Stress

How Mindfulness Can Make You Better at Your Job // Book Summary of David Gelles’s ‘Mindful Work’

April 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mindfulness Simply Means Being Aware and Being Present

Most religions and spiritual practices encourage some sort of meditation and mindfulness. However, the specific practice of bringing your attention and your focus to the present moment, and observing and accepting the experience as is, is most commonly associated with the Eastern meditative traditions.

Mindfulness is an element of the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path to nirvana (enlightenment.) The Buddha taught that a mistaken perception of reality inevitably leads to suffering. Mindfulness is the primary means of bridging that gap between how things seem to be and how they really are.

Attending to What Happens to Our Minds, Hearts, Attitudes, and Actions

In its secular form, mindfulness is but a practice of consciousness. It is heedfulness or awareness of your subjective thoughts, behaviors, and experiences—without evaluating or judging them.

Mindfulness can help you, through direct experience, become more comfortable with your life and to be better able to cope with the problems and issues in your daily life.

The heightened mental receptivity, together with an increased sensitivity to the environment, better openness to new information, and a sharper decision-making are understood to produce a great number of physiological and psychological benefits.

Mindfulness is the Best Antidote to Anxiety

In a world that barrages us with information and demands us to be incessantly active and reactive, mindlessness is being embraced increasingly in the mainstream culture. As a supplement to yoga, and without any specific religious association, mindfulness is today practiced as a way to prevent being swept away in an avalanche of thought, activity, and emotion.

David Gelles’s Mindful Work: How Meditation Is Changing Business from the Inside Out provides a remarkable account of the ever-increasing adoption of meditation-based mindfulness. Prominent American corporations such as Google, General Mills, Aetna, and Ford have built mindfulness-themed employee wellness initiatives to foster a happier, more productive workplace.

Gelles brings a business journalist’s objectivity to draw together his experience of practicing meditation for 15 years. He also reviews scientific research that has evidenced how people who have a mindfulness routine are less distractible and better at concentrating, even when multi-tasking.

Scientific research is making the benefits clear. Studies show that mindfulness strengthens our immune systems, bolsters our concentrative powers, and rewires our brains. Just as lifting weights at the gym makes our muscles stronger, so too does practicing mindfulness make our minds stronger. And the most tried-and-true method of cultivating mindfulness is through meditation.

Gelles discusses the teachings of many key influencers in the development of the mindfulness movement. The rising popularity of meditative mindfulness in the West has its genesis in a retreat organized in the ’70s by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk and teacher. One of his attendees, the University of Massachusetts psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, integrated Hanh’s teachings with yoga and medical science, and created the popular eight-week “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” course. Over the decades, other psychologists developed mindfulness-based interventions that allow patients to observe their cognitive and behavioral processes.

Gelles summarizes much of the recent research that has confirmed the centuries-old Eastern wisdom about mindfulness practices. Developments in contemplative neuroscience have corroborated the effects that meditative mindfulness has on supporting the body’s immune system and counteracting the symptoms of burnout.

Indeed, mindfulness seems to change the brain in some specific ways. Broadly speaking, mindfulness increases activity in parts of the prefrontal cortex, an evolutionarily recent region of the brain that is important for many of the things that make us human. This region is the seat of much of our higher-order thinking-our judgment, decision making, planning, and discernment. The prefrontal cortex is also an area that seems to be more active when we are engaged in pro-social behavior—things like compassion, empathy, and kindness.

Some studies have shown that folks who practice meditation have a less perturbed amygdala. That means that the brain is less vulnerable to interpreting many flight-or-fight stimuli as threats and triggering anger, stress, or a defense reaction.

Mindfulness is the Best Antidote to Anxiety

Meditative Mindfulness in the Emerging Context of Consumer Culture

Gelles warns that capitalism and commercialization could, due to many increasingly-visible entrepreneurial teachers, complicate something as seemingly simple as observing one’s breath and paying attention.

