I was talking with my dad about feeling sad and hopeless about his cancer. “On the one hand,” he said, “I know every day is a blessing and there’s so much to be grateful for. But that seems so abstract. So far away right now.” Here are some thoughts about feeling hopeless, and building a ladder toward hope.
Good Sad - Finding Moments of Hope [6:58m]:
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It feels like summertime here - glorious, peaceful, and relaxed. The scent of jasmine is pouring in through my office windows along with the gently cooling evening air.
Yesterday I was talking with a client/friend about where he needs to put energy in his business. Hands down: “relationships.” Reaching out and connecting, mostly externally and also internally. He admitted he wasn’t doing it the way he wanted, and part of me wanted to say, “but that’s so easy!”
Then I realized that his reason for not doing this is much the same as my reason for not exercising (something he’s great at, by the way): In two completely different challenges, we each feel inadequate - incompetent - and without real hope that our efforts will work.
And we each find it incredibly difficult to persevere… and all too easy to slide that task to the bottom of the pile. I am sure there is value and insight in this feeling, some clarity to be found, but even in this quite jasmine gentleness of evening, the wisdom is beyond me.
A few months ago I blogged about Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” about Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. He didn’t use these words, but he talked all about what we call emotional intelligence. Here’s a reprise he gave on Oprah:
Plus here are a ton of other videos about Randy.
This awareness campaign for the International Red Cross won bronze at the ACT competition last year. The idea behind the artwork is that everybody have the right to be treated as a normal human being. A healthy life is very important, compassion and tolerance is part of it.
“Every conflict around the globe, whether it’s between countries or cousins, begins when people disregard this (compassion) basic human emotion. Compassion helps us find common ground and overlook our differences by discovering that we all have the same colour blood in our hearts.”
Direct from very hard hitting osocio
Intriguing study - more evidence that being smart with feelings is key to success in life. In this case - recovery from illness.
Those with low anger control produced higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which was in turn, associated with delayed healing.
While I’m not crazy about the phrase “anger control” (because “control” is the most superficial form of self-management - kind of like someone saying you should “control your wife”), the concept makes so much sense. Feelings tied to danger (ie, stress response) focus our body on short-term problems (fight the lion).
Likely one reason feelings like hope, courage, and compassion speed healing is that they reverse stress.
@ lunch today confess to eavesdropping (funny word) on 2 young women talking about their lives and decision to make conscious choice about how they want their days to add up into a life.
“I am getting sick of just drinking every day, so I guess I gotta spend my time with different people.”
They got talking about “doing my work” and the healing they both wanted to do. On the one hand, it sounded like an OD of Dr Phil - every self-help cliche was coming out. On the other I wanted to go hug them and give them my card. I thought that might give away the fact that i was eavesdropping though….
And, on the 3rd hand (is there one?) I was wondering about “doing my work.” I love the commitment to growth. And I wonder: Why is it work?
I mean, I get that it is. Usually it feels like work to change and grow… it’s a real effort to stop doing the crappy-but-gratifying stuff and be a grownup instead (sigh). But I also feel sad that it’s “work” to learn.
“Which is more of threat to your health: Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security?” was the provocative lead in question to a recent article entitled Living in Fear and Paying a High Cost in Heart Risk. The article states that the answer is not as clear cut as you might think. A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, which tracked the health of a representative study of more than 2,700 Americans before 9/11, began monitoring people’s fears of terrorism for several years post the attack and found that the most fearful people were found to be 3 to 5 times more likely to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments. For specifics about the study read the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15tier.html?pagewanted=all
During this period Homeland Security devised a color coded scale to alert the nation to the level of threat present. If you recall the numerous news conferences the Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security held and the lead story to the nightly news, which all gave special attention to the elevated level of threat. I remember sitting in an airport, late one night waiting for a flight, when a cold metallic voice over the loudspeaker broke into my day’s reflections informing me that the level of threat was elevated to orange and to not leave my bags unattended! My amygdala quickly focused my vision, as I scanned all the other faces in the waiting area and it alerted me to where all the exits where. It was scary. Of note is that the level has never dropped below yellow, third of the five levels, since the inception of the scale. The implications and results of the study indicate that living in constant fear has negative psychological, physical, and emotional consequence to one’s health.
As I was working my way through the article I kept reflecting on how important the work we do with leaders on managing and navigating emotions. One tool we teach is the Reaction Cycle (Our body’s way or reacting to a perceived threat), which shows how you can intervene at three critical phases of the cycle: Preparation, Interpretation, and Escalation, to bring our thoughts, emotions and bodies back to equilibrium. I also wondered about leaders who use fear as part of their leadership style and the consequences it has on performance but also on the long term health of the people they manage and lead, as well as on their own health.
Alan Deutschman in his book, Chang or Die points out the misconceptions about change; if you give people the facts, create enough fear and then add force that change happens. In fact the 3 F’s are the saboteurs of change. Joseph LeDoux says, “Emotions are a critical source of information for learning.” EQ tells us that fear is a legitimate and critical emotion; without fear there probably wouldn’t be a human species. However, to remain in fear is unproductive for health and performance and to bring about constructive change. We need fear to alert us to the dangers of global warming and other serious threats to our well-being but we need to learn to move out of fear and into hope to assist us in creating a sustained effort to overcome our threats.
Is it emotionally intelligent to fight? New study from University of Michigan divides 192 couples 3 groups based on “unfair attacks”:
- both partners communicate their anger;
- one spouse expresses while the other suppresses;
- both suppress their anger and brood.
Preliminary finding after 17 years is that group 3 is at risk. Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the U-M School of Public Health and the Psychology Department, and lead author:
“When both spouses suppress their anger at the other when unfairly attacked, earlier death was twice as likely than in all other types.” Source: Physorg
Sometimes people think emotional intelligence is the same as “being nice.” Based on this data, though, the intelligent use of emotion is to fight! Or maybe to fight nicely.
