Richard G. Petty, MD

Work, Stress, Vacations and Exotic Drinks with Little Umbrellas in Them

Your humble reporter has often spoken about his brush with burnout. 

Even though I was a recognized expert on stress – and a former meditation teacher, no less! – I got perilously close to the edge. Fortunately someone noticed and I was packed off on vacation. It was remarkable that just a week in the Caribbean followed by an unforgettable one-week retreat in the Catskills was enough to cure me. My resting pulse rate fell from 68 to 48, where it stayed for more than a year, and I never again had any symptoms. The key point was that the short break was enough to interrupt the downward spiral and provoke the cognitive shift that prevented me from ever again making the mistakes that lead to the trouble in the first place.

I still work hard, but trust me when I say that working 16-17 hours a day, seven days a week is preposterous. Neglecting your emotional health and social life is bad enough. But the last straw was to stop engaging in spiritual practices that I had followed since childhood.

For a long time now I have been teaching that most people can make phenomenal changes in a very short period. It may take you a long time to prepare, but once you are ready change can be extremely quick. If you think about it, the actual physical business of an egg and a sperm joining to make a new life takes less than a minute. But the preparation for the event may take half a lifetime. At least I hope for your sake that it takes a lot longer than a minute…

And that’s all that I am going to say about that…

I was thinking about all this the other day when a stressed executive was telling me that he all he wanted was to spend six months sitting on a beach. In fact that would probably be a thoroughly bad idea.

It is not the time; it is the quality of the time, and the energy that you bring to it.

I cannot stress enough that for most people energy management is far more important than time management.

When it comes to beating burnout, the kind of vacation is likely more important than its length.

A summary of ten years of research by a team lead by Dov Eden, an organizational psychologist from Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management, was presented at last year's meeting of "Work, Stress and Health" in Miami. The event is sponsored by the American Psychological Association and what Professor Eden had to say really supports what we have been talking about.

For the past ten years the team has been studying "respite effects," which measure relief from chronic job stress during and after vacations away from the workplace. They have also been looking at the impact of constant contact: the revolution in telecommunications has kept some people permanently wired into the office while they are supposed to be away putting their feet up and drinking exotic concoctions with little umbrellas in them. So we are losing true "respite relief," and that in turn is a cause of chronic job stress.

One recent study involved 800 professors from eight Universities in Israel, the United States, and New Zealand. The researchers measured stress levels before, during, and after a sabbatical leave of a semester or a whole year. They compared them with people who stayed home, and others who just took a long weekend or a one-week vacation. They found that those who took a long sabbatical break experienced about the same amount of stress relief as people who had taken either a week off or just a long weekend or long-weekend vacation. And all three groups returned to pre-sabbatical stress levels in about the same amount of time: approximately three weeks.

Some of Eden’s other studies have indicated that people who best succeed in uncoupling from work and detaching form its demands, get the most benefit from their vacations and they probably less likely to experience job burnout. It's the ones who cannot detach from the constant flow of job-related demands that are most likely to suffer from burnout.

The key to a refreshing vacation is to create as much space as possible between you and your work life. I once knew someone who spent a week on Tioman Island in the South China Sea. It is reputed to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, which was one of the reasons why it was selected for the filming of South Pacific. For the whole week she spent all day every day working, and every day the hotel’s fax machine got jammed with the 60-70 pages that she sent out. That is not a recipe for a refreshing, life affirming vacation.

This body of research confirms what most sensible managers have worked out for themselves. When someone goes on vacation they should leave their cell phones behind and not check their email. People who feel attached to the office 24/7 are setting themselves up for long-term stress-related illnesses.

I get a lot more email and phone calls than most normal mortals, yet many years ago I made a remarkable discovery.

I had been out of contact for a week, and even after disposing of the spam and junk mail, there were still well over a thousand messages “demanding” my immediate attention. But during that week away, events had moved on, most no longer needed any input from me at all. Matters had been resolved and solutions found. We lost no business, and I have it on good authority that the earth did not fall into the sun.

I came back rested and restored, and firing on all cylinders: everyone benefited.

Quite obviously it is not a good idea to be completely un-obtainable. I have had two friends, one of whom lost her mother and another his wife, and neither heard the sad news for more than a week. So even when I am in some far flung part of the planet I make sure that there is a way for me to be contacted, But only three people know how.

