Emotions

The Power of Negative Thinking

May 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stoic philosophy recommends a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils,”) i.e. intentionally visualizing the worst-case scenario in your mind’s eye.

The first point is to acknowledge that misfortunes and difficulties could, rather than certainly will, come about. The second is to envisage your most constructive response should the worst-case scenario transpire. For instance, if you’d lose your job due to coronavirus, what resources could you rely on, and how could you handle the consequences?

The direct benefit of premeditatio malorum is in taming your anxiety: when you soberly conjure up how bad things could go, you typically reckon that you could indeed cope. You’ll not dwell in the negative thoughts. Even the worst possible scenario couldn’t be so terrible after all.

Another surprising benefit of negative visualization is in raising your awareness that you could lose your relationships, possessions, routines, blessings, and everything else that you currently enjoy—but perhaps take for granted. This increases your gratitude for having them now.

This Stoic exercise has an equivalent in Buddhist meditation-based mindfulness practices that encourage nonjudgmental awareness of unpleasant sensations (the vedanā.)

Your emotions, sensations, and events are in flux. They arise and pass. You’re merely to regard yourself as the observer of these thoughts and feelings, but you’re not to identify with them. You are not your thoughts … you are not your feelings. The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield writes in The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology (2015,)

Thoughts and opinions arise but they think themselves and disappear, “like bubbles on the Ganges,” says the Buddha. When we do not cling to them, they lose their hold on us. In the light of awareness, the constructed self of our identification relaxes. And what is seen is just the process of life, not self nor other, but life unfolding as part of the whole.

Idea for Impact: Could you benefit from reflecting on how you think of potential negative events?

An awareness of the possible—and the self-determining attitude—can be quite liberating. Premeditatio malorum is a surprisingly useful technique, if only with a scary name.

“What then should each of us say as each hardship befalls us? It was for this that I was exercising, It was for this that I was training,” as Epictetus philosophized in Discourses (3.10.7–8.)

Why People under Pressure Choose Self-Interested Behaviors

January 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Pressure can put people in a state of threat. As I’ve examined previously here, here, and here, pressure can undermine people’s ability to make sound decisions.

Under pressure, people can abandon their inhibitions, cut corners, and loosen up their moral standards. In other words, they are more likely to engage in self-centered behaviors as opposed to pursuing the common good.

People adopt moral standards that dissuade them from unacceptable behaviors. Under normal circumstances, they think sensibly about the costs and benefits when making decisions. However, under pressure, people can be depleted of the cognitive resources they need to act ethically and resist temptations. See my article on the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower.

When people are in that state of emotional and psychological anxiety, the brain goes into a defensive mode. With that, they are more likely to engage in self-interested behaviors that they would otherwise avoid, especially if the payoff for such behavior is high, and the odds of getting caught and punished are low.

How to Reduce Thanksgiving Stress

November 26, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Getting everything organized in your kitchen for this week’s annual celebration—one that nonetheless marks the Anglo-Saxon incursion of someone else’s country—is challenging enough, but hosting Thanksgiving gets even more stressful as soon as guests start arriving. You’re obliged to talk to them, entertain them, and keep them busy and occupied, all the while prepping and oven-coordinating.

One way to reduce your festive stress is to assign each guest a simple responsibility. Get aunt Mary to set the table, uncle Roger to get all the wine and the champagne ready, and the children to prepare the place cards. Somebody else can organize simple Thanksgiving games for the restless kids.

Give them all specific goals; don’t dictate perfection. Make sure the jobs are easy enough, short, and, preferably centered away from the kitchen, allowing you to focus on getting the food ready.

Appoint one dependable person to operate as your right-hand person—this person can coordinate with everybody else.

Your guests will feel satisfied that they’ve helped, and you’ll get some valuable space to get everything ready and have a fun time with your family.

Reduce Thanksgiving stress further by not partaking in that ritualized consumer orgy called Black Friday. Join the Buy Nothing Day movement in protest against excessive consumerism.

