To spot a bubble in
advance requires a judgement that hundreds of thousands of informed
investors have it all wrong - Greenspan, 1999
Amy Harder
Verified account
British Columbia offers glimpse into how a carbon tax drives consistently lower gasoline consumption amid cheap oil. http://on.wsj.com/2dryw6W
Operation Babylift, 1975. Over 3300 Vietnamese orphans evacuated by air to the United States and other countries.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost
ValueWalk
Time to pull out Einhorn's Euro crisis chart .... from 2011 - $DB version
Why the first SAS soldiers were mad, bad - and VERY dangerous to know: The fearless killers who thought nothing of crossing the desert without water or boots
- Ben Macintyre's book details who the SAS are and where they came from
- First ever fully authorised history of SAS covers its secret WWII activities
- Macintyre had access to a strictly confidential, 500-page ‘war diary’
Beyond the vision of battling races and an impoverished earth I catch a dreaming glimpse of peace. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
'Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing'
-- W. S. Burroughs
Socrates: It is good to repeat and review what is good twice and thrice over (Gorgias)
"We can never obtain peace in the outer world
until we make peace with ourselves."
— Dalai Lama XIV
|
BI Finance
The top 50 dream companies for business students around the world http://read.bi/2cEB1Bw
Alkilihne Lake
This Alkaline African Lake Turns Animals into Stones
A calcified flamingo, preserved by the highly basic waters of Tanzania’s Lake Natron and photographed by Nick Brandt. © Nick Brandt 2013, Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery, NY
“When I saw those creatures for the first time alongside the lake, I was completely blown away,” says Brandt. “The idea for me, instantly, was to take portraits of them as if they were alive.”
The ghastly Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, is a salt lake—meaning that water flows in, but doesn’t flow out, so it can only escape by evaporation. Over time, as water evaporates, it leaves behind high concentrations of salt and other minerals, like at the Dead Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Unlike those other lakes, though, Lake Natron is extremely alkaline, due to high amounts of the chemical natron (a mix of sodium carbonate and baking soda) in the water. The water’s pH has been measured as high as 10.5—nearly as high as ammonia. “It’s so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds,” Brandt says.
As you might expect, few creatures live in the harsh waters, which can reach 140 degrees Fahreinheit—they’re home to just a single fish species (Alcolapia latilabris), some algae and a colony of flamingos that feeds on the algae and breeds on the shore.
Frequently, though, migrating birds crash into the lake’s surface. Brandt theorizes that the highly-reflective, chemical dense waters act like a glass door, fooling birds into thinking they’re flying through empty space (not long ago, a helicopter pilot tragically fell victim to the same illusion, and his crashed aircraft was rapidly corroded by the lake’s waters). During dry season, Brandt discovered, when the water recedes, the birds’ desiccated, chemically-preserved carcasses wash up along the coastline.
“It was amazing. I saw entire flocks of dead birds all washed ashore together, lemming-like,” he says. “You’d literally get, say, a hundred finches washed ashore in a 50-yard stretch.”
Over the course of about three weeks, Brandt worked with locals to collect some of the most finely-preserved specimens. “They thought I was absolutely insane—some crazy white guy, coming along offering money for people to basically go on a treasure hunt around the lake for dead birds,” he says. “When, one time, someone showed up with an entire, well-preserved fish eagle, it was extraordinary.”
Just coming into contact with the water was dangerous. “It’s so caustic, that even if you’ve got the tiniest cut, it’s very painful,” he says. “Nobody would ever swim in this—it’d be complete madness.”
For the series of photos, titled “The Calcified” and featured in this month’s issue of New Scientist, Brandt posed the carcasses in life-like positions. “But the bodies themselves are exactly the way the birds were found,” he insists. “All I did was position them on the branches, feeding them through their stiff talons.”
***
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.Link: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/10/this-alkaline-african-lake-turns-animals-into-stone/
7/26/2009
ADDitudeMag.com
33 Ways to Get Organized with Adult ADHD
Want a clean home? An efficient office? Get organized with adult ADHD thanks to organizing guru Judith Kolberg and her 33 top strategies for work and home.
by Judith Kolberg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uncluttering your life is a key step toward reaching bigger, better goals. So why do so many adults with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) fail to seek the help we need to get organized with adult ADHD and achieve a clean home, a clutter-free office, and a simple life?
Judith Kolberg suggests it's a matter of perfectionism: We're unable to do what it takes to get even a bit more organized because we worry that we won't become perfectly organized. And as Kolberg, author of Conquering Chronic Disorganization, points out, there is no such thing as perfect organization. Life is capricious, and get-it-done strategies that work well today may prove useless tomorrow.
The good news, says Kolberg, who's now president of FileHeads Professional Organizers, is that seemingly small changes can bring big improvements in your life - less clutter, fewer hassles, and greater tranquility.
THE BIG PICTURE
1. Set time limits for decision-making.
ADDers can spend days agonizing over decisions that others make in minutes. Speed the process by setting a time frame or a budget cap. If you're choosing a summer camp for your child, for example, set a deadline, and make the best choice you can by that date. If you're deciding which new cell phone to buy, pick a price cap and ignore more costly phones.
Always identify the most important factor to consider in making any decision, whether it's price, convenience, aesthetics, practicality, or something else. Focus solely on that factor when considering your decision.
2. Fight the tendency to over-commit.
For each new commitment you make, give up an old one. If you agree to join the school fund-raising committee, for instance, give up the neighborhood watch committee. ADDers tend to spread themselves too thin.
3. Keep your to-do lists brief.
Using big, bold letters, make a list of no more than five tasks on an index card. (List any additional items on the back of the card.) Once you have done those five things, refer to the back of the card to create a new to-do list - and discard the old one. You'll accomplish more, feel less frustrated, and manage your time better. (For a high-tech approach to to-do lists, see To-Do Lists That Really Work.)
4. Fight hyperfocus.
Set an alarm clock, kitchen timer, or computer alert - or arrange for someone reliable to call you at a specified time or times. If you tend to lose yourself on eBay for hours at a time, you need this kind of help.
5. Use a "body double."
This is a friend or family member who sits with you as you tackle mundane chores, like balancing a checkbook, filling out a job application, or reviewing financial statements. Your body double will create a productive atmosphere by sitting quietly and doing an unobtrusive task, like affixing stamps to envelopes or clipping recipes from a magazine.
PERSONAL CARE
SIGN ME UP
for the Adult ADD e-newsletter, and for a free copy of the ADD handout Adult ADD Time Assessment Chart.
6. Keep extra medication on hand.
Each time you fill a prescription, write in your planner the date on which you'll need to renew it (or set your computer to issue an alert or generate an e-mail reminder on that date). Ask your pharmacist if he can call to remind you when it's time to refill. Your "renew date" should be at least one week before the date on which you'll run out of medication.
7. Build socializing into your schedule.
That way, your desires to meet new people, have interesting conversations, and keep up with friends are taken care of automatically. Take a class, join a book club or a lecture series, or start a dinner club.
8. Join an ADD support group.
Support groups provide more than emotional support. For example, the members can get together online when it's time to tackle boring tasks, like filling out tax returns or filing: One at a time, each person leaves the computer, dedicates 15 minutes to the task at hand, then returns to instant messaging - to joke, commiserate, and congratulate one another. Find out more about online and in-person support groups at chadd.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 2
9. Carry a colorful wallet.
It's harder to misplace a red wallet than an ordinary black or brown one. The same goes for your checkbook.
10. Buy experiences, not objects.
There's nothing wrong with a little "retail therapy" to reward yourself for your accomplishments. But think twice before buying some new object (which may become just another bit of clutter in your home). Instead, use your money to buy a pleasant experience, such as a massage or a night out with friends.
CLUTTER CONTROL
11. Stop agonizing over insignificant items.
What to do with greeting cards you've received, batteries of dubious power, unidentified CDs and cassette tapes, orphaned screws, and so on? Toss them into a "ripening drawer." Once the drawer is full, quickly sort through it. Use what you can, and discard the rest. Then start the process anew.
12. Get a "clutter companion."
This is a (nonjudgmental) friend or family member who will help you get rid of all the stuff that's cluttering up your house. A few times a year, you and your companion should sort your clutter into four piles: "keep," "toss," "donate," and "age." Discard the "toss" items at once - before you have a chance to change your mind. Place "donate" items in heavy-duty garbage bags, and drive them to the nearest donation bin. Place "age" items in a cardboard box marked with a date three months hence. In your calendar, mark the same date as the time to "review age items." When that date rolls around, give those items another look. If you feel comfortable discarding them, do so. If not, renew the date for another three months.
13. Fight financial-statement overload.
Do you really need to keep monthly account statements? Ask your accountant if you can get by with keeping only quarterly or annual statements - and toss the rest.
