When was the last time you sat down at the computer and just focused on one project, one issue, for one hour, without being distracted or checking your email, or finding out the latest celebrity gossip, or seeing how your sports team did, or finding a really funny video showing a cat water-skiing.

Yeah, I thought so. Me neither. But don’t worry. You are not alone. OK, we are not alone.

Short attention span

According to a new study, in the past decade the average attention span has dropped dramatically from 12 minutes to five minutes. Five minutes. That’s barely enough time to boil a hard-boiled egg. Hardly enough time to make a decent cup of tea. You wouldn’t even be halfway through the Derek and the Dominos classic  “Layla” (OK, that dates me) before your time is up.

The study says that today the average office worker checks their email 30 to 40 times an hour. An hour. It’s like a Pavlovian response. The little image appears in the corner of your screen or a sound goes off telling you there’s a new email in your inbox and you rush there to check it out. Odds are it’s going to be worthless or something that could have waited a few minutes, or quite  honestly a few hours, or days or weeks or you could even ignore it completely and life would go on. Yet still you feel the need to go and check it out right, right, now.

To delay might mean. Well, what!

Exactly. We are rushing around from one thing to another and not necessarily doing anything better or more skillfully or thoughtfully. All we are doing is doing it faster. The downside of that is that anything that forces us to slow down, or – god forbid – stop – then just drives us crazy. We’re addicted to speed. Addicted to multiple stimuli at the same time.

Addicted is the right word to use in this context. This new study found that social media may even be changing the way our brains work, re-wiring our circuitry, making us impatient and forgetful and distracted.

OK, what was I saying?

Slow down, let it sink in

Think about it. When was the last time you watched a video – other than a movie – that lasted more than a few minutes. How often do you just dismiss out of hand anything that looks as though it might take a few minutes to watch or read. How often do you just move on from an article that actually requires some real thinking, maybe even reading it a couple of times to understand it.

We are trying to save time. Instead we are losing our minds.

I have a friend, whom I have never met.  He is a young man in (where are you from Henrik?)  Oh, yes, Henrik lives in Sweden.

He is 30 years old going on “Wise” man  and he has spent (how many Henrik?) oh, yes, 5 years training himself in the power of Positive Thinking. Here  is what he has accomplished – in his own words:

• Switched from a generally pretty negative attitude to a much more positive one.
• Lost 26 pounds during 4 months in the winter/spring of 2009. I did it by using a program called Turbulence Training, check out the review here.
• Become a lot more present. I used to live a lot of my life in my head, in the past and in the future. Today I spend a lot more time living it in the present moment. It’s a wonderful thing.
• I have become a less shy and more confident person.
• I get things done. I used to be a real procrastinating slacker that never got much done. My effectiveness and productivity have shot up quite a bit since then (although I certainly still have room for improvement).
• I have created a highly successful blog. This blog has – in July of 2010 – 32000+ subscribers via email and RSS and hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. How did I do it? How to Build a Somewhat Successful Blog: 16 Lessons I Have Learned has a lot of answers.

Henrik is a man with a mission.  I have never actually met him, but his blog is filled with interesting lessons and lovely positive thoughts.  His picture is perfect for what he advocates.

So it was terrific tonight when I got home and got a message from Henrik.  My day had not been stellar!  It was one of those days when my computer wouldn’t do anything I asked of it, and although I was all set up for my favorite client, she came in and asked for other things which I could not bring up on my computer immediately, which made me feel the fool and a tad inept when she found a spelling error in the very first title page.

Geez, I felt completely disheartened after trying a number of times to burn a DVD of my work for my client, only to send her home with a DVD with “Nothing” on it.  Duh!

Knowing this, I spent another 2 hours trying to burn a “corrected” version of the DVD.  To No Avail!  Sorry, the computer said, No Can Do because the original can’t be found.  What?!!! It’s a Movie!  You Can Burn a Movie, said I…but no.

Then, I opened my g-mail and Henrik sent me this:

Our brains are funny things. They often take us down dark passages even when we are trying to stay bright and positive. It’s almost as if we don’t have any control over them; as if they have control over us. Maybe they do.

