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

by Brian King

However, we cannot possibly anticipate every difficult situation that we may find ourselves in. This is where our ability to solve problems comes in handy. Our prefrontal cortex, perhaps as part of providing us with our resilience, is the area of the brain we use to solve problems. Another way to think about stressful events from the perspective of your brain is that they represent problems that need to be solved. Threatening problems, sure, but problems nonetheless. Therefore, if we have well-developed problem-solving skills, we are more likely to respond to a stressful event with the confidence that we can influence the outcome. In other words, we will respond as if we feel some level of control.

you might recall I used a muscle analogy to describe how we can “strengthen” parts of our brain and develop particular patterns of activity. Just as muscles adapt to repeated exercise, through repeated practice of a behavior, our brain becomes more adept at performing that behavior.

Stress management is all about reducing the problems in our life, so how can we practice problem-solving without adding to our stress? Easy, we need to find problems that are not life-threatening or do not have any negative repercussions should we fail. Because, let’s face it, we are talking about a need to develop our nonexistent or underdeveloped skills. We are going to fail a few times.

There are problems all around us, every day we are faced with a multitude of opportunities for our brain to strategize, we just have to be able to recognize them for what they are. Household chores, for example. How do I solve the problem of my living room being a complete mess? I can problem solve where to put things so that they aren’t scattered about, alleviating the problem of clutter. I can organize drawers, fold clothing, run the vacuum, load the dishwasher, and even make the bed. All of these represent simple problems I can solve to give my brain some practice.

Puzzles are great mental exercise: mazes, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, brainteasers, trivia, whatever your preference. They provide simple, safe, repercussion-free ways to develop the part of your brain that figures stuff out.

The point is to challenge our brain, repeatedly, until we develop mastery over that level of challenge. Then to step it up a bit.

If you haven’t looked, you might be surprised at how many puzzle games are available for mobile use. At this stage in my life, I mainly use them to keep my mind busy when I’m bored, but for people who are actively trying to develop their cognitive skills there are a ton of similar apps and gadgets available.

one of the things that Sarah does to cope with stress is clean and organize.

The lesson? If you don’t see any problems that need to be addressed and your prefrontal cortex could use a boost, create problems to solve.

One thing that you should understand from this advice is that I am not saying that if you solve a bunch of puzzles you will suddenly be able to face down a bear or remain calm in traffic. There is a huge difference in the skill set needed to solve those problems. However, I am saying that stressful events are problems that need to be solved, and the better your brain is at solving problems, the more likely it is react to the next one as if it is something that can be solved. In other words, the more confidence you have in your abilities, the less your reactions will be influenced by feeling stressed.

Finally, let me add that problem-solving skills, like most acquired functions of the brain, have to be maintained. Again think about the muscle analogy and what happens to them when you stop working out.

That sounds like living the dream for me, but a lot of retirees develop depression and experience cognitive decline. Almost all of their mental activity was focused on whatever they did for a living, and now their responsibilities include watching Matlock reruns and making sure their recliner doesn’t float away.

When I was still in college, I was exposed to the Baumrind theory of parenting styles.54 According to the theory, parents can be categorized based on how much they require their child to adhere to rules and structure, and how responsive they are to their child’s needs. A child can develop problems if they are raised without structure or neglected. With regard to resilience, I like to think of successful parenting in terms of problem-solving.

Nobody wants their kids to suffer or experience pain, but there is value in working through difficulties. There is value in having to deal with adversity. Stepping in or shielding our children may help keep them out of harm’s way, but it could have long-term consequences.

The best way to teach a child how to handle stress is to model resilient behaviors in their presence and try to keep our worry or anger to ourselves. Allow children an opportunity to solve their own problems. Provide assistance and support, but give them a chance to attempt things on their own, and the opportunity to fail.

But what we can do is recognize the potential advantages of shaking things up a bit. We don’t have to change cities or countries all the time, but we do need to change our experiences. The more we experience, the more our brain learns to overcome and cope with the problems it encounters.

By now some of you might be thinking, “So stress is all in your head, right?” Now, sure, some stress is a product of our thoughts, but remember, there are real stressors in the world: attacking bears, vans breaking down in Mexico, adjusting to new high schools, or worse. Sometimes life deals us shitty circumstances. Sometimes you can’t do anything about those circumstances. But you can change how they affect you.

The only part of your brain that you have voluntary control over is the activity of your prefrontal cortex, your thoughts. Your thoughts influence both your behaviors and your emotions, and it is important to understand this in order to make any changes. If that sounds really simple to you, that is because it is. The key to making some pretty significant changes in our lives is to adjust the way we think. We tend to think that our lives, our problems and issues, are extremely complicated and overcoming them requires a complicated solution. Making changes can be simple, it just isn’t easy.