Addendum: When multiple families assemble for large gatherings, there’s a tendency for entire families to sit together. That’s a shame; if people could scatter around the dining table, there’d be more interactions and a livelier event. Bear this in mind while you decide on seating arrangements.

Who Told You That Everybody Was Going to Like You?

October 24, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

From investor Joshua Kennon’s perspectives on being disliked,

Years ago, a family member had to deal with a work colleague who utterly despised her to the point this colleague couldn’t conceal their disdain.

Exasperated, my family member called the prayer line of a televangelist and pleaded, “Please pray with me to have God to change this coworker’s heart so they like me. I’m friends with everybody. There’s no reason they hate me so much.”

The lady on the other end of the phone was quiet for a moment. When she finally spoke, she asked, “Who told you that everybody was going to like you? You weren’t promised that. In this world, there are going to be people who hate you for one reason or another, perhaps even without justification. As long as you’ve examined yourself and are sure it’s not something you’re doing wrong, if you’ll let me, I’d instead like to pray with you that God helps you find peace with the situation so it doesn’t steal your joy and you can move on to more edifying things.”

If others’ disapproval tends to nurture your self-dissatisfactions, question it. If you’ve made a mistake, try to right the wrong. Learn from it, pardon yourself, and move ahead.

If your quest for others’ approval is rooted in insecurity, remind yourself that your contentment in life cannot spring from other people’s perceptions of you; it has to come from an inner scorecard. Warren Buffett famously said, “The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.”

Striving to live your life to satisfy others always is an impossible aspiration. You’ll wind up losing your sense of individuality in the quest to conform to others’ expectations. “It is our very search for perfection outside ourselves that causes our suffering,” warned the Buddha.

How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235

October 1, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

As I’ve examined previously, airline disasters are particularly instructive on the subjects of cognitive impairment and decision-making under stress.

Consider the case of TransAsia Airways Flight 235 that crashed in 2015 soon after takeoff from an airport in Taipei, Taiwan. Accident investigations revealed that the pilots of the ATR 72-600 turboprop erroneously switched off the plane’s working engine after the other lost power. Here’s a rundown of what happened:

About one minute after takeoff, at 1,300 feet, engine #2 had an uncommanded autofeather failure. This is a routine engine failure—the aircraft is designed to be able to be flown on one engine.
The Pilot Flying misdiagnosed the problem, and assumed that the still-functional engine #1 had failed. He retarded power on engine #1 and it promptly shut down.
With power lost on both the engines, the pilots did not react to the stall warnings in a timely and effective manner. The Pilot Flying acknowledged his error, “wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle.”
The aircraft continued its descent. The pilots rushed to restart engine #1, but the remaining altitude was not adequate enough to recover the aircraft.
In a state of panic, the Pilot Flying clasped the flight controls and steered (see this video) the aircraft perilously to avoid apartment blocks and commercial buildings before clipping a bridge and crashing into a river.

A High Level of Stress Can Diminish Your Problem-solving Capabilities

Thrown into disarray after a routine engine failure, the pilots of TransAsia flight 235 did not perform their airline’s abnormal and emergency procedures to identify the failure and implement the required corrective actions. Their ineffective coordination, communication, and error management compromised the safety of the flight.

The combination of sudden threat and extreme time pressure to avert a danger fosters a state of panic, in which decision-makers are inclined to commit themselves impulsively to courses of action that they will soon come to regret.

Idea for Impact: To combat cognitive impairment under stress, use checklists and standard operating procedures, as well as increased training on situational awareness, crisis communication, and emergency management.

This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

August 13, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Never Feel Sorry for Yourself or Engage in Self-pity

The American writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who poignantly explored the African-American experience, passed away last week. Her best-known novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved (1987) is one of the few works of non-fiction that I’ve read. This captivating novel is much-admired for calling to mind of the inhumane violence of the institution of slavery. It’s a true story of a post-Civil War escapee-slave who, after she is recaptured, kills her infant daughter to liberate her from slavery and oppression. Read it (or watch its 1998 film adaption starring Oprah Winfrey.)