14. Don't let unread magazines pile up.
If the next issue arrives before you've read the last one, place the last one in a small basket (measuring no more than six inches high and two magazine-widths across). Once the basket fills up, sift through the magazines. Read what you can, and discard or recycle the rest. (You might drop off the best magazines at a hospital or women's shelter.)
If you are habitually unable to keep up with the issues of a particular magazine, cancel the subscription.
YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
15. Make use of "wasted" minutes.
Don't wait to find long blocks of uninterrupted time to tackle organizational chores. In one minute, you can sort mail, remove lint from the dryer, or water the plants. In five minutes, you can empty the dishwasher or write an e-mail. While you wait for your laundry to dry, you can mate socks and gather clothes for dry cleaning.
16. Create a "launch pad" near the front door.
This is the place to stash things that family members need each time they leave the house - umbrellas, school backpacks, briefcases, pocketbooks, keys, scarves, and so on. The launch pad might have cubbies, pegs, hooks, containers - anything that makes it easy to find and grab things as you head out the door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 3
17. Ditch those receipts.
Each evening, empty your pockets, wallet, purse, and briefcase of all ATM slips and receipts. Put them in with your stack of bills to be paid and financial statements to review.
Too much loose change? If coins pile up on your dresser, get a jar to put them in. At the end of the month, you'll have an extra $15 or so to spend - a reward for keeping your pockets free of clutter.
18. Simplify your wardrobe.
The more clothes you have, the harder it is to decide what to wear each morning. So continually winnow out extra clothing. If you get a new shirt, for instance, consider getting rid of an old one. In spring and summer, coordinate all your clothing around only two colors, plus white. In fall and winter, coordinate all your clothing around two other colors, plus black. You'll feel liberated by having fewer outfits to choose from - and you'll save money on clothes.
19. Pre-assemble your clothes into complete outfits.
Hang them on sturdy hangers in your closet. You'll get dressed faster each morning, with less confusion and second-guessing. This strategy works for men and women alike, and is especially helpful for organizing business attire. Women can slip a baggie with matching jewelry onto the hanger. For items to help organize children's clothes and toys, take a look at organize-everything.com/kiddailor.html.
AROUND THE HOUSE
20. Take it one project at a time.
Having to tackle several big projects at once is stressful for people with ADD. Set one priority, and get it done, tying up all loose ends before moving on to a new project. For instance, get new eyeglasses before cleaning your gutters. Or take your car in for maintenance before revising your résumé.
21. Use sticky notes to stay on track.
If you're often sidetracked by interruptions, make it easy to return to the task at hand once the interruption is over. How? Keep a supply of sticky notes with you, and jot down where to pick up again. For instance, if you must take a phone call while reading, post a note on the text that says, "resume reading here." When the call is over, you'll know exactly what to do.
22. Double up on tasks.
If you can make it a habit to do two small things in concert, you'll get more done. For example, you might reset your clocks and change the batteries in your smoke detectors upon the end of Daylight Saving Time each autumn. You could change your oil and balance your investments on the same day. Or reorganize your pocketbook each time you water the plants.
23. Organize your garage like a professional.
That means separating your stuff into "zones" of the sort you see at home-improvement stores: "tools," "painting supplies," "gardening supplies," "sports equipment," "automotive," and so on. If this job is too big to tackle on your own, don't be reluctant to ask for help.
THE PAPER TRAIL
24. Rethink your filing system.
ADDers often have trouble with filing because they create too many categories. Better to keep your categories broad, and use subfolders where necessary. For instance, you might label one folder "insurance," and fill it with subcategory folders for life insurance, car insurance, and health insurance.
Online retailer addconsults.com offers a variety of terrific organizing products, including one designed specifically for keeping track of owner's manuals, product warranties, insurance policies, and the like.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 4
25. Create a document "hot spot."
This is a red, see-through folder for important, time-sensitive documents. In this folder, which should be kept on your desk, you should place papers representing up to five different tasks that must be attended to within the next 24 hours - an overdue bill, a client file, a phone message to return, and so on.
Clear out your hot spot daily. Active papers that aren't yet urgent should be kept in transparent file folders arranged vertically in a file holder.
A hot spot is a great tool for dealing with the "out of sight is out of mind" problem.
26. Stanch the flow of junk mail.
Add your name to the "do not send" list maintained by the Direct Mail Association. Go to the-dma.org for more information.
27. Process the mail every day.
That will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. Throw out junk mail immediately. The rest of the mail should be kept in one place, with a wastebasket nearby. Bills to be paid should be placed inside your checkbook or - if you use online banking - on the desktop beside the computer. Stick everyone else's mail into nearby cubbyholes, slots, or shelves with their names on them.
MONEY MATTERS
28. Schedule a quarterly review of investments - with yourself.
Write the date and time to review these on your calendar or in your planner, and go over your bank accounts, investment accounts, and retirement plans.
29. Switch to online banking.
How much time do you spend each month writing checks, addressing envelopes, and affixing postage (not to mention mailing the checks)? It's faster to do your banking online - especially since you can set up recurring bills to be paid automatically - and you won't have to pay for postage.
If you're intimidated by the sometimes-complicated computer work required to open an online account, ask a computer-savvy friend or family member to help.
30. Use a single checking account.
Keep your checkbook in your purse or briefcase and return it there immediately after using it. Keep your check register and a few emergency checks (but not another checkbook!) in another location, in case you lose your checkbook.
31. Keep plastic to a minimum.
The more credit cards you have, the more statements and receipts you'll have to contend with. Better to stick with one or two major cards and avoid the high-interest store and gas cards. Consider new card offers only if the terms of the card are clearly superior to the terms of your current cards.
32. Get a debit card.
Keep it in your wallet, and use it instead of a personal check whenever possible. Each time you use the card, make an entry in your check register as if you had written a check. That way, your checking account stays balanced.
33. Keep some extra cash on hand.
Put several hundred dollars in a waterproof plastic bag and place it someplace safe but easy to locate (maybe your freezer). That way, you won't be caught empty-handed if a storm, power outage, or some other natural or man-made disaster makes it impossible to use ATMs.
For more on preparing for a disaster, go to redcross.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 1998 - 2007 New Hope Media LLC. All rights reserved. Your use of this site is governed by our
Terms of Service (http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/terms.html) and
Privacy Policy (http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/privacy.html).
ADDitude does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The material on this web site is provided for educational purposes only.
See additional information at http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/disclaimer.html
New Hope Media, 39 W. 37th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10018
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
33 Ways to Get Organized with Adult ADHD
Want a clean home? An efficient office? Get organized with adult ADHD thanks to organizing guru Judith Kolberg and her 33 top strategies for work and home.
by Judith Kolberg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uncluttering your life is a key step toward reaching bigger, better goals. So why do so many adults with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) fail to seek the help we need to get organized with adult ADHD and achieve a clean home, a clutter-free office, and a simple life?
Judith Kolberg suggests it's a matter of perfectionism: We're unable to do what it takes to get even a bit more organized because we worry that we won't become perfectly organized. And as Kolberg, author of Conquering Chronic Disorganization, points out, there is no such thing as perfect organization. Life is capricious, and get-it-done strategies that work well today may prove useless tomorrow.
The good news, says Kolberg, who's now president of FileHeads Professional Organizers, is that seemingly small changes can bring big improvements in your life - less clutter, fewer hassles, and greater tranquility.
THE BIG PICTURE
1. Set time limits for decision-making.
ADDers can spend days agonizing over decisions that others make in minutes. Speed the process by setting a time frame or a budget cap. If you're choosing a summer camp for your child, for example, set a deadline, and make the best choice you can by that date. If you're deciding which new cell phone to buy, pick a price cap and ignore more costly phones.
Always identify the most important factor to consider in making any decision, whether it's price, convenience, aesthetics, practicality, or something else. Focus solely on that factor when considering your decision.
2. Fight the tendency to over-commit.
For each new commitment you make, give up an old one. If you agree to join the school fund-raising committee, for instance, give up the neighborhood watch committee. ADDers tend to spread themselves too thin.
3. Keep your to-do lists brief.
Using big, bold letters, make a list of no more than five tasks on an index card. (List any additional items on the back of the card.) Once you have done those five things, refer to the back of the card to create a new to-do list - and discard the old one. You'll accomplish more, feel less frustrated, and manage your time better. (For a high-tech approach to to-do lists, see To-Do Lists That Really Work.)
4. Fight hyperfocus.
Set an alarm clock, kitchen timer, or computer alert - or arrange for someone reliable to call you at a specified time or times. If you tend to lose yourself on eBay for hours at a time, you need this kind of help.
5. Use a "body double."
This is a friend or family member who sits with you as you tackle mundane chores, like balancing a checkbook, filling out a job application, or reviewing financial statements. Your body double will create a productive atmosphere by sitting quietly and doing an unobtrusive task, like affixing stamps to envelopes or clipping recipes from a magazine.
PERSONAL CARE
SIGN ME UP
for the Adult ADD e-newsletter, and for a free copy of the ADD handout Adult ADD Time Assessment Chart.
6. Keep extra medication on hand.
Each time you fill a prescription, write in your planner the date on which you'll need to renew it (or set your computer to issue an alert or generate an e-mail reminder on that date). Ask your pharmacist if he can call to remind you when it's time to refill. Your "renew date" should be at least one week before the date on which you'll run out of medication.
7. Build socializing into your schedule.
That way, your desires to meet new people, have interesting conversations, and keep up with friends are taken care of automatically. Take a class, join a book club or a lecture series, or start a dinner club.
8. Join an ADD support group.
Support groups provide more than emotional support. For example, the members can get together online when it's time to tackle boring tasks, like filling out tax returns or filing: One at a time, each person leaves the computer, dedicates 15 minutes to the task at hand, then returns to instant messaging - to joke, commiserate, and congratulate one another. Find out more about online and in-person support groups at chadd.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 2
9. Carry a colorful wallet.
It's harder to misplace a red wallet than an ordinary black or brown one. The same goes for your checkbook.
10. Buy experiences, not objects.
There's nothing wrong with a little "retail therapy" to reward yourself for your accomplishments. But think twice before buying some new object (which may become just another bit of clutter in your home). Instead, use your money to buy a pleasant experience, such as a massage or a night out with friends.
CLUTTER CONTROL
11. Stop agonizing over insignificant items.
What to do with greeting cards you've received, batteries of dubious power, unidentified CDs and cassette tapes, orphaned screws, and so on? Toss them into a "ripening drawer." Once the drawer is full, quickly sort through it. Use what you can, and discard the rest. Then start the process anew.
12. Get a "clutter companion."
This is a (nonjudgmental) friend or family member who will help you get rid of all the stuff that's cluttering up your house. A few times a year, you and your companion should sort your clutter into four piles: "keep," "toss," "donate," and "age." Discard the "toss" items at once - before you have a chance to change your mind. Place "donate" items in heavy-duty garbage bags, and drive them to the nearest donation bin. Place "age" items in a cardboard box marked with a date three months hence. In your calendar, mark the same date as the time to "review age items." When that date rolls around, give those items another look. If you feel comfortable discarding them, do so. If not, renew the date for another three months.
13. Fight financial-statement overload.
Do you really need to keep monthly account statements? Ask your accountant if you can get by with keeping only quarterly or annual statements - and toss the rest.
14. Don't let unread magazines pile up.
If the next issue arrives before you've read the last one, place the last one in a small basket (measuring no more than six inches high and two magazine-widths across). Once the basket fills up, sift through the magazines. Read what you can, and discard or recycle the rest. (You might drop off the best magazines at a hospital or women's shelter.)
If you are habitually unable to keep up with the issues of a particular magazine, cancel the subscription.
YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
15. Make use of "wasted" minutes.
Don't wait to find long blocks of uninterrupted time to tackle organizational chores. In one minute, you can sort mail, remove lint from the dryer, or water the plants. In five minutes, you can empty the dishwasher or write an e-mail. While you wait for your laundry to dry, you can mate socks and gather clothes for dry cleaning.
16. Create a "launch pad" near the front door.
This is the place to stash things that family members need each time they leave the house - umbrellas, school backpacks, briefcases, pocketbooks, keys, scarves, and so on. The launch pad might have cubbies, pegs, hooks, containers - anything that makes it easy to find and grab things as you head out the door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 3
17. Ditch those receipts.
Each evening, empty your pockets, wallet, purse, and briefcase of all ATM slips and receipts. Put them in with your stack of bills to be paid and financial statements to review.
Too much loose change? If coins pile up on your dresser, get a jar to put them in. At the end of the month, you'll have an extra $15 or so to spend - a reward for keeping your pockets free of clutter.
18. Simplify your wardrobe.
The more clothes you have, the harder it is to decide what to wear each morning. So continually winnow out extra clothing. If you get a new shirt, for instance, consider getting rid of an old one. In spring and summer, coordinate all your clothing around only two colors, plus white. In fall and winter, coordinate all your clothing around two other colors, plus black. You'll feel liberated by having fewer outfits to choose from - and you'll save money on clothes.
19. Pre-assemble your clothes into complete outfits.
Hang them on sturdy hangers in your closet. You'll get dressed faster each morning, with less confusion and second-guessing. This strategy works for men and women alike, and is especially helpful for organizing business attire. Women can slip a baggie with matching jewelry onto the hanger. For items to help organize children's clothes and toys, take a look at organize-everything.com/kiddailor.html.
AROUND THE HOUSE
20. Take it one project at a time.
Having to tackle several big projects at once is stressful for people with ADD. Set one priority, and get it done, tying up all loose ends before moving on to a new project. For instance, get new eyeglasses before cleaning your gutters. Or take your car in for maintenance before revising your résumé.
21. Use sticky notes to stay on track.
If you're often sidetracked by interruptions, make it easy to return to the task at hand once the interruption is over. How? Keep a supply of sticky notes with you, and jot down where to pick up again. For instance, if you must take a phone call while reading, post a note on the text that says, "resume reading here." When the call is over, you'll know exactly what to do.
22. Double up on tasks.
If you can make it a habit to do two small things in concert, you'll get more done. For example, you might reset your clocks and change the batteries in your smoke detectors upon the end of Daylight Saving Time each autumn. You could change your oil and balance your investments on the same day. Or reorganize your pocketbook each time you water the plants.
23. Organize your garage like a professional.
That means separating your stuff into "zones" of the sort you see at home-improvement stores: "tools," "painting supplies," "gardening supplies," "sports equipment," "automotive," and so on. If this job is too big to tackle on your own, don't be reluctant to ask for help.
THE PAPER TRAIL
24. Rethink your filing system.
ADDers often have trouble with filing because they create too many categories. Better to keep your categories broad, and use subfolders where necessary. For instance, you might label one folder "insurance," and fill it with subcategory folders for life insurance, car insurance, and health insurance.
Online retailer addconsults.com offers a variety of terrific organizing products, including one designed specifically for keeping track of owner's manuals, product warranties, insurance policies, and the like.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organize Your Life, Part 4
25. Create a document "hot spot."
This is a red, see-through folder for important, time-sensitive documents. In this folder, which should be kept on your desk, you should place papers representing up to five different tasks that must be attended to within the next 24 hours - an overdue bill, a client file, a phone message to return, and so on.
Clear out your hot spot daily. Active papers that aren't yet urgent should be kept in transparent file folders arranged vertically in a file holder.
A hot spot is a great tool for dealing with the "out of sight is out of mind" problem.
26. Stanch the flow of junk mail.
Add your name to the "do not send" list maintained by the Direct Mail Association. Go to the-dma.org for more information.
27. Process the mail every day.
That will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. Throw out junk mail immediately. The rest of the mail should be kept in one place, with a wastebasket nearby. Bills to be paid should be placed inside your checkbook or - if you use online banking - on the desktop beside the computer. Stick everyone else's mail into nearby cubbyholes, slots, or shelves with their names on them.
MONEY MATTERS
28. Schedule a quarterly review of investments - with yourself.
Write the date and time to review these on your calendar or in your planner, and go over your bank accounts, investment accounts, and retirement plans.
29. Switch to online banking.
How much time do you spend each month writing checks, addressing envelopes, and affixing postage (not to mention mailing the checks)? It's faster to do your banking online - especially since you can set up recurring bills to be paid automatically - and you won't have to pay for postage.
If you're intimidated by the sometimes-complicated computer work required to open an online account, ask a computer-savvy friend or family member to help.
30. Use a single checking account.
Keep your checkbook in your purse or briefcase and return it there immediately after using it. Keep your check register and a few emergency checks (but not another checkbook!) in another location, in case you lose your checkbook.
31. Keep plastic to a minimum.
The more credit cards you have, the more statements and receipts you'll have to contend with. Better to stick with one or two major cards and avoid the high-interest store and gas cards. Consider new card offers only if the terms of the card are clearly superior to the terms of your current cards.
32. Get a debit card.
Keep it in your wallet, and use it instead of a personal check whenever possible. Each time you use the card, make an entry in your check register as if you had written a check. That way, your checking account stays balanced.
33. Keep some extra cash on hand.
Put several hundred dollars in a waterproof plastic bag and place it someplace safe but easy to locate (maybe your freezer). That way, you won't be caught empty-handed if a storm, power outage, or some other natural or man-made disaster makes it impossible to use ATMs.
For more on preparing for a disaster, go to redcross.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 1998 - 2007 New Hope Media LLC. All rights reserved. Your use of this site is governed by our
Terms of Service (http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/terms.html) and
Privacy Policy (http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/privacy.html).
ADDitude does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The material on this web site is provided for educational purposes only.
See additional information at http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/disclaimer.html
New Hope Media, 39 W. 37th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10018
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/26/2012
The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com
This is a fascinating story about a guy who grew up on Wall Street....
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
ANGRY Sandy Lewis, an ex-broker who once manipulated a stock price to make a point, at his Essex, N.Y., farm. “There’s no rational structure” on Wall Street, he says.
September 15, 2012
A Lonely Redemption
By MICHAEL POWELL and DANNY HAKIM
ESSEX, N.Y. — Striding barefoot through the fields of his farm in the Adirondacks, S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, is talking without pause, gesturing this way and that in a soft summer rain.
That Mr. Lewis is in a rage is not unusual. A few days earlier, he had watched as the computerized stock trading of Knight Capital ran amok.
“If Knight blows, six firms follow, and the whole corrupt thing goes up,” he said. “Predator banks and hedge funds run the market for their pleasure — there’s no rational structure, nothing!”
He is just warming up. News reports have revealed a world he knows intimately. Goldman Sachs pays vast fines to avoid prosecution for mortgage securities fraud. Barclays manipulates interest rates. The Senate exposes HSBC as a racketeering enterprise, laundering money for drug cartels. Banks are laden with bad assets.
And Wall Street, Washington, the press corps, everyone sits and stares like so many dumb cows.
“The complicity on Wall Street is sickness!” Mr. Lewis says. He fixes you with his laser stare. “If you think the big firms are being honest” — his tone slides streetwise — “well, sweetheart, go think something else!”
The temptation is to dismiss Mr. Lewis, 73, as a crank, except he once ruled as an eccentric genius of arbitrage, with a preternatural feel for the tectonic movements of the markets. He has railed for decades about venalities now on daily display. Rude truth is his currency.
He knows Wall Street’s heights. He helped hire Michael R. Bloomberg, and he invested the money of two former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen, making a fortune in the 1980s. And he knows its depths, since he pleaded guilty to stock manipulation in 1989, and was barred from the Street.
President Bill Clinton pardoned him, and a federal court judge later said Mr. Lewis acted out of pure reforming impulse.
But he remains in self-imposed exile.
Mr. Lewis wants to flip over Wall Street’s paving stones and search for worms.
He relies on his singular strength: he discerns patterns where most see random data. He forecast the financial meltdown of 2008 that vaporized Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. In 2006, he warned a Bear Stearns executive: “Bear is toast. Get out now!”
Lehman Brothers, he notes, certified it was in good health in June 2008 and issued stock, attracting investment, including from the New Jersey Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund. Secretly, Lehman was on an intravenous drip, poisoned by bad debt.
“My respect for their brains is too great to think Lehman’s top guys didn’t know they were conveying the cynical impression of health,” Mr. Lewis said.
He is no less suspicious of Goldman Sachs, which has alumni sprinkled across the upper reaches of government.
In a tough spot, Goldman obtained extraordinary permission to make an overnight metamorphosis from investment bank to traditional bank holding company.
“Can I prove this was a wired deal? Absolutely not,” Mr. Lewis said. “Am I certain of it? Only 100 percent.”
As for the whirling, three-million-shares-per-second casino of Wall Street? He sees it as rigged. “I would not risk stocks under any circumstances,” he said, “because we don’t know when this thing is going to blow.”
Nothing about Mr. Lewis is easy. He delights in sending scabrous, insulting, free-associative mass e-mails to journalists, financiers and members of Congress. Show annoyance, and he doubles down. “You know what I do with tension?” he said. “I ratchet it up!”
Not surprisingly, some dismiss him as a nut. As striking are those who pay careful heed.
“Sandy’s right; government created a banking oligopoly with no accountability,” said Peter Solomon, a friend of Mr. Lewis’s who runs an investment banking firm.
Arthur Aeder, a retired accounting executive, was twice fired by Mr. Lewis. “Not many antagonize Goldman just for the hell of it,” Mr. Aeder said. “Most people think, ‘I have a family to feed.’ ”
Mr. Lewis is no less harsh on himself. After a visit, he handed us laptops containing every furious e-mail he had sent and received over 10 years.
“The Wall Street ethic broke decades ago,” he said by way of goodbye. “The stink is terrible.”
MR. LEWIS was born to Wall Street royalty — his father, Cy, was managing partner at Bear Stearns from 1949 to 1978. His parents were characters out of a Fitzgerald novel: his father was Jewish, debonair and domineering; he desired power, wealth and a beautiful woman — wife or mistress, that mattered little. His mother, Diana Bonnor, a member of the Protestant establishment, was beautiful, brilliant and no less formidable. She cared about social justice and status and was profoundly uninterested in mothering.
“I never remember her at breakfast,” recalled Roger Lewis, Mr. Lewis’s younger brother. “High tea? Oh, yes. Cocktails? Yes! But breakfast? Never.”
Cy doted on Sandy while Diana screamed at the boy, striking him with a hair brush when he refused to read, he said. A willful child, the boy stopped speaking for days and sometimes retreated onto a window ledge, sitting high above Park Avenue.
Another brother, John, renounced wealth, bought clothes in thrift shops and became a well-known legal-aid lawyer. Roger got off to a fine start on Wall Street until the Grateful Dead moved into his town house before Woodstock. He ingested gobs of LSD, was arrested on charges of selling drugs and served time. “I broke all the bonds of polite behavior,” Roger said. “Prison was pretty fascinating.”
When Sandy Lewis was 10, his parents shipped him off to Chicago and Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School, an institution for emotionally disturbed children. The first day, he held his breath until he nearly passed out. But he credits the school with saving his life; Bettelheim became a second father.
“He had Bruno’s traits: he was arrogant, controlling, all powerful — and generous,” recalled George Kaiser, a former teacher at the school.
Mr. Lewis saw in Wall Street a three-dimensional chess game played at great velocity. “Brain not brawn, and the smartest wins, yes!” he said.
He came to conceive of the Street as a drainage system, every pipe connected to another. Inside information sluiced from brokerages to white-shoe law firms to investment houses.
He glimpsed this world when he returned to New York in 1964. He said he sat in the front of his father’s Cadillac limousine, listening as Cy and friends talked angrily about a partner who had impersonated a reporter for The New York Times and got a half-hour drop on a Supreme Court decision. The firm profited by trading ahead of the news.
Mr. Lewis said he confronted his father that night. Dad, you must fire that man. Cy shook his head: He is too valuable, Son.
“That,” Mr. Lewis said recently, “was when I realized that the trouble on Wall Street was systemic.”
He refused to sit at the Four Seasons trolling for inside tips and paying for call girls for clients.
He was fired by all the best firms: Salomon Brothers, White Weld, Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch. At Merrill, the chief executive officer at the time, Donald Regan, pursued a system to buy and sell stocks without using the exchange floor. Mr. Lewis came to see this creation as unfair to the public.
So Mr. Lewis, in speeches and work with the S.E.C., fought to make all sales transparent on the floor of the exchange. “In one of my periodic periods of unemployment, I walked down the street thinking, ‘O.K., now I’m going to sabotage Don Regan,’ ” he said. “I have six kids and I’m going to be eating worms.”
He worked briefly for Ivan F. Boesky, until he realized the arbitrage specialist was trolling for inside information. Mr. Lewis quit and Mr. Boesky was later imprisoned.
To find a place that would not fire him, in 1980 Mr. Lewis established S. B. Lewis and Company. The company’s returns were meteoric — over 50 percent annual returns after expenses. Former employees recall a brilliant arbitrageur who could, without warning, go to “Sandy World,” a mental planetoid with a population of one.
Mr. Lewis brokered the merger between Sandy Weill’s Shearson and James Robinson’s American Express.
“I told Robinson: ‘Weill’s got the brains; you’ve got great class. It’s perfect,’ ” Mr. Lewis recalled.
He had found success, a lovely wife and five boys and a girl, with a home in Short Hills, N.J. Except his volcanic pit never stopped rumbling.
IN November 1988, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States attorney, indicted Mr. Lewis on 22 charges, accusing him of manipulating the stock of a large insurer. Mr. Giuliani was a Savonarola in the canyons of mammon, and Mr. Lewis would fall beneath his sword.
Rivals shared laughs at Sandy the Moralist laid low. The trouble, however, took root not in venality but in his mania to police his industry. He had watched as insiders reaped profits by driving down prices before shares went public.
