Thrivalry
Psychological Resilience
Mental Resilience.
three wall ery or three value ery - Orderliness Compassion Altruism & Authenticity Brotherhood Compassion
bit.ly/Thrivalry
https://sites.google.com/view/sleep-smart-smash-stress/ thrivalry
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Thrivelling instead of shrivelling.
赛 翁 失 马
''Keep Calm and Stay Alive'' Journal is based on a motivational WWII poster commissioned by the British government's Ministry of Information in 1939.This lined Journal is perfect to write anything in your mind Nurture Yourself, Expand Your Mind, Embrace Who You Are. Talk to yourself evreyday what you have been Achieved that day, what you did wrong so you can work on it and make yourself better at it.
Thrivalry (thriving chivalry gallantary antethetcal to cowardice)
http://bit.ly/Thrivalry
https://sites.google.com/view/sleep-smart-smash-stress/home/arcade/thrivalry
optimized living aiming towards flourishingly thriving, fighting to overcome hurdles.
Resilience in the age of global crises: How can we cultivate it?
Resilience in the age of global crises How can we cultivate it?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/resilience-in-the-age-of-global-crises-how-can-we-cultivate-it
What does it really mean to be resilient, and how useful is this concept still?
Life’s easy if you look at things from another point of view.
This song describes what many people understand through resilience: the ability to consider negative events “from another point of view,” one that allows them to construct a different, positive narrative.
“grin and bear it” going through negative life experiences by “unwanted” emotions of anger, sadness, or hopelessness.
What is psychological resilience?
Medical News Today spoke to three experts.
1. Dr. Mark Hoelterhoff — lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom — is a counseling psychologist with expertise in positive psychology and a research interest in psychological capital.
2. Tania Diggory is a business neurolinguistic programming practitioner and mental health trainer. She is also the founder and director of Calmer, a company providing mental health and well-being training courses for businesses and professionals.
3. Dr. Tim Lomas is a former lecturer in positive psychology at the University of East London in the U.K., author of The Positive Power of Negative Emotions, and currently a researcher at the Wellbeing for Planet Earth foundation.
Defining resilience: A difficult task
However, even psychologists and researchers do not always agree on how resilience is defined,
In a perspective paper informed by a 2013 discussion panel, specialists define resilience variously as “the ability to bend but not break, bounce back, and perhaps even grow in the face of adverse life experiences” or “a stable trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event.”
Dr. Steven Southwick, a psychologist with a special interest in resilience who chaired the original discussion panel, points out that there is no consensus even on whether resilience is “a trait, a process, or an outcome.”
Dr. Southwick says: “[R]esilience more likely exists on a continuum that may be present to differing degrees across multiple domains of life. […] Resilience may [also] change over time as a function of development and one’s interaction with the environment.”
Dr. Hoelterhoff noted that resilience can be a difficult concept to define and that using mantras from popular culture to think about and understand it may not always be helpful.
Keep Calm and Carry On
“What should [therapists and counselors] be communicating to people, and what should we, as people, be encouraged by or challenged by in regards to our own resilience? […] There was a while that everybody had a mug or a poster or something […] [with] this ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ [message],” he remarked.
Thrivelling instead of shrivelling.
Approach to surviving in, adapting to and thriving out of MUSICS, described as hardships, adversity, this trauma, this difficult thing hurdle, setback, roadblock etc.
“We saw these everywhere, and really the message is just […] ‘let’s not freak out about this, and let’s not overreact […] we’ll be OK, but we just need to keep going.’ It’s about continuing to move forward,” he noted.
1. Mastering the grin and bear it’ or Keep Calm and Stay Alive, to acquire and sustain constructive mindset loaded with tons of patience to not fall into the neuroticism trap.
2. Refraining from overreacting wishfully hoping to restore to the prior better status immediately by bearing in mind the rule that repairs tend to take ten times longer
3. Things will be OK, we will bounce back from a challenging situation,
4. It is a process of transforming and growing through and from it.
5. Never Never Never give up on the dream and try to and stay alive to thrive.
“[I]f we take a definition of resilience as […] being able to survive adversity, then I would suggest that that is a definition that […] is incomplete. However, if we change that definition just slightly to say that resilience is not about getting through adversity but thriving because of adversity, that […] makes a big paradigm shift, and what we’re actually expecting then from resilience is more than just coping.” – Dr. Mark Hoelterhoff
“If resilience is actually, from a perspective of growth, that […] we’ve experienced these hardships, adversity, this trauma, this difficult thing, and not only have we gotten through it, but because of it, we have changed as a person — hopefully, for the better — [then], hopefully, we [have] grown and gained new perspectives and have [a] new appreciation of things [in life],” he went on to say.
