Stress Kills?

After watching Kelly McGonigal’s Ted Talk over stress I honestly feel a bit stressed out. I may be focusing on the wrong part of her discoveries or maybe I’m going about it the wrong way, but her beliefs over stress killing is unbelievable! She spoke about how people who believed stress was a negative part of their lives were 43 percent more likely to die in the next 8 years. That was it, that was the only information she gave. She cannot do that there are so many more implications to death than just stress. For instance everyone on that list could have been around their 90’s living rich fulfilling lives, but with some stress due to physical limitations. Then eight years later 43 percent of them could have passed, but she attributes it to stress? That really doesn’t make sense to me. At first part of me thought it was a slip of the tongue she couldn’t possibly directly correlate stress with death there were way to many variables for that, but then not even five minutes later into this talk she goes to say that stress should be the 15th largest killer of people in the United States. My immediate reaction to that was “How?” Do people just die when too much stress enters their lives? What causes that, how can people determine how much stress will kill them? Unless 43% of her numbers all suddenly were stricken by broken heart syndrome and died from it, I find it incredibly hard to believe that stress was what did them in.

Stress may have something to do with death although without knowing anything about the data she used I cannot tie anything together there. Just the thought that she says that stress legitimately kills you if you think it is bad for you bothers me to no end. It is not a conclusion she can make, death isn’t black and white like that. Besides her belief that stress kills I will say that she made a good point that life is full of stress, but we take it and grow stronger from it. So that is what I am going to continue to do, I will keep going no matter the stress, because eventually I’ll make it to the other side.

Sources: http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en#

Emotion

Dr. Gilbert’s TED talk on synthetic happiness changed my perspective on many topics, but also strengthened my opinions about certain issues. All my life, happiness is one thing that I have always given most importance. From simple things like “does wearing this shirt make me happy?” to life-changing decisions such as “will this college ultimately make me happy?”, I’ve based most of my decisions on how happy I would be if I were to pursue the action. Like Dr.Gilbert mentioned in his talk, however, “natural” happiness is not always reached, and it does lead to disappointment.Although I’ve always believed that time brings happiness, I have come across this idea of synthesized happiness. Even the simple statistic about how the happiness of a letter winner and a paraplegic is the same after a year simply blows my mind. If I ponder on that, however, it actually makes sense. Life is not always about chasing things which could possibly bring you happiness, it is about finding happiness in the things which are already present in your life. I am a strong believer that every thing in life has a purpose. Sometimes it may take time to realize what the purpose was, but it does not mean that the purpose was missing. Synthesized happiness, to me, seems like a form of how people accept the purpose behind events that occurred in their lives. For example, Dr. Gilbert talked about a man named Moreese Bickham who was imprisoned for no fault of his own, but upon release, described it as a “glorious experience.” I’m sure no one has high hopes and dreams to one day be imprisoned for no reason, but somehow this man has learned to accept the purpose behind this incident in his life. I believe synthetic happiness can also be described as being grateful. In the video, Dr. Gilbert talks about the fact that a freedom to choose is the greatest enemy of synthetic happiness. Freedom to choose will always result in a constant deliberation of what could’ve happened if I were to chose the other option, whereas only one option results in gratitude, even if time is required to reach that stage.

Dr. Gilbert certainly did seem credible as he used many resources and experiments to back up his results and findings. By doing so, his word was backed up with clear evidence which gives him credibility to be a reliable resource.

Emotions

Dan Gilbert knows how to work a crowd. He knows what people want, he knows what the audience will find topical and funny, and he knows about the self-help craze still sweeping bookstores. Fill a book or a TED Talk with reassuring people that they’ll be happy in unexpected, miserable situations, and of course they’ll like the premise. People want to be told that life is going to be okay, life will be great, and so on no matter what happens. Books and talks not uplifting and being positive about life aren’t as appealing because no one wants to be told life is a series of closed doors because everyone already experiences it.