A good friend of mine had a pretty nasty scare recently. First he had a blinding headache that made him nauseous, that was followed by days of painful pressure in his head. I only found out about this later and my first thought was “aneurysm” – a blood vessel bleeding into the brain, not a good thing – and my second thought was “stroke” – not a particularly good thing either.

So, he went to see a doctor. The doc did a scan and they found what they called “some suspicious looking spots” inside his skull, close to his brain.

This is your brain on my blog

Playing mind games

Now, I try to be positive and think the best but try as I might my brain kept leaping to the worst conclusion. It could be cancer, it could be something invasive. Instead of waiting for the follow-up tests to show what it really was my brain kept running ahead to anticipate what it might be. Not in a good way, but in the worst way.

Why do we do that? Is it a form of protection, preparing ourselves so that if the worst does come we are somehow ready for it – and yet if you think about it telling yourself it could be cancer never really prepares you for the news that “it is cancer”.  Are we hoping that by thinking the worst then we’re more likely to get a better outcome – which seems a rather perverse way of going through life, imagining that “oh well my children will all turn out to be criminals or idiots or both” while secretly hoping by saying that they’ll all be Rhodes Scholars.

Whatever the reason, while I kept telling everyone around me to be patient and positive, my own brain was saying “oh, this can’t be good.”

Why do we fear the worst?

But guess what? My brain was wrong. The follow-up tests showed some lesions, foreign lesions in the brain, but they weren’t cancerous. Unusual, yes, but not life threatening.

Wonderful news. Terrific. Incredible relief.

It answers one question but it leaves a lot of others unanswered, such as why do we put ourselves through such torture when we don’t know what’s coming. Why don’t we just wait – worry obviously, that’s natural – but wait until we find out what is going on before going to DEFCOM 4.

I don’t know the answers to that. For now, I’m just terribly happy that all those dark thoughts and dark spots  were nothing. That what I feared didn’t happen.

Now what?

But what happens next time, and the next time, because there’s always a next time.

How often do we need to put ourselves through this before we find a better, healthier – but no less realistic – way of coping with moments like this. I wish I knew the answer.

Perhaps it’s the lessons we learn from such an experience.  The sweetness of life!  How very lucky we are to even have friends, family, to be alive.  Perhaps it’s about realizing the gratitude we feel that our friends are safe, for now, and our lives and the people we love  have become more precious – just because, my friend has a problem, but it’s not life threatening.

I guess if it was, we would deal with it, support him and feel the sweetness of life, too!  This outcome is more joyful!

I recently had a friend who is a seasoned professional who has decided to change her career.  She has been in the same profession, working    for the same company for over 24 years and she’s frankly, had enough.  Luckily, she has saved some money over the years which gives her the opportunity of time.  Time to find out what she wants to do next.  And since she has been working for so long and so hard for over half her life, it feels very strange to have no place to go, no projects to do, and time on her hands.  In fact, you might say it is jarring for her.  Oh sure, the first 3 months were filled with friends, day trips, special things she wanted to get done around the house, but now, 6 months later she is looking for the “answer”.

She went to a therapist to talk about how she felt and the therapist suggested a “life coach” so she found a coach through a friend and began to look for her “new” self .  It has been over a year now and she is becoming very nervous that she won’t find the “career” that she loves  She has read books, taken classes, joined groups, and has actively pursued an answer from all kinds of experts.

I wonder if she just relaxed and stopped being so goal oriented if she might be able to listen to her own expert advice.  I can understand how years of practiced, work oriented, energy can leave such an empty place in a life, a hole so unusual in a daily experience that it seems as if you are doing something wrong if you are not rigorously pursuing your objective.  Not to mention how we are all defined by what we “do” in our society.  So it is completely understandable that my friend feels uncomfortable and anxious.

One of my favorite blogs is “Litemind” , written by Luciano Passuello, he always comes up with different ways to solve problems.  His recent blog is about how the instant rush to find an expert to give you the answer might be detrimental to your quest for an answer.  Experts can be very focused on the one specialty they have focused their careers on…but as Abraham Maslow says, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail”, meaning perhaps, there is more than finding an expert to tell you what you should do.

Today, I was listening to Michael Krasny’s KQED-FM radio show “Forum”. His guest was Mary Gaitskill, who has written many award winning novels and taught Creative Writing at Skidmore.  She said, people who want to become authors should not be concerned about the “need” to take a creative writing course as an absolute stepping stone to their success.  Sometimes we rely too much on how the experts do it.  Sometimes you just need to quiet the mind, stop the chatter and listen to your own advice.

