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Wendy at Lifehacker.com points to this Steven Gillman article on managing worry effectively. It fits in with the GTD theme I’ve had running through my mind this week, so I am glad to reproduce the original article in full (with permission from ezinearticles.com):
We all worry at times, and there is probably no way to stop worrying forever. There are some specific ways to stop right now, however. The following tips on how to stop worrying come from experience, because I’ve always been a bit of a worrier, and I had to learn some good techniques for stopping this energy-sucking habit. Here are five of the best.
1. Take action now. Any action towards a goal tends to diminish worry. Thinking too much about your goals or plans, especially if you dwell on the hurdles, will cause you worry and stress. Of course you should plan well, but when planning drifts towards worrying, it’s time to start doing something positive. Take action!
2. Make decisive decisions. When you want to stop worrying too much about an unresolved issues, you need to make decisive decisions, and even bad decisions may be better than doing nothing. Often you will immediately resolve the stress when you, for example, finally decide to quit that job, buy that house, or make that phone call. Nothing crowds and clouds your mind with worry as much as decisions waiting to be made. Make them now, or at least start gathering the information you need to make them. If they prove to be bad decisions, just make new ones.
3. Use mental categories. Too many things going on in your head? Put them on lists and you may feel better. It works well for many of us worriers. When you are dwelling too much on something, and you stop to schedule a time to work on it, or just put it on a list, it is easier to let go of it for now. Jot down that phone call you have to make on tomorrow’s list, and you’ll feel less worried now. You’re basically creating “mental categories.” In fact, just saying to yourself, “There’s nothing I can do about this until Monday,” can put a worry into a category of “nothing to worry about right now.”
4. Deal with problems directly and quickly. To eliminate worry when there are real problems, try to confront them head-on, and resolve them quickly. I once had to sue someone over a business matter, and I was worrying about it for weeks. When I finally just filed the papers, got on the phone, and came to an agreement, my stress was gone. Actually, my worrying began to dissipated as soon as I started acting, BEFORE the resolution (See #1).
There is more mental pain and worry in anticipating problems than in the problems themselves. If you lost a thousand dollars in the stock market last year, you probably suffer less from that today than you would from wondering if you’ll make it on time to a concert you paid $50 for. The anticipation of problems is what causes the most worry. Just deal with them head on as soon as is possible, and resolve them to the extent possible.
5. Meditate to eliminate worry. Meditating is a great way to relax and to stop worrying, but what if you don’t have the time for more involved meditative practices? Don’t worry. Just try this: close your eyes, let the tension out of your body and take several deep breaths through your nose. That’s it. Want even easier meditation? Try brain wave entrainment CDs that do all the work for you. Just pop on the headphones and they’ll relax you by slowing your brain waves.
Try the above techniques. Make habits out of whichever ones work best to stop your worries. They need to be habits because nothing works if you forget to use it. In fact, until they become habitual, you may want to carry a list of your favorite techniques for eliminating worry.
Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more on How To Increase Brain Power, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Gillman
August 10th, 2006
Diets are like religion.
[pause]
How did I mean that statement? Well, it is probably true in many respects — Insert your truism here — but I mean it in this way: people tend to belong to sects and cleave to them very tightly with a real zealot’s passion. Sometimes, too, people will bash other diets with a fundamentalist’s fervor.
Weight Watcher’s people (to pick an arbitrary example) may go around saying the most intolerant and rude things about Atkins Dieters. Atkins people (and I have been one) often denigrate and demean the low-fat lifestyle.
I firmly believe, as I have said before, that the diet that works is the one you stick to. Now, there are snake oil salesmen in the world, but their diets don’t work. You can probably guess in advance if a plan is something you believe in and feel you can stick to. If a diet isn’t working for you, you shouldn’t be sticking to it. Give it a chance, then move on.
Low carb really works. Low fat really works. Loads of people lose brilliantly on diets as diverse as the Beverly Hills diet (ugh - I could not stick to that one!) and the Shangri-La diet. Ultimately it comes down to commitment. But commitment alone won’t work if you choose a plan that is simply beyond your ability to follow.
If a diet story makes the front page of Digg or Slashdot, invariably, one of the very first comments is something along the lines of “Just eat less and exercise more, pigs!”.
