Why You HAVE to Manage Stress!

Work related stress: A cost no one can afford

A poll of 112 top companies revealed that 65% believed stress was a major factor in ill health. Every day 270,000 people take time off work for stress-related illness and absenteeism cost the UK$10.2 billion last year. Stress often causes a manifestation of the "fight or flight" response. Over short periods, this is perfectly healthy, and virtually everyone can cope with very short periods of stress. However, over a sustained period, keeping the body in readiness this way is extremely harmful.  Although some people appear to thrive on stress, for others, the consequences can be devastating.  Stress is linked to the development of stomach ulcers, and increases in high blood pressure.

Long-term problems

Over the longer term, stress places workers at higher risk of more serious illnesses such as heart disease and stroke. In addition, stress can lead to over-indulgence in unhealthy habits, such as overeating, smoking and drinking.  And it can be a vicious cycle - stress can lead to insomnia, depression, or other physical symptoms, which in turn decrease performance at home and at work. However, the effects of stressful working conditions on mental health are equally costly.  Depression or even nervous breakdown are both well-known consequences of extremely stressful working conditions.

Other effects of stress

It has long been known that stress can have an effect on a woman's ability to conceive, and this suggestion was given some weight by a recent study which found high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in women whose periods had either stopped or were wildly irregular. Relaxation therapy and counseling reversed these problems in most cases.

·          Most people believe stress is the main problem in their lives. However, as long as you see stress as the problem you will never know that it is the way in which you allow it to affect you that is the real reason you are stressed-out and often overwhelmed!

·          You may not realize it, but we all need stress in order to live. We would literally become human vegetables without stress because of the numerous forms of necessary stimulus it provides. Stress in-and-of it-self is benign.

·          The secret of total mastery over stress is so very simple: If you could step back for just a split second and observe your response to any form of stress, in that very moment everything could change.

·          The hidden factor behind why we always succumb to stress has mainly to do with one very significant emotion: "resentment" or anger. Can you honestly say that you are free from those little impulsive sparks of anger or resentment?

·          You are tired, the checker is rude and the moment is ripe with potential. Two different outcomes are possible at this juncture. #1- You react, get upset and either get into a argument with the checker (in which case people see you as a jerk), or: #2- You just step back and observe her.

·          Do you see how once objectively removed from reacting you might contribute to a solution rather than a problem?

·          The "hot-potato." Principle #1- The minute you become affected by any negative external stimulus, someone who's inpatient or any kind of stimulus that you might think of as negative, its almost literally like taking a “hot potato” from someone.

·          Why do we take the "hot-potato?" Because you have unconsciously or impulsively agreed to take on a problem that belongs to someone else that you did not have to accept.

·          Do you see how little tiny irritations have the power to knock you right out of your center and begin to ruin your attitude? It is important to understand that stress does one thing equally to every human being; It challenges you. It puts you on the spot.

·          Now, here is Principle #2- All forms of stress are requiring of you something that you may not have: Patience.

·          Principle #3- When you are irritated by anything you are literally knocked out of your center. Why?

·          Because in the very moment you are affected by the source of the irritation, as you react you literally give control of yourself over to the source as if it had authority or power over your attitude.

·          You allow it to gain control over you as you lose objectivity. How?

·          Almost invariably, just seconds before you have an experience with a pressure source, you are lost in thought.

·          Because unless you are aware or in the moment, when you encounter a pressure source you are not going to be ready for it because you are off-guard.

·          Remember: It's not so much that the pressure outside of us is the problem, but rather the way that we respond to it when we encounter it. This is the key to taking back your personal power. 

·          The reality is that you have no control over a most things that happen in this life. Can you help it if you get grid-locked in traffic? You can't stop somebody from breaking into your apartment and stealing your belongings.

·          There are millions of things you have no control over. But there is one thing you always have control over, and this is what you have to begin to accept right now: You have to accept this new paradigm:

·          You have the power to control your response to stress.

·          Stress is a constant. Pressure is a constant. But the other more important constant is your capacity and your ability to confront it with the power of objectivity.

·          Lots of people have a proclivity to set goals in order to make things happen in their lives. But the moment you set a goal you are unknowingly creating pressure on yourself, from yourself.

·          This is when you are the most susceptible to stress. Because every little thing that begins to get in the way of your accomplishing goals becomes a source of irritation.

·          Every day there are innumerable little irritations or impediments that get in the way of what you want and prevent you from experiencing the results that you desire. Now we begin to experience another key word, which is "frustration." How often do you feel frustrated?