He also makes an interesting comment towards the end of the talk: “But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk.When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value.” Basically, kill any of your passions, and be completely complacent in life. This life is the only one we have, and this guy is telling the audience to keep everything in check? He never defines what “real value” is either. Things of value differ from individual to individual. It’s a horribly discouraging quote that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Listen, no one is suppose to be feel happy all of the time. Life is full of disappointments and anxieties. It’s okay to feel sadness, despair, and other usually connotatively negative emotions. No one has to call it synthetic happiness. If you feel like you are settling for less, or you would be happier in another situation, it’s okay to feel like that and go for something else. No one can tell you if it truly does get better or worse because no one knows the future, and no one knows your perspective. If you know you’ll be happy one way or another, you’ll know before anything happens. I realize that sounds lame and unscientific, but it holds truth. Masking other emotions towards your current situation as synthetic happiness is just going to catch up with you in the end. Ultimately, happiness just fills a void when we’re going through the motions of a meaningless life. Maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s artificial or synthetic or real. It does feel better when you admit you’re not really happy, and you’ve just been subscribing to the bizarre pop culture craze of happiness being the only feeling you experience though.

Changing your view on stress

Kelly McGonigal has been a health psychologist for 10 years which means she is most likely credible and knows what she’s talking about. Her ideas about tricking your body into believing stress is a good thing sounds easier said than done. When people say they’re stressed, it always a negative thing, it means they are going through a hard time, have to much on their mind or plate, etc. People always express sorrow when they hear someone is stressed, it’s a societal idea that stress is bad. It seems strange that just a simple adjustment of how we perceive our stress can change our health. I’m not sure how easy is it to take a moment when you’re stressed to tell your body that it’s a good thing when you know you don’t really believe that.

The other piece of information about oxytocin makes a little more sense to me. Everyone craves sympathy or supports when they feel stressed and it’s nice to hear that it’s a natural thing to want and can help your body cope with stress. It makes sense that telling someone about your stress can help while bottling it up hurts the person more. I always thought that was just psychological but it’s neat that it also effects people physically.

These two ideas seem easy enough to switch to in life. Next time you feel stressed, you can either tell someone about it or can treat it like a good, healthy challenge to have. I don’t think looking for stress just to do this would be wise but since most people experience relatively high stress often, it should be easy to find and implement in daily life. Whether tricking your body into believing stress is good works or not, maybe constantly telling yourself that will eventually trick you. Once your body react positively to stress, go tell someone your problems and you’re right as rain in the stress department, according to MGonigal.

Happiness is Happiness

Dr. Gilbert’s TED Talk about happiness and synthetic happiness was interesting, however, I feel like it’s an old topic. Everyone knows that money isn’t a guaranteed ticket to happiness, happiness comes from meaningfulness. The only thing that I found interesting was the synthetic happiness he was talking about. Personally, I’m not sure if I like the term synthetic happiness. If you feel happy, if you feel good, isn’t it real? Is there really a difference between when something makes you happy and when you just feel happy? I know the things that make me happy and I know it because I feel it. I’m happy when I enjoy a cup of the nice Colombian coffee my friend sends me, I’m happy when I feel the bass from my music in my chest, I’m happy when I hear the grumble of my V8 on the highway on ramps. Most of all I’m happy when I see my girlfriends face and here her voice on my phone even though we are separated by 861 miles. I argue that there is no synthetic happiness, there is just happiness. If something makes you happy, then it really doesn’t matter how. That’s not the only disagreement that I have, Dr. Gilbert spends some time on tests conducted at Harvard, the university he teaches at, and uses them as anchor points for his lecture. My issue here is that I just can’t accept everything he says here as this is his own work. Not only is there the possibility that he may try to make the experiment seem more important than it really is, but also he may himself believe that the experiment shows great and important results. When you make something yourself, you inherently see it in great light, and tend to miss the flaws. I would like to look more in depth at the projects Dr. Gilbert referenced to get a better understanding of the data and results.

I will say this, however, Dr. Gilbert’s point about being mindful in how we pursue happiness so that we don’t inherently destroy ourselves or hurt those around us is something I can agree with (for the most part, I do tend to speed a little, I like to go fast). We need to know what makes us really happy and what is just a cheap thrill (the difference to me being what does it every time and what needs to be bigger and better every time to work). If we pursue too much, we tend to lie, cheat, and be greedy, and that only leads to sorrow, not happiness.