Well, those people are coming from their paradigm, where exercise is already a part of their lives and they already have good eating habits - and fat people are bad, lazy, deluded people.
Those folks can really get dieters or people considering dieting steamed up. Particularly if we are thin-skinned. Ultimately, we know we need to ignore that unhelpful “insight” (for now, until we have the tools to enable us to eat less and exercise more). However, are you really any better at dealing with people who live outside of your weight-loss paradigm?
If your friend on plan x says they’ve reached a plateau in their weight loss, are you encouraging them to “stick with it”, or are you undermining their success by trying to convince them to “switch planes mid-flight”?
I think we might all benefit from taking a more detached, less passionate attitude about other people’s diet choices. That said, just like in religion, if you find a specific thing that works for you, there is a strong impulse to go evangelize. Tread lightly, friend.
What do you say? Am I off base? Let me know!
This post was inspired by:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I just began reading it)
and
Overjustification Effect Explains Away Religious Morality - Your motivation to exercise evaporates for the same reason many believe morality has a religious basis. (I take no stance on the issue, but it is an interesting read)
Technorati Tags: weight-loss, diet, morality, 7 habits
August 8th, 2006
You must observe this.
Treadmills were never meant to be this…sassy.
August 5th, 2006
Researchers in Sweden’s Karolinska Institute have looked at the results of fifteen different studies into the correlation of eating processed meats (bacon, ham, sausage, salami, etc.) and incidence of stomach cancer. The results are troubling, but in perspective, may not be quite as bad as they seem.
Stated results are that the risk of developing stomach cancer increased by 15 to 38 percent if consumption of processed meats increased by a mere one ounce per day.
How bad this is depends on the baseline chance of developing stomach cancer. If the average person has a seven percent chance of contracting stomach cancer, this is really bad news. If, however, the true figure is a .07 percent chance, it is less so. Further, it is quite possibly the nitrates or excessive salts that are responsible for causing the cancer either directly or through their effect on gut bacteria.
If that turns out to be the case, low-sodium or organic preserved meat products may be a better choice. In the mean time, perhaps you should spare that bacon in favor of a chop or steak.
It is hard to give a meaningful figure for the average person’s chance of developing stomach cancer, due to the many known risk factors, including genetics.
Technorati Tags: meat, cancer, stomach, health, diet
August 2nd, 2006
According to WebMD, if you are experiencing any of the following symptoms, you should legitimately be concerned and seek medical advice:
From WebMD:
1. If you have unexplained weight loss and/or loss of appetite, you may have a serious underlying medical illness.
2. Slurred speech, paralysis, weakness, tingling, burning pains, numbness, and confusion are signs of a stroke, and you should get to an appropriate emergency center immediately. Early treatment may prevent permanent damage to the brain or even save your life.
3. Black, tarry stools may indicate a hemorrhage from an ulcer of the stomach or the intestine. It is important to stop the bleeding and to rule out cancer as a cause.
4. A headache accompanied by a stiff neck and fever is an indicator of a serious infection called meningitis.
5. A sudden, agonizing headache, more severe than any you have felt before, could mean you are bleeding in the brain. Go to an emergency room immediately.
6. For women: Vaginal bleeding after menopause is a waning sign of possible cancer.
6. For men: A lump in your testicle with or without a small lump in the groin could be serious. Testicular cancer is more commonly found in testicles that did not naturally descend from the abdomen to the scrotum.
For More, Visit:
http://www.webmd.com
Digg this story
March 6th, 2006
Mmmm, VPX Redline Fat Burner, a new energy drink so powerful that if you don’t portion it out into 1/10th oz. doses, it can kill you.
It acts by a combination of thermogenics and inducing shivers or minor seizures.
If you drink this and die, don’t come crying to us. We don’t talk to dead people. At least not often.
Read More:
Quite Possibly the Most Powerful Energy Drink Ever [Energy Fiend]
November 8th, 2005
*Update: Now the Shangri-La Diet is now available from Amazon.
Order Seth Roberts’ Shangri-La Diet Now.
The same week the web’s diet clique became abuzz over the preposterous sounding “The Diet Code” based on Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code and the relevance of the Fibonacci Series to weight loss, a far more interesting school of thought on obesity has moved onto our collective radar- the
Shangri-La Diet.