And I am no longer an electron junkie.

Try it the next time that you have a chance. It really is easier than you think.




“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.”
--The Bible, Ephesians 4:31-32

“Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, 1897-1981)

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by, but some of them are golden only because we have let then slip by.”
--Sir James Matthew (J.M.) Barrie (Scottish Writer and Playwright, 1860-1937)

Overcoming Rejection

I am sure that most of us have faced some form of rejection at some time or other in our lives. People with high self-esteem seem better able to take rejection in their stride, but usually only if it is “earned.” Simply trying artificially to build your self-esteem rather than having built it on a platform of past achievement, will probably not work very well.

New research in the journal Psychological Science from UC Berkeley indicates that this does not mean that people with low self-esteem are doomed to respond defensively to criticism and rejection. The key seems to be that people who are better at controlling their impulses are less vulnerable to rejection. 

There were 38 female and 29 male participants in the study. The first completed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, one of the most widely used self-esteem measure in the social sciences. They then completed a questionnaire on their ability to focus on tasks at hand without distraction. The subjects were arranged into two groups - low self-esteem and normal-to-high self-esteem – based on their scores on the Rosenberg scale.

Each of the volunteers then viewed images showing positive, neutral, negative and rejection themes while being subjected to sporadic loud noises. A startle probe measured the force of their eye-blinks in response to the abrupt sounds. Eye blinks are a good measure of the startle response and correlate fairly well with the activation of the “fight or flight” reaction.

As anticipated, all the participants blinked more strongly when the loud noise was paired to such negative images as dead animals or mutilated bodies. However, the people with low self-esteem blinked more forcefully in response to pictures portraying themes of rejection loneliness and alienation. Paintings with negative themes or acceptance themes, such as lovers embracing, did not elicit the same response in low self-esteem people.

In other words the powerful was in which rejection activates the threat system in people with low self-esteem suggests that their fear of rejection runs extremely deep and engages neurological systems involved in reacting to a threat.

On the other hand, those with low self-esteem who scored higher for attention control, which included the ability to focus, were able to modulate their immediate reactions to rejection. 

Some previous work has suggested that self-esteem is part of a primitive emotional warning system that warns us if we are in danger of being socially excluded. While the evolutionary function of this detection system was originally intended to motivate people to stay socially connected, the constant anticipation of rejection can create problems, with the system being triggered by the merest whiff of rejection. They may become hypersensitive and have a brain that generates a cascade of defensive reactions if they sense any kind of disapproval.

Although this is a small study, the evidence is that rather than teaching self-esteem skills, the solution for them might be to improve their abilities to focus, concentrate and regulate their internal states.

In other words develop some specific forms of self-control and resilience.

For many people this may be the most effective way of helping them to cope with disappointment and maintain close relationships.




“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
--Epictetus (Phrygian-born Greek Stoic Philosopher, c.A.D.55- c.A.D.135

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
--Sir Edmund Hillary (New Zealand Mountaineer and Explorer, 1919-

“Mind control is not one's birthright. The successful few owe their success to their perseverance.”
--Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950

“The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.”
--Norman Vincent Peale (American Cleric, Writer and Self-Help Expert, 1898-1993)

Counterfactual Thinking

Most of us have experienced the “I should have,” “I could have,” “If only I” and “I would have” moments. Times when we lament our missteps. We say to ourselves that we should have invested in a certain stock, should have married Agnes or become a doctor instead of a cab driver. Though it can be positive, for some people this kind of thinking becomes so pervasive that they simply cannot take any action in the present. So anything that we can learn about this process will likely help a great many people.

We refer to this process in which we evaluate how we would do things differently, as “counterfactual thinking.” Though it can be positive, and help us learn from our mistakes, it is a common psychological mechanism that causes us to harbor feelings of disappointment and regret. For some people this kind of thinking becomes so pervasive that they simply cannot take any action in the present. So anything that we can learn about this process will likely help a great many people.

A common research strategy in the study counterfactual thinking, is to have people read stories in which the main character makes decisions that will ultimately doom him or her to failure. Researchers then ask them how they would have done things differently.