The search for happiness has ended!

I really think Gilbert is on to something here. This TED talk gives me a lot of hope because the idea that we create our own happiness is kind of awesome. I’m not going to lie, until watching this video, I was one of the skeptics who believed that synthetic happiness isn’t the same as natural happiness. I’m only 19 but I feel like I’ve already spent a large portion of my life searching for that true happiness and, unfortunately, it seems like I could never quite achieve it. From the evidence he gave us though, I’m starting to see it from a different perspective. I always just assumed that when we don’t get what we want, we just settle and lie to ourselves that we’re happy with the end result and eventually just start to believe the lie, but it’s never really real. That’s why the studies Gilbert spoke of with the Monet prints were so surprising to me, especially the one with the amnesia patients. They literally believed that the print they didn’t know they owned was better than the one they first picked out of the set. Showing that their synthesized happiness of having a certain thing, turned into a real preference for it. The real lesson I took from this talk was, be happy with what you have even if at first you’re pretending to be…eventually, it will become real happiness. The fact that this is scientifically proven also makes it much easier for me to believe. Now that I have this little gem of knowledge, I’m going to start applying to my life anytime things don’t quite go my way by just telling myself that eventually I will be happy about this, I just need to give it time. I think Gilbert is pretty credible, not only does he have the endorsement of being on a TED talk, but he uses multiple studies and graphs to prove his point. We aren’t just relying on his word. In his bio, it also says that he is a Harvard Psychologist researching happiness. To be frank, even if he wasn’t a very credible source, I would still like to believe what he has to say, because I think it will definitely help me in my life long search for happiness.

Week 12 Blog Prompts: Stress & Emotion

Hand writing on a notebook

Here are the two prompts for this week.

Option 1: Please use the tag “Emotion.”

We all want to enjoy life and seek ways to make ourselves happy. Indeed, we spend much of lives chasing the goal of happiness. But how good are we at actually finding it? Dan Gilbert discusses the ways in which we sabotage our own happiness in his TED talk. Watch the video, share your reactions, comment on the speaker’s credibility, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss ways in which you can incorporate more synthetic happiness into your life.

Option 2: Please use the tag “Stress.”

Stress is something all too common in college students’ lives, but what if you could change your relationship with stress. Kelly McGonigal discusses doing just that in her TED talk “Making Stress Your Friend.” Watch the video, share your reactions, comment on the speaker’s credibility, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss how you could implement some of the ideas into your life.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

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I’ve Got Personality!

FullSizeRender 7.jpg We were asked to take four different free personality tests and compare the results to our personal perception of how we present ourselves.

Test One:

This test is a version of the Jung Typology, or MBTI, test where your personality is defi
ned
as four letters. Usually I’m an ENFP, but this test actually scored me an ENTP. According to the website, I would be a deviant kind of creative, overly ambitious in nature, loyal, debate-prone, and… entertaining at the very least. I think this is pretty accurate. At my core, I’m an artistic girl with a penchant for adventure and perverse humor. I take on too many projects, set my sights too high, and it usually ends in an Icarus-type scenario. Also according to the quiz, I should be fond of playing Devil’s advocate, which can be fondly remembered in my middle school self’s habit of “defending” Nazi Germany in world history class debates. Although I obviously didn’t sympathize with Hitler, it was extremely entertaining to go against the crowd in such a way. And, yeah, my friends say I’m an amusing human being.

I’ve seen a lot of these tests in my 18 years, and this one’s pretty standard: a gradient selection which allows you to pick degrees of an answer, a bunch of questions based on self judgement. The site’s also gotten pretty positive reviews from users who claim the results are reliable, and the information page is well researched as this is basically a sample of a for-sale product. I’d trust the credibility of the test.

While I’m not quite as optimistic as ENTPs tend to be, and I do have a strong introvert side, I’d score this quiz a solid 9/10.

Test Two:

The second test is another variation of the MBTI test. However, instead of ENFP or ENTP, I scored an ENTJ. Puzzled, I read the qualities listed and found myself not identifying with many. For instance, it propositions that I’m a very completion-oriented person who needs to be in charge and often grazes over either their own emotions or others. I’d only really agree that I prefer leading–but I’m also one hundred percent fine with following a leader so long as they’re competent… As for the other stuff, no. I am highly empathetic. I have a million projects going at once and have big problems getting anything in on time (lol). A look at my art desk will prove that.

