eXpress Yourself newZletter Vol 2002 No. 1
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
New Site, New Address, New Archives
--- Pass the word: XYZ’s got a new address and archive
Women And Stress: Different Reactions, Difference Results
--- 50 years of stress research is turned upside down
Be Kind To Yourself: Seize The Moment
--- Schedule your joys, not your headaches
It's A Puzzlement & The Game's Afoot
--- Wrap your breakthrough thinking around these, Sherlock
Right Brain, Left Brain, No Brainer!
--- Find out precisely which side of the brain you favor
Hello !
I trust this 2002 spring edition of your eXpress Yourself newZletter finds you practicing your communication skills.
Okay. Maybe I’m being idealistic. You probably haven’t been practicing.
But I do hope you’re at least a bit more aware of some pitfalls and potholes to avoid as you chart your path into the new territory of more dynamic, compassionate relationships.
This edition is packed with more thought-provoking articles, including a startling new study on how women handle stress. A colleague of mine offers her personal insight on the consequences of a life lived around a schedule of “oughts.” And, in response to requests from many of our readers who wanted more puzzles and self-tests, I present some of the best of both.
But first ... an important announcement tops our Table of Contents. Read on!
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NEW SITE, NEW ADDRESS, NEW ARCHIVES
Here’s some great news and an explanation for those who have been unsuccessful trying to subscribe to the XYZ newsletter over the past few weeks.
The eXpress Yourself newZletter now residees at a new web site --- the completely redesigned new home of the Hole in the Garden Wall book. No better time for housecleaning than the spring ... and no better time to announce a new site than right now. Here it is:
http://www.holeinthegardenwall.com/
You can go directly to the subscription page for the XYZ newsletter by using this address:
http://www.holeinthegardenwall.com/newsletter.html
And for those of you who want to review past issues, we now have all of them listed in the new XYZ Archives at this location:
http://www.kohlquest.com/xyzarchives.html
Just click on the above URL address or copy and paste it into the location box on your browser and press Enter/Return. You will find every past issue right up to the most current. So, if you prefer reading your latest XYZ newsletter on a web page, you can now do that by going to ---
http://www.kohlquest.com/xyzarchives.htmlPlease help us pass the word. If you know anyone who tried to subscribe to the XYZ newsletter and was unable to connect, spread the good news that they can now sign up for their own subscription at this new site address: http://www.holeinthegardenwall.com/newsletter.html
If you know anyone who is serious about improving the quality of communication in their relationships, or anyone who could use some help in learning how to recover and reclaim his/her own authentic voice of self expression, direct them to XYZ’s new address and have them subscribe.
The newsletter is still free and is still passionate about giving people the kinds of tools needed to successfully create honest dialogue with those people that truly matter in their lives.
Thanks for your help in spreading the word!
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WOMEN & STRESS: DIFFERENT REACTION, DIFFERENT RESULTS
Need another reason to improve your communication skills between and among you and your friends? Here is a sobering report for both men and women. It’s not just a regurgitation of medical jargon. It’s about the healing power of friendships.
A landmark UCLA study suggests women respond to stress differently than men. What’s more, women have a better way to fight stress --- bonding with each other.
(If you thought bonding was exclusively a testosterone prerogative reserved for macho beer commercials, think again!)
Friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are.
But friendships between and among women may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress too often experienced on a daily basis.
The UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a startling finding that has turned five decades of stress research --- most of it conducted on men --- upside down.
"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura \Klein, PhD, now assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State University and one of the study's authors. “It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.”
Now researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." According to Dr. Klein, when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress response in a woman, it buffers the “fight or flight” response, encouraging her, instead, to tend children and gather with other women. This tending or befriending releases more oxytocin, further countering stress and producing a calming effect.
“This calming response does not occur in men,” says Dr. Klein, “because testosterone, produced in high levels when men are under stress, seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen seems to enhance it.”
Drs. Klein and Taylor quickly discovered, by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: the fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for women’s health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways oxytocin encourages women to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has confirmed that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol.
"There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live longer." In one study, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a six-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a nine-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60 percent.
Friends are also helping us live better. According to the famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School, the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. The results were so significant, researchers concluded that not having a close friend or confidante was as detrimental to your health as smoking or being overweight!
And that's not all. When the researchers looked at how well a woman functioned after the death of her spouse, they found that, even in the face of this most devastating stress, those women with close friends and confidantes survived the experience without any new physical impairment or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not as fortunate.