What makes us resilient?
The question arises, however: To what extent is resilience an innate trait, and to what extent is it a “skill” that each individual is able to build throughout their life?
there may be a genetic component to individuals’ adaptability to stressful situations.
A review published in 2013 in for instance, notes that there are different genetic factors that regulate the way in which a person is able to respond to stress.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00010/full
Wu et al published Understanding resilience in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Feb 2013 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00010
Resilience is the ability to adapt successfully in the face of stress and adversity. Stressful life events, trauma, and chronic adversity can have a substantial impact on brain function and structure, and can result in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and other psychiatric disorders. However, most individuals do not develop such illnesses after experiencing stressful life events, and are thus thought to be resilient. Resilience as successful adaptation relies on effective responses to environmental challenges and ultimate resistance to the deleterious effects of stress, therefore a greater understanding of the factors that promote such effects is of great relevance. This review focuses on recent findings regarding genetic, epigenetic, developmental, psychosocial, and neurochemical factors that are considered essential contributors to the development of resilience. Neural circuits and pathways involved in mediating resilience are also discussed. The growing understanding of resilience factors will hopefully lead to the development of new pharmacological and psychological interventions for enhancing resilience and mitigating the untoward consequences.
Environmental factors tend to alter the expression of the genes that regulate people’s adaptability to stress, which muddies the idea of “natural” or innate resilience as a trait.
Yet psychologists think of resilience as a skill that we can learn and build during life.
resilience most likely comes out of a combination of innate factors and acquired responses.
Everything when dealing with the human experience is a hybrid of natural inclination and learned behavior.
not to say that people are incapable of optimism
upbringing plays a role in conditioning level of optimism a proponent of positive psychology, popularized by Prof. Martin Seligman.
How to build resilience in times of crisis
1. Making a conscious effort to take time to address physical and mental well-being.
2. Making time for and engaging in leisure activities, helps most respond more constructively to stress.
3. Practicing yoga and meditation may also help, Heightening a sense of self-awareness and giving yourself permission to put time aside to prioritize own well-being is key to building resilience
4. Practicing journaling, engaging in expressive writing, (paper psychologist) which refers to putting one’s feelings and experiences into written words.
5. Help read a self-development book
people who have a reliable support network also seem to have a stronger sense of resilience amidst adversity.
Positive progressive pleasurable pursuit preponderance patronizing. (Plupatz) or Diligent decadence dozing.
Pluplatz hypothesis advances a viewpoint respecting plus placement of the brain and mind through regular experiencing of pleasurable experiences. This hypothesis is grounded in this pair of overlapping interventions namely Behavioral Activation/ De-activation Transitions Offered Affect Deflections (BADTOAD) and Cognitive Harmonized Operant Behavioral Activation Therapy Hedonism & Eudaimonism (CHOBATHE) and the crippling and cerebral growth retarding effect of extreme childhood neglect as observed in historic natural experiment-based observations Romanian children and the aftermath of Dutch winter famine etc., which establish the adverse impact on resilience of brain and mind of severe psychological trauma or insults that erodes cognitive resilience. Conversely having grown up in privileged circumstances places these children at substantial advantage while those who are deprived of such support suffer the aftermath of disadvantage unless remedied through dedicated efforts of devoted parenting. Plupatz hypothesis also advocates that it can take 2 or 3 pleasurable experience of comparable intensity to erase the adverse effect on the neurochemistry and cognitive processing style that underlies resilience.
Adverse impact of adversities on neurogenesis and NESDAC.
Severe childhood deprivation reduces brain size,
Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sonuga-Barke and colleagues told how they carried out brain scans and other measures of 67 Romanian adoptees who had spent between three and 41 months living in severe deprivation as children. At the time of the scans the adoptees were between 23 and 28 years old.
Mackes et al on behalf of the ERA Young Adult Follow-up team published
Early childhood deprivation is associated with alterations in adult brain structure despite subsequent environmental enrichment in Jan PNAS , 2020 117 (1) 641-649; first published January 6, 2020; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911264116 adducing compelling evidence that time-limited severe deprivation in the first years of life is related to alterations in adult brain structure, despite extended enrichment in adoptive homes in the intervening years.