Don’t look for a book - there isn’t one (yet)* - but self-researcher/subject Seth Roberts has sprung his test findings on the world through a recent NYT article, as well as by guest-blogging last week at the Freakonomics Blog (mentioned here a few days ago).
Roberts spent the last 25-or-so years (since college) experimenting on himself to find the diet that would work best for him- not by trying different commercial diets, but by testing the effects of different foods on his metabolism. The results have led him to the theory that the desire to eat more food than one needs is actually stimulated by an abundance of flavorful foods. He views this as a hangover from the abundance/famine cycles early man lived through prior to the development of agriculture.
The plan he developed around this theory has had the result that by eating a certain amount of bland foods (both caloric like olive oil or a weak solution of sucrose water each day and non-caloric, like water) in addition to whatever else he wants to eat, he has lost 40 pounds and maintained the loss.
Quote from Seth Roberts bio page at the UC Berkeley Dept of Psychology:
“… I am testing a theory of weight control that assumes that the setpoint of the system that regulates a person’s body fat is sensitive to how strongly the tastes in that person’s diet are associated with calories. These associations are due to Pavlovian conditioning. The stronger the associations, the higher the setpoint; the higher the setpoint, the more body fat the brain tries to maintain. This theory explains a diverse set of facts, including why people in rich countries are generally much fatter than people in poor countries; why smoking, water, and bland food cause weight loss; why the fat content of your diet actually has only a small effect on your weight, contrary to what you may have been told; why popular foods such as hamburgers, soft drinks, and pizza always combine strong tastes and “quick calories” (sources of calories that are quickly digested).
Quote from the NYT:
“During an era of scarcity - an era when the next meal depended on a successful hunt, not a successful phone call to Hunan Garden - this set-point system was vital. It allowed you to spend down your fat savings when food was scarce and make deposits when food was plentiful. Roberts was convinced that this system was accompanied by a powerful signaling mechanism: whenever you ate a food that was flavorful (which correlated with a time of abundance) and familiar (which indicated that you had eaten this food before and benefited from it), your body demanded that you bank as many of those calories as possible.
Roberts understood that these signals were learned associations - as dependable as Pavlov’s bell - that once upon a time served humankind well. Today, however, at least in places with constant opportunities to eat, these signals can lead to a big, fat problem: rampant overeating.”
Quote from Freakonomics Blog (discussing the Shangri-La Diet):
“…I used to drink carefully measured amounts of fructose water or extra-light olive oil — amounts containing about 100-300 calories per day. Now I measure nothing. I am sure however that my total caloric intake from what I will call unusual foods has not changed. The unusual foods currently consist of canola oil, sucrose water (much more convenient than fructose water), and most days a raw egg, swallowed quickly, as the Italians do. Ah, food taboos. I repeat: I am not recommending this (or anything else). I got the idea from a friend of mine; a raw egg swallowed quickly is a relatively diverse source of calories without taste. Perhaps she got the idea from the Italian custom. I have only been swallowing raw eggs for a few months and overall am beginning to think they are more trouble than they are worth. The child in me wishes there were more opportunities to bring it up in conversation…”
Read More:
Does the Truth Lie Within? [New York Times- free registration or BugMeNot required"
Seth Roberts|Associate Professor|Research Interests [UC Berkely Psych dept.]
Dietary Non-Advice [Freakonomics Blog]
Freakonomics [Amazon]
Technorati Tags: diet, seth roberts, shangri-la, canola oil, olive oil, sugar water
September 23rd, 2005
Over at the excellent Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, Finn Brunton has recommended the Russell Executive Mesh Chair as a budget-conscious alternative to the Aeron ergonomic chair by Herman Miller. This chair is apparently available for as little as US$230.00 new from discounters, as opposed to the Aeron, which costs roughly double that figure.
Other posts on the Aeron:
The Aeron Chair: Are Ergonomics Universal?
July 11th, 2005
Coca-Cola Zero is a huge improvement over Diet Coke and tastes more like Regular Coke than even “Diet Coke with Splenda” thanks to the addition of sweetener Ace K.
Continue Reading June 17th, 2005
Touch Typing and monitor height adjustment may help you prevent Carpal Tunnel etc.
Continue Reading June 14th, 2005
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