I’m sympathetic to the skeptics, who worry that a noble practice is being quickly corrupted by modern marketing. But having witnessed mindfulness in action for fifteen years, it is clear to me that rarely, if ever, does exposure to meditation make someone a worse person. On balance, the folks who become more mindful tend to be happier, healthier, and kinder. Nevertheless, it is worth addressing the various critiques of mainstream mindfulness, if only to put them to rest.

…

Even today, some of the most popular gurus in America have demonstrated a penchant for bling that strikes many as being out of touch with their mantra of inner peace. Bikram Choudhury, the litigious yoga teacher, cuts the figure of an oligarch, driving around Beverly Hills in a Rolls-Royce and sporting a gold-encrusted Rolex. A Thai monk with a taste for Louis Vuitton luggage and private jets had his assets frozen by authorities in 2013.

A Few Minutes a Day is All You Need to Reap the Benefits of Mindfulness

Recommendation: Read David Gelles’s Mindful Work. This helpful tome offers a succinct rundown of the benefits of mindfulness. In an era where our culture is increasingly questioning the frenzy of activity and reactivity that has entrenched the current way of life, mindfulness will continue to draw many mainstream practitioners for its ability to promote stress-reduction and produce improvements in one’s overall emotional state and outlook on life.

Indeed, mindfulness is about much more than simply observing sensations as they occur. It is about what happens to our minds, hearts, and actions when we deliberately continue these practices for weeks, months, and years. Mindfulness is a practice that allows us to achieve more sustainable happiness and to grow more compassionate. And over time, mindfulness requires one to confront thorny concepts like impermanence and compassion.

What Your Messy Desk Says About You

March 13, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

What Your Messy Desk Says About You

Appearances are Important

Your office and desk must seem organized. A messy office or a cluttered desk can not only impede your space and cramp your style, but also affect how your peers and superiors perceive you.

Clutter can drag you down, sap your energy, and reduce your efficiency. However, if clutter is your style, you should have every right to work the way you like to work.

A messy desk isn’t a professional flaw, but clutter may reflect of your competence. Untidiness can give an impression that your job may be too much for you to handle, or that you can’t get your thoughts and information organized.

How to Conquer Your Paperwork Crisis

As opposed to sorting through everything in your drawers, desktop, and filing systems, consider removing the whole lot somewhere else and only allowing the important things back.

Stephanie Winston, author of The Organized Executive, famously wrote that each clutter represents a decision not made. In this bestselling book, she recommends the “TRAF” system, a precursor to the “Inbox Zero” discipline that I’ve previously discussed on this blog. TRAF is an acronym for the four decisions you must make on each piece of paper that arrives at your desk. You can Toss it away, Refer or delegate it to someone else, Act on it, or File it if it absolutely deserves to be achieved. Don’t keep anything merely for reasons of habit or for sentimental reasons.
Don’t start tomorrow with today’s mess. Spending ten minutes at the end of your workday gearing your desk up for the next day can help you stay organized.

After you’ve taken steps to reorganize your office, sustain your system. Look for ways to further streamline and fine-tune your organization framework.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Let Clutter Spin Out of Control and Affect Other’s Perceptions

Taking too much time to organize can be just as ineffective—don’t end up spending so much time organizing that you don’t have the time to do anything else. (This is one of the shortcomings of David Allen’s Getting This Done system.) Learn to put things away as soon as you’re done working on them.

Being organized not only means less time wasted looking for things, but also rewards you with a greater sense of control and a favorable professional image.

What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress

February 27, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment Under Stress

Airline disasters often make great case studies on how a series of insignificant errors can build up into catastrophes.

As the following two case studies will illuminate, unanticipated pressures can force your mind to quickly shift to a panic-like state. As it searches frenetically for a way out of a problem, your mind can disrupt your ability to take account of all accessible evidence and attend rationally to the situation in its entirety.

Stress Can Blind You and Limit Your Ability to See the Bigger Picture: A Case Study on Eastern Airlines Flight 401

Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed on December 29, 1972, killing 101 people.

