It might not be. Check out these articles about it:
Parental praise and children’s exploration: a virtual reality experiment
The effects of praise: 7 evidence-based tips for using praise wisely
Parenting: Don't Praise Your Children!
Direct Your Mind: Could I Just Do Part Of It For Now?
The question, "Could I just do part of it for now?" keeps you moving. It keeps you making progress.
One of Lakein's techniques was to set a timer for five minutes, and work on your project until the time is up. Because it is so brief, you are not at all intimidated. Five minutes. You can stand just about anything for five measly minutes.
Often you'll find that once your five minutes are up, you don't really want to stop. But by giving yourself such a small task to begin with, you are able to get something done. Without that technique, you might have gotten nothing done on that project.
And working on your project for even five minutes gets you thinking about it, which is usually a good thing.
We tend to think about projects as a whole. This question gets us thinking about doing smaller parts of the whole. Do you have a large project you've been putting off because it is such a large project and you don't want to get started? Ponder this question. Can you do something on it for five minutes? Can you do a small part of it for now?
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
The Old Switcheroo
When you find yourself thinking about something negative and you want to stop, I’d like to give you a technique...but I can’t. The mind doesn’t work that way. It’s like a river that just keeps flowing, and even when you try to dam it up, it just overflows the dam and keeps on flowing. A river must flow. You can’t stop it.
But you can redirect it.
The same is true for your mind. It keeps flowing; it keeps thinking. You can’t stop it. But you can redirect it.
When you are thinking about something negative you can’t do anything about, redirect your mind. There are a million things you could direct your mind to, but let’s choose a good one now rather than wait until we’re bothered by something. Here’s an extremely useful area to redirect your mind to: Complimenting other people.
You and I know we take things for granted and it would be good to appreciate what people do for us, but we don’t, at least not as often as we’d like. Why? Because we need to think about it. When we compliment someone without giving it any thought, it comes out shallow, general, or phony. To do it well requires thought.
But we don’t have the spare time to think about it — we’re too busy thinking about negative things we can’t do anything about (wink).
So from this point on, use the occurrence of needless negative rumination as a trigger — something that reminds you to think about complimenting someone. Use it as an opportunity to switch your mind, to turn it in a new direction. What specifically has someone done that you think was cool? Big or small, it doesn’t matter. Next time you see that person, let them know you appreciate it. The fact that you acknowledge it some time after it happens shows it was important enough for you to think about later, which adds more impact to the compliment. Give more sincere and well-thought-out compliments and your relationships will be better, your life will be better, the world will be better. And one way to give more compliments is to use the old switcheroo.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.
Using Your Strengths to Become Happier
A signature strength is a characteristic that you are not only naturally good at, but that makes you feel good when you exercise it. For example, my top signature strength is Love Of Learning. I am naturally curious and I am good at learning, and it actually makes me happy to learn new things.
Anyway, The Chief Happiness Officer had a great little mission for his readers: A seven-step process to discover your signature strengths and exercise them at work in order to be happier while you're on the job. A worthy mission! Here's a link to the article and one of the seven steps:
Monday Tip: Use your strengths at work: "What strengths do you rarely or never use at work? These represent untapped potential for you and your workplace. Is there any way you could get to use them more often?"
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
Could I Just Do Part Of It For Now?
The time-management expert, Alan Lakein, calls this the “Swiss Cheese” method. You poke a hole in your project. After you poke enough holes in a project, there isn’t much left. A large project becomes easier and easier to tackle the more holes you poke in it. Also, when you don’t have the time or motivation to tackle your project, you can do some small thing that moves it forward, even a little, and that will do two things: It’ll improve your mood, and it will make the project a little less intimidating.
This question keeps you moving. It keeps you making progress.
One of Lakein’s techniques is to set a timer for five minutes, and work on your project until the time is up. Because it is so brief, you are not at all intimidated. Five minutes. You can stand just about anything for five measly minutes.
Often you’ll find that once your five minutes are up, you don’t really want to stop. But by giving yourself such a small goal to begin with, you are able to get something done. Without that technique, you would have gotten nothing done on that project.
