The Art of Taking It Easy Quotes

“Besides being a new source of stress, my daughter is also a source of unbelievable happiness for both Sarah and me.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“teaching audiences about happiness, the benefits of humor, and how to manage stress for nearly a decade. These subjects are very interrelated, as managing stress is key to happiness, and humor contributes to them both.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“As it turns out, worry provides relief to the brain for a very uncomfortable condition it sometimes experiences called “inactivity.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Happiness is a great emotion, and really preferable to the alternative, but for many people it is a difficult thing to experience because of stress. If we could just get a handle on stress, we would have greater potential to achieve happiness”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“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.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“We need to learn to react to what actually happened, not what could have happened or what we thought was going to happen. When it comes to our own health and safety, there is no benefit to allowing ourselves to be affected by things that did not happen.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Feeling stressed is really feeling out of control, to put it very simply. Every stressful situation is really just a situation where the brain does not feel it has any control.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“The time to develop our stress-management skills is not when we are jacked up full of cortisol, that’s when we need to exercise them. We need to work on our problem-solving, planning, and other positive cognitive activities before we find ourselves facing that bear. Otherwise, the sound of our own wheels just might drive us somewhere we don’t want to go.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Resilience is our ability to recover from adversity, to bounce back or return to equilibrium after experiencing an adverse event.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“So you are happy . . . are you married?” to which I replied, “Of course not, I said I was happy.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Resilient people approach life by thinking and planning; they see their problems or adverse events as temporary and/or solvable.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“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.34 Happiness and resilience may be partially genetic, but we have a lot of potential to modify our emotional state.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Learning how to increase the right kind of prefrontal activity, or thoughts, and being able to consciously redirect choices made by other areas of the brain, is the key to living a less stressful existence.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Learn to assess your stress. Learn to tell the difference between bears and traffic. The first thing we should do when we start to feel agitated or stressed is stop and ask ourselves, “Is this situation actually threatening?” If it is, then Houston, we have a probl—uh I mean, bear!”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“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.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Remember, stress is not our reaction to threat, it is our reaction to the perception of threat.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Well, our brain creates these things called beliefs, values, and expectations, and they influence how we perceive the world.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Bad things happen all the time, but what ultimately makes the difference in our lives is how we deal with those situations.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Not only can stress negatively affect our health, it can also lead to unhealthy behaviors.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Our stress response should be engaged only when it can help us.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“believe that if neither option looks appealing, the brain will choose to freeze or do nothing. In the case of a”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Worry is one way that the brain can generate its own activity. Yes, worry relieves boredom.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“And that’s the thing about worrying, it does nothing to prevent bad things from happening. Worrying does not affect the outcome of a situation, it doesn’t make adverse events less likely to occur, it just makes our life less great.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

“Your prefrontal cortex can alter or completely reverse decisions made by other areas of the brain and all you need are your own thoughts.”
― Brian King, The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors