Type A and Type B Behavior

TYPE A BEHAVIOR	TYPE B BEHAVIOR
Impatient	Patient
Aggressive	Causal lifestyle
Sense of time urgency	Enjoys the moment
Highly competitive	Useful. Helpful
Interrupts others’ speech	Good listener
Craves recognition	Appreciates leisure and beauty
Frequently checks time	Rarely looks at watch
Obsessed with multitasking	Does things one at a time
Seeks fame, wealth and power	Enjoys work
Quick tempered	Peaceful deliberate thinker
Angry	Expresses affection openly
Rapid speech	Slow, deliberate speech
Inability to relax	Calm
Facial tension	Smiles and laughs easily
Always seeking more	Enjoys the present
Complainer	Content
Tongue and teeth clicking	Tranquil expressions
Audible forced inspiration of air	Relaxed breathing
Perfectionist	Accepts own imperfections

AS HAPPY AS APPLE PIE

Psychological studies indicate that just as we seem to have a set point for wealth, we also have a set point for happiness. Through controlled experiments, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD has explored ways to beat the genetic set point for happiness. According to Dr. Lyubomirsky, if happiness resembled an apple pie, the flavor of that pie would depend on the following three factors:

·      50% of the pie’s happiness depends on our genetic set point. Studies of twins and adoptees show that 50% of our happiness/unhappiness response can be explained by the way Mother Nature mixes the chromosomes we inherit from our parents. An upward swing in happiness eventually falls back to our happiness baseline. Likewise, a mind-messing downswing will gradually return to our genetic set point for happiness

·      10% of the pie’s happiness comes from life circumstances. Our income, marriage, children, occupation, physical health and where we live contributes 10% to our overall chance to experience happiness.

·      40% of the pie’s flavor develops from learned emotional and behavioral factors. How we act and how we respond to circumstances contributes 40% of our overall chance to experience happiness.

60,000 Thoughts A Day

Scientists estimate that we create approximately 60,000 thoughts a day. Most of these thoughts—about 95 percent—are repetitive. These thoughts make up our philosophy of life, our personality. One way to change our personality is to change our thought patterns through a concentrated effort to think healthier. And then to go beyond positive thinking, we need to experience and give love.

            Excellent health goes beyond positive thinking to include a positive philosophy of life. Positive thinking is better than negative thinking, but a benevolent view of life is better still. Those individuals who view life with equanimity, peace, and joy are much more likely to have excellent physical health. Feeling—really feeling loved by God—and knowing—really knowing that God's spirit dwells in us—changes the biochemistry of our bodies in a beneficial way.

            Self-understanding, learning, stretching the mind, and observing will enable us to cultivate the positive forces in the universe, in ourselves and in others. When we cultivate a more loving perspective about our lives, and ourselves we gradually develop a healthier philosophy of life. Daily praying for the gifts of the spirit—love, joy, peace of mind, wisdom, humility, patience, self-control, kindness and gentleness—can lead to positive changes.

CERTAIN TRUTHS

Those that develop a plan for living a life of joy accept certain truths that argue against pop culture happiness:

·      Material possessions may interfere with our getting that which is best for us.

·      Not everything that makes us feel better is good for us.

·      Not everything that hurts is bad for us.

·      The idea that life must always be fair, easy and stress free engenders frustration, despair, and all sorts of addictions.

·      The work of gathering and heaping interferes with a contented life.

·      Virtuous choices—choices that leave us with no regrets—allow us to put aside things we want that may interfere with obtaining things of lasting value.

·      Delaying gratification usually provides worthwhile pleasures.

Humor

      Sustained effort is best balanced by laughter and play. A joyful heart is healing while a dreary spirit leads to sickness. Joyless opportunities deplete vigor and dull the senses. An exhausting vacation provides an inappropriate use of leisure time. Participating in sports and games that bring more frowns than laughter creates an absurd use of time. Three types of humor exist:

o      Sarcasm and self-deprecating humor—Shun this type of humor. The unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between positive and negative comments. Self-deprecating humor, no matter how much others laugh, impacts your unconscious mind to accomplish those things you joke about. Likewise, sarcasm reflects passive hostility toward the other person. Sarcasm and self-deprecating humor produce negative results.

o      Laughter power—Hearty, energetic laughter invigorates those around you.

o      Cosmic humor—Avoid taking life too seriously. Finding the absurdity in human foibles allows you to brush off the “dust and soot” of life.

