The Deflector

And I just would remember so many times wishing he would just end it all for me. Things came to a head for her when her husband came home one night drunk and high on drugs and cried to her to call EMS because he thought he was going to die. I remember at that moment thinking, `Should I call EMS, or should I just let him die? In the middle of trying to figure out what to do, Brandy saw one of my tweets, and it inspired something in her. It reminded me that my life was worth it no matter what was going on around me or happening to me. And that there can always be better if I choose better. Without our phones, we can't rely on Google or Yelp ratings to let us know where the four- and five-star restaurants are when we get hungry, which is just as well. We've outsourced so much of our decision-making to maps and apps that we've forgotten we're our own best judges of what want we when we use our eyes and instincts. As for Noel Santillan, the Lost Tourist of Iceland, he eventually found his way to Reykjavik. But a few days later, his GPS got him lost again, when he followed it to a deserted building while trying to find the Blue Lagoon, Iceland's famous geothermal spa. This time, he decided to forgo the GPS and ask a real human being for directions. Then he drove on, looking out for landmarks along the way. Before long, he'd arrived exactly where he wanted to be. I'm not afraid to get lost. I love getting lost, he later told reporters. That's how you find interesting things. When most people are angry, their muscles become tense, their hearts beat faster, their hands start to sweat, and they may even begin to feel a little dizzy. Similarly, every time you have a happy, hopeful, kind, optimistic, positive thought, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel good. When most people are happy, their muscles relax, their hearts beat more slowly, their hands become dry, and they breathe more evenly. Your body reacts to every thought you have, whether it is about work, friends, family, or anything else.

This is why when people become upset, they often develop physical symptoms, such as headaches, stomachaches, or diarrhea, or they become more susceptible to illness. Just as pollution in Los Angeles or Beijing affects everyone who goes outdoors, so, too, do negative thoughts pollute your mind and your body. In generations past, negative thoughts protected us from early death or becoming supper for powerful animals, so in essence, being aware of and avoiding danger was crucial to survival. Unfortunately, even when the world became safer, negativity bias remained in our brains. Researchers have demonstrated that negative experiences have a greater impact on the brain than positive ones. According to research from the content marketing website Outbrain. Read this question aloud once. Everything that happens from now on, everything you encounter, may already be an aspect of the answer to your question. Go to the woods or to a park and pick out a tree. Welcome the tree like an old friend and sit down with your back to it, with your back facing south (you may need to take a compass with you, or you can use your phone). Consider your question first from the feeling side: What emotions does it trigger? How do you respond to your feelings? Next, move clockwise 90 degrees. If you started in the south, you will now look toward the west. What or who do you need? This might include certain people with whom you work or who are important for the solution. We are drowning in calories engineered to be irresistible. We are drowning in labor-saving technologies that may be saving labor, but costing us years from life, and life from years. As with drowning of the more literal variety, the fix is a combination of personal empowerment - the healthy living skill set analogous to swimming - and public accountability at the water's edge. If we treated obesity and lifestyle-related diseases more like drowning, we would tell the truth about food.

We would not willfully mislead about the perilous currents in the modern food supply. We would not look on passively as an entire population of non-swimmers started wading in over their heads. If I were in charge, I would make some changes. But I am not in charge, so we are left to change ourselves. We clearly can't afford to be idle and just keep waiting on the world to change. Through my work with the True Health Initiative , 22 I am trying to create the future of healthy living I would like to predict. She got help for her husband that night, and she also resolved to get herself out of that relationship. From there, Brandy's faith in herself began to grow. It sparked in me a belief in myself and that one day it would get better. That was a hard journey for me. It was one step at a time, then one day at a time, then one month at a time. What encouraged me was to look back on how far I'd come. Even if it was just one step, it was still a step forward. Every step took faith. I took a lot of faith steps. Not long after that, Brandy started working for an organization that helped others, and she started living with a greater sense of purpose than she'd ever had before. If you don't lose yourself, you're never going to find yourself. WE LIVE IN an era of singles. While it was once standard for artists to release a single song or two as teasers for an upcoming album, these days it's common for musicians to put out four, five, or even six singles--with or without a full album to promote. It's all about throwing out content, the songwriter Savan Kotecha (who's written hits for One Direction, Ariana Grande, and the Weeknd) told Rolling Stone.

And between streaming services, satellite radio, and YouTube, it's never been easier to listen to the songs we want, when we want them. Despite the temptation to skip ahead to our favorite tracks, or stream individual songs without bothering with the album itself, it's worth taking the time to listen to a full album from start to finish. It's not even that time-consuming--as the music writer Sarah Eldred points out, most full albums are shorter than a single episode of a TV drama. You wouldn't read every other article in a article, would you? Like novelists, musicians think about the big picture as they assemble their albums, paying careful attention to elements like pacing, storytelling, how to begin, and where to end. When we cherry-pick individual songs, we miss an opportunity to understand the artist's project on a deeper level. Even our language is not exempt: 62 percent of the words in the English dictionary connote negative emotions, while only 32 percent express positive ones. Bad news is quickly stored in the brain to keep us safe, but positive experiences have to be held in consciousness for more than 12 seconds before they stay with us. The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones, Hanson wrote. The only way to escape this is to focus on what will bring flow--activities that increase our sense of purpose and achievement. In short, negative emotions trump positive emotions, which is why it is critical to discipline your natural tendency toward the negative and amplify more helpful thoughts and emotions. If you never challenge your thoughts, you will simply believe them and then act out of that erroneous belief. If, for example, I thought, My wife never listens to me, I'd feel lonely, mad, and sad. I would give myself permission to be rude to her or ignore her. My reaction to the lie I was telling myself could cause a negative spiral in my marriage, which could then literally ruin the rest of my life. By repeatedly allowing undisciplined thoughts to invade your mind, you are more likely to behave in ways that make terrible things happen, which is why it is critical to get control over your thoughts. Move clockwise 90 degrees. You will now be facing north. What is important to learn to study? What do you not understand?

What knowledge, what information, do you need? Move clockwise 90 degrees. You will now be facing east. Where are you going? What is the most beautiful image you can conjure up for the solution? How should it be? For now, I predict that things will work out better for you in the short term if you take matters into your own hands and learn to swim through the currents of our culture, however misdirected they may be. From theory to practice. My wife, Catherine, and I have long said: I'm theory, she's practice. As I have sallied forth each day to battle the dietary dragons du jour, I have fueled the effort - with rare exception - with Catherine's loving and enlightened sustenance. My wife has fueled my career-long efforts with love and comfort and good counsel . That's the trait that puts nutrition in a different domain than much scientific debate. Eating is not theoretical. Almost everyone I know does it almost every day. Those around the world who can't eat nearly every day are generally quite unhappy about it. Hundreds of millions globally suffer overt malnutrition, and it is one of the great travesties of modern inequity. But there were some big tests of her faith still in front of her. Two big crises slammed her at the same time. One was that her son, at that point a teenager, began to get in a lot of trouble, started hallucinating, became very withdrawn, and would become easily agitated. At first, Brandy thought he was having issues with drugs, but it turned out he was beginning to show signs of schizophrenia.