I speculate that part of the reason for the inaccuracies have to do with the format of the quiz. As opposed to Test One, Test Two relied on a binary. You had one of two choices, not allowing for all the options desired. This probably led to the inaccuracy.

3/10.

Test Three:

What an interesting one! I feel as though I’ve taken this test before, but I didn’t have a clue as to what the results would be. This test rated you on a high-to-low scale in five “big” categories supposed to define your personality.

Screen Shot 2016-04-19 at 9.07.40 PM.png As you can see, I score high in extroversion, agreeableness, and intellect/imagination. I’d have to approve. In general, I’m an extroverted individual who has a natural disposition for maintaining friendships, and I’m always open to new experiences. The weirder the better, especially if I’ve got a friend by my side. Additionally, my low scorings in emotional stability and conscientiousness didn’t come as a surprise. I’m easily swayed by my moods, and I’m a disorganized mess. Didn’t really learn too much new.

The accuracy of this test probably stems from the gradient answer system which worked for me so well on the first test. It also cites Goldberg in the introduction.

8/10 because it’s kind of bare bones.

Test Four:

Another interesting one. This quiz had me randomly select colored squares based on intuition, wait a few minutes, and then redo the colored square selections. It’s then supposed to figure out your personality. Surprisingly, it was very accurate. It predicted that I’m an emotional, artistic person who lusts after beauty, intimate relationships, and who feels as though there’s more to the world than the present. I’m also prone to feeling isolated, can often be cornered into compromises, and have some difficulty appreciating the small things in life. It was really only erroneous in calling me a conceited person or that I easily become involved in pointless activities.

7/10.

Personality Tests

Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test

ENFP:

Extravert(16%) INtuitive(12%) Feeling(16%) Perceiving(28%)

I have a slight preference of extroversion over introversion which is in some sense true because I don’t see myself as being the quiet one in the room that never says a word, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be a very outgoing loud engaged people person. it says that ENFP’s are people persons and i can disagree with that because i get socially awkward or shy around people I dont know. I also have a slight preference of intuition over sensing which i find to be very accurate because I’m usually with it most of the time and not confused about little things. In a workplace it says ENFP’s are creative and friendly which i can agree with as well. As far as the left over information about ENFP’s I say it’s not all of the reasons given are accurate to everyone and that this test really cant determine my personality. There are too many outside variables.

Personality Test:

My jungian personality test is ENFP.. even though the acronym and classification is the same i personally think this test asked better questions, and the description about the personality seemed more accurate as well. This quote is a very good explanation of the way ENFP’s are. “Their charming personalities can show signs of irritability and over-sensitivity when their desires to please different people come into conflict. During times of stress, ENFPs feel alienated. They then engage in deceptions that serve to obscure what is occurring within themselves.” I think this is very true about the way i feel when it comes to stress. But when stress grows internally this is not something I would do.. “may attribute malevolent schemes to others in order to explain away their fears.”

Big 5 personality test:

Extroversion (45)- I agree with being outgoing and social, most of the time.

Emotional stability(39)-I am opposite of having neuroticism and negative emotionality according to the big 5 I am emotional stable.. which could be argued against because I am not always emotionally stable.

Agreeableness(51)- Friendly, and optimistic. I am very friendly, not all the time optimistic, but I am shy so I’m usually friendly if somebody else starts a conversation first.

Conscientiousness(26)- I guess I am disorganized and impulsive because my impulse decisions are not always the best and I am usually late on things and not very organized.

Intellect/imagination(40)- I am imaginative and very open to new experiences.

I have to argue about the numbers because some are low and some high but I would argue that some need to be lower than others and some higher.

Color quiz:

The results on the color quiz I can agree with 100%. This quiz describes me as independent, striving for what I want even though stubborness is involved. EVEN though I have no idea the accuracy or credibility of this quiz i cant disagree with it because the way it described me in every aspect was on point and sounded like me!