Mindfulness and Mystery: Sleuthing Toward Interpersonal Awareness

Written by Maya Talisman Frost


We love mysteries.

We enjoy using our minds to gather clues and solve problems of all kinds. Whether it'srepparttar latest crime show on television, a news story, your company's top-secret product launch, or where you left your glasses, you are captivated by questions that have significance for you.

In fact, we can learn a great deal by becoming mindful ofrepparttar 140079 types of mysteries that fire up our brains. By using multiple intelligences theory as a framework, we can create greater awareness ofrepparttar 140080 areas that naturally appeal to us as playgrounds for mindfulness.

For example, if you find that you are frequently intrigued by dramas--gossip, soap operas, office politics, novels, or shows like "Survivor" or "The Bachelor"--pay attention to that. What it tells you is that you have a natural inclination to flex your interpersonal intelligence, or "people" smarts.

You seek clues to help you understand and anticipaterepparttar 140081 motives, reactions, and choices of others. You have an ability to see personality traits clearly and recognize behavior patterns, and you apply this knowledge to new situations and characters.

Allrepparttar 140082 world is a stage to you, and you are fascinated byrepparttar 140083 players and plots.

If you enjoy observing dramas, you might as well use them as triggers for mindfulness, right? So, for example, you could select a particular cue to notice and heighten your awareness of when, how, and why it appears.

If you choose a gesture like someone putting their hand on their forehead, you could use this as your secret prompt to pay attention to what follows immediately AFTER that. An exclamation of exhaustion? A self-critical statement? A swear word?

You can do this during your conversations with others, but it's also easy to do when you are watching people in any setting--at a party, in a movie, on television.

Stress Management

Written by Kim Olver


Have you ever saidrepparttar words, "This job/my life is so stressful!" Or something else along those lines?

Most people believe that stress is something that happens in their lives. They believe it isrepparttar 140078 result of outside circumstances beyond their control. We are stressed if our work is too difficult. We get stressed when people in our lives aren’t doing what we want them to do. We are stressed when it’s been too long since a vacation. We get stress over deaths, weddings, major purchases and a host of other things. We talk as if stress is something outside ourselves---a condition of things in our external environment. It's not.

Health professionals will tell us that stress is a contributing factor in many physical ailments---heart attacks, asthma, high blood pressure, stroke and many others. There are several diagnoses inrepparttar 140079 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV,repparttar 140080 diagnostic tool of therapists and psychiatrists that describe many stress-related disorders. Stress is a killer.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to handle stress better than others do? One individual may have allrepparttar 140081 life circumstances purported to cause stress in one’s life but seem to be just breezing through his or her day, seemingly without a care, while another person gets a flat tire onrepparttar 140082 way to work and has a total melt down. How can this be explained?

I intend to look at stress from a different perspective---a choice theory perspective.

According to Choice Theory, all behavior is purposeful. This means that no matter what we do it is a purposeful attempt to get something we want. We are never simply responding to outside stimuli.

You may ask, “What about when I flinch when I hear a loud noise?” The flinching is not a response torepparttar 140083 noise, but rather your proactive way of staying safe. This may seem like I’m splitting hairs, but it is an important distinction to understand in this discussion of stress.

Let me give you another example. You may think you get mad at your child for not cleaning his or her room after you asked several times. It sure feels as ifrepparttar 140084 anger is in direct response to your child’s behavior. However, your anger is actually your best attempt to get your child to do what you want. By displaying angry behavior, it is your belief that your child will go ahead and clean up his or her room. Any behavior or emotion we employ is a proactive, sometimes conscious sometimes not, attempt to get something we want, not a response to external stimuli.

The same is true for stress. We are choosing stress as a proactive attempt to get something we want. This choice is almost never conscious, but I want it to become conscious for you. Once it is conscious, then you haverepparttar 140085 power to choose to do it differently if you so desire.

Since all behavior is purposeful, it helps to understand what possible benefits or purposes one could achieve by stressing. Who would ever choose that behavior for any benefit?

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