But this method may not provide a complete picture of this mental process. New research published in the June issue of Psychological Science, which is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that our counterfactual thinking may be markedly different when we are actually experiencing failure rather than reading about someone else's.

In a series of experiments, Vittorio Girotto of the University luav di Venezia in Venice, Italy and his colleagues attempted to demonstrate and explain the differences in counterfactual thinking between actors who actually experienced the problem and readers who just read about it.

The experimental subjects were divided into two groups:

• Actors who were asked to participate in a game in which they could win a reward by solving a math problem. They were then asked to choose one of two sealed envelopes: One was said to contain a difficult problem, and one supposedly contained an easy problem. In reality, both envelopes contained a problem that was nearly impossible to solve in the allotted time. Once the actors failed, they were asked to write at least one way in which things would have been better for them.
• In the second group, “Readers” read a story with a protagonist who faced the same choice and ended with the same negative outcome as the subjects did in the actor condition. Like the actors, readers were required to write at least one way in which things would have been better for the protagonist.

The readers and actors were very different in their counterfactual thinking. Readers tended to undo the protagonist's choice to tackle the problem, while actors changed the way in which they tried to solve the problem. So a reader would say, “I should have picked another envelop,” while the actor would ask if he could use a calculator.

These results run counter to previous theories of counterfactual thinking. It was assumed that people who read a story construct the same counterfactuals as people who experienced the events described in the story. It was also believed that actors tend to avoid self-blame at all costs when thinking of alternatives. Instead, the actor-reader differences emerged even in conditions in which actors' decisions made the best decisions that they could. The researchers said,

“Actors and readers produce different counterfactuals because they rely on different information, not because they have different motivations.”

In both cases, “what might have been” thinking can be stressful.

This research confirms something that we have been teaching for years:
Learn to detach from your aims and desires: you need passion and purpose. But you do not need the third “P:” Pain

Liberate yourself from the past: Healing, Meaning and Purpose has a whole section on novel ways to get rid of some of the “stuff” that most of us carry around in our bodies, our minds and our subtle systems.

Depression, Folic Acid and Bread

A remarkable study was published in the July edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, by researchers at the University of York and Hull York Medical School.

They reviewed 11 studies involving 15,315 individuals and confirmed that there is a link between depression and low levels of folate, a vitamin that comes primarily from leaf vegetables such as spinachturnip greens, dried beans and peas, fortified cereal products, sunflower seeds and certain other fruits and vegetables are rich sources of folate, as is liver. and

Last month, the British Food Standards Agency  recommended to Health Ministers that they should introduce mandatory fortification of either bread or flour with folic acid to prevent neural tube defects, which can result in miscarriage, neonatal death or lifelong disability. This new study suggests that the measure may also help to reduce the frequency and severity of depression.

Lead author Simon Gilbody said:

"Our study is unique in that for the first time all the relevant evidence in this controversial area has been brought together. Although the research does not prove that low folate causes depression, we can now be sure that the two are linked. Interestingly, there is also some trial evidence that suggests folic acid supplements can benefit people with depression. We recommend that large trials should be carried out to further test this suggestion."

Recent research from the same team published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has also shown that people with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia commonly have a genetic mutation named MTHFR C677T in the 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene on chromosome 1. The enzyme that the gene codes for is involved in folate metabolism, and the mutation (polymorphism) means that they process folate less efficiently. Folate is linked to the production of some of the chemicals in the brain, including serotonin, that in some part some the brain elevate mood. The identification of this gene provides a plausible explanation as to why folic acid supplements may help people with depression.

There is also another implication of the finding: it is well known that some diseases are more common in people who have depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, including coronary artery disease ad some forms of cancer.

This same genetic polymorphism has been linked to cancers of the breast and lung, as well as coronary artery disease. It may be that folate is one of the factors involved in both.

Yet another research project!

Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man

Today is traditionally taken to be the birthday of the great Roman lawyer, political figure, orator and philosopher Cicero, whose full name was Marcus Tullius Cicero. Nobody really knows the exact date of his birth, but for several centuries, January the 3rd it has been.

His life was extraordinarily successful by the standards of the day, and generations of school children learned some basic history and philosophy from him.

We also learned that success is subjective.

Over two thousand years ago he wrote about the “Six Mistakes of Man:”

1. The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do

Even after all this time, how much has really changed?

