Why being grumpy can be good for you
It may take more muscles to frown than to smile – but being grumpy is better for you.
A new study into behavioural health has discovered people who are always crabbit are less gullible and better at decision making.
Psychology expert Professor Joseph Forgas revealed his startling results in this month’s Australian Medical Journal.
His findings show even the most negative emotions, such as sadness and grumpiness, can prove more valuable than happiness and other positive feelings.
But if being like Victor Meldrew can be better for you when it comes to making decisions, what can other emotions or behaviour do for you?
GRUMPINESS
According to Prof Forgas, grumpy people make better eye witnesses, are harder to fool and will make better judgment calls than cheerier people.
He believes that a negative mood “triggers more attentive, careful thinking and we pay greater attention to the external world”.
SADNESS
Another part of Prof Forgas’ study compared the benefits of being sad to being happy. He found that a sad person can cope with demanding situations better than a happy person because of the way mood affects the brain’s information processing systems.
One of the many tests Prof Forgas used to prove his theories involved asking happy and sad people to judge the merits of urban myths spouted in movies, and found that the sad ones were less likely to be conned.
SWEARING
It might not be big, clever, politically correct or polite but, according to scientists, unleashing a four-letter word outburst can be very good for your health.
A study at Keele University found that swearing helps us deal with pain and that potty-mouthed people can endure pain for 50 per cent longer than non-swearers.
FLIRTING
A cheeky nod or wink can be good for your health – it’s official. Studies have shown an inoffensive flirt, even if you are not looking to follow it up, can be a great way to build confidence and reduce stress.
And as long as it is not intended or perceived as sexual harassment, studies have also shown it can improve office morale and camaraderie in stressful times.
GIGGLES
Laughter can be the best medicine and since 1995 a form of laughter yoga has been taught around the world to encourage the giggles. It helps with heart health and is also effective in pain management, stress reduction and fighting depression.
GRINNING
A big cheesy grin may be quite off-putting to some but the widest kind of smile is also good for you, with some incredible benefits.
These include a drop in blood pressure, a boosted immune system and a reduction in stress. It also helps produce endorphins, which relax the body, as well as the happy hormone serotonin.
CRYING
Letting go and having a good blub can be one of the best things for you. Tears include a powerful hormone, leucine enkephalin, which regulates pain and other hormones which regulate stress. So tears could be a physiological way for the body to reduce stress.
SHOUTING
A good scream is not only a good workout for the lungs but it is also good for the soul. Primal Scream therapy, popularised in the 1970s and enjoyed by people such as John Lennon, uses shouting to connect to subconscious stresses and issues and get them out.
LAZINESS
People who get up early and busy themselves all day long are heading for an early grave, says public health expert Professor Peter Axt.
He believes lazing about is the key to a long life and an antidote to professional stress, provided people are otherwise healthy.
He says: “People who would rather take a midday nap instead of playing squash have a better chance of living into old age.”
ANNOYING THE NEIGHBOURS
Blasting out loud music is the best way to upset your neighbours but it can boost your brain power.
According to researchers at Manchester University music fans are stimulating part of the inner ear known as the sacculus, which responds to the beat in music.
This gives the brain pleasure and makes us feel good – during the music and afterwards.
FIDGETING
A fidgety work colleague can drive you mad but fidgets are actually keeping themselves slim.
A study in America found that people who constantly tap their fingers or twitch and stretch are using up an extra 350 calories a day.
Endocrinologist James Levine, who led the research, said: “There are huge differences in the amount of fidgeting between people who are lean and those who are obese.”
BEING UNTIDY
An unmade bed may appear to be the height of laziness but it could help prevent asthma.
Scientists at Kingston University found house dust mites – which can bring on an asthma attack – cannot survive in the dry exposed conditions found in an unmade bed.
Nov 4 2009 Brian McIver
Pain Is Unavoidable, Suffering Is Optional
If you’ve never, ever been hurt in your entire life, raise your hand. And leave this blog ASAP, because the following article is not for you. It’s for all the people who got hurt at some point in their lives. And who suffered because of that.
Suffering and pain are tied together in our minds. One is giving birth to the other. They’re like a single, osmotic being. Every time we get hurt, we suffer. And every time we suffer we create more hurt. It’s difficult to even talk about pain and suffering in a detached way, this is how deep they are buried in our subconscious mind. The mere act of reading about pain and suffering is making your brain reconnect with those feelings in this very moment.
