by Larry Senn
Take Your Thinking More Lightly
During down times it is easy to become trapped in lower-level thinking—and down times are when your thinking is most unreliable. Paradoxically, we tend to take our faulty thinking most seriously just when we should discount it the most. Learning to take your thinking more lightly—to question your own assumptions, to doubt your own certainty, and to be open to opposing ideas and contrary evidence, especially when your low mood is talking—can dramatically improve your quality of life.
Lots of benefits come from cultivating the habit of taking your thinking more lightly:
You will be a better listener.
You will perceive your surroundings more accurately.
You will be more open to new ideas.
You will recall critical information in a timely fashion.
You will see a broader range of possibilities and solutions.
You will respond to challenges more creatively.
You will feel more optimistic and hopeful.
You will remain higher up the Mood Elevator.
Letting go of lower-state thoughts and feelings is not always easy or possible.
Here is a way to use your feelings as a guide. When a down-side emotion like impatience, irritation, anxiety, or judgment surfaces in you, don’t react immediately. First pause and simply notice the feeling so that you can choose how to respond to it rather than react on autopilot. Next, make a conscious decision as to whether the situation is significant enough to react strongly to or whether it is “small stuff” for which an attitude of mild preference is more appropriate.
In most cases, you’ll want to choose to live in mild preference. But if you do decide that a particular circumstance warrants a more emphatic response, you will do so in a much more thoughtful, effective way because you paused to make a conscious choice rather than react automatically.
Here’s a metaphor I use to remind myself of the benefits of mild preference and taking my thinking lightly: Like many air travelers, I prefer to avoid waiting for checked luggage by using a carry-on bag equipped with wheels that let me roll it down the airplane aisle. In most cases, this works like a charm. But some airplanes have narrower aisles than others, and the difference of an inch or two sometimes causes my bag to bang into the seats on either side of the aircraft, annoying my fellow passengers and making my trip down the aisle more difficult. And the problem is much worse when I am anxious or in a hurry. The faster I try to go, the more the bag bounces off one armrest and rams into the other. Sometimes my bag even flips over sideways, and I end up dragging it down the aisle. Those few inches of aisle width make all the difference.
Life is like that. When you live with strong preferences, unyielding principles, and rigid thinking, it’s like trying to navigate down a narrow aisle—you keep bumping into thought patterns and feelings you could easily avoid. Instead, try broadening your aisle just a bit by making a deliberate choice to be more flexible, open-minded, and lighthearted. You’ll find yourself feeling irritated, bothered, and judgmental a lot less often—and enjoying life a lot more.
9
Shifting Your Set Point: The Wellness Equation
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
—WILLIAM JAMES
The benefits of living life up the Mood Elevator are obvious. Fortunately, most people seem to be born with access to a naturally healthy state of mind. Our default setting is to be up the Mood Elevator. That’s our home base—and it’s only a thought away.
Medical experts tells us that all people have a “set point” when it comes to body temperature—a personal temperature index that is close to the normal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit but that may be slightly higher or slightly lower. Similarly, most people have a set point for their weight—the number we fluctuate around and keep coming back to.
We also tend to have a set point on the Mood Elevator—one that we can shift through a couple of deliberate life practices. One practice involves adjusting your habitual mental state through certain simple behavior adjustments. I discuss this practice in chapter 10.
The other practice is simply taking better care of ourselves physically—something we all know we are supposed to do but that we often neglect through carelessness or being overly busy.
Research shows that when people are run-down they catch colds more easily. We also catch bad moods more easily. When we are physically run-down, we are more sensitive to what other people say and more likely to take things personally. We are less patient and understanding and often feel overwhelmed. Because the quality of our thinking is lower when we are tired, we are not as wise and resourceful as we could be. Our effectiveness is hampered, and that increases the stress and pressure we feel. We handle life better when we are fit and rested.
By contrast, when we are rested and in good physical shape, we are more resilient, less easily irritated or bothered, and less prone to having our buttons pushed by people or circumstances. That’s because there is a strong connection between our physical state and our mental state, and that is why, for most people, life looks better after a good night’s sleep, a restful weekend, or a refreshing vacation.
Fortunately, there are specific ways to take better care of yourself so that you will be more resilient and less apt to drift down to the lower floors on the Mood Elevator.
The Importance of the Stretch-and-Recover Cycle
The foundation of best practices for physical fitness is an understanding of the need of both your body and your mind to stretch and recover. Humans were designed to live in cycles. To operate at our best, we need cycles of stretch and recovery in many aspects of our lives.
Experienced athletes generally know how the stretch-and-recover cycle works. Stretching means going beyond your comfort zone to expand your capabilities mentally, emotionally, and physically. Weight lifters, for example, work one part of the body very hard to break down their muscles; they then let that body part rest the next day so that it recovers, grows, and becomes stronger.