Early childhood deprivation is associated with higher rates of neurodevelopmental and mental disorders in adulthood. The impact of childhood deprivation on the adult brain and the extent to which structural changes underpin these effects are currently unknown. To investigate these questions, we utilized MRI data collected from young adults who were exposed to severe deprivation in early childhood in the Romanian orphanages of the Ceaușescu era and then, subsequently adopted by UK families; 67 Romanian adoptees (with between 3 and 41 mo of deprivation) were compared with 21 nondeprived UK adoptees. Romanian adoptees had substantially smaller total brain volumes (TBVs) than nondeprived adoptees (8.6% reduction), and TBV was strongly negatively associated with deprivation duration. This effect persisted after covarying for potential environmental and genetic confounds. In whole-brain analyses, deprived adoptees showed lower right inferior frontal surface area and volume but greater right inferior temporal lobe thickness, surface area, and volume than the nondeprived adoptees. Right medial prefrontal volume and surface area were positively associated with deprivation duration. No deprivation-related effects were observed in limbic regions. Global reductions in TBV statistically mediated the observed relationship between institutionalization and both lower intelligence quotient (IQ) and higher levels of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. The deprivation-related increase in right inferior temporal volume seemed to be compensatory, as it was associated with lower levels of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms.
Millions of children worldwide live in nonfamilial institutions. We studied impact on adult brain structure of a particularly severe but time-limited form of institutional deprivation in early life experienced by children who were subsequently adopted into nurturing families. Institutional deprivation was associated with lower total brain volume in a dose-dependent way. Regionally specific effects were seen in medial prefrontal, inferior frontal, and inferior temporal areas. Deprivation-related alterations in total brain volume were associated with lower intelligence quotient and more attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms; alterations in temporal volume seemed compensatory, as they were associated with fewer attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. We provide evidence that early childhood deprivation is related to alterations in adult brain structure, despite environmental enrichment in intervening years.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/11745398.2016.1211943
Persons who had been in utero as fetuses during the famine during the later half of 1940s, the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort — died at a higher rate than people born before or afterward”. Dutch Hunger Winter silenced certain genes in unborn children — and that they’ve stayed quiet ever since.
Denovan & Macaskill published Building resilience to stress through leisure activities: a qualitative analysis in Annals of Leisure Research July 2016; 20(4):1-2 demonstrating a cumulative positive impact of leisure and positive emotions acting in tandem to develop psychosocial resource reperetiore of cognitive processing network. Stress is prevalent in modern society and coping strategies largely determine well-being. A qualitative investigation of leisure as a positive coping response to stress was undertaken using a resilience-based perspective. This approach enabled a focus on competencies and strengths in the stress-leisure-coping process, contributing to the sparse literature in this area. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of eight participants. From a thematic analysis three overall themes emerged: leisure as a buffer of stress, the relationship between negative and positive emotions and leisure, and benefits of leisure for coping with stress. The findings demonstrate how leisure facilitates a sense of resilience and its preventative functions. The results are discussed in relation to relevant theoretical propositions concerning the role of positive emotion in coping. In particular, the broaden-and-build theory provided a meaningful framework for suggesting how leisure and positive emotions acted in tandem to develop psychosocial resources over time.
Yoshitaka Iwasaki published Counteracting stress through leisure coping: a prospective health study in Psychology, Health & Medicine May 2006;11(2):209-20. doi: 10.1080/13548500500155941 underscoring the importance of giving greater attention to the role of leisure as a means of coping with stress in health practices, particularly among marginalized groups such as individuals with lower social class. The purpose of this study was to examine stress-buffer or -counteracting effects of leisure coping, by taking into account several key axes of society (i.e., gender, social class, and age) that are essential to characterize the diverse nature of our society. A 1-year prospective survey of a representative sample (n = 938) from an urban Canadian city was conducted. In the total sample, long-term health protective benefits of leisure coping became evident when stress levels were higher than lower (i.e., support for buffer effects of leisure coping). However, a health-protective effect of leisure coping to counteract the impact of stress on health was found substantially stronger for people with lower social class than for those with higher social class. On the other hand, health-protective stress-buffer effects of leisure coping were evident regardless of people's gender and age.
Glass et al published Expressive writing to improve resilience to trauma: A clinical feasibility trial in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice Feb 2019;34:240-246. doi: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2018.12.005. Epub 2018 Dec 16.