Do you remember how you felt last time you experienced pain? What were the exact feelings? Frustration? Sorrow? Despair? Defeat? What were the words you used to describe it? Suffering? Affliction? Trauma? Grief?
Pain is one of the most avoided situations in our life. We run away from pain. We’re trying to escape the pain. To mask it, to hide from it, to cover it in superfluous, temporary indulgences. We can’t stand it. Because we don’t want to suffer.
Why Do We Suffer?
Pain is external. It’s created by things out of our control. We’ve just been hit by something. The same way we get hit by happiness, sometimes. Only this time it hurts.
Suffering is internal. It gets triggered by our own feelings and perceptions of the pain. We’re interpreting the pain in a certain way. Most of the time by resisting it.
Pain is generated by loss. Loss of confidence, loss of affection, loss of hope. Every time you get disappointed, you’re losing a dream. And it hurts. We lose things we were attached to and the main body reacts: I want that part of me back. And we get this signal under the form of pain.
Suffering, on the other part, is the attachment for what we lose. The higher the attachment, the stronger the signal we receive. Pain becomes bigger and bigger.
But, believe it or not, losing parts of ourselves is natural. This is how we grow. By losing parts of ourselves. We lose our childish body and become adults. We lose our ignorance and become knowledgeable. We lose our inhibitions and become free. Every time we lose something, we’re forced to put something in its place. We create something new. We become something new.
Our loss is the trigger for evolution. We replace the tears with something we crafted. This is how we become a new being. Most of the time a better one. Because now we know what it takes to re-create that part of our Universe.
They say you grow stronger through pain than through happiness. And that’s true. You grow faster when you have all that work to do. When you lose all your dreams and hopes, you have to get to work. Fill in the gaps. Make sure life doesn’t flow away through all those holes. Be there. Do things.
I’m not making the apology of pain as the ultimate evolutionary tool. I’m human just like you and I get hurt just like you. What I do try is to lower the suffering. Because suffering is not necessary. Pain, as hurtful as it gets, might be. But suffering is an internal artifact, a self-generated response which I have control over. I may not control pain, but I can control my own reaction to it.
By giving free way to suffering I accept to lose my energy. My whole power is hijacked by suffering. Instead of using it for creating something new on that crack, I crave for what was there before. I use my focus in a desperate attempt to freeze the Universe in the very second before the loss occurred. Like this would be possible…
I Am What I Do
Every time I get hurt, I try to see which part of me is detached. What am I losing? Is the affection of somebody? Is my confidence in somebody? Is something I took for granted but it proved to be as changeable as the whole Universe? Every loss I experience creates some pain. I know I cannot avoid it. But I also know I can create something new in that hurtful cavity of myself.
That pain is the signal I have work to do. If there’s somebody affection I lost, I start to love myself more. If there’s confidence in somebody I lost, I start to trust myself more often. If there’s something I took for granted, like when I’m disappointed by somebody, I start to make and keep new promises. All those tears are signs of unfinished work with myself.
It’s not about the other guys. The outside process of getting hurt is in fact a reflection of what’s going on inside. Blaming external conditions for my pain is just another form of suffering. The real process takes place inside.
Deep down, every pain is a pointer for something we avoided to do for a long time. We’re designed in such a way that we naturally experience growth, and most of the time we grow organically. But sometimes we get so attached that we cannot break up and grow further other than through violent actions. This is when pain occur. When we don’t want to grow anymore. At that point, a violent event blows away that part of our main body which is not necessary anymore. Forcing us to start covering it with something new, and, most important, better.
Most of my pain came in my relationships. I made bad choices. Several times. I got hurt and I’m still getting hurt. It’s nobody else’s fault. In fact, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just a pointer that I have a lot of work to do in this area. And that work is about myself. It’s about trusting and opening. About accepting rejection, if that’s the case, and creating understanding. It’s about making peace with my own failures and my partner’s failures. About acceptance and freedom.
Desperately trying to tune out the pain by temporary indulgences won’t solve my relationships problem. The cavity will still be there until I start building something new over it.
