Exaggerating Storytelling

When you can reframe your anxiety with these four keys, you'll find that channeling your anxiety and helping it help you will become easier. In the next article, I'll introduce you to anxiety and its friends: the seventeen emotions that will help you think, decide, feel, act, and live more intentionally. When you know how to identify your emotions and work with them as your friends and partners, you'll have access to clearer self-awareness, better understanding of others, and more options in every area of your life. Also, you and your anxiety will have their support so that you can do your best work together. Meeting Your Four Emotion Families Your emotions are important messengers that tell you how you're feeling and what's going on -- inside and outside of you -- and they work to support you in every moment of every day. Each of your emotions is essential, and all of them bring you the skills, energy, and intelligence you need in each situation you encounter. For instance, as we've learned so far, anxiety helps you complete your tasks and meet your deadlines, anger helps you set boundaries around what's important, and sadness helps you let go of things that aren't working any longer. All emotions have specific functions, and all of them contain unique gifts, skills, and intelligence. Though each of us has unique emotional experiences -- based on our upbringing, our temperament, our emotional training, and our individual responses -- I was able to organize emotions into categories by focusing on what they do. Many working caregivers end up using all or most of their savings and retirement funds. For those who are considering full-time caregiving, you must understand the financial position you may be getting yourself into down the road. In addition to the financial costs, one of the greatest hidden costs of caregiving is time. Most people underestimate how much time they will spend providing care. They picture themselves caring for a few hours a week for a couple of months but end up providing care a few hours a day for a couple of (or more) years. By devoting more and more time to their loved ones, caregivers may lose more than just time. Caregivers often must reduce their working hours, leave their jobs temporarily, or take early retirement. Leaving the workforce for a couple of months might be feasible, but doing so for a couple of years could put you in a tight spot financially. A study by MetLife found that the average caregiver's lost wages are $143,000. For those who leave the workforce to become a caregiver, returning can be a challenge.

Most everyone needs seven or eight hours a night. Getting less sleep impairs the brain's self-cleaning process at night performed by the newly discovered glymphatic system. The brain's glymphatic system cleanses the brain's daily buildup of toxins and cellular debris, especially amyloid plaque that figures so prominently in Alzheimer's. Emotional Neurotoxins It is probably no surprise to learn that chronic stress, fear, and anxiety are neurotoxic. Chronic or intense stress (such as surviving a military firefight where half the platoon died) can kill neurons and up to one-quarter of the hippocampus can be lost. When trauma happens in childhood, damage to the hippocampus is multiplied, resulting in reduced hippocampal size and vulnerability to future anxiety, fear, stress, and depression. Childhood maltreatment correlates with lifelong elevated levels of stress and inflammatory hormones. Chronic anger and chronic loneliness also shrink the brain and are neurotoxic. Emotional isolation impairs new brain cell growth and damages brain development. Move on, if someone tells you you can't have a certain style. Everyone can have everything, just a different version of it that's right for your face and your hair and your lifestyle and body shape. And if you find you need to use too many products to look good every day, it's not the right haircut. You owe it to yourself to sit in a new chair with someone who doesn't know your hair history, who looks at you in a fresh, modern way. In article 19, you'll find a list of the best stylists in the country, hopefully in a city near you. I know that breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes you just have to. If you're feeling guilty, you can do the equivalent of what companies do before they fire an employee: give fair warning. Next time you see your stylist, make it crystal clear that you want a younger, fresher look. You can even bring in articles from magazines. If you don't get what you want, your stylist will know why you ended the relationship, especially if you run into each other in the hood and your hair looks more Y&H than ever.

When I couldn't cope with the fallout from 9/11, feeling helpless, and no longer able to make sense of the world in which we were living, I bailed. I needed to find more meaning, more purpose, more inspiration to keep going. I felt at times I couldn't keep up, that I might slip and completely let go into an unknown world that may not breathe life into me again. I wanted out. If we pay close attention to science, we quickly learn that the dynamic and law of the Universe is to go from chaos, to order, back to chaos again, or from connection, to dis-connection back to connection. Everything expands and contracts; Then why do we as human beings constantly try to hold on to things with the notion that they need to stay the same? Bessel Van der Kolk, the best-selling author of The Body Keeps the Score, one of the best articles out there on the topic of trauma, talks about the enduring changes brought about by the experience of trauma: We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Hi, I'm Robert Borders. You must be the executive Amelia called me about. What can I do for you? I just finished talking with Sandy Fitzwilliam, and now I need to talk with some associates in your company about empowerment. But even though empowering people is my goal, I'm skeptical. I've tried to institute empowerment with my associates, and, frankly, I haven't seen much change. How long have you been at it? Robert asked. Nine months, said Marvin. Robert nodded.

This will boost your personal value not only in the eyes of others but also in the eyes of your toughest critic. You will make people feel great because it seems like you are exceeding expectations and going the extra mile every single time. You'll also experience a lot less stress and be more relaxed. Make it happen. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe already knew hundreds of years ago that Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Do you plan things and then get sad if they don't turn out as you expected? If this happens to you often, then you might be missing an essential ingredient of the formula. Dreaming about the future and planning it is great, but it's not enough. To turn your dreams into reality, you must DO. You also know when babies are happy--their smiles light up a room. They are full of love. Tiny babies will die if they do not get love. Once we are older, we learn to live without love--or try to--but babies will not stand for it. Babies love every part of their bodies. You were like that at one time. We were all like that. Then we began to listen to adults around us who had learned to be fearful, and we began to deny our own magnificence. Today, put all criticism and negative self-talk aside. Let go of your old mind-set--the one that berates you and resists change.

This one walks in a funny way. That person is not dressed well. You wonder what someone sitting at the park is smiling about. When these thoughts fill your head, you will only drain yourself. Spending too much time focusing on other people will only deter you from using your mind productively. Instead of visualizing your goals and your future, you waste your energy mulling over little things that add no value to you. Regular Insomnia Do you find it hard to sleep sometimes? You may get worked up over the idea that your brain cannot shut down and stop thinking. Sadly, this can paralyze you since your brain doesn't get the rest that it deserves. For it is better to have less money, to miss out on a promotion, or not to be well regarded, than to lose your serenity and your self-worth. Practice this by beginning with little things: some wine is spilled on you. Do not get upset. Instead, say to yourself, This is the small price I pay in order to keep my inner peace and harmony with others. Gradually, move on by practicing bigger things: some of your money has been stolen. It is not worth getting upset, because you would simply add a self-inflicted injury to whatever has already happened. IF YOU WISH TO MAKE progress, be happy to be considered clumsy or foolish by others with regard to externals. Don't try to impress them with your knowledge, since you truly have little of it. If they think you are someone of importance, don't trust their judgment. You know better.