Background and purpose: Trauma is highly prevalent, with estimates that up to 90% of the U.S. population have been exposed to a traumatic event. The adverse health consequences of trauma exposure are diverse and often long-lasting. While expressive writing has been shown to improve emotional and physical health in numerous populations, the feasibility and potential effectiveness of a novel expressive writing program provided in a clinical setting to improve resilience is unknown. Our objective was to determine the feasibility and potential effectiveness of a 6-week expressive writing course provided in a clinical setting to improve resilience in individuals with a history of trauma.
Materials and methods: This prospective, observational trial of a 6-week expressive writing intervention (Transform Your Life: Write to Heal) was conducted in an academic outpatient integrative clinic. Eligible participants were a self-referred sample of 39 English-speaking adults who identified as having had a trauma, or significant emotional/physical upheaval, within the past year. Main outcome measures included: Feasibility: Enrollment, Retention in Program and Trial, Adherence. Acceptability: Adverse Events; Participant Ratings. Primary Psychological Outcome: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Secondary Psychological Outcomes: Perceived Stress Scale - 10 item (PSS-10); Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D); Rumination Response Scale (RRS).
Results: All measures of feasibility including those related to enrollment, retention, and adherence support feasibility. All measures of acceptability including adverse events and participant ratings support the intervention as being safe, well-received and personally valuable. Resilience scores increased from baseline (64.3 ± 14.40) to post-intervention (74.2 ± 13.15), t(37) = 4.61, p < 0.0005; Cohen's d = 0.75. In addition, across the same period, Perceived Stress scores decreased close to a standard deviation (20.5 ± 7.43 to 14.3 ± 6.64), t(37) = -4.71, p < 0.0005, Cohen's d = 0.76; depression symptoms decreased (from 19.0 ± 13.48 to 12.7 ± 11.68), t(37) = -3.21, p = 0.003, Cohen's d = 0.52; and rumination scores decreased from 48.5 ± 12.56 to 39.8 ± 10.07), t(37) = -5.03, p < 0.0005, Cohen's d = 0.82. Effect sizes ranged from medium to large.
Conclusion: The Transform Your Life: Write to Heal program is feasible to offer in a clinical setting, was well-received by participants, and demonstrated preliminary findings of effectiveness. Our study suggests that this novel 6-week writing intervention including expressive, transactional, poetic, affirmative, legacy, and mindful writing prompts increases resilience, and decreases depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and rumination in an outpatient sample of those reporting trauma in the past year. The program appears suitable to be evaluated in a larger randomized controlled trial.
However, during widespread, chronic crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, many people may experience social isolation.
Even if you’re someone who identifies with being genuinely content in their own company for a long period of time, at some stage, you’ll feel a need to connect with others — this is part of our human survival instinct.
Humans tend to be profoundly shaped by social connections and influences, and feeling isolated for a long period of time can have an impact on well-being.
Subscribing deeply to rule of impermanence of the challenges and constancy of change doctrine.
“Processing our emotions helps turn down the dial of the stress response in the brain and enables us to regulate our feelings and have clarity of thought,”
1. Consider who you trust that you could speak to sharing and exploring possibilities with someone you trust can unlock new ideas and ways of coping,” do not have to struggle or consolidate your resilience alone
2. look into therapeutic interventions with a professional who can help you identify your emotions and explore new coping skills.
3.
4. let go of putting any pressure on yourself to feel at your best every day.”
The role of negative emotions
acknowledging and accepting negative emotions as we experience them could actually boost psychological well-being
These were the findings of a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2017.
Commenting on the results, senior study author Dr. Iris Mauss — a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley — says that “people who habitually accept their negative emotions [in the moment] experience fewer negative emotions [on the whole], which adds up to better psychological health.”
“Maybe if you have an accepting attitude toward negative emotions, you’re not giving them as much attention. And perhaps if you’re constantly judging your emotions, the negativity can pile up,” she hypothesizes.
Yet negative emotions also play a valid role in people’s relationship with the world they inhabit. Speaking to MNT, Dr. Lomas said that “[a] common and helpful way to look at emotions generally — positive and negative — [is that they] are […] a form of information that help[s] us understand and act in the world.”
“From that perspective,” he explained, “negative emotions can be signs that indicate something is wrong, e.g., that there is a threat we need to be careful about. Such emotions can then be helpful to the extent that they allow us to deal with these challenges.”
This, he cautioned, is not always the case. If “these processes […] go awry, e.g., our information may be faulty, or the signals may be overamplified or distorted, […] emotions may not be helpful or useful and, in serious cases, may be deemed to constitute a mental illness,” he warned.