·      Integrity—Keeping commitments demonstrates integrity. People want to know three things about you:

1. Can I trust you? —Honest, thoughtful, and ethical behavior builds trust.
2. Do you care about me? — Treating others as you would like to be treated (the Golden Rule) demonstrates concern, commitment, and caring.
3. Are you committed to excellence? — Do the best you can. Excellence can be achieved by developing habits that strengthen the character:

o      Choose to enjoy each day by eliminating hurry from your life.

o      Practice random acts of kindness daily.

o      Learn something new each day by reading and listening.

o      Give thanks for fortunate events.

o      Praise positive and helpful behavior in others.

o      Establish a specific time for prayer and scripture studies daily.

o      Set aside a quite half hour for personal rejuvenation each day.   

The Mind-Body Connection

Research involving the mind-body connection (called psychoneuroimmunology) can be summarized in one sentence: The cerebral cortex (the thinking part of the brain) is connected to the limbic area (the feeling part of the brain) that is linked to the hypothalamus (the hormone control button of the brain) that, in turn, influences the rest of the body through a series of extremely complex microbiological connections.

When we have a thought or a feeling, our brains make chemicals known as neuropeptides. These protein-like molecules attach to the receptor sites of blood cells in the body allowing brain and body cells to talk to each other chemically. Immune cells that repair tissue, heal wounds, ingest bacteria, and protect us from cancer, have receptors for these neuropeptide chemical messen­gers.

Messages flowing between the brain and the immune cells are transported instantaneously. When we experience joy, the white blood cells receive that mes­sage immediately. Conversely, when we are unhappy, a negative message is transmitted directly to the white blood cells. Thus, our emotional reaction influences physical health. Positive message, good health. Negative message, poor health.

What's more intriguing, scientists have discovered certain cells in the body can make the same chemicals that the brain makes when it thinks. Our body cells make harmful or beneficial chemicals, depending on our mood. There may be a biological truth in the statement, "He's a pain in the neck," or "She makes me sick." Likewise, the proverb, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones" suggests that our body chemistry is influenced by our attitude.

A Guide for Understanding Basketball

Here is a good source for those who want to know about the technicalities of basketball.

www.guidetocoachingbasketball.com

A Fun Test on Civics

Here is a link to a fun test that allows you to check how well you know civics.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Do We Listen?

A man walked into a room to apply for a job as a telegraph operator. He got into a long line of applicants. In the background the tapping of a telegraph message could be heard. To the loud protests of the other applicants, the man moved to the front of the line, and was allowed entrance into the back office. Soon an announcement told the other applicants that they could go home, the position had been filled. The telegraph message heard in the background had repeatedly tapped out these instructions: "Anyone who understands this message, please come into the back office. You will be hired."

How often do we listen to background messages that give us the answer to our problems? How often do we listen for God's instructions?

Reasons for Change

TWO REASONS PEOPLE CHANGE

1.    Pleasure—realizing that new behavior patterns will produce more pleasure than maladaptive behavior patterns brings change. Believing that we can have a better life engenders different approaches. The power to visualize a successful outcome gives the courage to try new ways of doing things.

2.    Pain—understanding that maladaptive behavior causes intolerable distress stimulates an alternative lifestyle. Drastic environmental consequences may be required before inertia can be overcome. Imprisonment, financial ruin, homelessness, or the treat of death may be necessary before transformation occurs. Allowing a person to suffer may be the best way to generate change.

WHY PEOPLE CHANGE (complete article)

            The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans experienced calamitous flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm surge came from the east via flooded Saint Bernard Parish and from the west through two large breaches in the Industrial Canal flood protection system, creating violent currents that smashed homes and tore them from their foundations. The storm became the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and many more thousands were rendered homeless.

            A College Station resident commiserated with one of the Hurricane evacuees temporarily housed in a local church:

            “That must have been the most terrible thing that ever happened to you. You lost your home. You lost your clothes and all of possessions. You have no money. You can’t get in touch with your relatives. Your friends have been displaced. What a tragedy. How will you ever recover?”

            The evacuee replied:

            “Surely that storm was a terrible thing. I was scared and pretty well knew for certain I was going to die. Then a boat came and they took us to the Superdome, and it was like the devil himself had come down and was torturing us. We were all crowded together and squashed-up. People were yelling and crying. It was hot and dirty. And we all got thirsty and hungry. It smelled bad and it seemed there was no hope for any of us. But somehow, we got rescued and took care of. And now here I am in this nice church. We have food. And water. And air conditioning. And good people are helping us and looking after us.