As Flight 401 began its approach into the Miami International Airport, first officer Albert Stockstill lowered the landing gear. But the landing gear indicator, a green light to verify that the nose gear was correctly locked in the “down” position, did not switch on. (This was later verified to be caused by a burned-out light bulb. Regardless of the indicator, the landing gear could have been manually lowered and verified.)

The flight deck got thrown into a disarray. The flight’s captain, Bob Loft, sent flight engineer Don Repo to the avionics bay underneath the flight deck to verify through a small porthole if the landing gear was actually down. Loft simultaneously directed Stockstill to put the aircraft on autopilot. Then, when Loft unintentionally leaned against the aircraft’s yoke to speak to Repo, the autopilot mistakably switched to a wrong setting that did not hold the aircraft’s altitude.

The aircraft began to descend so gradually that it could not be perceived by the crew. With the flight engineer down in the avionics bay, the captain and the first officer were so preoccupied with the malfunction of the landing gear indicator that they failed to pay attention to the altitude-warning signal from the engineer’s instrument panel.

Additionally, given that the aircraft was flying over the dark terrain of the Everglades in nighttime, no ground lights or other visual cues signaled that the aircraft was gradually descending. When Stockstill eventually became aware of the aircraft’s altitude, it was too late to recover the aircraft from crashing.

In summary, the cause of the Flight 401’s crash was not the nose landing gear, but the crew’s negligence and inattention to a bigger problem triggered by a false alarm.

Stress Can Blind You into Focusing Just on What You Think is Happening: A Case Study on United Airlines Flight 173

United Airlines Flight 173 crashed on December 28, 1978, in comparable circumstances.

When Flight 173’s pilots lowered the landing gear upon approach to the Portland International Airport, the aircraft experienced an abnormal vibration and yaw motion. In addition, the pilots observed that an indicator light did not show that the landing gear was lowered successfully. In reality, the landing gear was down and locked in position.

With the intention of troubleshooting the landing gear problem, the pilots entered a holding pattern. For the next hour, they tried to diagnose the landing gear glitch and prepare for a probable emergency landing. During this time, however, none of the pilots monitored the fuel levels.

When the landing gear problem was first suspected, the aircraft had abundant reserve fuel—even for a diversion or other contingencies. But, all through the hour-long holding procedure, the landing gear was down and the flaps were set to 15 degrees in anticipation of a landing. This significantly increased the aircraft’s fuel burn rate. With fuel exhaustion to all four engines, the aircraft crashed.

To sum up, Flight 173’s crew got preoccupied with the landing gear’s malfunction and harried preparations for an emergency landing. As a result of their inattention, the pilots failed to keep tabs on the fuel state and crashed the aircraft.

Stress Can Derail Your Train of Thought

Under pressure, your mind will digress from its rational model of thinking.

The emotional excitement from fear, anxiety, time-pressure, and stress can lead to a phenomenon known as “narrowing of the cognitive map.” This tunnel vision can restrict your field of mindful attention and impair your ability for adequate discernment.

Situational close-mindedness can constrict your across-the-board awareness of the situation and force you overlook alternative lines of thought.

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, as the aviation industry did in response to the aforementioned incidents.

How to Organize Your Inbox & Reduce Email Stress

January 19, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The recipe for staying on top of your email is to be ruthless about what you send and receive, and to focus on how you process your inbox. Here are thirteen practices that may help you be in command of your inbox.

