroachment, captivity, and life with man by adapting, by 'rolling with the punches'.. 

Got Optimism?

"Overall, the more positive we are, the more likely we are to have penetrating moments of insight." -- John R. Ryan

Stuck?  Stymied? Step away from the impasse and reset your brain with a blast of optimism.   Return refreshed, and watch those ideas flow.  Problem solved.

Bloomberg's Business Week explores neuroscience's impact on effective leadership,  "the body of evidence suggests neuroscience has the power to influence how we work and how long we can continue to be effective."  Specifically,  "A positive mood increases verbal fluency, improves creativity and problem solving, and helps us think less linearly, which are key to innovation. " 

Persuasive, but just how to trigger that surge of optimism?  Try these 3 time-tested tips:

1)  Notice the good.  List of 3 things you are thankful for.  Can't think of any?  Check out what other folk are grateful for on our "World Gratitude Map"  (E.g. "I am grateful my nickname is 'Legs')

2)  Walk around the block, stretch, or kick a ball around the yard.  Scientists have consistently found an association between exercise and optimism.

3)  Connect.  Call a friend,  poke your head into the next cubicle, pet your dog.  Social connectedness  and positive emotions are closely entwined and also foster physical health.

At the heart of resilience is the ability to bounce back, to reset.  The more often we reset, the better we get at it.  So next time you're 'stuck, take a few minutes to exercise your 'optimism muscles.'   You'll be that much stronger the next time 'life happens'.

Spellbound

 Credit: Sirko Molau, IMO, Archenhold-Sternwarte

The Perseid Meteor showers peak tonight.  Our yearly ritual, we watch them every August, preferably from the beach.   No matter what the past year has brought, wrought, tonight we'll lie still, focused.  The waves slap and hum, hypnotic. The sky stretches over us black, clear, untroubled.  Occasional flashes of meteor skitter across the sky,  dragonflies on a pond's surface.  Falling Stars.  Riveting, ephemeral.  Tonight we again focus on all that is good and beautiful and possible in the world.  

Go With the Flow: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Video on TED.com

"The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile."    --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Can Our World Gratitude Map Reduce Your Stroke Risk?

Speaking of Martin Seligman's work, a new study by Eric Kim at University of Michigan finds higher optimism associated with a lower risk of stroke.

"Character can't be taught like a lesson in school; it's mostly learned by observing." --Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

I highly recommend checking out Kenneth Ginsburg's website Fostering Resilience.

Are Your Friends More Important Than Your Eyes?

Being social is "the most successful form of higher adaptation known...even more adaptive than having eyes." ---Martin Seligman

Headhouse Books was founded in 2005 in Queen Village, Philadelphia to create a social community where the book buying experience would be a nuanced discovery to enrich, not deaden, the senses:

Andre the Turtle Says "OM" ओम्

We can learn much about resilience from animals.  They stay in the moment, rarely (if ever) hold grudges or complain.  Meet Andre the turtle.

 "It's a beautiful thing to see a turtle who had overcome so many obstacles," said said Melissa Ranly, hospital coordinator for the Loggerhead Marinelife Center.

Science Thought for the Day: "The Mind is Mind Boggling"

While the beach abounds with "Bikini Boot Camps",  Penn's Neuroscience bootcamp suggests we give our brain its due, too:

The mind, we were reminded once again, is mind-boggling.  Consider this (which we learned this afternoon). The brain has somewhere between 100 billion to 1 trillion neurons.

Milly the Monkey Takes Five.

Sometimes we need to reset.  A British mandrill named Millie learned to cover her eyes when she wants a break.

Fretting Won't Make the Markets Rise any Faster

Plummeting stock markets seize our breathe like the most serpentine roller-coaster.But this we know: the market over time is a case study in resilience.  Calamity, crashes, chaos, then a slow, steady regrouping.  The market inevitably picks itself up.  Dusts itself off.  And starts all over again.

This we also know: our brains make bad decisions under pressure.

Science thought for the day: the power of ordinary

Researchers in child resilience -- those looking at how good outcomes can happen in the face of serious threats to development -- were surprised by the ordinariness of resilience.

"Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities" Ann Masten, 2001 American Psychologist

Read this! The Brain that Changes Itself (Norman Doidge)

“The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility.."  The New York Times

Even if you cannot pronounce neuroplasticity, these gripping tales of everyday folk betrayed, then saved, by their brains will have you reading aloud to the people sitting near you on the beach.

Today: Find a Reason to Fall Down Laughing.