I urge you to think about those six and whether any of them are operating in your life. I often use "The Six" as a jumping off point in therapy or workshops: they often help us to focus on some of our false beliefs and perceptions.

And to celebrate his birthday, here are a few choice Cicero quotations from my own collection.

Enjoy and, perhaps, learn something from them.

“A liar is not believed even though he tells the truth.”

“A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.”

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.

“A youth of sensuality and intemperance delivers over a worn out body to old age.”

“Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.”

“All things are full of God.”

“As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.”

“As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.”

“As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.”

“Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.”

“Before beginning, plan carefully.”

“Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.”

“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.”

“Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.”

“By doubting we come at truth.”

“Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

“Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.”

“Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”

“Generosity should never exceed ability.”

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

“Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.”

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

“He who suffers, remembers.”

“If you would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury.”

“In a disturbed mind, as in a body in the same state, health can not exist.”

“In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.”

“In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.”

“Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.”

“It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.”

“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”

“Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.”

“Many wish not so much to be virtuous, as to seem to be.”

“Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“Nature has placed in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.”

“No man is so old as not to think he can live one year more.”

“One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul will ever be destroyed”

“Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.”

“Reason should direct and appetite obey.”

“Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.”

“Superstition is a senseless fear of God.”

“That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.”

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”

“The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.”

“The beginnings of all things are small.”

“The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.”

“The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.”

“The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.”

“The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body.”

“The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.”

“The forehead is the gate of the mind.”

“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil”

“The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.”

“The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.”

“The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.”

“There are gems of thought that are ageless and eternal.”

“There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.”

“There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften”

“There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.”

“Through doubt we arrive at the truth.”

“To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.”

“To the sick, while there is life there is hope.”

“True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.”

“Virtue is its own reward.”

“We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory

“Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine and on that account must necessarily be eternal.”

“When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.”

“Work makes a callus against grief.”

 

Wishing You Great Learning Opportunities in the New Year!

“The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourself strong.”
--Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1863-1902)

A lot of people tell me that they are pleased to see the back of 2006, and we certainly had more than our fair share of challenges during the year, having lost four members of our family in just a few months. The fact that they were not all human didn’t change the impact one bit.

But for all the people who have told me about their negative thoughts about the year I’ve said the same thing: the year has actually been a terrific learning experience. That’s not to say that we should slap a big smiley face on every pain, hardship and adversity, but it does mean that it is essential for all of us to try and find the meaning in the events that have happened in our lives.

When Nietzsche said “That which does not kill me makes me stronger,” he was giving voice to a peculiarly Germanic ideal of the time: that people need to be tested and tempered like steel. That’s not what I mean at all.

The three best and most effective ways of dealing with adversity are first to extract meaning from the event or situation: “Why is this happening?” “Is it just dumb bad luck or is there more to it?”

The second essential is to learn to detach from an event, so that it no longer has its emotional claws in you.

And the third is to accept a situation. Not in some passive way of letting life bowl you over, but of being able to acknowledge an experience and then using it as the basis for wise action.

Each of these can take a lifetime to learn the hard way, but you can actually master them very quickly with a series of simple steps.

I am going to be sharing some of them with you in the coming months. I am also going to be publishing an eBook on the topic of resilience, because detachment and acceptance come much more easily to the person with robust resilience.

Having recently had to make a number of unexpected trips overseas has delayed our publication schedule by three months, but we shall be back on track by the end of January.

And here's a final thought for you from Healing, Meaning and Purpose: adversity is an invitation to grow. If approached in the right way, apparently negative events can lead to a shift in your consciousness and rapid spiritual development.

In fact the majority of my own teachers could trace their spiritual maturation to major life events that at the time seemed to be the end of the world.

Remember that what the caterpillar thinks to be the end of the world, is, for the butterfly, just a new beginning!

“Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.”
James Buckham (American Naturalist and Writer)

“The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.”
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (German Philosopher, 1844-1900)

“Out of confusion, you invent something permanent - the Absolute, the Brahman or God.”
--Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1895-1986)

Banquo’s Ghost

“Chess is the game which reflects most honor on human wit.” -- Voltaire (a.k.a. François-Marie Arouet, French Writer and Philosopher,  1694-1778)

For anyone with even a passing interest in chess, a re-unification match for the World Championship is currently taking place in Elista, the capital city of Kalmykia, a small region of the Russian Federation that is Europe’s only Buddhist country. Though I’m sure that some would quibble about whether it should be in Europe or Asia.

