I can't stand paparazzi either

I occasionally stop what I'm doing and thank my lucky stars that I have my space and privacy instead of swarms of people following me around.

Hey, you never know when you may be famous, so enjoy your obscurity now.

Trouble sleeping? Here are some tips!

One sure fire way to help reduce stress is to get better sleep. It allows the body to spend less energy focusing on survival (approximately 30% of your energy goes towards processing what your eyes see), and more energy healing and rejuvenating. The University of Maryland Medical Center has these tips on how to sleep more quickly and easily (such as Progressive Relaxation, Toe Tensing, Deep Breathing, Guided Imagery, Quiet Ears).

Another technique I've been advocating lately is to massage lavender oil your feet just as you get into bed. It not only has a pleasant aroma, but helps calm, relax, and balance both physically and emotionally.

It's important to keep in mind that these are just tools to help you cope with whatever is causing you to feel so distressed. You can apply tip after tip, but wouldn't you prefer to just sleep soundly, easily, and feel well rested when you wake up?

Fortunately there's a system to help you do that.

But at the very least start by giving yourself a set amount of time to sleep each night and protecting that time.

Stuck in the subway

It took 13 years.

I've been living in Manhattan for quite a while now, frequently using the public transportation system, and today is the first time I've been stuck in a train for an extended period (over 15 minutes).

No one in my subway car was happy about it, but everyone seemed to take it in stride. I was amazed. No one expressed a sense of entitlement, "this shouldn't be happening to me!" but there was a fair amount of, "All they (the Transit Authority) have to do to fix this is ..."

I turned my attention to jotting down a blog post and smiling at the coincidence that yesterday I saw a movie where all the transportation systems in the US were disrupted - so my predicament was fairly tame in comparison.

My gratitude list (aka, at least I've still got this going for me):
The lights are on
The air conditioning is on
The conductor is telling us why we're delayed
I have some water in a bottle
We're passing by other, non-moving trains

And those are just some of the 'practical' ones before going onto:
A fight hasn't broken out
I'm not wounded
The ceiling is sound and hasn't collapsed on us
Rats aren't storming the subway cars
No reports of anthrax

45 minutes later, I was at my subway stop and late for a meeting - a good number of the attendees were also late, and some had yet to arrive.

Is Stress Contagious?

The news has been aflutter with articles about a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine that indicates that Obesity is 'Contagious'.

I've been saying that about stress for quite some time. It's one of the core principles of my definition of stress - "A reaction that commonly occurs when your current situation doesn't match your ideal version of that situation"

The more common stress is in your life - the more it's seen as acceptable, beneficial, or natural - the more likely you are to choose it (and yes, unless your life is in immediate danger, you are choosing it).

So rather than congregate or interact with people whom "Stress Out" find another group (or create one) that values other modes of interacting and expressing themselves - maybe a group that tends to laugh rather than gripe.

The music of life

Yesterday I listened in on an interview with Tal Ben-Shahar (Harvard professor who lectures on Positive Psychology) talk about how goals are the means to enjoying the journey. Which goes right along with how I prefer to differentiate between living a life of purpose with high standards vs. a life towards goals with high expectations (I'll elaborate more on this soon).

Alan Watts has a simple comparison between the journey of life and how we listen to music, and the creators of South Park created a fun depiction to emphasize the message in Watt's speech.


(in case you can't see the video - see it directly on YouTube)

(Thanks to Maneu for the link)

?eil a ro ,hturt eht ti si (aka How to Catch a Liar)

(Is it the truth, or a lie?)

Lying can be hard, stressful work. It's been made more difficult by the research in Aldert Vrij's recently updated book - Detecting lies and deceit: The psychology of lying and the implications for professional practice (in press) - which states that a very effective method to detect a false story is to ask the person to tell it backwards.

Turns out that keeping your lies straight is harder when you're being asked to twist them around in your head.

[Thanks to Dan Goldstein for being on the pulse.]

How I always catch my train

The subway is my main form of transportation. As such, I see a lot of trains pulling out of the station^*.

I often hear people cursing the train, their bad luck, or the elderly woman who was moving slowly down the stairs. These people have a very strong attachment to an imaginary life. I don’t know what kind of magic and wonders they expected to happen as a result of the recently departed train, but whatever it was is gone, and the sooner they accept that the better.

Imagine walking up to an ATM – would you get mad at the person ahead of you because they’re about to receive the $20 bill that you have big plans for? That $20 bill has pulled out of the “ATM station.” That $20 has a unique adventure ahead of it, but so does the one about to enter your pocket.

The same can be said of you and your train ride. Yes, you could have one set of adventures if you caught the earlier train, but you’re now faced with this set – the one the universe has given you the opportunity to take.

“Your train” is the one you actually end up riding, not the one you planned on taking.

Congratulations, now you’ll never miss your train again!


* At which point I think, “great, I’m early for the next one” (I actually feel that more and more often the trains are just arriving at the station).