Tennis players alternate great bursts of energy with brief recovery times. Many have recovery rituals, such as playing with their racket strings or bouncing the ball between vigorous sets.
Having been a jogger for decades, several years ago I decided to take up triathlons. The cross-training involved in preparing for a triathlon yields a natural stretch-and-recover cycle. When I run one day and bike or swim the next, I use varying muscle groups, giving other muscle groups the chance to rest and recover.
The concept of stretch-and-recover is relevant in mental fitness, as well. The upper floors on the Mood Elevator—like those labeled curious/interested, flexible/adaptive, hopeful/optimistic, resourceful, and creative/innovative—all involve activities that help us stretch: learning new things, tackling challenging assignments, and taking calculated risks, professionally and personally. Research shows that these activities expand our minds, adding brain cells and warding off mental decline in later years. Rest through meditation also has an impact on brain function.
But we can stretch for only so long before burning out, so we also need ways to recover mentally. Processes that encourage mental recovery include sleep, exercise, and time spent in certain self-renewing, higher mood states such as those labeled grateful, appreciative, patient/understanding, and sense of humor.
Getting Enough Sleep
The most important recovery mechanism people have is simply getting enough sleep. American author and entrepreneur E. Joseph Cossman allegedly said, “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” When we’re well rested, we feel stronger and more capable, and we have better access to our wisest self. That’s why the natural alternation of day and night and the instinctive circadian cycle of activity and sleep has shaped human society for thousands of years. And yet in our nonstop, 24/7, Internet-driven world, the majority of people are sleep deprived.
Being sleep deprived isn’t just unp
leasant; it has been associated with numerous medical problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, and cardiovascular disease. Sleep deprivation is also closely associated with such psychiatric disorders as alcoholism and bipolar disorder. In fact, up to 90 percent of adults suffering from depression are found to have sleep difficulties.8
Adequate sleep is also important for learning, gaining insights, and making decisions.
People who lack sufficient sleep perform less well in solving problems, completing puzzles, and taking tests. Research has shown that sleep-deprived subjects score lower on tests of both IQ (intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence). They have less access to creative original thought, and their ability to handle stressful situations and deal with people suffers.9
Scientists have yet to determine all the ways that sleep benefits us, but research provides some clues. Sleep provides time for the body and mind to recover. When the brain slows down, especially during deep, non–rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, it shifts from generating alpha waves to delta waves, which are therapeutic and restful. When denied NREM sleep for too long, experimental subjects became near-psychotic, experiencing hallucinations and paranoid schizophrenic thoughts.10
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep plays a different but equally important role. According to Rebecca Spencer, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, REM sleep activates the emotional areas of the brain so that “the things that are most important to you on a gut level are prioritized.” It also appears that, during REM sleep, all the conscious and unconscious images we perceived during the day are processed and organized. As Spencer puts it, “REM sleep is good for problem-solving and decision-making because your brain is putting pieces together and trying new alternatives. You gain insights that wouldn’t occur to you when you were awake.”11
This may explain the common observation that “sleeping on a problem” often helps generate a solution. In one study experimental subjects played a game with a hidden underlying rule: one group of subjects had a chance to sleep before discussing the game the next morning, while another group played the game in the morning and debriefed it later that day. Among those who “slept on it,” twice as many participants figured out the secret rule.12
Senn Delaney has found something similar in its culture-shaping sessions with executive teams: while a one-day session can provide value, a two-day session that includes reflection and discussion the second morning is usually much more transformational.
If you are among the millions of people who are habitually sleep deprived, make changing your sleep habits a high priority. Stop settling for five or six hours a night; reorganize your schedule so that you can routinely enjoy seven or eight hours of sleep. If necessary, alter your sleeping conditions to be more conducive to relaxation and rest: get room-darkening curtains, remove the television or computer, install sound-proofing insulation, and set a comfortable temperature.
You’ll accomplish far more in 16 hours after a good night’s sleep than you can in 18 or 19 hours after a too-short period of rest and recovery.
The Power of Exercise: The “Use It or Lose It” Principle
Exercise is a vital component of any plan to live a healthier and longer life. My interest in running developed decades ago when I read Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s original book, titled simply Aerobics. Cooper was the first to popularize the notion that there is a connection between aerobic exercise and cardiovascular health. Prior to that, bed rest and a sedentary life was the common prescription for those with heart problems. Cooper’s motto was Use it or lose it, and hundreds of studies have documented the validity of that premise. The body doesn’t wear out; it rusts out from lack of use.