            Yes, that Hurricane was a horrible thing and I never want to go through nothing like that again. But, you know, that Hurricane—no matter all the bad things that happened—was the best thing that ever happened to me and I am thankful for it.

            I’m not discounting the bad things that happened to so many people and all the dead people and people who never will find their families, but for me that hurricane was good. If it hadn’t been for Katrina, I would have been trapped in the lower ninth ward for life. Before the hurricane, I had nowhere to go. I had no idea how to go. I had no money to go. I was just there and that was my life. But the big wind came and blew me to a better way of looking at things. And now I have a new life, a new start on life. I’ve got possibilities. Yes, thank God for Hurricane Katrina. I’ve got hope.”

THE TRAGIC FAILURE TO CHANGE

            Some people have difficulty changing because they are caught in financial or geographical traps. Let us consider those people, however, who have every opportunity to change, but, nonetheless, continue to engage in self-defeating behavior despite ongoing negative consequences:

v    Smoking, obesity, and alcohol abuse can lead to chronic illnesses and premature death. Despite ominous health warnings that are more certain than storm alerts from the National Hurricane Center, surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that very few people are willing to stop their self-destructive unhealthy habits.

o      20% of American adults smoke

o      More than 30% of Americans are overweight

o      15% of Americans are binge drinkers

v    People are often noncompliant to medical treatments

o      50-65% of Americans fail to follow their doctors’ treatment recommendations

o      10% of hospital admissions among older adults result from failure to follow doctors’ directions

o      Almost one-third of patients visiting a physician fail to get their prescriptions filled

o      A Case Western Reserve University survey showed that 54% of glaucoma patients failed to use their eye drops as directed even though these patients knew they would go blind unless they complied with their doctors’ instructions.

o      70% of patients receiving treatment at a community mental health center dropped out of treatment before the third visit.

v    Most serious attempts to maintain behavior change are unsuccessful. A University of Scranton study found that only 19% of those who had made a significant change in a problem behavior maintained the change when surveyed two years later.

v    People continue to engage in patterns of behavior—anger, violence, nagging, dependency, and jealousy—that are destructive to their relationships and their well-being.

REASONS FOR LACK OF CHANGE

v    EMOTIONAL AMBIVALENCE. A woman complained vociferously about her husband who controlled her. He wouldn’t let her out of the house alone. He wouldn’t let her drive a car. He wouldn’t let her visit friends. When asked why she didn’t leave her husband, the woman replied, “I love him so much.” When the woman was seen two years later. She had the same complaints about her husband. She remained married.

v    CIRCULAR EXCUSES. Common explanations for lack of change become circular arguments. People may blame their resistance to change on stubbornness, an addictive personality, or self-destructiveness. An explanation for refusing to improve a situation may go this way, “Because my situation is hopeless, I can’t change.” The behavior is then used to support the explanation, “I can’t change because my situation is hopeless.”

v    REBELLION. Telling someone to change often exacerbates the situation. A highly directive approach causes a person to adamantly resist change. One study showed that the more alcoholics were directed to change the more they drank.

v    INERTIA. Systems resist change. Physicists call this resistance to change “inertia.” The first law of motion indicates that people, like objects, tend to keep on moving if they are moving and remain standing still if they are still.

v    BLAMING. It is easier to make excuses for our problems than it is to assume responsibility for our own behavior. The statement “If she didn’t nag me so much, I wouldn’t drink,” is an example of blaming others.

v    LEARNED HELPLESSNESS. Put an animal in a cage. Apply a mild electrical shock all over the floor of the cage. When the animal discovers that escape is impossible, the animal lies down and passively in the corner of the cage and accepts the shock. Then the electrical shock is applied only to the corner where the animal is lying. The other areas of the cage are shock free. The animal continues to stay in the corner. Humans that are constantly exposed to conditions from which there appear to be no escape will eventually give-up and surrender to the situation.

FORCES THAT IMPEDE CHANGE

Psychological Forces	Thoughts and Habits that Limit Change
Pain versus Pleasure	The immediate pleasure of the habit (gambling) is more powerful than the delayed pain (financial ruin).
Fear of failure	“If I don’t change, I will feel even worse than I do now.”
All or nothing thinking	“I must lose 50 pounds; losing 10 pounds is unacceptable”
Unconscious conflicts—unaware of problems	We may repeat maladaptive behavior because we fail to recognize the destructiveness of our acts.
Change is unpredictable	The discomfort of the status quo may be preferred over the anxiety produced by change.
Resisting authority	“I don’t like anyone telling me what to do.”
An undesirable habit may provide unmet needs.	Drinking relieves stress. Physical abuse provides attention. Eating fills a psychological void.