The beginning of the match between two of the world’s top Grandmasters - the aggressive Bulgarian gambler Veselin Topalov and the conservative Russian, Vladimir Kramnik - has led to and 2-0 score in favor of the Russian.

So why am I mentioning this is a blog dedicated to Personal Growth, Healing and Wellness? Because the current one-sided score line has a lot to do with each of these topics. This match is not just about chess playing ability: it is also about psychological and emotional strength, character and resilience.

There was a time when chess masters were unfit, often over-weight and the majority smoked. When I first started playing in tournaments in England, it was quite normal to have ashtrays beside most of the boards.

Oh how things have changed!

Now the players prepare physically, psychologically and some even spiritually with prayer and meditation:

1. Very few players smoke, not just because of long-term health risk, but because the deleterious effects of lowered oxygen levels on cognition outweigh the short-term improvement in attention caused by nicotine.
2. Aerobic exercise is essential to ensure that the brain is perfused with oxygen, and if you are physically unfit you cannot expect to survive a number of games that may each last for five or six hours.
3. Strength training is also essential to overall fitness and physical and the maintenance of psychological resilience. Topalov is going to need that now.
4. Posture is extremely important. According to Chinese and Ayurvedic physicians and chiropractors, bad posture results in a restriction in the flow of Qi, Prana, or blood. Whether or not you believe in the flow of Qi in the body, it is easy to demonstrate that bad posture has bad effects on cognition.
5. Flexibility is also an essential part of physical wellness that affects you psychologically as well as physically. Daily stretching should be part of everyone’s life.
6. Relaxation and meditation: one or other or both are essential tools for maintaining your balance while under stress, and for building resilience.
   
7. Diet: a carefully balanced nutritious diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (without any added mercury!) and fiber is essential for optimum mental functioning.
8. Fluid intake: the current recommendations are for a healthy person to drink between 80 and 120 fluid ounces of pure water each day.
9. Avoid alcohol: A former World Champion – Alexander Alekhine – lost his title after turning up drunk on a number of occasions during a match to defend his title.

Looking at the pictures from the match, in both games Topalov looked intense and Kramnik far more relaxed. It could have been an illusion: I would need to be in proximity to be sure. In the first game Topalov took a needless risk in a dead level position. In the second, he had an absolutely won game. I’m no grandmaster, but even I spotted a win in three moves. How could he have failed to find it and then lost?

What is the explanation? Chess players have to play a certain number of moves in a specified time, so not only are they playing their opponent, they are also playing against the clock. The biggest prize in the game is on the line, for which both players have been preparing since childhood. And there are hundreds of thousands of people who are watching and analyzing their every move.

I know from personal experience that it can be hard enough to be interviewed on a television show being watched by millions of people, where any false statement would haunt me forever. Imagine having a battle of wits with one of the finest chess players in the world in the knowledge that every move will be analyzed for the next century, and computers are already analyzing every permutation of every move that the two players have made.

The stress on the players is unbelievable. Both have prepared for it, but it is also a matter of who has prepared best: that is a mixture of temperament and training. Just today I read an article talking about ways of avoiding stress. This is silly: stress is part of life and it can provide the motor in motivation. The trick is how we learn to respond to stress.

There is also another stressor that has only been felt by world championship contenders on two or three previous occasions. This match is being played in the shadow of the retirement of Garry Kasparov, who, in the opinion of most people, is the strongest player who ever lived, with the possible exception of Bobby Fischer. The difference is that Bobby became World Champion all by himself, with little help and by inventing a new approach to chess. It is a great tragedy that his life has apparently been blighted by mental illness, and that he has played only a few recorded games in the last 34 years.

By contrast, Garry was the strongest player in the world for twenty years, and in the opinion of most experts would probably still beat both of the current contenders. So whoever wins wants to prove himself a worthy champion. Garry’s specter remains like the ghost of Banquo in the Scottish play.