He laid a trap. He asked another securities firm to buy stock in the insurer to shore up the price. I’ll cover your losses and describe the payments as “investment banking services,” he told them.
Mr. Lewis hoped to deliver a delicious kick to the teeth of the insiders. He made not a dime; his firm was not involved in the offering.
Years later, a federal judge, William C. Conner, described Mr. Lewis’s action as “an act of market vigilantism in which Lewis in no way personally profited.” He was infuriated, the judge wrote, “by what he viewed as the unethical actions of arbitrageurs.”
“He was the Lone Ranger,” Mr. Solomon recalled, “and Giuliani treated him like a member of the corrupt club.”
Prosecutors threatened Mr. Lewis with 15 years if he went to trial. His wife, Barbara, urged him to cut a deal. He argued prison would be interesting. His bravado reinforced her fears.
Silver haired and trim, she looks at Mr. Lewis, still consumed: “I thought he would die. That was weak of me.”
He pleaded guilty to three charges, and the judge handed him three years’ probation and a $250,000 fine.
TELL us about Bill Clinton. Mr. Lewis cannot resist a smile; even by his standards, this is a weird tale.
In the summer of 1994, Mr. Lewis — in exile — got a phone call at his Maine home from his friend, Douglas S. Eakeley. Mr. Eakeley was also an old friend of Mr. Clinton’s.
I want you to go to a fund-raiser in Portland, Mr. Eakeley said, and talk with the president about his womanizing.
Is this, Mr. Lewis asked, an intervention?
As it happens, Mr. Lewis possesses a sixth sense for psychic pain. He can pick the addicted, the sick and the depressed out of a crowd. His fractured childhood and pathological candor give him an expert hand with the singed.
He rounded up Barbara and a friend, Dr. Stanley Evans, and drove to see Mr. Clinton at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.
Mr. Lewis introduced himself. “You’re Doug’s friend?” the president said, according to Mr. Lewis and Dr. Evans. “Wait, we’ll talk.”
The Secret Service escorted Mr. Lewis, his wife and the doctor into the kitchen, and the president followed.
“Sir,” Mr. Lewis recalled saying as he stared at Mr. Clinton. “Doug thought maybe I should spend a weekend with you. It would be the two of us only.”
Mr. Lewis said the president was taken aback. “What is this about?”
“Sir,” Mr. Lewis said, “this is about your most personal business. You probably won’t be too happy with me by Monday morning, but I think we can avoid a train wreck.”
The president’s face flushed. Dr. Evans realized his friend was confronting the president about his extramarital affairs. “I thought Sandy had lost his mind,” he said.
The weekend session never took place. Revelations of the president’s sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky came years later.
Mr. Eakeley is circumspect. “Sandy has incredible intuition and intellect, and I knew he could help if the president could stand it,” he said. “Sandy may have alarmed the president, but I don’t think he repelled him.”
Mr. Clinton’s office declined to comment.
So it goes for Mr. Lewis on his walk, decades long, through the wilderness. One night, he said, he yanked a truck driver out of a fiery wreck on the New Jersey Turnpike, only to discover that the driver had Mafia connections. He said a mob representative told him he could call in his i.o.u. anytime; Mr. Lewis declined, politely.
He became the de facto impresario of the Clinton Correctional Facility, a prison near his farm in the Adirondacks, arranging frequent performances. The prison has housed a who’s who of the criminal and homicidal, from Lucky Luciano to the serial killer Joel Rifkin.
Recently, Mr. Lewis brought in Helena Baillie, 30, an accomplished violinist who is akin to his surrogate daughter, to perform Bach’s “Chaconne” in the Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief. Many prisoners were in tears.
Mr. Eakeley said Mr. Lewis might be better for his exile. One of Mr. Lewis’s sons, John, is not convinced. He sees a father become “walking id.”
“Giuliani,” he said, “obliterated some part of him.”
In 2000, Mr. Eakeley and former Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach worked pro bono and submitted a pardon application to Mr. Clinton. In January 2001, just before leaving office, the president signed it.
Six years later, Judge Conner overturned the S.E.C. order that barred Mr. Lewis from Wall Street. “Federal regulations now outlaw the very practice his actions were meant to thwart,” the judge noted.
No cloud of mellow descended. Mr. Lewis trailed the S.E.C. counsel out of the courthouse. “I will rip your guts out,” he bellowed. “Letter to follow!”
A few days later, he looked at the mountains and experienced an epiphany: “I’ve gotten my redemption, and no one cares.”
THE phone rings and Mr. Lewis, in midsentence of a long disquisition, picks up the receiver. A North Country car dealer asks about the economy.
“Yes? Yes!” he listens for 30 seconds. “It’s going to get a lot worse. We’ll be burning scrap wood in our fireplaces before it’s over. Goodbye!”
Among residents of this rural land, Mr. Lewis has a reputation as a savant. He warned that the housing market was overheating years ago and sold several properties. He converted to cash before the 1987 stock crash.
Still, he could not complete the last act in his redemptive play. Financiers with White House connections solicited his advice during the 2008 crisis. But he was not invited into the circle of advisers who, to his mind, poorly served this young president.
As a Wall Street friend warned in an e-mail: “Sandy, you constantly kill yourself. You exhaust folks.”
Mr. Lewis considers his plight over a dinner with Barbara. His eyes are red, his voice a rasp. “I’m bright as hell, but I’m impossible to live with.” Barbara nods. “I am in a state of outrage all the time.” Barbara nods. “I bring this Orthogenic morality to everything on Wall Street, and it’s unsustainable.” Barbara, dry as gin, says, “No kidding.”
Mr. Lewis sees a banking system in unstable remission. Goldman answers to no one. China and Europe are wobbling, deflation is at the door, another crash is coming.
“The criminality is astounding,” he says. “You have a complete confusion between principal and principle.”
He is pacing again. “You don’t understand what it is to find someone on Wall Street who tells it like it is. You want to get real? Baby, let’s do the full root canal!”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 23, 2012
An article last Sunday about S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, a former Wall Street broker who turned into a critic, misstated, in some editions, the given name of one of his former teachers at Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School in Chicago. He is George Kaiser, not Charles.
The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/nyregion/the-lonely-redemption-of-sandy-lewis-wall-street-provocateur.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com
7/30/2011
The Role of Mindfulness in Positive Reappraisal
edure>
A coping strategy in which patients are taught to monitor and evaluate negative thoughts and replace them with morepositive thoughts and images.
(16 Dec 1997)
PMCID: PMC2719560
NIHMSID: NIHMS122364
|
The Role of Mindfulness in Positive Reappraisal
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Corresponding Author: Eric L. Garland, 19 Copper Hill Ct., Durham, NC 27713, Telephone: 919-943-6022, Email:elgarlan@email.unc.edu
The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Explore (NY) See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.
Abstract
Mindfulness
meditation is increasingly well known for therapeutic efficacy in a
variety of illnesses and conditions, but its mechanism of action is
still under debate in scientific circles. In this paper we propose a
hypothetical causal model that argues for the role of mindfulness in
positive reappraisal coping. Positive reappraisal is a critical
component of meaning-based coping that enables individuals to adapt
successfully to stressful life events. Mindfulness, as a metacognitive
form of awareness, involves the process of decentering, a shifting of
cognitive sets that enables alternate appraisals of life events. We
review the concept of positive reappraisal in transactional stress and
coping theory; then describe research and traditional literature related
to mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal, and detail the central role
of mindfulness in the reappraisal process. With this understanding, we
present a causal model explicating the proposed mechanism. The
discussion has implications for clinical practice, suggesting how
mindfulness-based integrative medicine interventions can be designed to
support adaptive coping processes.
Keywords: Mindfulness, positive reappraisal, cognitive appraisal, coping, stress
Introduction
Among
the many interventions at the forefront of integrative medicine,
mindfulness meditation is increasingly well regarded for its therapeutic
efficacy in a broad range of illness, conditions, and settings.
Although the operationalization of the construct is still under debate
in academic circles, simply described, mindfulness is a mode of
awareness characterized by a present-centered attention to raw
experience liberated from cognitive abstractions and preoccupations.1, 2 While
mindfulness practice is at the heart of ancient Buddhist traditions,
and as such, has been practiced, analyzed, and debated for centuries, it
is only within the past decade that mindfulness has received
significant attention in the medical and psychological literatures.
Indeed, there is mounting empirical evidence of the role of mindfulness
in reducing stress and improving health outcomes across conditions as
diverse as anxiety 3, depression 4, anger 5, cancer 6, substance abuse 7, fibromyalgia 8, and even psoriasis.9 Despite
growing evidence for the clinical utility of mindfulness, there is
considerable debate in scientific circles over its therapeutic mechanism
of action.