TWO REASONS PEOPLE CHANGE

1.    Pleasure—realizing that new behavior patterns will produce more pleasure than maladaptive behavior patterns brings change. Believing that we can have a better life engenders different approaches. The power to visualize a successful outcome gives the courage to try new ways of doing things.

2.    Pain—understanding that maladaptive behavior causes intolerable distress stimulates an alternative lifestyle. Drastic environmental consequences may be required before inertia can be overcome. Imprisonment, financial ruin, homelessness, or the treat of death may be necessary before transformation occurs. Allowing a person to suffer may be the best way to generate change.

ELEMENTS OF CHANGE

v    Because ambivalence to change maintains the disease process, books, tapes, and didactic lectures help reveal unconscious psychological conflicts that retard progress.

v    Cognitive behavior therapy teaches more appropriate ways of thinking about conflicts.

v    Fellowship—developing friends who model appropriate behavior helps generate change.

v    Spiritual transformation provides love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

CIRCULAR EXCUSES

            People may blame their resistance to change on stubbornness, an addictive personality, or self-destructiveness. An explanation for refusing to improve a situation may go this way, “Because my situation is hopeless, I can’t change.” The behavior is then used to support the explanation, “I can’t change because my situation is hopeless.”  

WHY PEOPLE CHANGE

            The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans experienced calamitous flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm surge came from the east via flooded Saint Bernard Parish and from the west through two large breaches in the Industrial Canal flood protection system, creating violent currents that smashed homes and tore them from their foundations. The storm became the costliest natural disaster in United States history. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and many more thousands were rendered homeless.

            A College Station resident commiserated with one of the Hurricane evacuees temporarily housed in a local church:

            “That must have been the most terrible thing that ever happened to you. You lost your home. You lost your clothes and all of possessions. You have no money. You can’t get in touch with your relatives. Your friends have been displaced. What a tragedy. How will you ever recover?”

            The evacuee replied:

            “Surely that storm was a terrible thing. I was scared and pretty well knew for certain I was going to die. Then a boat came and they took us to the Superdome, and it was like the devil himself had come down and was torturing us. We was all crowded together and squashed-up. People was yelling and crying. It was hot and dirty. And we all got thirsty and hungry. It smelled bad and it seemed there was no hope for any of us. But somehow, we got rescued and took care of. And now here I am in this nice church. We have food. And water. And air conditioning. And good people are helping us and looking after us.

            Yes, that Hurricane was a horrible thing and I never want to go through nothing like that again. But, you know, that Hurricane—no matter all the bad things that happened—was the best thing that ever happened to me and I am thankful for it.

            I’m not discounting the bad things that happened to so many people and all the dead people and people who never will find their families, but for me that Hurricane was good. If it hadn’t been for Katrina, I would have been trapped in the lower ninth ward for life. Before the hurricane, I had nowhere to go. I had no idea how to go. I had no money to go. I was just there and that was my life. But the big wind came and blew me to a better way of looking at things. And now I have a new life, a new start on life. I’ve got possibilities. Yes, thank God for Hurricane Katrina. I’ve got hope.”

Destructive behavior patterns

People continue to engage in patterns of behavior—anger, violence, nagging, dependency, and jealousy—that are destructive to their relationships and their well-being. A woman complained vociferously about her husband who controlled her. He wouldn’t let her out of the house alone. He wouldn’t let her drive a car. He wouldn’t let her visit friends. When asked why she didn’t leave her husband, the woman replied, “I love him so much.” When the woman was seen two years later. She had the same complaints about her husband. She remained married. 