Turn off all new email notifications.
Limit the number of times you access your email.
Avoid checking your email during the first hour of the day. Work on something that requires your energy and focus.
Don’t have your email software opened … keep it closed until it’s time to “do” email.
When you “do” email, follow the “Process to Zero” technique. Merlin Mann, the productivity guru who popularized this technique, emphasized, “Never check your email without processing to zero.” Handle every email just once, and take one of these actions: delete or archive, delegate, respond, or defer.
If you can process an incoming email in a minute or two, act on that email immediately, using the Two-Minute “Do-it-now” Rule.
For any email that requires inputs or deliberation, start a reply email, and file it in the “Drafts” folder of your email software. Set aside a block of time to crank though all such draft emails.
Tell people with whom you communicate the most that you intend to check your email intermittently. Encourage them to telephone or drop by if they need a quick response.
If you’ve been dreading a large backlog of email, consider deleting everything that’s over three weeks old. If the contents of any of those emails were of any consequence, somebody would have appraised you of their substance.
Reduce the number of emails you send. Decrease the number of people you carbon-copy on emails. Consider meetings or telephone calls for more effective interaction.
Curb the number of email messages you receive. Ask to be removed from irrelevant newsgroups, and unsubscribe from marketing emails. Learn how to use the “filter” feature on your email software.
Don’t get sucked into replying to every email. Reply only to those that are of relevant to your priorities. Let other communicators follow up with you if they need a reply.
Empty your inbox by the end of the day and process every message.

Idea for Impact: Don’t let an overflowing inbox be a big distraction (read my article on the Zeigarnik Effect.)

Moral Disengagement Leads People to Act Immorally and Justify Their Unprincipled Behavior

November 20, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Temptation of Christ on the First Day of Lent

Rationality Drives Human Behavior Only After Emotion and Impulse Lose Their Hegemony

People adapt moral standards that dissuade them from objectionable behavior. But these moral standards do not serve as a steadfast regulator of their moral actions. Occasionally, circumstances can make people to become selectively disengaged from those moral self-sanctions and end up pursuing unprincipled actions.

Particularly when people feel angry, pressured, or depressed, their mental footing tends to ebb away. Any state of emotional threat can let up their determination to act ethically and resist temptations. They lose discipline, get into a defensive mode, and become susceptible to thinking only about short-term benefits. They are more likely to engage in self-absorbed behaviors that they would otherwise spurn, especially if the payoff for such behavior is high and the odds of getting caught and punished are low.

Circumstances Sometimes Sway People to Engage in Behaviors That Conflict with Their Internalized Moral Standards

Moral disengagement is the psychological phenomenon that describes how people rationalize behavior that is at odds with their own moral principles. For example, suppose a teenager who has a principled framework that forbids theft. If he takes a newspaper without paying for it from a Starbucks store, he may rationalize his actions by telling himself that Starbucks warranted some harm because it overcharges its consumers and, until recently, purchased not all its coffee beans from certified fair trade sources.

People engaging in wrongdoing often see that the rules are uncalled-for and unjustifiable. In their judgment, even though they may be breaking the rules and flouting conventions, they’re persuaded that they’re really not doing anything wrong because the rules deserve to be violated.

Moral reasoning usually deprives people when they devalue their prey and malign their victims (“her tattletaling deserved it” or “he brandish a knife, hence I pulled out my gun.”)

Stanford Psychologist Albert Bandura, who introduced the concept of moral disengagement, identified eight cognitive mechanisms (book) that disengage a person’s internal moral standards from his/her actions, thereby causing unethical behavior without conspicuous remorse or self-censure.

Idea for Impact: Be Wary of Suspending Your Moral Standards to Reduce Self-Censure

When circumstances or people provoke you to potentially regretful behavior, realize that you are a self-determining agent, and that you have a moral and ethical responsibility to behave with integrity and pursue wholesome actions. Step back and ask yourself, “Normally, would I judge this contemplated action to be wrong? Are my ways of thinking flawed? Am I defending the harm I am causing by blaming others? Am I criticizing the victim to justify my destructive actions?”

When in doubt, use Warren Buffett’s rule of thumb for personal integrity: “I want [people] to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper—to be read by their spouses, children and friends—with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.”

How to Prevent a Communications Breakdown During Crisis

November 13, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Prevent a Communications Breakdown During Crisis

The ultimate test of a leader’s and an organization’s communication skills is how they deal with a crisis—natural disasters, crisis of confidence, acts of malevolence, strategic errors, acts of deception, management misconduct, and so forth.