The
practice of mindfulness involves a variety of meditative techniques
designed to focus attention on experience in the present moment.10, 11 While it is sometimes assumed that meditative techniques promote health by triggering a relaxation response 12, criticism has been leveled against the conceptualization of mindfulness practice as a relaxation technique.10 Putatively,
the process of mindfulness extricates attention from being fixated on
evaluative language, enabling nonjudgmental, metacognitive awareness of
thoughts and feelings.2, 10.This
process is described as involving a shift in cognitive sets known as
decentering, a stepping back from mental experience that results in the
realization that thoughts are not facts.13, 14 How
this shift of attentional focus may result in salutogenesis is still
unknown. In this paper we explore a hypothetical mechanism through which
mindfulness promotes health via positive reappraisal, a form of meaning
based coping.
Since the work of the great medical sociologist Antonovsky e.g. 15,
it has been empirically demonstrated that coping with adversity is a
critical component of health. Of the many forms of coping outlined by
Lazarus and Folkman in their seminal transactional theory of stress 16,
the construct of positive reappraisal is especially salient. Positive
reappraisal, a form of meaning-based coping, is the adaptive process by
which stressful events are re-construed as benign, valuable, or
beneficial. Research has demonstrated that the ability to find benefit
from adversity is associated with improved health outcomes.17, 18, 19 In
spite of the known significance of positive-reappraisal coping to
healing, the literature has largely ignored the question of how
mindfulness may leverage this adaptive coping process. In this paper we
propose a hypothetical causal model that delineates the interactional
dynamics between mindfulness and positive reappraisal.
Given
the relevance of positive reappraisal for health, it behooves the
clinician and researcher alike to discover the mechanism by which it
operates. How does a person disengage from a previously established
stress appraisal to construct a more adaptive appraisal of their
circumstances? Here, we propose that the mechanism allowing one to shift
from stress appraisals to positive reappraisals involves the
metacognitive mode of mindfulness, a mode in which thoughts are
experienced as transient, psychological events rather than reflections
of absolute reality. The practiceof mindfulness may facilitate and strengthen this capacity for positive reappraisal.
To
understand the role of mindfulness in positive reappraisal, we first
review the concept of positive reappraisal in transactional stress and
coping theory. Next, we review research related to mindfulness and
cognitive reappraisal, based on a targeted search and focused analysis
of extant research. We then identify traditional Buddhist views that
implicate mindfulness’ role in positive reappraisal. Based on this
conceptual review, we then detail the hypothesized central role of
mindfulness in the reappraisal process, presenting a causal model
explicating the proposed mechanism. Finally, we discuss implications for
clinical practice, suggesting a potential leverage point, a linchpin
with which mindfulness-based integrative medicine interventions can be
designed to support coping processes.
Positive reappraisal as an adaptive coping process
Lazarus and Folkman 16 identified
appraisal as central to the stress process. When a given stimulus is
initially appraised as challenging, harmful, or threatening, an
activation of physiological systems involved in the stress response
co-occurs with a subjective experience of distress. For example, one
such biological stress pathway involves the stimulation of the
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis leading to elevated secretion
of cortisol.20 Primary
appraisal of the stimulus is then followed by a cognitive process of
secondary appraisal in which one’s resources and coping options are
weighed against the perceived demands of the actual or potential harm.
The biopsychosocial sequelae of the stress reaction result from
evaluation of one’s resources as insufficient to negotiate the challenge
presented by the threatening stimulus. Such stress appraisals may
result in prolonged HPA axis activation, leading to a disruption in the
homeostasis of multiple body systems through the cortisol-mediated
stress-response, which in turn is a significant regulatory factor for
disease-generating events.21
However,
this evaluative process is dynamic and mutable; new data from the
changing environment coupled with novel information about one’s own
reactions to the threat may initiate a reappraisal process, in which
one’s original appraisal is changed as a result of the feedback. A
stimulus that was originally appraised as threatening may be
reinterpreted as benign, such as in the case of an encounter with an
intimidating stranger who later turns out to be benevolent. Conversely,
what was once held to be benign may be later appraised as threatening.
Thus, the stress reaction is potentially intensified or attenuated by
reappraisals.
Research
has found that people often experience positive outcomes from stressful
events, even though the events themselves did not have concretely
beneficial resolutions, including perceiving benefit from facing
adversity 22 and feeling as if one had grown from dealing with the stressful event.23, 24 These findings are incongruent with Lazarus and Folkman’s original transactional model.16 In
their classic model, positive affect is the product of successful
resolution of the stressful event. However, this model does not detail
the pathways by which meaning-based coping generates positive affect in
the midst of unresolved stressful events, nor does it factor the effect
of positive emotion on adaptational responses.25
Positive reappraisal has been found to reduce distress in the face of a number of medical conditions, including breast cancer 26, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 27, traumatic brain injury 28, and myocardial infarction 29, among others. This finding is particularly evident in a seminal investigation conducted by Folkman and colleagues30, 31 who
used mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to discern the
relationship between coping and stress in caregivers for partners who
were terminally ill with AIDS. They found that many caregivers in their
sample coped with chronic stress by actively striving to construe events
as positive and imbue events with positive meaning. After statistically
controlling for the influence of other types of coping, caregivers’ use
of positive reappraisal was significantly correlated with the
experience of positive affect in the time leading up to and following
the death of their partners. Despite the inevitable illness and death of
their loved ones, caregivers used reappraisal to feel positive emotions
in the face of situations that could have no benign resolution.
Positive reappraisal is an active coping strategy 30,
rather than a defense mechanism used to repress or deny. Unlike
suppression of negative emotions which can cause increased sympathetic
nervous system activation 32, positive reappraisal does not lead to physiological or psychosocial complications.33, 34 In
addition, positive reappraisal is often the first step towards a
reengagement with the stressor event. For instance, a person stricken
with a non-fatal heart attack might positively reappraise the event as
an opportunity to change their lifestyle and subsequently begin to make
changes in diet and exercise behaviors. Alternatively, a person who has
recovered from cancer might view their survival of the disease as
evidence of their strength and resilience, and they might decide to
dedicate their life to helping others make similar recoveries. Hence,
positive reappraisal is an adaptive rather than an avoidant strategy -
one that can be leveraged by clinicians to optimize the well-being of
their clients. Indeed, the demonstrably efficacious process of cognitive
restructuring in Beck’s ubiquitous cognitive therapy 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 involves positive reappraisal training.
Hypothesized role of mindfulness in positive reappraisal: A metacognitive framework
Regulating attention intentionally upon consciousness and its contents 1 in a moment-by-moment, non-discursive, receptive manner 40 induces
the naturalistic, metacognitive function of mindfulness. Mindfulness is
naturalistic in that it is an inherent mental capacity of the human
organism, although persons differ in their ability and willingness to
actualize this capacity.2, 41 Mindfulness is metacognitive in the sense described by Nelson, Stuart, Howard, and Crowley 42:
it involves a meta-level of awareness which monitors the object of
cognition while reflecting back upon the processes of cognition itself.
Mindfulness is more like a mode than a trait, in that attending in a
mindful way generates a transitory metacognitive state that remains for
as long as that form of attention is sustained.43 Hence, mindfulness is an innate psychological function that can be fostered by training.
The
metacognitive stance of mindfulness can moderate the impact of
potentially distressing psychological content through the mental
operation of stepping back from thoughts, emotions, and sensations. The
process by which persons step back from their experience to shift
cognitive sets, alternately termed decentering 13 or reperceiving 44,
has vital importance to the study of stress and coping and may
represent an unexplained link between appraisal and reappraisal. This
link involves a second-order rather than first-order change, a shift in
mental process rather than in contents.45
In
their theoretical model, Shapiro, Schwartz, Astin, and Freedman
consider the shift in perspective involved in reperceiving a “meta
mechanism” of mindfulness.44Reperceiving
is thought to lead to an objectification of or disidentification from
mental contents. In turn, this mental shifting from the contents of
consciousness to the process of consciousness itself eventuates in a
number of direct change mechanisms, including: self-regulation; values
clarification; cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility; and
exposure.44 Such
therapeutic mechanisms may unfold from the liberation of awareness from
fixed or schematized narratives about self and world. Shapiro et al.
suggest that “through reperceiving brought about by mindfulness, the
stories (e.g. about who we are, what we like or dislike, our opinions
about others, etc.) that were previously identified with so strongly
become simply ‘stories’.”44(p379) These
authors contend that disidentification from socially-conditioned
narratives enables the selection of values that are more congruent with
the individual. However, the mental shifting of reperceiving or
decentering may afford an even more fundamental cognitive flexibility.