The “Litemind” blog suggests talking to friends, acquaintances, people in the coffee shop,  and get a really good diverse conversation going.

Relax, be patient,  the answer will come when you listen.

A close friend of mine was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It wasn’t a huge surprise. She hadn’t been taking care of herself; she ate a diet heavy in fats and sweets, and got very little exercise. She also has a family history of diabetes so with that kind of background and that kind of lifestyle everything was heading in one direction.

Even so, she was a little taken aback when she got the diagnosis.

Fortunately the disease was caught early, before any real damage had been done, and she was given some reading materials on how to take better care of herself. She was also given a session with a nutritionist who gave her advice on her diet, the kinds of food she could eat and the kind she should try and avoid.

There were no absolutes – no “you can never eat chocolate again” rules – just general guidelines.

Six months later she admits she is doing a poor job of making those lifestyle changes, of doing the things she needs to do to avoid having to take medications like insulin or, more seriously, of having complications such as damage to her kidneys or eyes.

When I asked her why she hadn’t made the changes she simply said “I just don’t have any will power.”

Now, most of us struggle from time to time, or maybe even all the time, with will power. For some the source of their temptation is chocolate or candy, for others it’s alcohol or drugs. None of us is immune to the problem and sooner or later we all give in to the temptation, albeit usually temporarily. But in my friends case it wasn’t that she was struggling with the temptation, she had given up even trying to fight it.

By telling herself she had no will power she was saying to herself she couldn’t control her urges or desires. In essence she was giving herself permission to fail.

There’s an old saying that comes to mind; “We are not what we think we are, but what we think, we are”

In other words the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves become our reality. If we tell ourselves we can’t do something we don’t do it. If we tell ourselves we have no will power we will have no will power.

The only problem is when  you try telling yourself you don’t have diabetes. Your brain may hear but your body has a mind of its own.

Sometimes it feels as if you can’t turn around without bumping into another study that tells you how wonderful exercise is. Most of it is stuff you probably already know – at least it is if you read Health and Simple regularly – but once in a while you come across some fun new benefit that makes you think “cool”.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first.. Just Being Fat Increases a Kids Risk of Heart Disease
Now, we all know that more and more children are becoming overweight or even obese. Not just here in the U.S. but throughout Europe and other developed and affluent nations. Now a new study says the consequences of that may be far graver than we thought.

The study, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, found that as early as age 7, being obese may raise a child’s risk of future heart disease and stroke, even if they don’t have any other risk factors for cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure.

That’s a wake-up call to parents, schools and pediatricians that they need to be more aggressive in working with kids with weight problems, to tackle them early and often so that those kids don’t grow up overweight or obese. The longer the problems persist, the greater the risk of future health problems.

Now, the news that fat kids start showing signs of heart disease early on is not new. But this adds an extra wrinkle. This shows that even if the kids are otherwise healthy and show no other indications of heart problems, just being fat shows they are heading for a world of health problems, unless we act quickly.

Move More Live Longer, and Healthier
OK, stop me if you heard this before. Exercise or physical activity is linked to a friggin’ host of wonderful things such as reduced risk of:

• arthritis
• falls
• fractures
• heart disease
• lung disease
• cancer
• diabetes
• obesity
• watching the Kardashians (OK, the evidence isn’t all in on this one but hopefully if you workout regularly you won’t have time to watch this dreadful, awful, scripted “reality” show) (note from Shirl:  I kinda like it…love the make-up!)

But now a bunch of new studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine show that exercise can have benefits in all sorts of fun, new ways

• Among women who are 70 or older, those who exercise regularly during middle age are healthier in many areas of health from less risk of chronic disease to lower risk of heart problems or dementia
• Exercise programs are associated with denser bones in older women. Why is that good? Because stronger bones mean less likely of fracture or other serious problems if you fall – either fall in love or fall in the shower
• Here’s my favorite. Resistance training can improve some cognitive skills in older women. This is such a cool study. The researchers found that doing resistance training just once or twice a week can not only improve attention and concentration skills among older women, but it can also improve conflict resolution skills. Amazing eh. Better conflict resolution skills. But then I figured that no one wants to argue with an old woman who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenneger so maybe that explains it. But what a cool granny eh!