“But, overall,” Dr. Lomas noted, “if functioning ‘regularly’ and appropriate[ly], even negative emotions can help people find and maintain well-being.”
He also explained that the way in which we understand negative emotions and the various roles that they play is also important.
“One main misunderstanding [that people may have about negative emotions] may be around the concept of ‘negative’ itself. The theorizing in this area can sometimes sound paradoxical, e.g., ‘positive can be negative,’ and vice versa, until one realizes that there are different forms of positivity and negativity,” he explained.
He also observed that, under normal circumstances, while negative emotions may feel like something we never wish to experience, they can ultimately help improve psychological well-being.
“With respect to emotions, two different forms are positive [versus] negative ‘valence,’ e.g., whether an emotion is experienced as pleasant or unpleasant, and positive versus negative ‘utility’ or ‘outcome,’ e.g., whether an emotion ultimately helps or hinders well-being. So, although emotion might feel unpleasant, that is, be negatively valenced, it may yet contribute to well-being, that is, have positive utility, and vice versa.”
– Dr. Tim Lomas
“Appreciating these subtleties helps move us away from rigid, binary thinking patterns, e.g., categorizing certain emotions as either positive [or] negative, or good [versus] bad, and allows us to see the nuances and complexities of our emotions more clearly,” Dr. Lomas told MNT.
He further noted that “even when [negative emotions] don’t contain useful information, since sometimes we can indeed feel bad without it seeming to have any identifiable purpose, it can still be helpful to try to acknowledge and accept their presence.”
“This not only can be conducive to well-being in itself, as shown in the emerging literature around mindfulness, but, moreover, trying to resist them can sometimes be counterproductive, e.g., it paradoxically may serve to make such emotions more tenacious and durable,” he explained.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Going beyond resilience
Although thinking of resilience as our adaptive capacity to cope with stressful situations may be a useful starting point, some specialists, including Dr. Hoelterhoff, argue that we must go beyond resilience as “just coping” or “surviving” and focus on how we can thrive beyond adverse events instead.
“[M]y definition of ‘resilience’ is that, of course, all of those aspects of coping are important, but that coping is insufficient […] and so I tend to stray away a bit from the word ‘resilience,’ just because it means so many different things for different people,” Dr. Hoelterhoff told MNT.
“I like to think about things like thriving and flourishing, you know, […] what would it mean for a person to really experience a sense of life in which they are flourishing? And that’s not the absence of adversity. Oftentimes, it’s because of adversity that we can flourish and thrive,” he pointed out.
In order to learn to respond to adverse events in a way that allows us not just to survive but to actually thrive, Dr. Hoelterhoff makes use of a concept known as psychological capital, which looks at our psychological resources as any other type of resources, which can become depleted or, with the right investment, increase.
“‘[P]sychological capital’ is […] a model of thinking about developing the assets and the strengths that we have to [have in order] to flourish,” Dr. Hoelterhoff explained.
‘HERO’ When in doubt, think
To think about the main psychological resources that could help us improve our well-being, an acronym may come in handy: HERO.
“So just taking each letter of HERO, the first [stands for] ‘hope,’ and research indicates that people who tend to have higher levels of hope tend to thrive and function and experience greater levels of well-being,” Dr. Hoelterhoff said.
“[H]ope is not some sort of mystical […] wishing that the future would be better,” he explained. “Hope is about really envisioning the future being better. It’s about actually picturing that things can be better and, specifically, that you have the capacity to make it better […].”
Dr. Hoelterhoff pointed out the importance of the phenomena referred to as internal and external loci of control, with regard to how individuals perceive the amount of control they have in the context of a stressful situation:
“[R]esearch indicates that people who have higher levels of internal locus of control — in other words, [who think], ‘I have power over my environment. I can make changes and do things to shape my environment’ — they tend to have greater levels of well-being. But people who have higher levels of external locus of control — [thinking], ‘Well, because of the government, I had this experience, and my family does this to me, or my job does this to me, or all these things outside of me are controlling my environment, controlling me’ — well, they tend to fare worse when it comes to measures of overall well-being and happiness […].”
“[T]he next letter in the acronym HERO, E, [stands for] ‘efficacy,’ and efficacy is about recognizing our strengths, recognizing our talents, our skills, you know, the assets that we have, and using them,” he went on to say.
