How Do We Manage to Survive in This Complex World?

As soon as we are born we start to experience life and we start to "survive". Our senses are filled with whatever surrounds us. These experiences are pleasant or unpleasant. By nature we are the kind of creatures who don't like to suffer, so we are constantly looking for pleasant experiences and trying to avoid unpleasant experiences. To be able to do that we carefully observe our environment.

There are certain things we can already observe in our environment from a very young age. To simplify things here I just talk about people and objects.

There are millions of people and objects surround us. We can notice that some of them are almost permanent or just slowly change. Think about your family or your neighborhood. Some of them constantly change. Think about what you see on television or passengers on a train. By recognizing this we learn to trust in those things which are more permanent. This gives a sense of security in "space".

Another thing we learn that we can "predict" the future to a certain level. This is because things don't change, at least most of the time suddenly. This gives a sense of security in time. If our environment would constantly and rapidly change that would be unbearable.

We also notice that there are many similar objects we don't have to learn about each individual person or object which belongs to a group. Think about a nation, or cars.

It also helps that we learn to imitate others around us. That's how we learn how to use a spoon. Sometimes we don't even know why we do things, we just follow others.

Since pleasant experiences give happiness and satisfaction we use our knowledge to get more of these experiences. We learn early that they don't come easy, it takes certain effort to get satisfied. Think about when you go to the gym or when you finish a project. At a very early age we also find out that there is always help you just have to learn how to ask for it. Think about a crying baby or visiting your doctor.

You Don't Have to Be Optimistic All the Time

In our society everything seems to make us believe that we have to be optimistic and happy all the time. Pessimistic people often pictured as losers. They expect from us to smile no matter what and to say that everything will be just fine. They make us believe that we are either born optimistic or pessimistic.

The one-size-fits-all optimism doesn't really work and can be harmful sometimes. Optimism and pessimism are feelings about the future. Both optimism and pessimism act like energizers in certain situations. If we were only realistic about our future we wouldn't even try to do things saying "it's just impossible".

Optimism and pessimism can also be a mind-set to adopt certain situations. In some situations it's better to be optimistic in others better to be pessimistic. Optimism can help us not to give up and cope with difficulties. Pessimism can help us to prepare ourselves if we won't succeed. Pessimism can help to better protect ourselves. This is also called defensive pessimism.

Of course in many situations it's much better to be optimistic. Some examples are when you are looking for a job, start to date, want to lose weight or start a business. Optimism can work against you when you gamble, when you are an investor, when you think that you can always get what you want.

Pessimism can be of course a negative feeling too. When you think that you will never get a job, never find a boy or girlfriend or never will be able to lose weight. Pessimism is bad when it makes you sort of give up.

Pessimism is good when it protects you, when it prepares you to the "what if" situation. Whit a pessimistic mind-set you will able to handle stress better. Pessimism is good when you don't over-expand because you are not 100% sure about your job and/or income or as an investor you diversify. Pessimism is also somewhat good when you or someone close to you have an illness. It helps you to prepare yourself to the worse scenario.

Why Do We Need a Good Sleep – Every Night?

Sleep Stages

When people need extra time to keep up with the demands of everyday life the only answer seems to be cutting back on sleep. When you understand sleep you’ll find out that this answer could be very damaging to your health. You need a healthy sleep-wake cycle.

How much sleep do we need and how many hours we actually sleep? A lot of people sleep only about 6 hours a night. An adult needs about 7.5-9 hours to completely restore physical and mental energy.

There are two types of sleep, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep has 4 different stages going from transition sleep to deep sleep. Non-REM sleep restores your physical energy, REM sleep restores your mental energy. During the night your sleep goes back and forth between REM and non-REM sleep. One cycle last about 90 minutes. If you don’t get enough sleep you have to pay the price with REM sleep since the body wants to restore physical energy first.

What happens if we don’t get enough sleep? We don’t have enough energy throughout the day and we probably forget how it does feel to feel good. But there are other more serious effects too:

• Fatigue, lack of motivation
• Moodiness
• Inability to cope with stress
• Concentration, memory problems
• Weight gain
• Increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other health problems

With sleeping in on the weekends unfortunately you can’t solve your sleeping problem. You need at least eight hours quality sleep every night.

You Need to Escape from Multitasking to Relax Your Brain

It’s hard to imagine our lives without computers, cell phones, television, computer games. The use of technology is part of our daily life. We constantly check our emails surf the web, check the news, and watch our favorite shows or movies often in the same time. It’s only possible if we teach our brain how to multitask.

There are benefits of multitasking. We are more productive. Multitasking also gives a chance to escape from the present while doing something else. Sometimes multitasking can be dangerous for example driving and using your cell phone in the same time. On the other hand multitasking doesn’t teach us to focus. When you multitask you try to pay attention several things in the same time. But is it good if you really have to focus only on one thing?

With new technologies we are addicted to multitasking. We think that without those gadgets our life would be very boring. There was a time when none of these gadgets existed and people were not bored at all and they could accomplish great things in history.

We need to escape sometimes from multitasking and just do one thing to relax our eyes and brain. Even if it lasts only 10-15 minutes a day it could make a big difference. Take a walk, listen to soft music without doing anything else, read a book or just sit back in a quiet room closing your eyes for a few minutes.

How Stress Can Affect Your Health and Weight

Stress has become a too familiar part of our daily life. Stress is real and a serious threat to your overall health as well as your efforts to lose weight.

Your body is constantly trying to maintain a state of internal stability, called homeostasis. You sweat to cool yourself on a hot day and shiver to stay warm when it's very cold. When your body feels stressed, it struggles to compensate for the real perceived threat that's created the stress.

This response can trigger a complex series of biochemical changes that struggle to bring you back to your pre-stressed state. For example, when you're stressed your body releases various hormones and chemicals including adrenaline, cortisol, and others that shift your body into a flight-or-fight response. These hormones increase your metabolism, your heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and muscle tension.

If these bodily changes are channeled into a physical activity the stress can be resolved. If, however, the stress is chronic and unresolved part of your life, like a difficult boss or an unhappy relationship, the effects on your body are ongoing and dangerous.

Long-term unresolved stress of the kind that many of us endure daily makes us vulnerable to hypertension, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, and other disorders. Unresolved stress also has been linked to developing insulin resistance as well as developing the "belly fat" associated with inflammation. Too much cortisol may also contribute to leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that is recognized as a "turn off signal" to hunger. Elevated cortisol in conjunction with adrenaline can also encourage your body to hold on to fat especially around the abdomen.

So how do you deal with stress? If you teach yourself to adopt some simple stress-reducing strategies, you really can reduce the physical effects of stress. You need to become stress resistant.

Regular exercise can help you to dissipate unfavorable chemical responses created by stress. Stress reducing techniques practiced daily can be pleasurable in your daily routine.

Proper diet can reduce the inflammation and internal stress of your body.