The final essential is that both players have to detach from the results of the first two games. Kramnik will obviously have his tail up now, but he is too smart and too experienced to give in to complacency. Topalov has to completely forget about the first two games and focus on what lies ahead: I’m sure that he has someone on his team working on simple techniques to stop the past from populating his psychological present.

Whatever lies ahead for these two men in the next few weeks, we shall see that chess is a microcosm of life in general.

“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.” --Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1895-1986)

Creativity and Resilience

“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
--Epictetus (Phrygian-born Greek Stoic Philosopher, c.A.D.55- c.A.D.135)

I have written several articles about resilience, and I have begun to talk about some of the methods for developing psychological resilience and also some of the potential consequences of not developing this essential psychological strength.

I’d also like to share with you another aspect of resilience: it is essential ingredient of creativity and of innovation.

I’ve had a longstanding fascination with the creative process, and one of the most robust findings in the research on extraordinary creative achievement is that even the greatest performers in their fields seem to produce the same ratio of undistinguished works to notable ones through their careers. The great chess player wins more often than the average one, but only sometimes produces a truly great creation. Even the best engineers and scientists conduct many unsuccessful experiments. The stories are legion of artists who produce many paintings and works of music that never win recognition and may not even be much good. Many great actors, directors, cricketers and companies have a great many failures behind – and sometimes in front  - of them.

Amongst the many attributes of the high achiever in each of these fields is a remarkable ability to bounce back, to detach from the apparent failure, to see it as an education, and to understand the importance of persistence and perseverance. To take a risk, to take a step back and to learn and adapt if at first it doesn’t succeed. This never means repeating the same strategies over and over again, it means being smart and not being fazed by failure

“Unless you are willing to try, fail miserable, and try again, success won't happen.”
--Phillip Adams (Australian Broadcaster, Filmmaker, Archaeologist and Satirist, 1939-)

I was once working with a company that had just tried to launch a promising new medicine. The initial effort had been a flop and at the time that I became involved, the company had just fired the entire marketing team. Neither the company nor the recently departed team had had the chance to find out what had gone wrong and how to build something new and different. The new team had to start from scratch and, living in constant fear, was burning out at an astonishing rate. The real problem was the inflexibility of the company that was stifling creative solutions to problems. Once that was fixed, things began to improve very quickly.

If anyone ever says that they and the company never accepts failure, it is laudable but impractical.

It’s different if an enterprise fails because people are not pulling their weight; or failing to meet deadlines; or being overly rigid in interpreting rules or just goofing off. But if everyone is trying to help, learning, and being dynamic and flexible, then it’s best not to send them on their way, but instead to see how we can learn from a failure.

And the key for you personally and the key for your company is to learn to develop personal and corporate resilience. Then creative answers have the chance to start flowing.

“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.”
--Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)

“No one succeeds without effort.... Those who succeed owe their success to their perseverance.”
--Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)

Revisiting Resilience

“I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs, but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
--General George S. Patton (American General, 1885-1945)

Resilience is the process of being able to adapt and to thrive in the face of adversity, stress, trauma, tragedy or threats. A resilient person is les likely to succumb to any of these life events and is less likely to develop mental illness. But resilience is more than a passive strength or resistance to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: it is a dynamic capacity that not only protects us, but enables us to turn adversity into strength and an opportunity for growth.

Despite our extraordinary health care system and a multi-billion dollar antidepressant industry, the rates of depression are increasing throughout the Western world. A recent book has suggested that boredom was unknown before about 1760: the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. All this tells us that something is seriously wrong with our resilience.

“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”
--Plutarch (Greek Biographer and Priest to the Oracle at Delphi, A.D. 46-c.120)

In Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I pointed out some of the incredible changes that have taken place over the last one hundred years, and their impact on health. To try and apply the principles of the past to the problems of the present and future is unlikely to be crowned with success. We need to adapt. Buddhists do not normally eat meat. Except for Tibetan Buddhists, who need to eat some meat in order to survive at the high altitudes of the Himalayas. I have a good friend who created the finest integrated medicine clinic in the world, the Hale Clinic in London. Normally an abstemious vegetarian, when she was embroiled in business meetings, she would often take some meat to remain grounded. I have done the same thing myself for years. I prefer not to eat meat. I have not had a steak in more than thirty years. But if I am to do a lot of traveling and need to work with politicians and business people, a bit of chopped up fish or poultry can be essential.

