Courage and Optimism

How much courage does it take to be pessimistic?
In a world where we can allow ourselves to be bombarded with instant information about violent conflicts, human suffering, economic hardships, and commercial airliners being shot down, it’s easy to think that the world is going bad and there is nothing you can do about it. Try turning off that information feed and stepping outside your door and looking around. Do you see bad things happening, or do you breathe in air that nourishes, view plants and flowers that grow, smell the richness and proliferation of life, feel the peace and calm in your neighborhood, hear the birds singing, feel the warmth of the sun that fires life? What is really happening in your world? Is their food in your refrigerator, power to run it, a roof over your head, a warm comfortable bed, and people who love you?Confront the pessimism as an illusion- piss-imissim.

What thoughts do you have that lead to not trying or working towards a solution?

Sometimes your reaction to a problem is more of the problem than the problem itself.

How many times have you had a problem that seemed impossible until you knew the solution, and then it seemed quite easy?

Can stress be good for you?
We get practically inundated with concerns about how stressful modern life is and it’s negative impact on our health. I read an article in the Summer 2014 Intelligent Optimist that says if you stop being anxious about your stress, your body copes in healthy ways. So says health psychologist and Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal in her TED talks.Belgian neuropsychiatrist Theo Compernolle says in his book Stress: Friend and Foe there is an optimal level of stress that motivates us and stimulates growth and development. A lack of stress can result in boreout- resulting in fatigue and depression and effecting 15% of workers. The healthiest form of stress, he says, is “interval stress,” just like interval training for muscles- short moments of stress during the day broken by periods of relaxation. Research indicates we perform better when we accept our stress instead of suppressing or telling ourselves to calm down.

Labeling an event as a challenge rather than a threat helps us respond to stress in a healthy way. Your body responds in a different way when you expect a positive outcome according to research by Jamieson published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

So if you judge stress as something functional that will help you then it will help you. It’s hard to break the habit of automatically interpreting stress cues as negative. What a great topic to teach children who experience more stress due to neurological and emotional variances.

Another scientist, Whitney Witt at the university of Wisconsin, followed 30,000 people for eight years. Their survival rates were predicted not by how much stress they reported but by how they thought about stress- bad or not bad for you. Published in the journal Health Psychology.

Being constantly connected to phones and computers results in frequent interruptions that create chronic background stress and can undermine intellectual productivity and creativity. When you see a challenge rather than a threat, your vascular system dilates so the heart pumps more blood and oxygen to our brains so we can process more information.

Great achievements can not be made without stress.