How do you gain self – knowledge?

Here are some things to consider as you ponder that question.  First of all why is it important to have self-knowledge? Well, it’s important to understand your own basic attributes, strengths and weaknesses or limits so you can better cope with the world as it presents itself to you.

Understanding what triggers your stress levels will help you calm yourself easier.

For instance, if you get stressed easily when you are in a noisy atmosphere or you become short tempered, observe how you react physically and mentally.  Do you feel anxious?  You will be able to cope better if you know what makes you feel stressed. When you observe how you react to different circumstances you will gain information about your self….hence, self-knowledge.

When you have this information you can see how you cope with problems and situations.  What do you do that works for you?  What do you do that undermines your overall optimum behavior?  In other words, you are now observing your strengths and weaknesses and you will be able to recognize events or thoughts that reveal your coping style and you can then begin to build skills which will help you cope more easily and comfortably.

What happens when you obtain self-knowledge?

You become less judgmental and begin to enjoy self-acceptance.  You then realize that you are fine in many ways.  Maybe you are good at cooking, not so good at math, or maybe you are good at being diplomatic, but you can’t boil water, or maybe you’re good at math but you suck at charades.   You see, being in acceptance of who you are releases you of being unhappy.

Some people call this having confidence.  But self-confidence is an overused term like self-esteem.  Most of us are good at most things but are not good at others.  Self-acceptance lets you embrace what you are good at and accept what you are not so great at.  There is room for improvement right, but you are no longer beating yourself up for not being “perfect”.

Accepting that you are who you are gives you permission to “be” who you are.  No need to change who you are but simply accept the person you are right now.  Okay, you may want to be better at math, or you may want to make a mousse or soufflé, or you may want to beat everyone at charades, and you can learn those skills by focusing on them and in time you will get better.  You are free to create the person you want to be.

Creating confidence in yourself.

As you master the first two steps, gaining self-knowledge and creating self-acceptance, you will become more confident in your abilities.  After all, you are getting better with every step you take.  You are stretching and taking risks and expanding your horizons.

Lot’s of people call this self-esteem, another overused and overrated phrase.  Self esteem is really just being confident about who you are…your abilities and understanding your limits ….uh…hmmmm, and accepting them.

Self knowledge, leads to self-acceptance, on the path to self-confidence…or self-esteem and less stress…now that’s healthy and simple!

Still have questions?  Go back to the top of this page and read again.  Geez…..c’mon…it’s not that tough!

Most people think of them as the left brain and the right brain. The left brain is the logical one, the one that deals with linear thinking, like solving math problems or planning a road trip. The left brain thinks analytically, it’s responsible for understanding languages, numbers, words and writing. The right brain thinks in pictures, emotions, sounds and symbols. Due to the right brain’s emotional sense, it can effect not only our psychological but also our physical states of mind. By imagining positive images the right side can make us feel comforted and safe which in turn can create a more relaxed frame of mind and actually lower blood pressure and loosen tense muscles. This is not just a belief, it’s a scientific fact, backed up by many studies; what you imagine can change the chemistry in your body.

Guided Imagery and hypnosis are used to promote a healthier outlook and a sense of well being just by imagining positive outcomes. We spend most of our time in our left brain, the logical thought processes in the conscious state of mind, because in our society that’s how we are educated and rewarded. You get an A if you know all the facts and information. You get into college if you get good grades, etc.

The right brain is where the subconscious mind lives. So focusing your attention on positive results will give your subconscious mind the authority and the go ahead to create a positive reality, just like worry and negative thoughts create an negative reality.

The subconscious mind doesn’t analyze, it doesn’t figure if the outcome is possible or not, it doesn’t judge or compare your thoughts with reality or try to identify exactly how something can or cannot happen, it simply takes your word for it and goes to work to create the goal or outcome you have been focusing on.

So, your thoughts are very powerful, that’s why you must be very careful how you think, what you talk about, and what you say to yourself. You attract whatever you put your attention to. If you focus your thoughts on how unlucky you are, you will be unlucky. If you focus on thoughts that you can’t lose weight, you won’t!