It’s not difficult to see why communication is an important element of crisis management: leaders today have to tackle media that is unsympathetic to what it regards as management incompetence, shareholders and customers who are ever more demanding, legislation and regulation that is getting stricter, and competitors eager to pinch customers during times of distress.

Effective crisis communications must be able to have a consistent and clear message and present this message swiftly and regularly following a crisis.

Here are seven elements of effective crisis communication.

Strategic Thinking: Think purposefully about what you want your constituencies (employees, stockholders, customers, suppliers, communities, the media) to know under the given circumstances. Many a routine problem has transformed into a crisis because too many people were told too much and the situation became exaggerated and out of control.

What happened
Who is responsible
Why did it happen
Who is affected
What should be done
Whom can we trust
What should we say
Who should say it
How should we say it

Openness: When a crisis befalls, be prepared to talk about it internally and externally as assertively as you respond to the crisis operationally. Understand the expectations of your constituencies and go beyond what is expected or required. If you are not communicative enough, people may make erroneous assumptions about the crisis. Bad news can travel fast and sell best.
Candor: If your constituencies should know about a crisis that your organization is experiencing, talk about it as quickly and as completely as you can, especially to those most directly affected.
Concern: Keep the people most directly affected by the crisis updated until the crisis is completely resolved. Do not brand a whistle blower a troublemaker.
Sensitivity: At the earliest possible moment, step back and analyze the impact of the crisis. Inform and alert all the constituencies that are affected. Demonstrate concern, compassion, sympathy, remorse, or contrition, whatever the case may require.
Integrity: If you are responsible for the crisis or perceived as such, acknowledge the situation promptly. Be true to your corporate and personal conscience. Share the crisis action plan and seek inputs.
Honesty: Learn from your mistakes and talk openly about what you’ve learned. Demonstrate your commitment to keeping errors and problems from resurfacing.

Idea for Impact: Reputation and goodwill represent a great part of business value. Protect yourself when faced with attacks on your reputation and competence. If you do not communicate effectively and frequently with your constituents, somebody else will. In the absence of information, your constituents can develop their own perceptions of the problem and its implications.

Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

November 8, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Give sorrow words;
the grief that does not speak;
whispers the o’er-fraught heart
and bids it break.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act 4, Scene 3)

Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Confronting Upsetting Experiences: Expressive Writing for Healing

People often block out thoughts that provoke negative emotions as a way of reducing their stress and regulating their moods. However, intentional suppression of deep-seated emotions not only increases susceptibility to illness, but also amplifies the emotionality and associated psychological effects of the suppressed thoughts.

Discussing, venting, clarifying, or expressing a trauma is a natural human response. When this necessity is inhibited, emotional stress and physical illness ensue.

Facing up to deeply personal issues can promote physical health, well-being, and beneficial behaviors.

The scientific research on the benefits of putting negative experiences into words is extensive. Studies have shown that expressive writing about oneself and one’s traumatic or stressful experiences does produce significant health benefits. Expressive writing helps ameliorate mood disorders, reduces symptoms among patients with serious illness, improve a person’s physical condition after a heart attack, and even enhance memory.

Writing about Emotional Topics Brings About Improved Physical and Emotional Wellbeing

James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, first investigated expressive writing as a healing process in the 1980s. Since then, research that spawned from Pennebaker’s pioneering studies, has revealed benefits could accrue to those who were dealing with divorces, lost love, death of loved ones, job rejections, terminal illness, even college students struggling with first-year transitions.