THE TRAGIC FAILURE TO CHANGE

          Some people have difficulty changing because they are caught in financial or geographical traps. Let us consider those people, however, who have every opportunity to change, but, nonetheless, continue to engage in self-defeating behavior despite ongoing negative consequences:

v    Smoking, obesity, and alcohol abuse can lead to chronic illnesses and premature death. Despite ominous health warnings that are more certain than storm alerts from the National Hurricane Center, surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that very few people are willing to stop their self-destructive unhealthy habits.

o      20% of American adults smoke

o      More than 30% of Americans are overweight

o      15% of Americans are binge drinkers

v    People are often noncompliant to medical treatments

o      50-65% of Americans fail to follow their doctors’ treatment recommendations

o      10% of hospital admissions among older adults result from failure to follow doctors’ directions

o      Almost one-third of patients visiting a physician fail to get their prescriptions filled

o      A Case Western Reserve University survey showed that 54% of glaucoma patients failed to use their eye drops as directed even though these patients knew they would go blind unless they complied with their doctors’ instructions.

o      70% of patients receiving treatment at a community mental health center dropped out of treatment before the third visit.

v    Most serious attempts to maintain behavior change are unsuccessful. A University of Scranton study found that only 19% of those who had made a significant change in a problem behavior maintained the change when surveyed two years later.

FORCES THAT IMPEDE CHANGE

Psychological Forces	Thoughts and Habits that Limit Change
Pain versus Pleasure	The immediate pleasure of the habit (gambling) is more powerful than the delayed pain (financial ruin)
Fear of failure	People fear that if they fail in their efforts to change, they will feel even worse.
All or nothing thinking	I must lose 50 pounds; losing 10 pounds is unacceptable
Loss of free choice	Encouraging change threatens freedom & control.
Change is unpredictable	The discomfort of the status quo may be preferred over the anxiety produced by change.
An undesirable habit may provide unmet needs.	Drinking relieves stress. Physical abuse provides attention. Eating fills a psychological void.

What Makes Us Who We Are

We are what we are because of nature (in computer lingo, our hard drive) and nurture (our software). Our genetic inheritance interacts with environmental conditions to make us who we are.

            The human genome is analogous to a 46-volume encyclopedia. Each chromosome represents a volume; a gene on the chromosome represents a page. The interaction between chromosomes and genes is analogous to the interaction of freewill and determinism.   Our development has a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The genes we inherit are important. How our genes interact with the environment is equally important.

Little Did He Know

Tiny differences in input can quickly become overwhelming disparities in output. A butterfly stirring the air in Scarsdale, New York can transform storm systems in London the next month. A man pushes the snooze button on his alarm clock. He leaves his house in the morning thirty seconds later than usual. A swerving truck misses his car by inches. Walking from the parking garage, a falling wrench at a construction site knocks him dead. Little did he know that thirty seconds was a half-a-minute too late. Just as there exist too many butterflies for the weatherman make an accurate forecast all the time, psychiatrists have a difficult time predicting how an individual will respond to the alarm clock. Thus, there is no definite psychiatric explanation for why some lead successful lives and others develop emotional problems.             

Who Can Predict Success?

I was reminded of the unpredictability of life on a recent outing with my granddaughter. Following a thunderous rain, my granddaughter, Lori, and I left the house to play. Strolling to a neighborhood creek, we put two matchbook boats side by side in the stream. We ran as quickly as we could to the footbridge crossing the creek and watched the progress of the two little boats. Although these boats were identical in size and structure, one boat quickly sailed under our footbridge, while the other boat bumped along slowly, was caught in a hydraulic force, and spit into an eddy where it stalled.

            “Pop, how come that boat kept going and the other one got stuck?” Lori asked.

            Wanting Lori to be the smartest kid in gym class, I said, “According to scientists studying chaos theory, it’s due to deterministic non-periodic flow.”

            “That’s what I thought,” replied Lori. “I think I’ll go ask Mimi.”

            I never discovered Mimi’s answer, but Lori’s dilemma presents some difficult questions: Why did one boat sail swiftly with the current, while the other boat floundered in shallow waters? In somber times, we sometimes ask a similar question about our lives. Does the outcome of our life depend on the currents of fate or the structure of our life or something else? Are our actions determined? Do we have free will to sail the streams of our choosing?

            Watch two bits of paper flowing side by side at the bottom of a waterfall. What can you guess about how close they were at the top? Nothing. Watch two people sitting side by side at church. What can you guess about the experiences they have had? Nothing.

            Why do matchbook boats sail erratically? Why are our lives so unpredictable? Why does the kid voted most likely to succeed spend his life under a park bench while the class clown wins the Noble Prize? 

Worship that Pleases God

Worship that pleases God has five characteristics:

1. Worship that comes from the heart.
2. Worship that is filled with thoughtful, meditative awe, and respect for God.
3. Worship that renews a dedication to serving God with our good works.
4. Worship that is joyful and spirit filled.
5. Worship that conveys thankfulness.