Morrison’s celebrated essay in the 150th-anniversary issue of The Nation suggested a potent antidote to suffering and loss. Here’s a précis:

On the day after Christmas 2004, I was in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. When a friend, a fellow artist, called to wish happy holidays, I told him, “I’m not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the recent reelection of George W. Bush …” My friend interrupted me and challenged, “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!” I felt foolish the rest of the morning.

[All the trouble in the world makes it difficult to stay grounded and productive.] Still, I remember the shout of my friend that day after Christmas. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. [While being aware of the world’s plights and the struggles of people,] there is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom.

Acceptance Can Set You Free

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate) by Vincent van Gogh When events have a downer-depressive effect, they can leave you in the throes of helplessness and depression. As Morrison suggests, acceptance and looking-forward is a compelling remedy to life’s many tribulations.

As I’ve stated in previous articles, even in the face of some of the worst misfortunes that could strike you, attempting to endure pain is a far superior choice than getting absorbed in feeling victimized and powerless.

After a reasonable period of grief, confronting your fears and facing up to the worst possible scenarios can bring about some tranquility.

You can deal with your troubles by diverting your mind with escapisms or cheering yourself up with distractive remedies, but these things can relieve suffering only for a short time. They do not alleviate grief but hinder it. You would rather end it than distract it.

In other words, it’s better to conquer your sorrow than to deceive it. If simply masked under self-gratifying pleasures and diversions, your haunted mind eventually comes back at you stronger than ever.

Idea for Impact: In facing life’s many troubles, acceptance can set you free. Perhaps the most potent cure for melancholy is to ask yourself, “What’s the one positive step I can take now?”

Change Isn’t Just Possible—It’s the Way Life Works

June 13, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Remarkable lines from “Change” from the English metaphysical poet John Donne’s Elegy III (Poems of John Donne, Volume 1, 1896):

To live in one land is captivity,
To run all countries, a wild roguery;
Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrified:
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this,
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest; Change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life and eternity.

Change helps you come back to yourself, over and over again, and ride the waves of richness through whatever life has to offer.

Change is a gift! Flow with it and seek out the beauty in each moment. Show up and be present, for there is something precious for you now—even within the pangs of loss and melancholy.

How to Prevent Employee Exhaustion

November 8, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Feeling exhausted, irritated, unhappy, and lacking in control are all signs of burnout—a temporary decline in an employee’s well-being.

If you notice a drop in energy, motivation, or productivity, try these simple ways to help combat employee exhaustion:

Clarify expectations
Where possible, lower the standards and relax the deadlines. Encourage less perfection.
Give employees the right tools and resources that they need to do their job effectively
Allocate some tasks to other employees
Appreciate, reward, recognize
Give employees some time off
Reduce travel and meetings
Offer counseling and mentoring

Employee stress and problems at work that are not dealt with effectively can quickly spill out into other parts of an employee’s life. In fact, many marriages go bad when stress at work is at its worst: people use up all their willpower on the job; their home lives suffer because they give much to their work.

Make employee welfare a key area of focus to promote better work environments and keep employees engaged.

Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

September 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Stress follows a peculiar principle: when life hits us with big crises—the death of a loved one or a job loss—we somehow find the inner strength to endure these upheavals in due course. It’s the little things that drive us insane day after day—traffic congestion, awful service at a restaurant, an overbearing coworker taking credit for your work, meddling in-laws, for example.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the many irritations of life. We overdramatize and overreact to life’s myriad tribulations. Under the direct influence of anguish, our minds are bewildered and we feel disoriented. This creates stress, which makes the problems more difficult to deal with.

The central thesis of psychotherapist Richard Carlson’s bestselling Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff… And It’s All Small Stuff (1997) is this: to deal with angst or anger, what we need is not some upbeat self-help prescriptions for changing ourselves, but simply a measure of perspective.

Perspective helps us understand that there’s an art to understand what we should let go and what we should concern ourselves with. As I mentioned in my article on the concept of opportunity cost, it is important to focus our efforts on the important stuff, and not waste time on the insignificant and incidental things.

