Building an Effective Plan

Optimism enters into self-regulation when people ask themselves about impediments to the achievement of the goals they have adopted. In the face of difficulties, do people nonetheless believe that goals will be achieved? If so, they are optimistic if not, they are pessimistic. Optimism leads to continued efforts to attain the goal, whereas pessimism leads to passivity. Scheier and Carver (1985) measure optimism (versus pessimism) with a brief self-report questionnaire called the Life Orientation Test (LOT). Representative items, with which respondents agree or disagree, include, 1. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best. 2. The sedative, sedative, and relaxing effects of lavender oil make it ideal for headaches. You can add something to the handmade soap or put a few drops in the bathtub. I like using a humidifier and putting a few drops in a medicine bowl. That is a great way to raise lavender oil into the air and keep the room moist. Lavender oil applies to massage into the skin to relieve pain. Tea is also a great way to take advantage of lavender. When soaking tea, put a few cups of lavender twigs in a container and absorb quickly. Lavender is a very safe herb, but it has not recommended taking essential oils directly because it can cause unwanted side effects. Lemon balm is a fragrant herb. By rubbing the leaves, it has a subtle mint and lemon-like aroma. A company's physical renovation inconveniences everyone. But inevitably, the job is finished.

An inexperienced manager is at the helm, but only for a month. A company suffers temporary difficulties because of temporary global events. In situations like this, it would be absurd to shelter seek, because distress is known to be short-lived, so it is best to adapt to the temporariness of the situation, perhaps with the mental alternation: It will soon be over. On the other hand, if distress is intense and long term, your evolved natural instincts are telling you: If you want to thrive, you have to leave a situation that you can only survive. Chronic distress in an environment means move! These two factors, intensity of distress and length of distress are vital communications. The degree of intensity tells you, In this environment, you are really not doing well. The length of distress adds: You've been feeling distressed for a while. If something can go wrong for me it will. [reverse-scored] Positive expectations are usually combined with reverse-scored negative expectations, and the resulting measure is investigated with respect to psychological and physical well-being. More recently, Scheier, Carver, and Bridges (1994) have introduced the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R), which is believed to be a better measure of dispositional optimism. Whether based on the LOT or the LOT-R, results show that dispositional optimism is linked to desirable outcomes and in particular to active and effective coping (eg, Carver et al, 1993 Scheier & Carver, 1987 Scheier et al, 1989 Strack, Carver, & Blaney, 1987). However, some studies have found that it may be the decreased use of passive and ineffective coping efforts rather than the increased use of active coping efforts that distinguishes individuals who are dispositionally optimistic from those who are dispositionally pessimistic (Chang, 1998). The optimism items of the LOT negatively correlate with the pessimism items but not so highly that the LOT or LOT-R are unidimensional (eg, Chang, D'Zurilla, & Maydeu-Olivares, 1994 Marshall, Wortman, Kusulas, Hervig, & Vickers, 1992 Robinson-Whelen, Kim, MacCallum, & KiecoltGlaser, 1997). Furthermore, optimism and pessimism so measured have somewhat different correlates. We discuss some of the relevant studies later in this article, but for the time being, let us comment that the occasional independence of optimism and pessimism is more than a methodological nuisance. In substantive terms, some people can be said to have hedonically rich expectations, whereas other people have muted expectations. At the extremes of this dimension, we may find DSM-IV personality disorders-for example, borderline personality disorder in the case of extreme expectations and obsessive-compulsive personality in the case of minimal expectations manifesting as anhedonia (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Lemon balm was first used by the Greeks more than 2000 years ago and has long used in herbal medicine. At that time, both Greeks and Romans utilized lemon balm and wine to relieve the heat.