Here are the main points about the expressive writing method:

Choose the part of the day when you are most contemplative (that’s the morning for most people.) Sit down at a place where you are not likely to be disturbed.
Reflect about a very personal and important event. Consider a significant emotional upheaval that influences your life the most or has in the past. Your topic can be about a distress or failure, lost love, health-, school- or career-related anxiety, relationships, inner conflicts, death of a loved one, or just about any topic that you would like to express.
If you’re writing about an experience or an event that involves another person, it can help to organize your writing as a letter to that person, whether alive or dead.
Write your deepest thoughts about your chosen event or experience continuously for 20 minutes. If you run out of things to write or reach a mental block, just repeat or recap what you have previously written.
In your writing, deeply explore your thoughts about the event and describe its effect on you. In other words, write both about what happened and how you feel about it. Think about how you can handle these events and their consequences now—what you can do specifically.
Connect your personal experiences to other parts of your life. How do they relate to your childhood, your parents, people you love, who you are, or who you want to be?
Write for yourself as your thoughts arise. Be as direct, intense, and serious as possible. Do not worry about grammar, spelling, comprehensiveness, legibility, or structure. On the opening day of writing, your stories are not very structured, but over the three or four days, you will develop a more structured narrative.
After writing for 20 minutes, do not look back over. Simply fold the papers you used, seal them, and put them away (read more about the “worry box technique.”) Unlike psychotherapy, the expressive writing technique does not employ feedback to the participant.
Make a mental note of how you feel. It is not unusual to feel sad or disheartened after writing—these feelings usually fade away in an hour or so. In research experiments, many participants have reported crying or getting upset by the experience of writing about emotional upheavals, but most participants testify that the writing experience was meaningful in helping them organize their experiences.
Repeat this exercise for four consecutive days. You can write about the same experience on all four days or about different experiences each day. If you choose to write about the same topic on all the four days, try to wrap everything up by the fourth day.

Note that expressive writing is distinct from keeping a daily journal in that it allows people to step back for a moment and evaluate their lives. Pennebaker once said, “I’m not even convinced that people should write about a horrible event for more than a couple of weeks. You risk getting into a sort of navel gazing or cycle of self-pity. … But standing back every now and then and evaluating where you are in life is really important.”

Translating an Emotional Experience Into Language Makes the Experience Graspable: it Can Help You Find New Meaning in Life’s Ordeals

New research has shown that expressive writing—followed by expressive rewriting—can improve happiness and lead to behavioral changes. Narrative storytelling of an unpleasant and chaotic experience may make the experience and its effects more controllable. For instance, according this New York Times article,

At the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, life coaches ask clients to identify their goals, then to write about why they haven’t achieved those goals. Once the clients have written their old stories, they are asked to reflect on them and edit the narratives to come up with a new, more honest assessment. While the institute doesn’t have long-term data, the intervention has produced strong anecdotal results.

Expressive Writing Can Help Change the Way You Feel About Traumatic Events and About Yourself

Idea for Impact: Expressive Writing Can Help Change the Way You Feel About Traumatic Events and About Yourself

Expressive writing is a method of self-help that supplements the value of therapeutic talking to someone accepting and non-judgmental.

By exploring your deepest thoughts and feelings with a reflective, inquiring, honest attitude, you can shift perspective. Standing back and reflecting on your suffering from different points of view can bring about an improved emotional state. You can create your greatest opportunities for change by confronting the realities, reframing your experiences in terms of your values and priorities, and identifying impediments that stand in the way of purpose, joy, and contentment.

For more on the means and methods of expressive writing, as well its many confirmed physiological and behavioral benefits, read James Pennebaker’s Opening Up: the Healing Power of Expressing Emotion (1997) and Louise DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing (1999)

How People Defend Themselves in a Crisis

November 6, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How People Defend Themselves in a Crisis The desire to protect and enhance one’s self-image is among the strongest motives of human behavior. No wonder scientific literature is laden with discussions on the ways in which people invoke self-deception in the interest of maintaining a favorable sense of their selves.

People have a propensity to avoid conscious awareness of fear-triggering worries, conflicts, and uncertainties. They engage in thought patterns that distort the external realities as a way of coping with distress.

Psychologists use the term “ego defense mechanisms” to describe the pattern of thought and behavior that arises in response to the perception of psychical danger.

