The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

by Brian King

Researchers also suggest that one of the primary drivers of happiness is having a sense of purpose.

The simplest description I have ever come across is that stress is our brain’s reaction to a perception of threat.

The traffic was real, but it was your own beliefs, values, and expectations that made the situation into one that you found stressful.

Ultimately overcoming stress and managing its impact on our lives depends on this basic realization: most of our stress is from percieved threats, not clear and present threats.

Remember, stress is not our reaction to threat, it is our reaction to the perception of threat.

Just like airport security, our brain has to take every situation seriously because failure to identify threats could be disastrous.

As it turns out, worry provides relief to the brain for a very uncomfortable condition it sometimes experiences called “inactivity.”

Worry is one way that the brain can generate its own activity. Yes, worry relieves boredom. And I believe this is why most worrying occurs.

One of the most difficult symptoms of depression isn’t feeling sad, it is feeling unmotivated. Anxiety has a similar impact on our behavior.

when we are stressed and facing multiple options, any small advantage that one has over the other is amplified to help the accumbens decide.

Stress decreases the production of a hormone called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is needed for neuroplasticity.

Fifty percent of how happy you are right now is attributed to your genes, about 10 percent is due to your circumstances, and the rest to your behaviors and thoughts.

Sometimes being able to come up with a good plan requires creative thought, and is better accomplished when we are calm and thinking clearly.

The brain has connections between the prefrontal cortex and other areas that mediate the stress response, which effectively allows the conscious mind to shut off the stress response.

When you feel like a problem is something that you can handle, it no longer causes you stress. Again, resilience is an attitude.

When we feel rage over an incident, such as road rage, it is important to reframe our thoughts by examining the actual outcome. We need to learn to react to what actually happened, not what could have happened or what we thought was going to happen.

What I always tell everyone is the best I can say it is, I blacked out. I knew what I was doing, so I didn’t truly black out, but it’s as if my mind went completely into training mode, and it said, Okay, I’m doing exactly what these guys told me to do.

You’re putting your faith in not only that training, but that instructor, that jumpmaster’s hand, and you’re saying, All right, he’s going to take my static line out of my hands.

being resilient means having the right kind of activity in the prefrontal cortex so that your amygdala doesn’t react to everything in our world as a potential danger.

being resilient means having the right kinds of thoughts in your head, and those thoughts relate to how well you feel you can handle whatever situation you are facing.

The only part of your brain that you have voluntary control over is the activity of your prefrontal cortex, your thoughts.

“the best possible selves activity” originally presented by Dr. Laura King (no relation).59 This activity, which involves nothing more than writing in a journal once a week, has been shown to increase optimistic thinking.60

Structured journaling exercises can help us learn to be more optimistic, which in turn can help us manage stress.

When we stress, cortisol flows through our body, resulting in all sorts of physiological changes. Problems arise when our body starts producing all this potential for action, and has no action to take.

Different studies have shown that laughter lowers cortisol and blood pressure, leaving me to conclude that laughter is nature’s stress-management system.

What makes burnout a bit more challenging is that most people really need their jobs, so they can’t simply remove that source of stress. They feel trapped.

The vacation mind-set helps create an urgency to take advantage of opportunities for joy.