Life is a Song68856

Yeah, and folks can eliminate stress, tension and anxiety (the Big-three) by deciding to use (Directed Mental Effort) and over learning the correct strategies.

Rats have a highly developed sense of self-awareness; they learn from experience, suffer stress and frustration, and giggle when tickled. So do Homo sapiens.

Negative emotions and the mental movies causing them, can be deleted just as you banish spam on your computer. The application is for returning Iraq veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the rest of us who suffer anxiety dealing with career and relationships issues.

Ever get the sweats from negative feedback on a loop (mental imagery) after an evaluation session with your team leader or a hot argument with your significant other? Notice how it often has a life of its own and just wont quit?

It takes four steps.

Google: the journal Science, 7.20.07, Brendan Depue, University of Colorado. Quashing Painful Memories.

Facts The Vital 20% Know and The Trivial 80% Do Not

a)The Visual Cortex of your brain contains the visual representations of a memory (mental movies). Imagery is processed by your Occipital Lobe.

b)Your Hippocampus is responsible for memory formation and retrieval.

c)Your Amygdala creates emotional responses to memories and is in continuous communication with your hippocampus.

d)Your PreFontal Cortex runs planning, logical and cognition, and provides motivation for taking action. It modulates the activities of both your hippocampus (memory) and amygdala (emotions).

Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D.

One Strategy, Four Requirements

a)ReLabel your feelings accompanying the anxiety producing mental movies. Humans categorize, classify and label what occurs in our lives. Mentally repeat, I am not helpless and hopeless, the mental images have hi-jacked my imagination and I have to take control. Change the label, and you often change the emotions and your behaviors. Change your mental imagery and you win the game.

b)ReAttribute the cause of our negative feelings. Say, I have seen fMRIs and know the real cause of feeling stress and anxiety is my Right-Hemisphere has become dominant. I need to create an intervention by my logical, reasoning Left-Hemisphere.

c)ReFocus how we react to stress and anxiety; stop blaming the other party and quit thinking I should-have, could-have or ought-to have said this, that or the other thing.

Have a specific strategy to switch dominance from your right to your left-hemisphere. Substitute mental movies of a day at the beach having fun from accusatory negative feedback imagery.

d)ReValue how we emotionally react to the hi-jacking of our mind by the negative feedback movies. The Value of our beliefs is built on mindful awareness, seeing things, as they really are, not through our suggestible ego. Recognize your feelings to the mental movies as senseless and false. Give them no value.

Google: The Mind and The Brain: Neuroplasticity And The Power of Mental Force. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, UCLA Medical School.

Albert Ellis, The Contrarian

The creator of Rational-Emotive-Behavior-Therapy fifty years ago passed on today at the age of 93. He contradicted Freud and the psychotherapists who took up to ten years to find a breakthrough by endlessly exploring childhood experiences.

Ellis developed short-term therapy protocols to solve the patients problems within a month, not years. No blaming parents, a refusal to focus on justifying their present negative life experiences, the treatment was learning to take immediate actions to change your ineffective behaviors.

Stop whining: Starting-Doing-Something-Now (SDSN) to improve your life, was the Ellis message.

The goal was not to feel better, but to get better. You have left brain tools (Directed Mental Effort), and it requires taking personal action, action, action.

Running Your Three Pound Coconut

Ellis offered three strategies to permanently delete from your brain.

a)Distorted Thinking: emotional thinking generates inappropriate behaviors (hurt you and others); polarized thinking (all-or nothing), black-or-white. Filtering: focusing mostly on the bottle being half-empty. Catastrophying: Henny-Penny the sky is falling.

b)Unrealistic Expectation: you are not the exception to the rule (mostly), chance plays a serious part in your life. So does your genetic inheritance. You have no control over a lot in life, so act as if you are your own Guardian Angel. Work for the best, have Plan B ready to deal with the worst.

c)Faulty Self-Perception: it aint your fault when your kid screws up. Your Mom said, I cannot put my head on your shoulders, or maybe if your friends jumped off the roof, do you have to follow? You are a unique charismatic personality, Start-Doing-Something-Now.

Endwords

Do you have to accept every idea you read of Jeffrey M. Schwartz or Albert Ellis? You have volition (choice), and it leads to Directed Mental Effort. There are options and they all require taking action after thoughtful analysis.

Thinking alone is bogus, Einstein used Thought Experiments, and required proofs to confirm his own theories. Where is your evidence?

We suggest you exercise your mind as if it were composed of body muscles; it atrophies and follows the rule of use-it-or-lose-it.

Would you have a competitive advantage and move to the fast-track if you tripled your learning skills and doubled you long-term memory? Ask us how.

Author of Speed Learning for Professionals, published by Barron's; partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating two million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and fortune Magazine for major articles.

http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org

See ya, copyright 2007 H. Bernard Wechsler, email: hbw@speedlearning.org