So many of our problems have simple solutions, but they are difficult to implement. For example, one of the most common questions people have for me, other than those that relate to stress, is if I have any advice on how to lose weight.

the key to losing weight is simple: eat less and exercise more. But that would make for a really short book. Eating less and exercising more is not complicated, but it is far from easy and maybe that is the true value of those books: each of them offers its own way for you to eat less and exercise more.

The answers are simple, carrying out the answer is what’s difficult. Which explains why, as someone who not only knows the key to how to lose weight, but has also studied the brain mechanisms behind appetite quite extensively, I still carry extra body weight.

People ask me how to live happier lives, and I tell them to manage their stress. Managing stress and becoming more resilient is a simple answer, but it definitely ain’t easy. Among the things that I have discussed so far, we need to learn to tell the difference between an actually threatening situation and one that is just annoying or inconvenient, feel as if we are in control, and develop our problem-solving skills. Those are all relatively simple lessons to learn and yet, they all take work and a lot of practice over time. There is no quick fix that will magically bestow upon us overnight the ability to remain calm, no matter how badly we want it.

Although it takes time and effort to become resilient, the good news is that there are some relatively easy practices we can incorporate into our lives to help us get there. I refer to this as the act of practicing positive thinking.

These are some mental exercises we can engage to give that left side of our prefrontal cortex a little extra activity. Three ways positive thinking can help you become more stress resilient are: Teaching you to become more optimistic. Teaching you to be more appreciative of what you have. Increasing your appreciation of humor.

We have survived plagues, world wars (two of them, I hear!), global economic depressions, the release of The Emoji Movie, and all sorts of natural disasters, and each time we come out swinging like a collective Captain America saying, “I can do this all day!” I don’t know how we will solve our problems, but I am confident that somehow some of us will solve some of them. This point of view would put me in the optimist category.

Optimistic people are happier and happy people are more optimistic. Optimistic people are also more resilient, are less affected by stress, and worry less often. All of this should make sense to you in the context of everything I have discussed. Resilience and happiness are a function of the types of thoughts we have and optimism is a way of thinking. So yeah, optimistic thinking contributes to both resilience and happiness.

Optimism is also a reaction. The brain has a wide range of potential reactions. When we encounter a stimulus, for example a piece of information, we can react to it by putting a positive spin on it, or we can worry about it. Worrying is a form of pessimistic thinking. Depending on which is more frequent, and therefore more likely to be our reaction, we may identify as either an optimist or a pessimist. However, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of that dichotomy, even if we lean to one side more than the other. I should also let you in on a little secret: optimistic people have pessimistic thoughts all the time. The most optimistic people among us are still plagued by negative thoughts, the difference is that they don’t dwell on them or ruminate.

If you are prone to worry you probably aren’t very optimistic (or happy or resilient), but don’t fret (any more than you usually do)—you can become optimistic through practice.

I want you to imagine the future, only this time imagine that everything has worked out for you exactly as you want it. What does that look like? Be as descriptive as possible. Now write that down in a journal and repeat this exercise again next week, focusing on a different aspect of your life (such as career or relationship). If you did what I asked, and I know that you probably did not (but you should!), what you just did was a version of a task called “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.

All you have to do is set aside some time on a regular basis to force your brain to think positively about the future. Which, if you are not very optimistic, you may recognize as precisely what your brain is not doing enough of. Actually, you probably don’t even need to write, but having the journaling exercise helps focus your thoughts.

Writing in a journal is not going to make you immediately optimistic, but practicing positive thinking on a regular basis will have an impact on your thinking.

One behavior that happier people engage in more often than less happy people is expressing positive emotions. Love, for example, is a very positive emotion and most of us feel it for people in our lives. However, not all of us are equally expressive of that emotion. Some rarely tell others how they feel, whereas there are some people who are extremely expressive of positive emotions. We have a word for people like that, we call them “happy.”

Whether it’s love, like, admiration, or appreciation, pretty much any sincere positive emotion expressed to another person can have an impact. We can increase the positive thoughts in our head by being more expressive of our feelings for other people. Of all the advice I give people on a regular basis, this is my favorite. Tell the people you love that you love them more often. Plus, as a bonus, it usually has this really cool side effect of making the other person happier too.

is the practice of gratitude journaling. There are different formats, but I prefer the simple act of ending each day by listing three or more things that I am grateful for about that day. Often this is referred to as the “three good things exercise,”

All of us, regardless of our circumstances, can find three things to be grateful for each day. Even on the absolute worse days, there are things to appreciate. In fact, it is on those days that this exercise might help us the most, reminding us that despite all the crap we dealt with, there is still good in our lives.

When you keep a gratitude journal it contributes to your happiness, but when you share that journal publicly you invite a whole additional element. People provide you feedback, they validate your experiences, and they are inspired to do it on their own.