There is also “resilience” in psychological capital — that is what the R in the acronym stands for. Here, “resilience is this idea that, again, it’s not just about coping with adversity, but thriving, and sometimes resilience really means having [a] growth mindset,” said Dr. Hoelterhoff.
In this context, he added, it may be useful to turn to research on post-traumatic growth, which “looks at people who experienced traumas and difficult circumstances, and what [it] find[s] is that people tend to have changes in [their] life after trauma.”
These can be positive changes that allow them to have an enhanced appreciation of the good things in life and to see “the bigger picture.” Finally:
“The O part of HERO is ‘optimism,’ and that is […] about acknowledging the positive. And as human beings, we certainly have a negativity bias, because it’s one of the things that help us survive — we spot the threats […] that are out there in the environment, and it helps us be aware of the bad things that are there, so we don’t go down that pathway again.”
– Dr. Mark Hoelterhoff
It may also be difficult for people to be optimistic given the nature of the modern world, where the news and social media feeds may often bombard us with stories that are apt to induce anxiety and disappointment.
“So how in the world do you have optimism in a world like that? […] I think one of the most simple things that people can do to foster optimism is to reflect on what they’re grateful for,” Dr. Hoelterhoff told us.
“[S]ome people [will keep] a gratefulness journal, and it can be just a day-to-day kind of thing where they reflect on something that […] they feel grateful for, [or maybe] they’ve noticed some positive thing that happened,” he suggested.
He also advised we may want to consciously stop and savor any positive stories when we come across them, as tempting as it may be to just quickly file them away with the rest of the daily news.
“Regardless of their temperament, their lifestyle, where they’ve grown up, or their culture, […] if [people] just take that moment to reflect on those [positive] things, we do see an increase in measures of well-being,” said Dr. Hoelterhoff.
“In fact,” he added, “even […] a neuroscience perspective […] acknowledges that that aspect of gratitude creates a dopamine release, and […] dopamine is one of these neurochemicals which help us, in a sense, feel OK, […] feel content.”
How employers can facilitate resilience
It has to be acknowledged that to foster resilience more effectively and to thrive in the face of hardship, individuals also benefit from being empowered in their journey by the people around them.
The search for psychological growth is something that is crucial to the well-being of groups and communities. It also has an impact on productivity.
In a world in crisis, the way in which managers and employers are able to support and empower their employees and direct reports to look after their own well-being can influence group dynamic, as well as individual motivation and creativity.
MNT asked Diggory what employers could do to help support their employees consolidate their resilience during difficult times.
“It’s important for employers to remember that everyone experiences stress differently, and what is stressful for one person won’t necessarily be the same for someone else, and vice versa,” she told us.
“So,” she added, “acknowledge that whatever stress your staff are experiencing is valid and real to them, and ask them what support they feel would be helpful from you and your organization.”
“Offering signposting to mental health and well-being support internally or externally is key. However, by asking them individually to share their thoughts on what would be helpful for them to build their resilience can help strengthen a sense of rapport and trust in your relationship, ensuring they feel valued and understood,” Diggory pointed out.
She also suggested that “[i]ncreasing the amount of check-ins with your staff can show that you’re conscious about their well-being day to day, [and] role modeling healthy habits, like sharing what you personally struggle with and what well-being initiatives help you, can open up a powerful dialogue, as well as encourage your staff to nurture their resilience.”
At the end of the day, there may be no single recipe for bolstering resilience and improving one’s well-being in the aftermath of a crisis situation. However, extending kindness and compassion to ourselves and others may be the first step that everyone needs to take.
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Legend of Sai Weng loses horse
Wait for the story to conclude and make it end favourable to you.
This is story behind the well-known saying: 赛翁失马,焉知非福也
( If you lose your horse, it seem that your fortune is not good - but may be it is.)
It was lifted from a book of parables. Most blessings manifest disguised as catastrophes.
The old man living on the plains lost a horse. His neighbours came to comfort him about his loss. The old man said: who knows, it may be a blessing. Sure enough, the ‘lost’ horse came home, with another horse – a thoroughbred. His neighbours came to congratulate him. The old man said: for all you know, it may be a misfortune. One day, the old man’s only son rode on the newly acquired horse, fell from it and broke his leg. Again, his neighbours came to comfort him.
The old man said: maybe, this is a blessing. There was a war and the army came to conscript young men for it. The old man’s son was let off because of his broken leg. And this saved his life.
Life is a series of ups and downs. One never knows until the end which implied deathbed or the final destination or the real exit or departure from the world when the story concludes.