And I’m building something new over it. I’m not making huge progress, but I’m sticking with it. Every single day.
Source: www.dragosroua.com/33-ways-to-get-and-keep-yourself-motivated
We as Mortals
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…
The World as I See. Einstien
The Time
The pressures on people today demand learning how to time shift. When faced with obviously conflicting priorities that “cannot possibly be accomplished in the time frame,” what alternative is there other than mind-numbing stress? The first thing is to assume there is a solution that can be achieved once you get internally coherent enough to perceive it. Internal coherence is the priority and can lead to surprising time-saving convenience.
Difficulties
During our lives we’re faced with so many elements as well, we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and have a little hope. The Tour isn’t just a bike race, it tests you mentally, physically, and even morally.
Independence Day
نظم و ضبط کو اپنا میر کاررواں جانو
وقت کے اندھیروں میں اپنا آپ پہچانو
—–
Avoid Negative Thinking – Choose to be Positive
Negative self-talk is a destructive habit and part of an essential defense mechanism that we often develop to protect ourselves. Many people end up talking themselves out of actions that may be scary or uncomfortable. “I can’t do this” is really just a way of saying “I don’t want to deal with the experience of doing this.” We are all strongly influenced by our feelings, often determining how and what action we ultimately take. If the feeling is uncomfortable, negative self-talk results; then we often decide not to take any action at all.
Many people assume that if a past experience produced a certain result, there is nothing they can do to change that experience in order to produce a different result. “I’ve tried every diet there is. I know what I should do; I just can’t do it.”
Please understand that you can make the choice not to repeat old patterns of eating, non-exercise, and negative thinking. You have the ability to choose the emotions you have. If you don’t like feeling guilty, frustrated, or doubtful, you can choose not to. You, and no one else, must decide what is comfortable for you. In order to become successful at making healthy choices, you must avoid negative self-talk and start practicing positive thinking.
Positive or negative self-talk plays a big part in your decisions. Be on the “look-out for negative self-talk and notice how it influences your choices; notice how it can negatively affect your efforts to change. For example, perhaps you’ve just returned from a week’s vacation where you took a break from exercise and low-fat eating. You tell yourself, “I feel so fat. I’m back where I started.” You feel guilty and frustrated. “I don’t have enough will-power to start all over again. Maybe I’m just meant to be overweight.” Feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, you give up.
First, reflect on the feelings you had before you decided to give up. You basically told yourself that the healthy habits you learned before your vacation were all for nothing and that you have to start over. Ask yourself if these feelings are reasonable. Are you really back to ground zero? Of course not. You accepted change and developed a new way of living; these skills are yours forever. The vacation might even have done you some good: everyone needs a break sometimes. Otherwise, you might have felt deprived and not really enjoyed yourself. It’s time now to tell yourself: “It felt good eating whatever I wanted and taking a break from exercising; I had a great time. But now I’m going to focus back on the low-fat, active lifestyle I was enjoying before vacation. There is no reason to beat myself up; I’ll just take it one day at a time.” Now you can rethink your previous decision and take action that will move you forward towards more positive change.
As you begin to understand your reasons for negative self-talk, you’ll find yourself recognizing it more and more quickly after it occurs. Eventually, as you practice, you’ll be able to recognize and stop negative self-talk before it interferes with your decisions.
It is very important to practice positive thinking and to remind yourself that you’re a worthwhile person whatever you do. Try to consistently acknowledge that you are making positive changes to improve your health. You should be proud of yourself. Visualize yourself as capable, happy, and confident. These positive feelings will help the process of change. Remember, there are bound to be times when you’re feeling frustrated or depressed. Positive thinkers know that these feelings are valid, and they don’t try to ignore them. Positive thinkers acknowledge and try to understand them, but they don’t blame themselves for the conditions that lead to these feelings. Good luck, stay positive, and enjoy all the wonderful benefits of a healthy lifestyle! [By Chad Tackett]
The Heart Math Solution
By using your heart as your compass, you can see more clearly which direction to go to stop self-defeating behavior. If you take just one mental or emotional habit that really bothers or drains you and apply heart intelligence to it, you’ll see a noticeable difference in your life.
Forgive and Forget [II]
Forgiving is love’s toughest work, and love’s biggest risk. If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love’s power to break nature’s rule.
