Category Archives for "Self-empowerment and dealing with difficult people"

According to studies, regular exercise has been shown to help prevent normal cognitive decline due to aging and dementia.

If you were under the impression that you couldn’t grow new brain cells (and that you could kill them by excessive alcohol consumption), you aren’t alone.

Research, however, suggests that there indeed is one area of the brain that does grow new brain cells, and it is involved with the formation of new memories (and therefore linked to cognition, commonly known as “thinking”).  This area is called the dentate gyrus, which is found in the hippocampus, which has been shown to grow when people are learning new information, such as when a taxi driver is learning the “maps” of the streets they will be navigating as part of their job.

In her book titled Pictures of the Mind, author Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald discusses studies of the dentate gyrus which revealed a link between exercise and dementia.  According to studies, regular exercise has been shown to help prevent normal cognitive decline due to aging and dementia.  The reason this appears to be so is not so much about exercise as it is about elevated levels of glucose in the blood, and how it affects the growth and development of cells in the dentate gyrus (GC).

Glucose (sugar) is needed by the brain to create the energy we need to fuel our bodies.  Our cells “suck” up the glucose (okay, it’s not really “sucked” in, but just go along with me here) and convert it into an energy form called “ATP.”

So, you may be wondering why too much glucose would even be an issue — if a little glucose was good, wouldn’t more glucose be better?  Not really…It has to do with sensitivity to sugar…

When blood sugar levels increase, our pancreas is told to release insulin, which is like the “key” that fits in the “locks” of our cells, telling our cells to let glucose in.  If our cells are continually “bathed” in insulin due to high blood glucose levels, the cell becomes lazy and complacent, assuming that there will always be insulin around, so it starts to break down some of the locks that would normally allow glucose to get in.

The more the locks are broken down, the less glucose is able to enter the cell.  The less glucose enters the cell, the more glucose is left behind in the blood.  The more glucose remaining in the blood, the more the pancreas releases insulin.  The  more insulin that is released, the more the cell is bathed in insulin.  The more the cell is bathed in insulin, the more locks are broken down.  It’s a vicious cycle, and you may have heard of it — it’s called Type 2 diabetes.

Glucose is a good thing, but too much is not.  It contributes to our blood becoming thicker and more ‘sticky.”  The blood doesn’t flow well, and the glucose starts causing damage to the walls of blood vessels, as well as contributing to a host of issues.  One of those issues is a relatively decreased blood flow, especially to areas that need it to create new growth.  Without blood, there is no oxygen or nutrients — both are needed to create new cells of any kind.

If you decrease the blood flow to the dentate gyrus, then it is less capable of producing new nerve cells, or “neurons” (in a process called “neurogenesis”), and it is believed that these nerve cells created in the dentate gyrus when we are forming new memories or learning new information are key to maintaining a certain “mental sharpness” as we age.  As brain cells degenerate with age, why wouldn’t we want to add more new ones?

Getting back to the brain — now here’s how exercise affects blood glucose levels…The more one exercises, the more the cells are using up energy.  This increased demand for energy creates an increased demand for glucose.  By exercising, you make your cells more “thirsty” for glucose, thereby prompting the cell to create more locks that can interact with insulin, so that it can “soak” up the glucose as soon as it’s available.  If you remove more glucose from the blood, the blood is now able to flow more freely and effectively, thereby allowing for better cell growth (and neurogenesis).

More exercise, more glucose “soak,” and more new cell growth.  It’s that easy!  It doesn’t hurt to eat a bit healthier too — less refined or simple sugars and more complex carbohydrates.  Reach for the fruits and vegetables instead of the chocolate bars and sodas.

It’s for the good of your brain!

-Victor

Here’s an article from the New York Times on a study regarding this very concept, in case you are interested.

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

“If we change the way we interact with others, they will have no choice but to change the way they interact with us.” ~Victor Schueller

After my interview with yesterday’s guest, Janice Harper, I thought about some of the things we discussed, particularly in regard to labels and the “consequences” of labeling people.  It reminded me of one of the most significant lessons I learned a few years ago, and I wanted to share it with you today.

A few years ago, my wife and I attended a seminar titled something like, “Dealing with difficult people.”  The information we gleaned from that session was extremely valuable.  I learned a lot, and to be frank with you, I do consider that session that day to be the start of this chapter in my life of helping people forge better relationships.  I still have the workbook and notes I took, and from time to time I refer back to it when I need to refresh my memory of some of the concepts of that session.

Who is a difficult person anyway?  How do you define it?  Is it someone that doesn’t agree with you?  Is it someone who shares a different way of dealing with problems than you?  Is it someone who makes you feel uncomfortable?