Many things gains will come in the first half of life and after 39 or 49 and especially after 69 lots of those gains will start to disappear or lost. Taking the “achievements” earlier part of the life as heavily conrtirbuted by the village of people around you and supporting in your success and not attribute them entirely to self is the desirable humble attitude to adopt. There is plenty of wisdom to not panic and fret at the losses given that even after those apparent losses you are still left with a plenty more than at the time of birth and eventually with some effort those losses tend to be recovered and in the process one often ends up making additional gains such that in order to realize some losses are essential and can be seen as investments for the final gains. Viewing the losses as the cost of doing business of life is an extremely prudent attitude to adopt.
Rejoice not excessively, when one thing is gained – for everything has a price and a side effect will follow. But the point is – always look on the bright side of life and work on 88 or if at all possible 99 out of 100 score at SWISS.
Shuo-shuo Chinese说说中文
Chinese Proverbs - Sai Weng loses his horse
赛翁失马 (Sai Weng loses horse)
赛翁失马是一个典故成语。
淮南子》中有一个寓言：塞上老翁失马，人们来吊慰，老翁说‘安知非福’。那匹马带了一匹骏马回来，人们来道贺，老翁说：‘安知非祸’。老翁的儿子骑这匹骏马，却从马上摔下来受了伤，人们来安慰他，老翁又说‘安知非福’。后来胡兵入侵，塞上的壮丁都起来作战，大部分的人战死了，只有老翁的儿子独因腿瘸未参加。后人多引此寓言作为祸福难定的。
Sai Weng loses horse is an allusive idiom.
There is a fable in "Huainanzi": When the old man loses his horse, people come to express their condolences, and the old man says "safety is not good fortune". The horse brought a steed back, and people came to congratulate him, and the old man said: ‘Knowing well is not a disaster’. The old man’s son rode this horse, but fell off the horse and was injured. People came to comfort him. After the Hu Bing invaded, all the strong men on the front stood up to fight. Most of the people died in the battle. Only the old man's son did not participate because of his lameness. Later generations often cited this fable as a misfortune.
Why is memory a human weakness?
What are the best things for mental health?
Humans were blessed by the evolutionary process with unique skills that are practically non-existent in sub-human species including primates, of retain excellent MEMORY of the past events and exploit that for PLANNING for future and improve their quality of life. Some dysfunctional shifts took place as human mindset due to super-fast technologically accelerated civilization that recently got topped up with digital revolution and the popularity and addiction to social media which promotes dysfunctional habits that I refer to as WEB NEUROSIS. The maladaptive habits are excessive materialism, greed, jealousy, hatred and selfishness. I coined an acronym for this cluster of maladaptive behavior or Stupidity of Excessively Myopic Self Interest Promotion (SEMSIP). A sizable contribution to this phenomenon has been made by the fossil energy sources coal, gas and oil that elevate human efficiency and productivity that promote SEMSIP.
The fuel of human evolutionary progress and in fact survival amidst horribly hostile environment replete with ferocious predators was the MUTUAL COOPERATION / COLLABORATIVE effort. That has not vanished but has become seriously distorted with “class wars” That has led to a morbid metamorphosis of MEMORY of the past and the PLANNING ability to develop a common good future have morphed into a morbidogenic combo CASDOS- of Chronic Anxiety State (CAS) and (DOS) DysOligoSomina (poor quality and abbreviated sleep duration per week) which is why I launched my uniquely unpopular website with near zero visitors named Sleep Smart Smash Stress. CASDOS are now a major source of morbidity and contributing to mortality and is fueling the upcoming dementia (Alzheimer’s Disease) tsunami.
By technology driven transforming the sociability of collaborative endeavors humans have managed to distort the unique skills of MEMORY & PLANNING into a disease generating combination of Guilt Evoking Ruminations & Worrisome Anxiogenic Dsycognitions (GERWAD) which convert those blessings into curses. Some small island communities that still practice a high level of collaboration and watch out for common good over Stupidity of Excessively Myopic Self Interest Promotion (SEMSIP) are
In their original format if used to build collaboration and social networking that I refer to as social syncytiation – which remedies the evil of Folly or Tragedy of the Commons. And helps undo the SEMSIP and GERWAD via Ikigai or Supreme Philanthropic Higher Intentional Compassionate Altruistic Living (SPHICAL). So, the blessings have tragically become ruined into curses and yes due to that memory is now evil or a WEKNESS instead of STRENGH a cause of lot of grief and suffering. One common example is suffering the memories of the horrible marriage after divorce instead of sweet loving memories of a romantic bond.