And working on your project for even five minutes gets you thinking about it, which is usually a good thing.
We tend to think about projects as a whole. This question gets us thinking about doing smaller parts of the whole. Do you have a large project you’ve been putting off because it’s such a large project and you don’t want to get started? Ponder this question. Can you do something on it for five minutes? Can you do a small part of it now?
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.
How Can I Look at This as a Good Thing?
On an old radio show, back in the days before television, The Amos and Andy Show was extremely popular. It was a comedy show, but sometimes they said something profound. In one show, Amos asked the Kingfish why he had such good judgment. The Kingfish replied, “Well, good judgment comes from experience.”
“Then,” asked Amos, “where does experience come from?”
“From bad judgment,” answered the Kingfish.
There’s always something to learn from misfortune. And that’s what this article is about: Dealing with adversity and setbacks. Dealing with events you didn’t want to happen.
The Kingfish pointed out one way you can always look at a setback as a good thing: You can learn something from it. At the very least, you can learn how to avoid having the same setback twice. But if you use your imagination, you can do better than that. Before you even see how something turns out, you can find ways of looking at an event that would make you feel good about it, even when it is obviously bad.
I’ll give you some examples in a minute, but I want you to see that if a “bad” thing has already happened, there’s no point in thinking of it as bad. Thinking it’s bad doesn’t help you to correct the problem, if it can be corrected. And if it can’t be corrected, it still doesn’t help you to think of it as a bad thing. People can learn and remember just fine when they feel good. You do not have to feel bad to learn from your mistakes. In fact, people tend to learn better in a positive frame of mind than a negative one.
So there is no good reason to ever hold onto the judgment of a situation or event in your life as bad, awful, terrible, tragic, unfortunate, or lousy. It doesn’t do you any good to consider an event that has already happened to be bad.
You can find a way to look at anything that happens to you as good, and people who are habitually successful and happy do exactly that. You notice I said “anything that happens to you.” If someone you love dies, do not try to see it as good. You probably would not anyway, but this is a disclaimer to let you know I’m not a nutcase. When something terrible happens to someone you care about, this question is probably not appropriate. The question is for events that happen to you personally.
Sometimes you’ll hear someone say, “I’m glad that terrible accident happened to me; it made me aware that my priorities were wrong.” And people who find meaning and value in even “bad” things in their lives are happier and more successful than those who just think it was a terrible misfortune.
And it’s not a matter of chance which way they look at it. It’s up to each person to decide how they will look at their circumstances. We have the choice, and we will live with the feelings that spring out of the choices we make.
If we take the easy way and choose to look at a “bad” thing as bad, we’ll get the results of the easy way: Bad feelings. But if we use our heads with a little more vigor, if we make the effort to actively look for what’s good about it, if we choose to find a way to look at it as a positive thing, we will get the results of that choice too: It’ll be easier to wake up in the morning, we will be nicer to the people we love, we will take advantage of what we have in our lives, and we will feel better in general.
You can ask yourself, How can I look at this as a good thing? Or you can simply assert to yourself, This is good! and then ask yourself why it’s good. Declare it’s good, and then allow your mind to find how you’re right. Either way works well.
Try it right now. Think of something in your life that you consider “bad.” It could be a condition you’ve lived with for some time, or something that happened recently you don’t like and wished hadn’t happened.
I’ll go along with you. I was a little curt with my sister-in-law, and now she’s not talking to me. Obviously that’s bad. Any idiot can see it’s bad. Only a starry-eyed goober would say that’s good. But I’m going to try to see what’s good about it. And come along with me, bringing the thing you think is bad with you. How can you look at it as a good thing?
How can I see it as good that I have this situation with my sister-in-law? Well, I can see right off the bat, I get to use it as an example in this chapter. Not only that, but it may be an opportunity to apply some of the other principles in my toolbox and might give me some good examples for those also.