Ultimately, reperceiving may facilitate the flexible selection of
cognitive appraisals, as “we become able to reflectively choose what has
been previously reflexively adopted or conditioned”.44(p380)
Thus,
we argue that mindful decentering allows for the possibility of
positive reappraisal. For one to re-construe his or her appraisal of a
given event as positive, one must disengage and withdraw from the
initial appraisal into a momentary state of metacognitive awareness that
attenuates semantic evaluations associated with the event. Hence, the
cognitive shifting afforded by the naturalistic state of mindfulness
facilitates the attribution of new meaning to previously stressful
events. Once this state of mindfulness consciousness is established, one
may redefine or reframe his or her circumstances as meaningful, in a
way that engenders hope and resilience. In this way, mindfulness is an
intrinsic and central component of meaning-based coping. Accordingly, if
the basic human capacity to make reappraisals involves the action of a
naturally-occurring mindfulness, then mindfulness training should
augment one’s ability to make positive reappraisals in the face of
acute and chronic stressors. The next section will detail empirical
evidence in support of this hypothesis.
Traditional Buddhist concepts of mindfulness that support its role in positive reappraisal
Buddhist
understanding of the mechanism of mindfulness training (shamatha in
Sanskrit, translated as “peacefully abiding”, or satipatthana in Pali,
translated as “the foundation of mindfulness”) lends theoretical support
to its role in positive reappraisal. Across Theravada, Mahayana, and
Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the basic objective of mindfulness is to
develop a mind that is free from obscuration and conflict, that is
stable, clear, strong, and supple.1, 46, 47
According
to Buddhist theory, stability is developed by repeatedly placing one’s
mind on an object, so that eventually one’s attention can remain on the
object without distraction.46, 48 The
object is usually the breath, but it can also be external, such as a
candle flame, or internal, such as the breath or a visual image. During
the practice of mindfulness, thoughts often arise, and the instructions
for dealing with thoughts are to simply note them non-judgmentally, let
them go, and return to the object of meditation. The process of letting
go is central to the Buddhist theory of mindfulness’ beneficial effect.
By noticing and releasing distracting thoughts and feelings, one is able
to let go of clinging to memories of the past and hopes and fears of
the future, based on habitual patterns of thought. Not only does one
begin to perceive thoughts as mere thoughts rather than reality, but in
letting go of the obscuration of thoughts, one is therefore able to
perceive and respond freshly to present-moment experience. Moreover, by
letting go thoughts and emotions, over and over, there is a reduction in
ego clinging, the serious, big-deal quality of who we think we are –
and a corresponding increase in spontaneity, humor, and humbleness. In
this spaciousness of the present moment, new ways of perceiving and
thinking about situations can arise. This latter product of the practice
of mindfulness is traditionally known as insight (vipassana or
vipashyana)..48, 49 “Insight is the higher view that draws conclusions about what awareness sees.” 46(p189) It is in this spacious present-centered, metacognitive state of mind that positive reappraisal can take place.
But why positive reappraisal? The psychological construct of positive reappraisal is described as an adaptive coping strategy 25,
rather than as a defense mechanism, thus “positive” should not be
construed as being blinded by self-centered, wishful thinking. This same
perspective on reappraisal is described in the traditional Buddhist
literature as the process of the mind’s becoming less clouded by
ego-centered thinking. The ego-clouded mind is a self-absorbed state
characterized by such negative emotions as jealousy, resentment, and
hatred. In Tibetan Buddhism, strong negative emotions are characterized
as migewa – Sanskrit for non-virtue – and are considered the
product of a weak, confused mind. The practice of mindfulness, results
in a strengthening of the mind, concomitantly decreasing migewa while increasing gewa,
or virtue. [46] Virtuous states of mind include such positive qualities
as generosity, compassion, gentleness, and patience. Thus, the strong,
peaceful mind cultivated by mindfulness practice enhances qualities more
akin to what is termed “Buddha nature,” or awakened mind – the
perception of “things as they are”. Awakened mind is not a blank or
neutral state, but a fundamentally “positive” state of being. The
Shambhala Buddhist literature describes this quality as “basic
goodness.”50 Such traditional conceptualizations support the notion of mindfulness’ role in positive reappraisal.
Empirical scientific evidence in support of the hypothesized mechanism
Fresco et al. 51 addressed
the connection between the ability to shift cognitive sets and positive
reappraisal, examining the correlation between these constructs as part
of an attempt to validate a self-report measure of decentering, the Experiences Questionnaire-Decentering Factor.
This factor contains items such as “I can separate myself from my
thoughts and feelings” and “I can observe unpleasant feelings without
being drawn into them.” Data obtained from a sample of 61 college
students who were administered Decentering Factor questions and the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire 52 evidenced
a significant but modest correlation of (r =.25, p<.05) on measures
of decentering and positive reappraisal, indicating that the two
constructs are distinct but interrelated.
Coffey and Hartmann 53 used
structural equation modeling to depict the mediational relationships
between mindfulness and psychological distress. Two samples of college
students (N=204 and N=258) were administered a number of self-report
instruments, including a measure of trait mindfulness, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale 40, and a measure of emotion regulation, the Repair subscale from the Trait Meta-Mood Scale 54 which
includes items related to positive reappraisal, such as “No matter how
badly I feel, I try to think about pleasant things.” Statistical
mediation was tested using a path analysis, which found that mindfulness
exerted a significant indirect effect on psychological distress through
emotion regulation ability. The authors offer the interpretation that
mindfulness leads to increased awareness of negative affective states,
alerting the individual to the need to implement coping strategies as a
means of dealing with the stressful event. However, in light of our
hypothesized mechanism, an equally plausible but overlooked
interpretation is that mindfulness leads to emotion regulation via
decentering from emotions and their cognitive antecedents, thereby
enabling the engagement of salutary coping processes. Regardless of the
interpretation, it is clear from this research that cognitive emotion
regulation strategies (of which positive reappraisal is an exemplar)
partially mediate the distress reducing action of mindfulness.
In
addition to these two cross-sectional studies, a longitudinal study of
the effects of mindfulness training on attentional subsystems provides
suggestive support for the hypothesis that mindfulness undergirds
positive reappraisal.55 The
attentional functioning of naïve meditators participating in an 8-week
mindfulness-based stress reduction course was measured by their
performance on the Attention Network Test (ANT).56 At
post-test, Jha et al. found that relative to controls, participants in
the mindfulness-based stress reduction course evidenced significantly
greater increases in their ability to shift their focus from one object
to the next. While this study demonstrates that mindfulness training
facilitates visual orienting functions, mindfulness may have similar
facilitative effects on cognitive switching, since visual and conceptual
switches involve interrelated neural networks.57 Cognitive
switching is the ability to shift stimulus-response sets encoded as
cognitive representations, restructuring associative processes to adapt
to environmental demands.58 Studies
using electroencephalographic event-related potential (ERP)
methodologies and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggest
that attentional orienting, whether visual, auditory, or cognitive, is
controlled by a common network of brain structures. These structures,
including regions of frontal and parietal cortex, exert a top-down
influence over perceptual processes.59
Given the findings of Jha and colleagues 55,
one can speculate that the effects of mindfulness training on orienting
may generalize to cognitive switching as well, for as Brown et al.
assert, “Thoughts, then, including mental images, narratives, and other
cognitive phenomena, can be regarded as objects of attention and
awareness, just as are sights, sounds, and other sensory phenomena.”29 Positive
reappraisal may be conceptualized as a specific case of cognitive
re-orienting, involving a disengagement or decentering of the attention
from an initial semantic object (the primary or secondary appraisal) to
move to engage a new semantic object (the reappraisal). If mindfulness
meditation training enhances one’s ability to shift from one visual
object to another, then it is possible that such training may facilitate
the cognitive-semantic shifts involved in positive reappraisal by
engaging the metacognitive, nonconceptual, decentered mode of mindful
awareness.
Another
recent study of intensive mindfulness training may offer support that
mindfulness undergirds positive reappraisal via cognitive switching.
Chambers, Lo, and Allen 60 used
a wait-list control group design to study the impact of a 10-day
mindfulness retreat on novice meditators. In addition to examining the
effect of mindfulness on self-reported affect, the authors tested the
process of attention switching, or the ability to shift cognitive sets,
via a novel experimental task, the Internal Switching Task (IST), which
involves maintaining a count of how many affective words have been
serially presented on a computerized display. During this task, subjects
are asked to imagine being characterized by these emotion words and
then ascertain whether the word was positively or negatively valenced.
Subjects press a key when they have updated their mental count and are
ready to be presented with the next word, and reaction times between
word presentation and key press are recorded. The mindfulness training
group exhibited a significant decrease in reaction times on the IST from
pre- to post-retreat that was not observed in the control group. In
addition, pre-post reduction in reaction times on the IST significantly
correlated with decreases in depressive symptoms. These findings suggest
that mindfulness training facilitates attention switching from negative
to positive emotional stimuli, and, consistent with our hypothesis,
training-related enhancements in attention switching are associated with
improved affect. Such attention switching may indeed be at the heart of
positive reappraisal.
