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Personal growth: Misconceptions about dealing with stress February 4, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Solving Problems.
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In our efforts to develop our potential through personal development, our approach to dealing with emotional stress might be the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

Dr. Richard Carlson observes that many of us, when faced with a stress-producing situation,actually add to our stress by trying harder and harder to solve the problem or resolve whatever circumstance is causing the stress.

But Dr. Carlson says that instead, we should be temporarily backing off:

“The more intense the feeling [of stress], the greater is the need to slow down or stop whatever we are doing, but, more importantly, what we are thinking about…when we feel stressed, we lose our psychological bearings, wisdom, and common sense…we lose sight of the big picture and often get lost in the details of our problems.” (1)

He compares coping with mental or emotional stress to dealing with the stress of a physical injury. If we sprain our ankle while jogging, for example, the last thing we would think of doing is to try to make the sprain go away by using the ankle even more.

Similarly, in dealing with our stress-inducing challenges, we should take a thought-break and do something that is not stressful and equally important, for the time being, stop trying to more and more effort towards solving the problem.

(1) Richard Carlson, Ph.D. in his book, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, New World Library, Novato, California, 1997

— Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: The power of transformative resilience January 31, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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When a calamitous event knocks us down in life, the usual, and perhaps simplistic, advice is to simply get up and bounce back; however there may be a more effective and life-altering approach towards moving forward, a process described in the New York Times online edition as transformative resilience.

In an article titled The 6 Steps to Turning Setbacks into Advantages, the writer reports on recent research demonstrating how various people dealt with major and seemingly crippling life-setbacks through a six-stage process known as transformative resilience.

Essentially the process involves using a major setback as a foundation for significant personal growth and effectiveness.

The article highlights the story of a young woman, who although possessing a Master’s Degree, was unable to get a decent-paying job, and was burdened with almost $100,000 in student debt.

She went through various stages of despair, which included suicide ideation,  in her journey out of this difficult situation, started a blog detailing her progress, and eventually began counselling people in response to them writing to her for advice on their employment difficulties and student debt problems.

My takeaway from the article is that the process of transformative resilience is a practical working example of the old adage: If life hands us lemons, make lemonade.

Our problems can actually become the life-changing catalyst for their solutions – solutions that go beyond simple problem-solving, but rather transform our lives.

I could not get a link that worked to the article, so to read the full article, I would suggest you enter the following in a search engine like google:

New York Times The 6 Steps to Turning Setbacks into Advantages

— Dennis Mellersh