Today, Lemon Balm works with other herbs, such as valerian and hops, to promote sleep and relax. Several studies have shown that it improves learning and memory. No wonder many herbal therapists recommend lemon balm to treat Alzheimer's disease. There are several ways to apply the lemon balm. Lemon balm is a versatile herb, both in terms of the disease that has treated and how it administered. Tea is a great way to take advantage of lemon balm. Soak 5-6 fresh leaves in a glass of water for 6 minutes and strain. Add honey or stevia to sweeten the store, add a bit of mint and add more flavor. Put the distress messages together: In this environment, you are not doing well, and it has been for a long time, so you better make a move if you want to do better. When a lower creature is given the message of distress, it listens and makes the appropriate maneuver. It practices self-preservation. The message for humans is that when you are given the longterm, chronic distress message- do not adhere to the conventional wisdom, to manage your emotions. Use strategic evolutionary psychology wisdom: follow your emotions. Over the years, I've written several articles on managing emotions and have counseled and taught thousands of people how to do just that. But I've come to question the enhancement value of managing emotions. In effect, the conventional psychological wisdom behind managing emotions is that to do so will help you be more effective in all aspects of your life. Is this really true? A good case can be made that helping people manage their emotions is simply a way of helping them adapt to their situation, but paradoxically, it keeps them in the situation that inevitably was the source of their distress. Be that as it may, it seems prudent for researchers to distinguish optimism and pessimism when using the LOT. It may well be that the independence of optimism and pessimism is related to the separate brain systems apparently responsible for positive versus negative affectivity (R.

Davidson, 1984). Seligman and his colleagues have approached optimism in terms of an individual's characteristic explanatory style--how he or she explains the causes of bad events (Buchanan & Seligman, 1995). Those who explain bad events in a circumscribed way, with external, unstable, and specific causes, are described as optimistic, whereas those who favor internal, stable, and global causes are described as pessimistic. The notion of explanatory style emerged from the attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness model (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). Briefly, the original helplessness model proposed that following experience with uncontrollable aversive events, animals and people become helpless-passive and unresponsive--presumably because they have learned that there is no contingency between actions and outcomes (Maier & Seligman, 1976). This learning is represented cognitively as a generalized expectancy that future outcomes will be unrelated to outcomes. It is this generalized expectation of response-outcome independence that produces later helplessness. Explanatory style was added to the helplessness model to better account for the boundary conditions of human helplessness following uncontrollability. Tinctures, extracts, and ointments are also widely used in lemon balm and are all very useful. Neem has a long history as a medicinal herb. The story goes from Nimes to one of the oldest texts known to humanity. Neem's properties have mentioned in several ancient Sanskrit languages, and the Neem Sanskrit word (Nimba) means healthy. Neem is a tree, so it may be difficult to classify it as an herb, but it couldn't remove from the herb list. Given that everyone in India has been using Neem for over 4,000 years, there are things to consider when it comes to herbs. Today, neems have applied for several reasons, including skin treatments for eczema, scabies, head lice, and psoriasis. Neem is known not only for skin but also for hair. Peppermint is a very well-known herb today because of its fantastic scent when squeezed leaves. It has used in many different ways, both in cooking and medicinal, that it is hard to keep peppermint out of our herbal list. I've helped couples work out problems, so they could keep their marriage--for what purpose? So they could continue to work out their problems every week for the rest of their lives?

I've helped top executives, seasoned managers, and line employees manage their emotions so that they could advance and stay in an organization that, for them, is the source of their frustration, anger, and anxiety. For these people, managing emotions in the conventional sense does not help them thrive- it only helps them survive by adapting. I have reason to support this point. Studies investigating the responses to distressful events and environments show dominant responses that Mother Nature would classify as adaptive. A sample of responses would be making changes within yourself, so you can adapt such as lowering your expectations, trying to get over a problem, retreating from others, and even doing nothing. These responses simply help a person cope with the situation encountered. Sure, there are times when managing your emotions is going to enhance the delivery of your presentation, your golf game, or your ability to help your children with their math problems when that does not come easy. However, in chronic distressful environments, managing your emotions becomes paradoxical: It helps you stay in the situation by helping you adapt to it, to survive. When is helplessness general, and when is it circumscribed? People who encounter a bad event ask why? Their causal attribution determines how they respond to the event. If it is a stable (long-lasting) cause, helplessness is thought to be chronic. If it is a pervasive (global) cause, helplessness is thought to be widespread. If it is an internal cause, self-esteem is thought to suffer. People have a habitual way of explaining bad events--an explanatory style--and this explanatory style is posited as a distal influence on helplessness following adversity (Peterson & Seligman, 1984). Explanatory style is typically measured with a self-report questionnaire called the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) that presents respondents with hypothetical events involving themselves and asks them to provide the one major cause of each event if it were to happen to them (Peterson et al, 1982). They then rate these provided causes along dimensions of internality, stability, and globality. Ratings are combined by averaging within dimensions, separately for good events and for bad events. Peppermint originally came from England in the late 17th century and is a hybrid derived from water mint and spearmint. Peppermint was also widely used in ancient Egypt, which has applied for indigestion.