Rest, Reflection, Renewal – A Celebration Of Life

Robert Sapolsky observed the low ranking Baboon mother trying to teach her offspring to be subordinate and look at the ground when being around the offspring of the higher ranking Baboon female and her offspring. The lower ranking Baboon mother was already teaching her offspring how to live with a low rank, how to cope, how to live when you never know when you are going to get beaten up, how to live with little or no purpose, how to live without vision.

Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford biologist and is leading the research on a vaccine for stress.

I’m offering some of my own reflections about an article on Sapolsky’s work from the August edition of Wired Magazine entitled Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine by Jonah Lehrer.

Lehrer’s article offers Sapolsky’s interesting explanation on the difference between pressure and stress.

Pressure is when an administrator has the responsibility to work with 2,000 people and their contracts.

Stress is when a typist is typing a never ending flow of incoming documents.

The difference between pressure and stress is the administrator has the ability to control the flow of the work, control when they work and has the ability to control the demands of their work. The typist has a total absence of control of their work typing an endless soul destroying pile of documents.

This lack of vision and control contributes to stress and up to four times the mortality rate of a person that has vision and control over their destiny.

When one is feeling repeated stress, the brain’s stress “ amygdale – fight or flight” mechanism swells and repeated stress causes one to feel a constant state of anxiety to the point that the brain can’t differentiate between stress that is real and unreal like violent TV shows as an example.

One must wake up the mind, the super conscious because the fear based mind can’t determine the difference between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, love and fear.

Lehrer offers ways to reduce stress and I have added a number of my own;

• Aerobic Exercise
• Avoiding conflict
• Confront Your Fears
• Forgiveness
• Friends
• Giving Thanks
• Journaling
• Meditation
• Sex
• Silence
• Sleep
• Stretching / Yoga
• Reduced Alcohol

All of these strategies help to reduce stress which adds to getting rest.

Remember, rest does not come from sleeping but from waking.

The weekend of August 21^st, 2010 gave me a very real experience on how to apply Sapolsky’s work.

I returned to my hometown of Chilliwack to attend a Celebration Of Life for an old friend that had passed away.

I left Chilliwack 32 years ago leaving under the influence of too many spirits, the cloud of smoke from Mary Jane along with my own demons. I was depressed and miserable and the only way to survive was to leave.

I’m happy that I attended the Celebration Of Life and appreciated the time and energy that my old friends invested to make the passing of our friend a celebration of the unique skills and talents that our passed friend brought into the world. I’m also happy that I got to meet many old friends that go back to my early teens and they really showed their appreciation about seeing me and I did in kind after all of these years.

Yet, with all of this appreciation, I left Chilliwack all those years ago and I really did not want to go back and I could not put my finger on the feelings to exactly why.

My return visit helped me to understand that I was lost all those years ago, I had no vision or purpose in life and I felt that I needed to leave town just to survive.

I was stressed!

This stress propelled me to change.

Over the years I’ve learned to forgive myself for my lack of understanding of myself.

I’m celebrating my life and vision along with the opportunity to help others find meaning.

The ability to find meaning through vision, mission, objectives, strategies and actions counteracts stress.

There will be no dreams and vision in their absence so learn to dream big and have a big vision.

Once you decide what you want, life will scale your dream back to the parameters of your reality … so keep dreaming big.

The true joy in life is recognizing that your purpose in life is a mighty one.

Your stress is just a feeling that nothing can be done because of a lack of vision and a lack of action.

The lack of action is killing you with the stress of inaction.

This last two weeks in August are a time for me for Rest ž Reflection ž Reorganizing ž Renewal ž Re-Visioning and Re-Branding.