I always find it helpful to add a little explanation of why I am grateful for each item on my list. One thing that is important about the exercise is that it is focused on the current day. If you just list three things you are grateful for in general, then every day you will have the same list. For example, one person who took me up on the challenge posted “My health, my husband, my kids” every day. By making it specific to today, you force your brain to reflect on all the positives that you have recently experienced, putting activity into the left side of your prefrontal cortex. And this is the whole point.

humor is our brain’s ability to recognize a potentially threatening stimulus as amusing or nonthreatening. It involves initially perceiving the stimulus one way, and then immediately reinterpreting it as something else. The brain recognizes this process as humorous.

Having a sense of humor means being able to understand things in multiple ways, and this is incredibly helpful in overcoming stress. As I have mentioned, inner areas of our brain may misinterpret a stimulus as a potential threat, thereby engaging our stress response, but our prefrontal cortex has the ability to override this system by thinking differently.

In addition to redirecting potentially negative brain activity, humor also has the nice benefit of inspiring us to laugh. You have probably heard the phrase “Laughter is the best medicine.” It gets tossed around a lot, and people don’t put too much thought into it.

However, laughter may help you prevent or recover from cancer,69 it may help you avoid cardiovascular disease by lowering your blood pressure,70 it might help you manage your diabetes,71 and it will certainly help manage your stress.

Well, I think the most obvious answer is to realize the impact that humor has on stress and engage in humorous activity more often. Joking is a great way to cope with a stressor or diminish the effect it has on us. In fact, a lot of humor comes from negative experiences or dark thoughts. Sitcoms and movies frequently make light of difficult situations, and stand-up comedians bring all sorts of pain to the stage. Humor is a great coping mechanism and learning how to laugh it off can be a helpful skill.

Obviously, I know from experience that burnout is absolutely terrible, and healthcare professions such as physical therapy, nursing, and medicine have some of the highest rates. Burnout is a form of work-related stress that can take its toll on our mental and physical health just like any other form of stress. 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. They can’t run, and they can’t fight, so they very often do nothing (freeze), which makes the situation worse and worse. For those of us with an advanced education or specialized skill set, the stress is amplified because we feel that we have invested so much time and energy into our career, we need it to pay off out of a lack of options.

Most of us have to work, and as long as we do, hopefully we can enjoy stimulating, rewarding, and maybe personally fulfilling careers. However, not all jobs are great, and sometimes we are going to have to take a position that might fall short of our dream job just to make ends meet. If a job can’t be great, at a bare minimum it should not make you sick. I think it is a reasonable expectation, and yet so many of us work jobs that are doing just that. Imagine a situation where a person suffering burnout develops depression. That depression is going to impact that person’s productivity, as well as their life outside of work. Thankfully there are potential treatments for depression. Imagine that this person seeks out therapy. Perhaps they are prescribed an antidepressant to help their situation. Now, they are taking medicine to manage their illness brought on by their crappy job so that they can continue working the same crappy job. But now, they really can’t quit the job because they need the insurance that pays for the pills that help them do the job that’s causing the depression! Obviously life is not this simple, but you see how some people can get trapped in a vicious unhealthy cycle.

Downtown is about ten miles from West Hollywood, which means it takes about four weeks to get there in traffic.

Sometimes my overestimation of the inconvenience would prevent me from doing the very thing I was in Los Angeles to do.

We should not beat ourselves up if we have a hard time being positive (beating ourselves up is the exact opposite of what we should be doing). Our brains are generally more focused on negativity, and even the most positive among us have our moments. However, pervasive negative thinking is ultimately going to interfere with our ability to handle stress, so we should try to do what we can to reduce it before it becomes problematic.

Part of being an optimistic thinker is suppressing negative thoughts. As I previously mentioned, optimistic people have pessimistic thoughts all the time, we just don’t dwell on them. One thing that helps is something I have already mentioned: redirecting your train of thought to something else. Literally, anything else. It works for worrying, and it works for all negative thinking in general.

Another thing that I recommend is a practice called “decatastrophization.”78 With this technique, we can use our estimation of the likelihood of the worst-case scenario to help us come to terms with our current situation. I have actually done this, even before I learned that a psychologist had a term for it. When stressed, I would frequently ask myself or others: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” and “What are...

What if the worst thing that could happen has already happened? Well first, that sucks and I am truly sorry that you had to deal with whatever that was. But then, to employ another frequent refrain from my internal dialogue: It’s not the end of the world. Sometimes the worst thing does happen, but knowing that the worst is behind you means that your situation can only stay the course or improve. It can’t get any worse than the worst-case scenario; that is kind of part of the definition. By imagining the worst-case scenario, we put ourselves back in a position to return to optimistic thinking.