Defense Mechanisms Play an Important Role in Self-Preservation

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) wrote in The Ego and the Id (1923,) “We have come upon something in the ego itself which is also unconscious, which behaves exactly like the repressed—that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious and which requires special work before it can be made conscious.” Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud (1895–1982,) and other psychologists identified twelve primary defense mechanisms:

Denial: explicitly refusing to acknowledge the threatening reality even when presented with indisputable data (e.g. someone with a terminal illness rejecting the imminence of his death.) Denial may give the respondent some time to evaluate the meaning and seriousness of the threatening reality before reacting to it.
Disavowal: acknowledging the threatening reality but downplaying its significance
Suppression: intentionally engaging distractions to eliminate from consciousness any thoughts of the threatening reality
Fixation: committing inflexibly to one specific mind-set or course of action
Substitution: replacing an unattainable or unacceptable instinctual object or emotion with one that is more accessible or tolerable
Displacement / Transference: redirecting emotions from their original object to a substitute object that is somehow associated with the original one.
Compensation: making amends for a perceived deficiency that cannot be eliminated (e.g., a physical defect) by excelling in some other way.
Grandiosity: exaggerated feeling of power or influence over the threatening reality
Idealization: ascribing power or influence to an existent or imaginary “savior” (an individual or a organization)
Intellectualization: thoroughly rationalizing a particular thought or action, by means of a misleading, but self-serving justification
Projection: incorrectly attributing to others any objectionable thoughts or actions. According to Sigmund Freud, projection makes a person perceive his objectionable character traits in others as a means of avoiding seeing those very faults in himself. For example, a man who cannot accept his own anger may cope with his feelings by accusing others as angry.
Splitting: fragmenting, isolating, and focusing on only certain elements of the threatening reality, instead of considering the complexity brought about by the crisis as a coherent whole

Idea for Impact: It pays to familiarize yourself with these twelve defense mechanisms and be able to identify them in how you (and others) react to emotionally charged situations, especially in close relationships. Defense mechanisms are natural forms of self-protection. However, used excessively, they can turn out to be pathological.

Reference: Cheryl Travers, “Handling the Stress” in Michael Bland (Ed.) Communicating out of a Crisis (1998)

How to Combat Burnout at Work

October 11, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Employee burnout, the slow and steady physical and psychological fatigue and depletion caused by one’s work-life, reflects a fundamental challenge of working life.

How to nurse your exhaustion before it escalates into a burnout Burnout is characterized by reduced personal accomplishment, physical exhaustion and unremitting weariness, feelings of despair and helplessness, and cynical attitudes toward work, life, and people.

Many people work in situations that are conducive to burnout. The prevalence of demanding job characteristics and the pressures of collegial and supervisory relationships, together with inadequate job resources and motivational job characteristics can trigger burnout.

If you’re feeling worn out, overwhelmed, even depressed at work, here’s how to nurse your exhaustion before it escalates into a burnout:

Investigate ways to limit or disconnect exposure to stress-initiators. First, understand and rank all the triggers of stress. Reflect on your existing responsibilities and relationships at work, and identify any element that strains your enthusiasm or diminishes your energy.
Restructure your work. If you’re dealing with excessive job demands and are provided with inadequate job resources, try to discard low-gain and high-pain tasks and responsibilities. Ask for more resources, and reach out to people you find supportive and motivating. If all else fails, lower your standards.
Seek opportunities for psychological detachment from work. Stop thinking about work during your leisure time and disengage yourself mentally from work.
Nurture yourself. Your needs belong to the top. As you make your way through a busy life, don’t ignore prioritizing taking care of yourself. Don’t surrender, settle, or lose hope. Don’t compromise yourself and become what you can settle for.

Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

August 18, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

The Lekha Sutta, an aphorism of the historical Buddha that has been preserved orally by his followers, identifies three distinct ways that anger manifests in individuals:

Firstly, the Buddha refers to the individual who is like an inscription on a rock. His anger stays with him for a long time; it does not war away by wind or water.
Secondly, the Buddha relates an individual who is habitually angered, but whose anger does not stay with him for a elongated time, to an inscription in soil that rubs away by wind or water.
Finally, the Buddha identifies an individual who is like water. When he is spoken to or treated rudely, he stays impervious, pleasant, and courteous—in the vein of an inscription in water that disappears right away.

Here’s a translation of the Lekha Sutta from the Pali by the eminent American Buddhist monk and prolific author Thanissaro Bhikkhu:

Monks, there are these three types of individuals to be found existing in the world. Which three? An individual like an inscription in rock, an individual like an inscription in soil, and an individual like an inscription in water.

And how is an individual like an inscription in rock? There is the case where a certain individual is often angered, and his anger stays with him a long time. Just as an inscription in rock is not quickly effaced by wind or water and lasts a long time, in the same way a certain individual is often angered, and his anger stays with him a long time. This is called an individual like an inscription in rock.

And how is an individual like an inscription in soil? There is the case where a certain individual is often angered, but his anger doesn’t stay with him a long time. Just as an inscription in soil is quickly effaced by wind or water and doesn’t last a long time, in the same way a certain individual is often angered, but his anger doesn’t stay with him a long time. This is called an individual like an inscription in soil.

And how is an individual like an inscription in water? There is the case where a certain individual—when spoken to roughly, spoken to harshly, spoken to in an unpleasing way—is nevertheless congenial, companionable, & courteous. Just as an inscription in water immediately disappears and doesn’t last a long time, in the same way a certain individual—when spoken to roughly, spoken to harshly, spoken to in an unpleasing way—is nevertheless congenial, companionable, & courteous. This is called an individual like an inscription in water.

These are the three types of individuals to be found existing in the world.

Idea for Impact: Learn to Corral Your Anger and Manage Your Emotions

Like everything else in the world, anger surfaces and passes away, restoring your previous sense of calm and stillness. Not identifying the nature of anger and allowing it to take over your state of being can lead to disastrous outcomes. Verse 222 of the Dhammapada (tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) states,

When anger arises,
whoever keeps firm control
as if with a racing chariot:
him
I call a master charioteer.
Anyone else,
a rein-holder—
that’s all.

Anger destroys careers. It destroys relationships. As long as you lack the capacity to withstand negative emotions such as anger, you will be at a marked disadvantage in life.

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Stress

Mindfulness Simply Means Being Aware and Being Present

Attending to What Happens to Our Minds, Hearts, Attitudes, and Actions

Mindfulness is the Best Antidote to Anxiety

Meditative Mindfulness in the Emerging Context of Consumer Culture

A Few Minutes a Day is All You Need to Reap the Benefits of Mindfulness

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Appearances are Important

How to Conquer Your Paperwork Crisis

Idea for Impact: Don’t Let Clutter Spin Out of Control and Affect Other’s Perceptions

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Stress Can Blind You and Limit Your Ability to See the Bigger Picture: A Case Study on Eastern Airlines Flight 401

Stress Can Blind You into Focusing Just on What You Think is Happening: A Case Study on United Airlines Flight 173

Stress Can Derail Your Train of Thought

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Rationality Drives Human Behavior Only After Emotion and Impulse Lose Their Hegemony

Circumstances Sometimes Sway People to Engage in Behaviors That Conflict with Their Internalized Moral Standards

Idea for Impact: Be Wary of Suspending Your Moral Standards to Reduce Self-Censure

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Confronting Upsetting Experiences: Expressive Writing for Healing

Writing about Emotional Topics Brings About Improved Physical and Emotional Wellbeing

Translating an Emotional Experience Into Language Makes the Experience Graspable: it Can Help You Find New Meaning in Life’s Ordeals

Idea for Impact: Expressive Writing Can Help Change the Way You Feel About Traumatic Events and About Yourself

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Defense Mechanisms Play an Important Role in Self-Preservation

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Idea for Impact: Learn to Corral Your Anger and Manage Your Emotions

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