I’ve previously written about my favorite 5-5-5 technique for gaining perspective and guarding myself against anger erupting: I remove myself from the offending environment and contemplate if whatever I’m getting worked up over is of importance. I ask myself, “Will this matter in 5 days? Will this matter in 5 months? Will this matter in 5 years?”

Carlson stresses that there’s always a vantage point from which even the biggest stressor can be effectively dealt with. The challenge is to keep making that shift in perspective. When we achieve that “wise-person-in-me” perspective, our problems seem more controllable and our lives more peaceful.

Carlson’s prescriptions aren’t uncommon—we can learn to be more patient, compassionate, generous, grateful, and kind, all of which will improve the way we feel about ourselves and the way that other people feel when they are around us.

Some of Carlson’s 100 recommendations are trite and banal—for example, “make peace with imperfection,” “think of your problems as potential teachers,” “remember that when you die, your ‘in-basket’ won’t be empty,” and “do one thing at a time.” Others are more edifying:

Let others have the glory
Let others be “right” most of the time
Become aware of your moods and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the low ones
Look beyond behavior
Every day, tell at least one person something you like, admire, or appreciate about them
Argue for your limitations, and they’re yours
Resist the urge to criticize
Read articles and books with entirely different points of view from your own and try to learn something

Carlson’s succinct insights have hit home with legions of the hurried and the harried. He became a bestselling author and a sought-after motivational speaker. Before his tragic death in 2006 at age 45, Carson followed up “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…” with some 20 tacky spinoffs intended particularly for spouses, parents, teenagers, new-weds, employees, and lovers.

Writing To-Do Lists Can Help You Sleep

June 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Sleeplessness Can Both Cause Anxiety and Be Caused by Anxiety

If you have recurrent difficulty with falling asleep or staying asleep, making a to-do list may help.

The authors of a Baylor University study suggest that not only can anxiety about unfinished tasks affect your sleep, but improving your sleep problem can also help symptoms of anxiety.

The authors’ experiment asked 57 students to spend a night in a sleep lab with no gadgets or distractions. Five minutes prior to an enforced sleep time, one half of the volunteers created a list of things they wanted to do over the upcoming days and the other half recorded tasks that they had completed during the previous few days. The researchers examined the participants’ brain activity during the night and established that those who wrote their to-do lists fell asleep nine minutes sooner on average.

How Ruminating about Unfinished Tasks Can Keep You Awake

The beneficial effects of a humble to-do list on your sleeplessness can be explained by the Zeigarnik Effect, the tendency for interrupted tasks and thoughts to be evoked better than completed tasks.

As I’ve written previously, Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who studied this phenomenon, theorized that incomplete tasks can incite “psychic tension” and can inundate you with a constant stream of reminders. Just the modest act of capturing how you’re going to deal with the unresolved tasks in a to-do list can achieve a sense of completion and respite.

According to Michael Scullin, the lead researcher of the aforementioned Baylor study, “there’s something about the act of writing, physically writing something on paper, that helps us hit the Pause button.”

When you have a task that’s unfinished, it’s on your mind more than any task you have completed. If you test people’s memory for things that were unfinished versus things that were completed, people remember the things that were unfinished a lot better. It seems that unfinished tasks rest at what we call a heightened level of cognitive activation. We think that’s the key ingredient. With our day-to-day lives and work schedule, unfinished tasks pile on one another and create this cognitive activation that’s difficult to set aside—unless, of course, you write about it.

Idea for Impact: Write a To-Do List Before Hitting the Sack Every Night

Some folks I know create a ‘brain dump’ just before bedtime—they not only jot down any worries or unfinished tasks from the day, but also create a plan for resolving their worries and stressors.

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Emotions

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A High Level of Stress Can Diminish Your Problem-solving Capabilities

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Never Feel Sorry for Yourself or Engage in Self-pity

Acceptance Can Set You Free

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Sleeplessness Can Both Cause Anxiety and Be Caused by Anxiety

How Ruminating about Unfinished Tasks Can Keep You Awake

Idea for Impact: Write a To-Do List Before Hitting the Sack Every Night

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