·          Are you an outcome or "process-oriented person." The power of process is this:  Process liberates you to feel a new sense of inner freedom because for perhaps for the first time in your life, when you choose to let the process be more important that the outcome you begin to know that you have the time to do all the things that need to be done.

·          When you embrace process, you can let go of the need to be pressured by goals, people, reward, and guilt.

·          And believe it or not, your attitude radically shifts so that instead of seeing problems as negative experiences you come to see them as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

·          What is it an opportunity to do? It's an opportunity to just simply focus for a moment.

·          Like exercise or weightlifting when you do your work-out you do some reps, and then stop for a minute and rest.

·          I want you to understand this simple point and I am going to explain it again and again until it sinks in...  once you learn to be objective,  pull back, stop reacting, being resentful, being angry about the little tiny irritations that rob you of energy all day long... When you learn to stand back, take a deep breath, and relax, at this point you begin to have a whole new perspective and feel a sense of personal power.

·          Intuition is a very powerful part of your mind. And believe it or not, It's a side affect of objectivity. Beware: there is a great danger of being controlled by external pressures all the time. Resentment or anger is often an inferior response to an unreasonable pressure.

·          Every time you become upset, every single time you are aggravated by a pressure or stress this is what happens; you are becoming the effect of an external cause.

Take a close look at that glass of water. Half empty? Half full? What you see could make a difference, not only in your daily health, but in how long you live. So say the results of a new Mayo Clinic study that tracked 839 people over 30 years. In the 1960s, study participants took a standardized test to determine whether they were optimistic, pessimistic or somewhere in between. Those who scored high on the pessimism scale turned out to have a 19% greater chance of premature death than those who scored more optimistically.

Multitasking is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned

How to cut through the info blitz and actually get some work done
By Steve Berlin Johnson DISCOVER

The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s college London sent the world of info junkies into a mild panic earlier this year by declaring that e-mail might do more damage to your brain than smoking pot. Of course, a closer examination of the study is less startling but still fascinating. Researchers asked two sets of subjects to take IQ tests. One group had to check e-mail and respond to instant messages while taking the test. The second group just sat down and did the test without distractions.

Surprise, surprise, the distracted group didn’t do as well on the test—10 points worse than the control group. In similar testing conditions, people intoxicated by marijuana had scores 8 points lower. So researchers drew attention to their study by noting that multitasking is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned.

The IQ loss also turns out to be temporary. Remove the multitasking requirement, and test scores jump back to normal. Nonetheless, because the study generated such a buzz, it does tell us something useful—many of us suspect we’re not doing our best thinking in front of a computer screen. We’re worried about what cultural critic David Shenk calls “data smog” as we wade through e-mail, voice mail, and instant messages, as well as the near-infinite distraction of surfing the World Wide Web. This is the dark side of the connected age: We have vastly more information at our fingertips than ever before but less time to make sense of it. Strategies for dealing with infomania—a term coined by those researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry —involve variations of pulling the plug. Some people detox by retreating to a cabin with old-fashioned print on paper for a week once a year (Bill Gates does that). Others restrict their time on the computer to no more than an hour a day (Discover associate editor Kathy Svitil, who works from home, says her kids’ constant cry is, “Mommy, when are you going to get off the computer?”). Limited-time tactics are creeping into the corporate workplace too: The marketing department at Veritas Software recently instituted a policy of e-mail-free Fridays. A better solution may lie in the design of interfaces. Data smog is prevalent because modern software has become increasingly adept at displaying multiple streams of information on a screen. Perhaps, instead of time away from the screen, what we really need are better.

Meditation Associated With Increased Grey Matter In The Brain

sciencedaily.com  - Meditation is known to alter resting brain patterns, suggesting long lasting brain changes, but a new study by researchers from Yale, Harvard , Massachusetts General Hospital , and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows meditation also is associated with increased cortical thickness. The structural changes were found in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing, the researchers report in the November issue of NeuroReport. Although the study included only 20 participants, all with extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation, the results are significant, said Jeremy Gray, assistant professor of psychology at Yale and co-author of the study led by Sara Lazar, assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital. "What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone's grey matter," Gray said. "The study participants were people with jobs and families . They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day, you don't have to be a monk." Magnetic resonance imaging showed that regular practice of meditation is associated with increased thickness in a subset of cortical regions related to sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing. The researchers also found that regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex. "Most of the regions identified in this study were found in the right hemisphere," the researchers said. "The right hemisphere is essential for sustaining attention, which is a central practice of Insight meditation." They said other forms of yoga and meditation likely have a similar impact on cortical structure, although each tradition would be expected to have a slightly different pattern of cortical thickening based on the specific mental exercises involved.