Tools for survival – the power of the human brain
The meaning of life is to live it and so it goes that fearing things you cannot control just produces gnarly chemicals in the body that do you no good. There was a great article in the NYT this Sunday about the Skinner box and the thrust of it is to not be a fearmonger and to avoid people who are overly pessimistic about the economy and tune out media that fans the emotional flames.
The collective fear, which is the thread that runs through most conversations these days is not healthy. No more than the elation of making super money in the stock market was healthy in the mid to late 90s.
But what grabbed me in this article is that when people fear losing something they are attached to they ascribe it greater meaning. I learned this through my divorces – emotional weight is given to inert objects and suddenly not having gotten the chair in the agreement or the soap dish is tantamount to having lost everything.
So the best thing we can do is just forge ahead through these uncertain times. Prepare ourselves of course for rainy days yet to come, but don’t give into the OMG factor. Because honestly, here in New Orleans, we had the OMG factor and quite a few of us lost every single thing we owned, but we came back, we rebuilt, we retooled, reinvented, renewed. And you know there were many silver linings – our school system, our courage was reforged, our hope was restored.
If we can do it, you can do it!