1. “Things” or stuff as in possessions are terrible for mental health- you sacrifice physical health, mental health sleep etc., in order to purposely enjoy things like house, car, recreational equipment etc. The shinier the things the more they hurt.
2. A new phenomenon emerging in the U. S., is insanity of clutter hoarding of by the middle-class Americans and that is a major source of mental illness and even divorces given that people regularly fight with each other as they can’t find things in a =cluttered house. Minimalism can cure this source of mental health. People rent storage space to stock up their never to be used stuff.
3. I can list of Life’s Simple 7 things medically that researchers say are good for both heart and brain and by necessary implication mental health too. This is the position taken in his May 2018 Lecture by an expert on mental health Dr. Charles DeCarli, MD in lecture series of UC Davis Alzheimer’s Community Engagement Series given that Alzheimer’s Disease is speedily spiking global source of mental illnesses.
4. My list of seven items that I refer to as SevenS is as follows:
1. SMAGIEW: Squirted Morning Arousal Glass of Ice Water – (SMAGIEW) with a lemon
2. SIMMM: Smarting & Inspiring Morning Mind Mellowing (SIMMM)
3. SevenS : Sarcopenia Stalling Sacred Sleep-Sunshine Stretching Session (SevenS).
4. STEPS: Sultry Thermal Excitation Proteinaceous Shocking. (STEPS).
5. S7-BFF: Seven stoic component breakfast-fortified (S-7 Breakfast of Fire Fighters)
6. SixS: Satisfying Sigmoid Squeeze & Silencing Sacral Symphony (SixS).
7. SIPPS: Serenity Ikigai Purpose Prayer for Stoicism (SIPPS) - with superior purpose sense.
5. In an objective and somewhat nit picking way I am tempted to take a position that given there is no study undertaken nor it would ever be given the multi-modality trend emerging in medicine “The Best” approach to build mental resilience would never be known to the question is technically unanswerable such that it can be deemed imprudent to attempt to answer this question which is scientifically inadvisable for being inappropriate. Anyone attempting to answer this must compare the above seven suggested paths to that outcome to which one can pay a sizable attention to POMYTs. On simpler terms being able to shed stress and sleep sufficiently is a powerful approach to amelioration of mental health. Physical wellness improvement plays a major role as also pursuing life satisfaction as in SWISS score that is analogous to placidity or sustained calmness of mind that one acquires well via yoga meditation etc.
Building psychological or mental resilience is the most desirable approach to take respecting preventive approach to mental wellness or SWISS score Dr. Darlene Mininni has uploaded a lecture on Science of Resilience: How to Thrive in Life Additional material is compiled by me at Thrivelling not Shriveling. Dr Lucy Hone is a resilience expert has posted a lecture named Three Secrets of Resilient People There is a few other compilations on laughter, longevity that are also relevant.
The recent chronic anxiety state or Generalized Anxiety Disorder pandemic is the result of loneliness, jealousy, selfishness web addiction etc., that is fueling a morbid metamorphosis of MEMORY of the past and the PLANNING ability to develop a common good future have morphed into a morbidogenic combo CASDOS- of Chronic Anxiety State (CAS) and (DOS) DysOligoSomina (poor quality and abbreviated sleep duration per week) which is why I launched my uniquely unpopular website with near zero visitors named Sleep Smart Smash Stress. CASDOS are now a major source of morbidity and contributing to mortality and is fueling the upcoming dementia (Alzheimer’s Disease) tsunami
CASPANDE (global scale epidemic of stress) is the title of an essay I am developing on the recent observations of aberrant physiology of ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC) that is linked to the dysautonomia or smpathotonia which links the process in this part of the brain to adversely impact the cardiovascular system. This the aberration wherein consists of a cortical cortex activity upon peripheral adrenergic stimulation viewed as an interoceptive dysfunction. I predict that in future the CASDOs would be linked to this aberrant physiology of ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC). By opting for resilience building lifestyle, we would be able to counter the effect while the current socioeconomic model is fuelling this anomaly. There is a trilateral linkage between the trio of stress, sleep and the neuropathology of functional nature in the vmPFC and that would give legitimacy to the anxiety the commonest mental health condition are reported by Medical News Today under the discussion Why Anxiety in the West Is it on the rise? We need to develop a swiss-knife type 7-item toolkit to fight it. I am inviting input comments and collaboration with this objective.