How else? Hmm. Well, I really haven’t gotten to know my sister-in-law very well as of yet, mainly because we live in different cities. And I know that sometimes in working out a conflict, people get to know each other a lot better, and there’s no reason to think this won’t happen with us. I can see it as good because it is an opportunity for us to get to know each other better, and at a deeper, less superficial level.
How else can I look at it as a good thing?
What about you? Have you found ways to look at yours is a good thing? Be creative. Look at it from outside your own perspective. If a professor of psychology knew about your situation, assume she could see it as good. How would she explain her position to you?
If everything is easy, I have no opportunity to apply what I’ve learned. In applying what I’ve learned, I learn it better. In handling a difficult situation, I can take knowledge and turn it into skill. From this perspective, anything difficult is good. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill me makes me strong.” Although that statement isn’t strictly true, the attitude is a good perspective to adopt when difficulties come your way.
I tell you truthfully, if you make these principles a part of your thinking, you’ll be insuppressible, unstoppable, and you will feel pretty good almost all the time. No kidding. The way you think makes a big difference. And each principle is like another plug in the bottom of your bucket. Less and less of your happiness leaks out as more and more of these principles become a part of your thinking.
I know that some of them are already a part of your thinking, although you probably don’t have them worded exactly this way. I haven’t put in principles like “I can change my own life for the better” because you already think that way or you wouldn’t be reading this book. You already think in a healthier way than many people who wouldn’t bother looking reading this book because they think “I’m just the way I am and I can never change.”
You also already know that even if you’re doing better than most, you can always get better. And each new principle, repeated many times, is a solid step in that direction. This one (How can I look at this as a good thing?) is extremely useful.
This is a principle of thought. And thinking is at its most creative when it is a dialog — specifically, asking and answering questions. That’s how to do your most productive creative thinking: Ask yourself a question and then try to answer it.
For example, Sylvia has just been fired. She’s on her way home from her ex-job. But she asks herself, almost with bitter sarcasm at first, “How can I look at this as a good thing?”
Sometimes when your body is filled with a negative emotion, a question like this won’t have a good effect right away. Don’t give up. Ask it again. And again.
“This isn’t a good thing,” thinks Sylvia, “not a good thing at all. ‘But how can I look at this as a good thing?’” She just needs to keep asking. She needs to awaken the part of her brain that answers questions.
And it is awake! “Maybe I’ll get a better job,” she says to herself without much conviction.
Ask it again! Keep asking the question. Sylvia does, and her mind turns more and more to the question, and it stops mulling her misfortune and stops moaning about how wronged she has been, and turns slowly toward the question. Then her mind kicks in and starts bringing up answers, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.
“There were a lot of things I didn’t like about that job. Now I have an opportunity to start over. It’s a good thing I got fired. I should have moved on from there long ago, but I guess I was just being lazy. This might be the best thing that could have happened to me. Maybe I should sit down and carefully decide what kind of job I want to get, and what kind of company I’d like to work for...”
And so on. Once the mind gets going, it can really come up with some good stuff.
Ask yourself: How can I look at this as a good thing? And keep asking.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.
Nitric Oxide: A Unifying Principle of Health
Nitric oxide is a unifying principle behind so many things we know are good for us, like probiotics and exercising and drinking more water and eating vegetables. What these all have in common is: They increase the amount of nitric oxide in your body.
And nitric oxide has a lot of different, significantly positive effects.
We’ve got all these different diets that have been proven to help people live longer and healthier, like the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet and vegetarianism. What they have in common is an emphasis on foods that increase the amount of nitric oxide in your blood, in your cells and in your brain.
When the research first started, not many scientists thought nitric oxide was even worth looking at. Only about 40 research papers a year were being published on the subject — most of them coming from a single lab. When that lab’s scientists won the Nobel Prize for its work on nitric oxide, it electrified the scientific community. Five years later, more than 7,500 papers a year were being published about nitric oxide.