The reason it is so difficult to deal with difficult people is because it’s very difficult, if not impossible to define exactly what a “difficult” person is.  This doesn’t mean that people who give us difficulty don’t exist, or that we are excusing what we would consider “poor” or “ineffective” behaviors…It just means that it’s hard to know who the difficult person really is and how they are defined as such.

Whenever you start attaching “labels” to a person, you are judging them.  When you judge someone, you are unconsciously putting them into a category of either “good” or “bad,” and when someone ends up on your “bad” list, it’s darn hard to get them off of it.  What’s more is that once you are convinced that your judgment about that person is correct, you will go through significant lengths to validate your opinion.  You will seek behaviors and words that support the fact that you believe this person to be difficult.

One major take-away that I got from the session, and the real “ah ha!” moment that I experienced had everything to do with perspective.  Some people call it a paradigm shift.  Once I figured it out, there was no going back…Are you ready for it?

Here it is:

Did you ever stop to think that everything the difficult person is to you may be the “everything” you are to them?  Did you ever think that perhaps — get ready for this one — you (yes you) could be considered a difficult person in the eyes of someone else?

That’s why it’s so hard to define who a difficult person is, because everybody has the potential to be labeled as “difficult” in the eyes of another.  It’s all about perspective.

So, now that I perhaps broadened your perspective a bit, you may be thinking what you can do about it, now that you have this person who you think is difficult, while at the same time may think you are difficult.  It’s a bit of a dance.

Here’s my list of 5 things you can do about your dealings with people you may perceive to be difficult:

1. Accept people’s perspective to be 100% accurate in their eyes.  We all view the world through our own eyes, mind, past experiences, emotions, assumptions, judgments, and thought processes.  We are in no position to question the validity of what others perceive.  This doesn’t mean we have to agree with their perspective — we just have to accept that what they see is what they see.

2. Show that we value another person’s needs (the need to be listened to, respected, valued, etc.) as much as our own.  If we put our own needs as a priority over the needs of others, we will come across as being aggressive and uncaring, which rarely leads to positive outcomes.  If we put others’ needs before our own, then we will come across as passive (or passive-aggressive, which is even worse), and we will soon find ourselves unhappy and unfulfilled.  We need to maintain a healthy balance of valuing others’ needs as much as our own.

3. Realize that others do not make us “feel” anything.  Other people do not make us feel angry, upset, sad, disappointed, or happy for that manner.  By believing this to be true, two things happen…One, we shift blame on to someone else, excusing our role in our emotions and we become powerless; two, we assign tremendous power to someone other than ourselves, and then we become extremely “dependent” on this other person’s actions and words to provide a “barometer” to how we feel.  We need to maintain control of our own feelings, and the number one way to do this is to realize we — and we alone — make us “feel” the way we do.

4. Think about how the actions of others really impact our lives.  We naturally are curious about what other people are doing.  One downside to this is that if someone is doing something that we feel is wrong or incorrect, we can spend an awful amount of time pointing out the fact that they are doing something wrong without any real power or ability (or real motivation) to change what we see as wrong.  Another downside is that we start focusing more on what other people are doing wrong and letting it influence what we do than we really need to.  A great question to ask is “How is this really impacting my ability to do what I need to do?”  If we find that the actions, either wrong or right, are not interfering with our ability to complete our tasks, then we have to return our focus on to ourselves, and let things be.

5. Above all, practice empathy and compassion for others.  Peggy Smith, a certified N0n-Violent Communication trainer who joined me on my radio show a few weeks back, recommended (I am paraphrasing) that we interact with other people with a sense of wonder and curiosity.  When someone does or says something, we can try to ask ourselves why the person may have said that, and more so, what the person feels they need, which is contributing to their words or behavior.  Many times, when people yell or shout, it is really because they have a need they feel is being unmet.  If we can truly attempt to seek out what the other person needs, and why this unfulfilled need is leading to their words or behaviors, we will find ourselves exercising empathy — we’re trying to put ourselves in the “shoes” of another, and trying to understand what they are going through.  By practicing empathy and displaying compassion, we will have a much softer approach toward others and it will show, because we’ll be demonstrating that we value their needs.

If you hadn’t noticed, everything we can do to deal with people we may perceive as difficult has nothing to do with external actions or behaviors.  It all has to do with how we process our thoughts and feelings internally.  The key to dealing with people we believe to be difficult is that dealing with them is an internal job.  Our goal is not to eliminate those who we feel may be difficult, but to figure out how we can mentally manage our relationships with them.  If we change the way we interact with others, they will have no choice but to change the way they interact with us.

Best wishes,

-Victor

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

Interesting read:

Retrain your brain to be happier | Adelaide Now.

I really like this article — it gives some easy and applicable ways to become more outgoing.  I wanted to share it with you!  Enjoy!

Here’s the article:

How to Be More Outgoing | Code of Living.