These
findings that mindfulness may influence positive reappraisal through
attentional mechanisms have support from basic psychological science. It
has been empirically demonstrated that positive emotional states are
strongly related to broadened attentional focus. The work of Isen has
demonstrated that positive emotions enhance creative thinking, enlarge
semantic categories to include more disparate concepts, and increase
one’s ability to make meaningful associations 61. Fredrickson and Branigan 62 found
that pleasant feelings expand visual attention from a focus on fine
visual details to a more global, holistic view, i.e. seeing the forest
before the trees. Recent experimental research by Anderson complements
and extends this work, showing that positive affective states result in
enhancements in semantic associations between remotely related terms
that are correlated with increased breadth of visual attention.63 Hence
the relation between positive emotion and attention appears to be
causal, in that experimentally inducing positive feelings leads to
broadened conceptual-semantic domains and expanded visual attention.
However, it is plausible that this is a bi-directional causal relation,
such that attentional broadening may also lead to increased capacity for
positive emotions. If so, mindfulness practice, which expands
attention, may facilitate reappraisal by relaxing inhibitory cognitive
control, leading to a generative, flexible, and positively-valenced
state of mind.
Pilot research on the role of mindfulness practice in positive reappraisal
Our
own research lab is currently conducting a clinical investigation of
how mindfulness training ameliorates stress-related illness through its
impact on cognitive coping strategies. Preliminary analyses of two
cohorts (N=17) of participants in our mindfulness-based stress and pain
management (MSPM) program support our hypothesis that mindfulness
undergirds positive reappraisal. MSPM class participants were
administered a battery of questionnaires pre and post an eight-week
intervention based on the mindfulness program designed by Kabat-Zinn.64 The
group intervention involved training in both formal and informal
mindfulness practice, including sitting and walking meditation, as well
as the use of mindfulness during daily activity.
Self-reported mindfulness was measured with the well-validated Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire.65 Positive reappraisal was measured with items from the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire.66 which
ask to what extent one copes with adverse life events with thoughts
such as “I think I can become a stronger person as a result of what
happened,” “I think I can learn something from the situation,” and “I
think that the situation also has positive sides.” A number of
statistical relationships were found to support our hypotheses that
mindfulness facilitates positive reappraisal. First, paired samples
t-tests revealed that positive reappraisal scores significantly
increased from pre- to post-intervention, t = 3.275, df = 16, p = .005,
as did overall mindfulness scores, t = 5.084, df = 14, p <.001.
Second, post-intervention mindfulness was found to strongly positively
correlate with post-intervention positive reappraisal, r = .786, p
<.001.
These
findings, while preliminary and based on an uncontrolled pilot study,
have implications for our proposed theoretical mechanism. Mindfulness
training appeared to increase positive reappraisal as a means of coping
with stressful events. By the end of the eight-week intervention,
persons with higher self-reported mindfulness also reported higher
levels of positive reappraisal. Given that the intervention amplified
mindfulness, increased engagement of the mindful coping pathway outlined
in this paper may have augmented the use of positive reappraisal.
However, due to a lack of statistical power, mediational analyses were
not conducted to fully test this hypothesis. In addition, due to the
uncontrolled nature of our design, these findings are subject to a
number of serious threats to internal validity, including maturation,
history, and testing threats which render our results tentative at best.
Without a comparison group, it is impossible to determine whether
positive reappraisal increased due to mindfulness training, non-specific
therapeutic factors (e.g. attention by a caring instructor, social
support, motivation to participate in an intervention), or simply due to
the passage of time. Nevertheless, the observed correlations suggest
that future investigation of our hypothesis is warranted, using growth
curve analysis of a full-scale, randomized controlled trial to explore
the trajectories of positive reappraisal as mediated by levels of
mindfulness.
The Mindful Coping Model
Based
on this theoretical proposal and bolstered by empirical support, we
present the following causal model of the role of mindfulness in the
positive reappraisal process (see Figure 1). Only the pathways between mindfulness and positive reappraisal are detailed in the mindful coping model.
This model builds upon our earlier conceptual framework of stress, metacognition, and coping.67 As seen in Figure 1, the transactional model of stress and coping 16,30 has
been unpacked in the mindful coping model. According to this model,
when a given event is appraised as a threat, harm, or loss that exceeds
one’s capabilities, the individual may initiate an adaptive response by
decentering from this stress appraisal into the mode of mindfulness,
wherein one attends to the dynamic process of consciousness itself
rather than its contents. This mode increases attentional flexibility
and broadens awareness. From the vantage point of this expanded,
metacognitive awareness, one can then reappraise the given event in a
positive manner by attributing to it new meaning. This new attribution
may arise either through a conscious process of reflection or a more
automatic process, based on spontaneous insight. The reappraisal of the
event then results in positive emotions such as compassion, trust,
confidence and equanimity which reduce stress and in turn influence
subsequent appraisal processes.
Discussion
The
mindful coping model is designed to elucidate a mechanism central to
emotionally-focused coping processes. In so doing, it provides a
conceptual map to guide future research on the underpinnings of positive
reappraisal. Additionally, this model provides both rationale and
impetus for viewing mindfulness and mindfulness training as a fulcrum
for clinical interventions, that when leveraged can bolster the
meaning-based coping of clients under duress.
Clinical
interventions can be designed to utilize the mindfulness processes
inherent in positive reappraisal by explicitly training clients to first
decenter from stress appraisals into a metacognitive mode, and then to
reappraise the stressor event as an impetus for growth or a source of
benefit. By teaching a client to consciously cultivate non-discursive,
receptive metacognition in the face of a stressor, they may more easily
detach from maladaptive appraisals of the event, thereby facilitating
new conceptualizations that reduce negative affect and empower the
individual.
In
this way, mindfulness meditation can be incorporated into cognitive
therapy to potentiate cognitive restructuring efforts. This use of
mindfulness is innovative. Although mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
(MBCT) integrates the principles of mindfulness-based stress reduction
within the frame of cognitive therapy 13,
the approach suggested by our conceptual review would marry
complementary aspects of both treatments, targeting both the process
(via mindfulness training) and content (via cognitive restructuring) of
consciousness. This hybridized therapy would target the meta- and
object-levels of cognition that drive self-perpetuating “depressive
interlock” schemata implicated in the maintenance of mood disorders.42, 68
Despite
its potential clinical utility, the mindful coping model is a work in
process and does have limitations. First, the presence of such a
mechanism may be difficult to substantiate due to a temporal dilemma;
initial stimulus perception, appraisal, coping efforts, and reappraisal
processes manifest as a phenomenally integrated holism. It is likely
that the phase of mindfulness consciousness integral to the positive
reappraisal process of non-meditators is extremely brief, thereby making
its detection difficult. Second, mindfulness may facilitate coping
through other pathways in addition to positive reappraisal. For example,
mindfulness may mitigate stress-related problems by reducing one’s
tendency to utilize maladaptive coping strategies. Lastly, other
executive cognitive control functions may mediate positive reappraisal.
Prepotent response inhibition and the updating and monitoring of working
memory representations are important subcomponent processes of
cognitive control that are implicated in the performance of
higher-order, complex executive tasks.57
It
must be noted that this paper proposes an apparent paradox: mindfulness
is a mode of non-evaluative and non-judgmental awareness, whereas
positive reappraisal attributes a positive valence to experience. Hence,
striving to reconstrue situations as positive would seem to be contrary
to mindfulness. Indeed, this conceptualization may not wholly accord
with classic Buddhist literature.1Traditionally,
mindfulness would not be used to make positive reappraisals, because in
the Asian cultures in which it was first described, positivity and
negativity are held to be indivisible aspects of a complementarity.69 The
pursuit of positive experience inevitably results in emotional pain, as
the transience of time leads to change and the loss of what was sought
after.69, 70 Loss
then drives one in search of the means to improve his or her situation,
which inexorably leads to the same frustration: a double-bind in which
the seeker is caught by the very act of seeking.70, 71 In
traditional cultural descriptions of the construct, mindfulness offers
the way out of this circular trap of dualistic thinking.67 attenuating emotional distortions of stimuli perception by encouraging non-evaluative contact with phenomenological experience.45
Given
this traditional conceptualization of non-striving and mindfulness, how
can the claim be made that mindfulness is a critical component in the
mechanics of positive reappraisal? Again, it is our contention that
mindfulness facilitates positive reappraisal in that it allows for a
decentered mode of awareness from which new
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