The changes in our lifestyles over the past century have dramatically reduced the level of physical activity necessary to provide life's basic resources: our effort-based rewards that are intimately involved in the regulation of mood. If you think about it for a moment, if your great-grandparents wanted to eat, there was probably a lot of effort involved. Our brains still contain a huge number of circuits that evolved to play roles in sustaining the kind of continuous effort that would be critical for the acquisition of resources such as food, water and shelter. So what happens when we suddenly on longer need much physical activity to obtain those resources? What happens to those parts of the brain that have millions of years evolving? There will be reduced activation of those brain regions essential for reward, pleasure, salience, motivation, problem-solving, and effective coping strategies. The practical consequence of that is that these systems will not sit there idling: if under-stimulated, since these systems are so heavily involved with our emotions, we would expect to see people becoming depressed. And we know that depression has been increasing throughout the Western world. Of course, many people need to stimulate these regions of the brain artificially, as with drugs, pornography or extreme sports.

Effort-based rewards are an essential component of resilience to life's stressful challenges. Purposeful physical activity is important in the maintenance of mental health. It therefore makes sense to put more emphasis on preventative behavioral and cognitive life strategies, rather than relying solely on psychopharmacological strategies. Our strategy is geared toward protecting people from developing depression, and compensatory behaviors. One of the very interesting new ideas in pharmacology is that antidepressants and antipsychotics may act to enhance resilience at both the cellular level and in the whole person. This is a very different concept from thinking of medicines as chemicals that simply block symptoms.

Our aim is to improve resilience and gradually to increase activation of all those under-used systems of the brain to treat and then to prevent problems. All the things that mother always said were good for you: healthy exercise, meditation, a balanced diet, charity and kindness, and actions aimed at fulfilling your personal and Higher Purpose have already been shown to treat and to protect.

Here are some proven methods for improving resilience:
1.    Learn to be adaptable: the heart of resilience is the ability to take things in your stride and to be able to surf the ocean of change, rather than trying to hold the hold it back.

2.    Be aware of the blockages in your mind or in the subtle systems of your body that are preventing you from bouncing back form adversity

3.    Attitude: avoid seeing a challenge as an insurmountable problem

4.    Accept that change is part of life: you can do little about it, but you can do a great deal about how you react to change

5.    Ensure that you have meaningful goals that are consistent with your core desires and beliefs, and that you are moving toward them

6.    Do all that you can to work on establishing your own Purpose in life. You can create a purpose for your life, but also be aware that there is a Higher Purpose in you life

7.    Take decisive actions: even if the first action may not be the best one. Any action is usually better than denying that problems exist, and hoping that they will evaporate while you are asleep or watching television

8.    Develop and maintain close relationships. Even if you are not a sociable person, relationships are one of the most potent way of protecting yourself from life’s ups and downs

9.    Look for opportunities to learn more about yourself, and how you react to situations. This doesn’t mean becoming an introvert or a rampant narcissist, but it does mean taking a moment each day to review where you are and what you can learn form things that are or have happened in your life. This is a big subject, but there are many good ways to answer the question, “Why is this happening to me  again?” and from preventing habitual problems and routine self-sabotage. (I shall be publishing an eBook and CD about this crucial topic in the very near future)

10.  Work on developing a positive self-image. I have had some harsh things to say about the excesses of the self-esteem movement, but it has now been replaced by something far more valuable: the science of positive psychology. We have a great deal of empirical data on how to improve a person’s happiness and resilience. Again, we can speak about that some more if you are interested.

11.  Maintain hope for the future. We have done research that has shown that one of the best ways of predicting a positive outcome with major mental illness, or of reducing the risk of recurrent substance abuse is to instill hope. Again, there are techniques for doing this, even when the whole world seems to be against you.

12.  Maintain perspective: do not blow things out of proportion, and remember that this too shall pass.

13.  Take care of yourself, physical, emotionally and spiritually. Listen to yourself: what does your body need? What do you need emotionally? What do you need from a relationship? What do you need spiritually?

14.  Are you giving others what they need from you? If you have a nagging sense that you are not giving a child or a spouse that they need and deserve, it can dramatically reduce you resilience.

