Focus on the positive

This week was devoted to paying attention to the positive.
We are hardwired to pay attention to the negative. It allowed us to survive back in the caves and it was passed in our genes. We also suffer from the negative confirmation bias. We tend to focus on negative aspects of life that confirm how bad and stressful life is. We see the negative in ourselves and in others.
Although we do not control what we pay attention to, we can redirect our attention to the positive. This is called attention training.
This can rewire the circuitry in our brains now and in the future.
There are many techniques to train your attention. Some examples are:

• search for the silver lining

• choosing to see the positive in others

• developing positive go-to staples - something you go that makes you feel better. It can be a person, or something in the future you are eager to.

• practicing gratitude - be thankful for what you are, what you have and the people that are in your life. Grateful people recover more quickly from illness and injury. You can practice being grateful by writing about what your grateful about, writing grateful letters, paying gratitude visits and writing thank you notes.

Training you attention to focus on the positive even leads to improved immune system responses and better physical health!

Mindfulness

Week 3 was dedicated to mindfulness.
Mindfulness can be defined as paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.
If you drive to work and don't remember getting there today, we were probably multi-tasking and your auto pilot was on. You probably were thinking about everything other than driving. This is the opposite of mindfulness. This is multi-tasking and research has shown that when we multi-task we miss important things that are right in front of us.
Mindfulness is not easy and does not require minimal practice. The good news is that there are tools you can use.
One of the tools you can use is STOP. It is particularly effective for stressful, challenging and difficult situations.

Stop - bring awareness to the present moment
Take a deep breath - calm yourself
Observe with an open and gentle attitude - what am I thinking? What am I felling?
Proceed positively - and do what is most important

Values and goals

In week 2 we talked about values and goals.
Values guide our lives and give our lives meaning.
Goals are the means to express our values.
I think this is better understood with an example: a goal of going to the gym 3 times a week reflects your value of a healthy lifestyle.
People that live consistent with their values report being less stressed, are more effective in their job roles and live more meaningful lives.
It is never too late to live consistent with your values. You just need the courage to change.
What are your values?
This is not an easy question.
To help you clarify your values there is an activity you can engage at: the bulls eye activity.

You need to think about 4 dimensions in your life and identify your values in each one of them:

• Work/ Education - How do you want to be towards your clients, customers, colleagues, fellow workers? What personal qualities do you want to bring to your work? What skills do you want to develop?
• Personal growth/ health - What kind of human being do you want to be?
• Relationships - What sort of relationships do you want to build? How do you want to be in these relationships? What personal qualities do you want to develop?
• Leisure - How do you enjoy yourself? What are you hobbies?

Then you will need to assess how fully you are living your values. If you are fully living your values in an area, you should mark a cross near the middle. If you have lost the touch with a value in an area, you should mark the cross farther from the middle.

After this exercise, you can try to identify interfering barriers and obstacles and create a Values action plan: a plan to help you eliminate or minimize those barriers and obstacles.

Good luck!

Stress and resilience

The first assignment is to teach the practice partner about the concepts of stress and resilience.

Everyone knows what stress is. Everyone felt stressed at least once: in traffic, with a partner, with children, with colleagues. Stress is inevitable. It is in our genes. It has been passed by the caveman that ran away when he saw a predator and felt he was in danger.

There are many stressors. Stressors are what triggers stress.

We need stress to do something in life. Studies indicate that humans perform better when they are subject to some stress. But too much or too little stress decrease human performance.

The curve below illustrates this. It is called the Yerkes-Dotson curve.

Resilience is defined as the ability to cope with changes, the ability to both survive difficult and challenging situations and thrive in life by optimizing well being. Resilience can be trained and acquired throughout our lives. Like in cooking recipes, there are ingredients that help people become more resilient. These include:

• managing negative emotions
• inducing positive emotions
• physical activity
• good sleep
• being grateful
• mindful-based practices

Resilience impacts our well being through:

• minimizing stress
• promoting physical and emotional well being
• engaging in behaviours that gives us a sense of purpose, meaning and overall life satisfaction.

And that is it for Week 1 of the course.

Motivation

Hi,
I've enrolled in the Edx course Becoming a Resilient Person: The Science of Stress Management and Promoting Wellbeing.
In this course we need to have a practice partner. This person is someone that is interested in the topics of the course and willing to listen about them.
I decided to create this blog as my practice partner.