The number of things scientists have discovered that improve when you have more nitric oxide in your body is really impressive. People sleep better, they have more energy, they’re in better moods, they have less heart disease, less cancer, and have a better long-term memory. Nitric oxide plays an important role in your immune system — it kills bacteria and viruses and promotes the healing of wounds and injuries. It also helps people lose weight by stimulating the burning of fat. It keeps the veins free of plaque. It can delay or even prevent atherosclerosis. It makes your blood vessels dilate, which lowers your blood pressure. It increases blood flow, increasing endurance and strength.
One of the men who won the Nobel Prize (for discovering the effect nitric oxide has inside the human body) said he believes heart disease can be essentially eliminated by doing things that keep your nitric oxide level high. That’s a big statement from someone with his credentials.
Nitric oxide also functions as a neurotransmitter, helping to process nerve signals as they cross synapses.
The first thing researchers discovered is that nitric oxide dilates blood vessels, which means it relaxes the smooth muscle cells that line arteries, veins and lymphatic channels, allowing blood, nutrients, and oxygen to flow more easily through your body. Nitric oxide also prevents blood clotting, so it reduces the chance of heart attacks and strokes. It can lower your cholesterol level. It also prevents bad cholesterol from oxidizing into even worse artery-clogging forms. It lowers the risk of diabetes.
It also triggers the pituitary gland to release human growth hormone, which stimulates your body to build and repair and heal your muscle, bone and skin.
Nitric oxide is a signaling compound. The body uses it as a communication device. The strange thing is that it's a gas. It is released by your body into your body as a gas. That’s why it was hard to discover — the molecule’s life span is only a second or two.
There are many different pathways for raising the amount of nitric oxide in your body. For example, some foods, like spinach and beets, contain a high amount of nitrite and nitrate, which your body can convert into nitric oxide. Some of that conversion occurs in your mouth by probiotic bacteria in your saliva.
When you drink enough water, it helps the enzymes that convert a particular amino acid (L-Arginine) into nitric oxide do their job more effectively. So by drinking more water, it raises your nitric oxide level.
Some foods (like pumpkin seeds) contain more of that protein, L-Arginine, than others. If you eat more of that protein, you’ll have more of the raw material your body needs to make nitric oxide. Some foods (like watermelon) contain L-citrulline, which helps make the enzyme that your body uses to convert L-Arginine into nitric oxide. Some foods like blueberries and cherries contain anthocyanins, which prevent nitric oxide from being oxidized too quickly, which allows it to have more of a positive effect on your body.
When you exercise moderately, it stimulates your body to produce more nitric oxide. If you exercise too vigorously, it produces too many free radicals, and actually lowers the amount of nitric oxide in your body.
Fasting stimulates your body to produce nitric oxide.
Just about anything known to be good for you probably increases nitric oxide in your body. Turmeric, for example, raises the amount of nitric oxide in your body. Leafy green vegetables contain a high amount of nitrite and nitrate that your body can convert into nitric oxide. Apples contain polyphenols that help your saliva convert those nitrates and nitrites into nitric oxide.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: Since there is bacteria in your saliva that convert nitrate and nitrite into nitric oxide, when you use a mouthwash, it lowers the amount of nitric oxide in your body.
Here’s another one: Caffeine increases your blood vessels’ output of nitric oxide.
Are you as intrigued about this as I am? It all sounds good, of course, but is it safe? Can you have too much nitric oxide?
Louis Ignarro, the man I mentioned above, who won the Nobel Prize (along with two of his colleagues), said: "At extraordinarily high concentrations, nitric oxide is toxic. These levels, however, cannot be reached through the body’s internal mechanisms for producing nitric oxide from either food and supplement intake or from exercise. At relatively low levels within the body — the kind that can be attained through foods, supplements, and exercise — nitric oxide can dramatically influence our health in positive ways."
I mentioned that all the diets known to reduce heart disease and cancer have nitric oxide in common, but not all the foods in those diets are high in nitric oxide. So this discovery allows us to be more precise with our diet. There are other factors in food that are good for you, of course, but a big one has been hidden because it’s a gas, and now that we know about it, we can make even better choices.
It’s worth looking into and Ignarro's book — No More Heart Disease — is a good place to start.
Listen to this article as a podcast by clicking here.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
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