We do it all the time; you know, the thoughts in your head that tell you what might go wrong, or what to judge, or just those thoughts that give you something to worry about. Worry is how most of us experience our imagination, we anticipate problems, we rehearse arguments over things that haven’t even happened yet, we prepare ourselves for failure.

But we can change the pattern of worry by using the imagination to our advantage. We can train our mind to put our subconscious to work FOR us not against us, to create a better outlook. All you have to do is imagine the best. Don’t let the left brain tell you no! Just pretend, imagine, see it, taste it, feel it. As if it has already become reality, and it will.

Okay, all you left brainers out there, just do it for 2 weeks. Notice what you say to yourself and make it a positive statement instead. Meet back here in 2 weeks and tell me what you found out!

I was watching the news, which reminded me of the beginning of a Beatles song: “I heard the news today… oh boy..”

…and I was thinking about how we don’t consider what we consume in thoughts.  Right – thoughts.  We consider our diets and what is good for us, we consider our fitness and how much exercise we are getting, (well, some of us do)  but do we consider our daily diet of idea intake?

Consider this, how many negative messages are in your daily life?  Do you really need to know about the tragedy that happened in the news, in your favorite soap opera, in the lives of the “rich and famous”?

Is your intake of negative thoughts and ideas permeating the way you look at life in general?  Is it making you fearful, skeptical, or simply anxious?

We are constantly bombarded by messages that we consume without any thought of how they will affect us.  So, I’m suggesting we start being more aware how many outside negative thoughts fill our lives.  I’ve often written about being observers of our own thoughts, but have you considered the ideas and thoughts we are consuming everyday, without ever being aware of them.

Do you have friends that complain about their lives on a regular basis?  Do you watch too many negative programs?  All of these things affect our emotions and our outlook.

So let’s take a little assessment of  our diet of thoughts and ideas and just be aware of what we are accepting into our minds. And then we need to accept that we don’t have to accept them.

We can hit the delete button, we can decide on how much news and what news we want to hear, and we can cut out toxic relationships that don’t help us maintain a balanced approach to life.

It’s up to you, you have the ultimate control on what ideas and thoughts you want to be exposed to.

Balance presents itself in all kinds of ways,  food, thoughts, and exercise.  We really are sentries for our own lives. We can decide who or what gets in and what stays out.  So remember to say- Who goes there?  Be in charge of the messages that enter your mind.

I don’t know about you – honest, I don’t! – but when I was growing up summers were long, languid affairs. You spent a lot of time just hanging out, doing nothing. It was a time to play soccer with your mates, make up games of your own, and sometimes just hang around staring at the sky.

I didn’t appreciate it then but it was a time to just be, not to think about the future or the past, to simply enjoy the present.

But once you get out of childhood, college and work and family mean the luxury of laziness is not an option. You have to work or when you do take vacation you are too busy trying to cram as much in as possible to really just stop and relax.

Or if you are unfortunate enough to be out of work then you certainly aren’t thinking about a long vacation, and days are filled with trying to find a new job or just worrying about your situation. Either way, not much fun.

But just because childhood is long gone – in my case way way long gone – doesn’t mean you can’t recapture some of that summer-time feeling. You just have to work a little harder at it that’s all.

Take advantage of the longer days, the light, the heat, the warmth. Use those as tools to help you just take a little time for yourself and reflect, even meditate, on your life.

For instance, after work instead of going straight home take 15 minutes to go for a walk; take the time to enjoy the trees, the light, the scent of flowers, the wind, the warmth. Focus on those and not on the problems at work or what you are going to have for dinner, or what activity you have to do with the kids later.

For just a few minutes, pretend you are a kid again with nothing but time stretching out in front of you.

If you don’t have time after work what about first thing in the morning, what about lunchtime. You don’t need long, you don’t need a special environment. All you need is a little time, a little space and a willingness to cast your mind back and clear the thoughts of the present out of your head.

It’s amazing how many problems melt away when you do this. Things that have been bugging you suddenly don’t seem that important. Arguments you have been having with a friend or loved one seem silly so you resolve to forget them or apologize and move on. Problems at work don’t seem that difficult.

There’s nothing magical here. You are just giving your mind some breathing room, some time to push the day-to-day stuff aside and focus on nothing. It’s really quite wonderful how big a difference a little peace and quiet can have on you.