15.  Rather than just thinking about and worrying over your problems, or problems that may turn up in the future, get into the habit of thinking of yourself not just as an individual who is going through problems, but as a boundless spiritual being who is learning a lesson.

16.  Never forget to think about the legacy that you are going to leave. Not just to your family, but to the world at large. If you can’t think of one, this is a good time to begin to create one. That is an enormously  powerful perspective on the world and on your problems.

“I am an old man and have had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
--Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)

Technorati tags: Resilience Life event Life balance Legacy Stress management

Critics and Creativity

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
--Albert Einstein (German-born American Physicist and, in 1921, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1879-1955)

I have had the incredible privilege of knowing, working with, and sometimes sitting at the feet of more than one hundred of the greatest and most influential thinkers, scientists and spiritual leaders of the last fifty years. I have never been interested in listing them: many wish to retain their privacy, and it is much more important for you to get the message, rather than its origin.

It’s great if a Nobel Laureate or a fourteenth generation teacher transmits his or her insights and wisdom. Yet it remains our responsibility to use all our powers - emotional, intellectual and intuitive - to decide what is right for us. I have seen a T’ai Chi Ch’uan master forget the “form,” a “guru” who neglected the most fundamental part of his own teachings, and a Nobel Laureate misquote a study in which I was involved. Such things happen; it just means that we have to bring our own gifts to bear when we decide how to proceed. Some spiritual teachers deliberately throw in some misinformation to see if we are actually working with their material, and not just sitting passively and soaking it up like a sponge.

After all these years spent with these fine people and scores of complementary practitioners, athletes, musicians, opera singers and ballet dancers, all have told me the same thing: the more creative you are, the more you give the world, the stronger the negative reaction. It almost seems to be a law of nature, to stop anyone form rising too high.

Debate is great! Willful destruction never is. Gently pointing out errors or inconsistencies is one of the marvelous strengths of the Internet. Smashing things and people for fun seems singularly pointless! Think about all the people in the public eye, actors and performers, who have been built up only to be thrown down again.

I’ve always been a gossip magnet: it’s just one of those things that I've come to expect! Yet we recently had something totally bizarre: we received a number of odd messages from people with strange pseudonyms. One made the bizarre claim that I was going to die. Well, I guess that’s a safe prediction for anyone! But with thanks to this modern Cassandra I am not, in fact, even close! I practice what I preach. Experts who have looked at my biophysical and "energetic" profiles think that I’m going to be around for another fifty to seventy years. And I plan to use those years to do what I can for others: helping, guiding, teaching, encouraging and supporting. And as long as people find them helpful, I’m going to keep the blogs, articles, books and CDs coming!

As Mark Twain said:
“The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

And another wise person had this to say:
“Pay no attention to critics. No one ever erected a statue to a critic.”

Odd comments like those recently sent to me are a terrific gift: they help us to see how far we've come with one of the three great pillars of self-realization: detachment. The other two pillars are "Honesty of mind" and "Sincerity of spirit."

You must decide how far along you and I are with those!

Technorati tags: Creativity Criticism Detachment Cassandra

Rooting Out Resistance to Change

It is never easy to change our mind about anything, as long as we remain attached to a particular belief, outcome or line of reasoning.  Subsequently, we can become inflexible and intolerant of new ideas.  There are several barries to emotional, personal and spiritual freedom and ATTACHMENT is one of the most potent.

In my recently released book, Healing, Meaning & Purpose:  The magical power of the emerging laws of life, I discuss 12 major reasons why people resist change.  They are:

1. Being unaware that change is possible.
2. Having entrenched belief systems.
3. Having an emotional or habitual attachment to a particular way of doing things.
4. Feeling comfortable about where you are.
5. Fearing change or the consequences of change, like losing face or risking embarrassment or ridicule.
6. Having intellectual reasons for maintaining the status quo.
7. Being unaware of information to support the need for change.
8. Being unconvinced by the necessity for change.
9. Having blockages or perturbations in their energy fields.
10. Having a life story that does not leave room for change or evolution.
11. Being unaware of the rewards that flow from changing.
12. Not knowing how to harness resources to accomplish change.

What are your roadblocks to emotional, personal and spiritual freedom?  What is the first step in creating positive changes in your life?

Technorati tags: spiritual growth

personal change energy

energy blockages.