I was in pretty good shape when I was young. I was a basketball player in high school, a gymnast in college, and a recreational league basketball player into my late twenties. Then I got busy launching a consulting business and raising three kids, and I stopped exercising much. As a result, I packed on 35 pounds.
Aerobics was my wake-up call. It contained a self-administered fitness test designed by Cooper for use with the military. The test was simple: Run as far as you can in 12 minutes, with the outcome evaluated according to your age and gender. I made it a couple of blocks before I was gasping for air with an ache in my side. I knew I was out of shape and in trouble. I started running regularly.
That was almost 50 years ago and, like the movie character Forrest Gump, I haven’t stopped running since. To save my knees, several years ago I began cross-training with road biking and swimming. The weight came off and stayed off, thanks to the combination of regular exercise and a healthy diet.
The Cooper Clinic in Dallas continues to do great research on the connection between exercise and heart disease. Researchers there have proven that even those who exercise moderately have measurably less chance of heart problems than do sedentary people.
Aerobic exercise has other powerful benefits. Studies by psychology professor Arthur F. Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that simple aerobic exercise (such as vigorous walking for 45 minutes three times a week) improved memory by 20 percent. Even more dramatic, a year of intense exercise can give a 70-year-old the mental functioning of a 30-year-old: improved memory, enhanced planning skills, and an increased ability to deal with ambiguity and handle simultaneous tasks. As Kramer says, “You can think of fitness training as changing the molecular and cellular building blocks that underlie many cognitive skills.”13
If you are suffering from physical, mental, and emotional weariness—and spending too many days among the bottom floors on your Mood Elevator—try incorporating aerobic exercise into your daily routine. You may be startled by the positive results you’ll experience.
Aerobics and Beyond
There are three forms of exercise that make sense to me. Of these the first and most important is aerobic exercise, which gets the heart rate up and provides all the benefits just described.
The second is anaerobic exercise, otherwise known as resistance or strength training. It too contributes to vitality and stamina.
Strengthening your muscles, especially core muscles like those in and around your abdomen, back, and pelvis, contributes enormously to a more satisfying life. Exercising your abs not only keeps your stomach from expanding with age but also protects your back, reducing the aches and pains that can take you down the Mood Elevator.
Resistance training also increases your metabolism and contributes to weight loss or weight maintenance as you age. Because it builds bone density, it enables you to engage in more-vigorous activities without significant physical limitations. Resistance training also appears to have definite psychological benefits. A 2001 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that just one or two resistance sessions per week for one year improved mental acuity and cognitive performance.14
The third and perhaps most neglected form of exercise is stretching. Our joints and tendons contract as we age, and we become less flexible, so we need to apply the stretch-and-recover model to our joints and tendons too.
I stretch regularly, motivated by an image in my mind of what could happen if I stopped. When shopping at a mall near my home, I sometimes see elderly people from a local retirement community trying to back their cars out of parking places. Their biggest challenge? They can’t turn their necks far enough to see what’s behind them. That painful prospect provides an incentive to me to stretch my neck, back, and hamstrings regularly. My friends who have taken up yoga tell me it’s a wonderful way to give their bodies the stretching they need while also providing a dose of mental and spiritual refreshment.
To Reap the Benefits of Exercise, Start Small—But Start Now
In addition to extending your life span and reducing your susceptibility to disease, exercise plays a major role in mental fitness and in raising your set point on the Mood Elevator.
There are many physiological reasons for this. Exercise increases your blood flow and buil
ds your stamina, so you don’t tire as easily. It also produces endorphins—a category of chemicals that act like a safe, legal narcotic to give you a positive, high-energy feeling. In fact, a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies on the impact of exercise published in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded, “Exercise improves mental health and well-being, reduces stress and anxiety and enhances cognitive functioning.”15
I have found this to be true in my own life. If I can get in even a brief run early in the morning before work, it raises my spirits and helps me start my day with a clearer mind and a fresher point of view. Many of the ideas in this book came to me while I was jogging. I’m not sure where these exercise-driven insights come from, but they are almost always more inspiring and interesting than the thoughts I have while working at my computer.
Yes, fitting an exercise regimen into your busy work-week can be challenging—but don’t let that be an excuse to do nothing. In the short term, make a commitment to at least a modest program of physical fitness. Promise yourself that you’ll get a good night’s sleep, take a 10-minute walk during a break at work, and build a stretch break into at least one meeting over the course of your day.
All of these small steps will elevate your spirit. In time, as the benefits slowly begin to mount, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to carve out more time for a more ambitious exercise program—and your time on the Mood Elevator’s upper floors will steadily increase as a result.
The Foods You Choose
Hundreds of books have been written on diet and nutrition. I don’t have the scientific expertise or the desire to compete with them here. But make no mistake—there is a direct link between what you eat and the quality of your travels on the Mood Elevator.