Yet, if friendships counter the stress that seems to swallow so much of our lives these days ... if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life ... why is it so hard to find time to be with friends?
That's a question that troubled researcher Dr. Ruthellen Josselson, coauthor of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family," says Dr. Josselson, “the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women. We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake, because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And women need to have unpressured space where they can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."
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BE KIND TO YOURSELF. SEIZE THE MOMENT!
Well, why don’t we spend more time with our friends and loved ones? Why, indeed, writes one of our subscribers who shares this messsage about a very special person in her life.
I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: “seize the moment.” Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet. Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming, or are too rigid to depart from their routine.
I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.
How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word refrigeration" mean nothing to you?
How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched Jeopardy! on television?
I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?" She would gasp and stammer, "I can't." (Check any one of the following:)
___ "I have clothes on the line."
___ "My hair is dirty."
___ "I wish I had known yesterday,"
___ "I had a late breakfast".
___ "It looks like rain."
___ And my personal favorite: "It's Monday."
She died a two years ago. We never did have lunch together.Because we cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves once all conditions are perfect:
--- We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Stevie toilet trained.
--- We'll entertain as soon as we replace the living room carpet.
--- We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of "I'm going to" ... "I plan on," ... and ... "Someday, when things are settled down a bit."
When anyone calls my “seize the moment” friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes,and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.
My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my hips with a spatula and eliminate digestion. But the other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.
Now, go out and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to ....not something on your SHOULD DO list. Today is called the "present" because it is a gift from God.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~IT’S A PUZZLEMENT & THE GAME’S AFOOT
Here are some classic brainteasers to challenge your skills at breakthrough thinking ... the kind of thinking that increases one’s ability to really survival in today’s world.
There is an art and a logic to breakthrough thinking. According to David Perkins, author of Archimedes’ Bathtub (W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), there are four key processes involved:
1. Roving: exploring various possibilities, trying this and thatInsight puzzles, like those that follow, call for systematic breakthrough thinking. So do conflicts in human relationships. Keep that in mind as you wrestle with these puzzles. The four key processes of breakthrough thinking --- roving, detecting, reframing, and decentering --- are critical tools to prevent the kinds of misunderstandings that can happen when one person attempts to send a message through all the invisible and nonverbal barriers a listener places in its path.
2. Detecting: looking for hidden clues that might point to a new approach or new direction
3. Reframing: considering the puzzle from an entirely new viewpoint or frame of reference
4. Decentering: moving away from approaches that clearly offer
no solutionBut more on that later. For now, go figure!!
THE EQUATION Examine the following equation: 2 + 7 - 118 = 129
As it stands, it is not a valid mathematical statement. Add one straight line anywhere in the equation to make it a true statement of mathematical equality.
THE RIVALS
Two sisters, daughters of a rich man, were ardent rivals in sports car racing, socializing, and the game of life in general. Their father got disgusted with their competitiveness and decided to teach them a lesson. So he asked them to meet him at a deserted race track. Each daughter arrived driving her fancy sports car.
“The winner of the race I have designed will receive a brand new sports car," announced the father. "But this race will be different. The one whose car crosses the finish line last wins.”
The two sisters hopped into the cars and roared off around the track as fast as they could go. Why?
THE FOUR CHAINS
Greta has four short chains of just three links each. She wants them reworked into one continuous circular chain of twelve links. Her jeweler will do the job for these fees: three cents to open a link and two cents to close it. Greta figures out a way to get the job done for fifteen cents. What does she tell the jeweler to do?
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RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN, NO BRAINER!
Most of us know each of the hemispheres of our brain has a specific function or specialty. In normal circumstances, these right and left hemispheres work together so we experience a blending of both functions in our daily activities.
However, there is a tendency for one hemisphere to be dominant and that dominance determines, in part, how we respond to new situations and experiences.
"Brain Works" is one of the most intriguing online self-tests for determining which hemisphere is your dominant one ... and precisely where you fall on the continuum between left and right brain functions. This self-test, created by Synergistic Learning Inc., provides a individual synopsis of your test results and a brain usage profile chart that includes information on whether you react in a more visual or auditory manner.
“Brain Works” is a fun exercise to do by yourself, then have your spouse, partner, children, or significant other complete the test and compare results. What makes this test so great is there are no right or wrong answers, only your personal profile of brain usage.
This is a free downloaded program well worth the time it takes to get it installed on your computer. Just click on the URL below or copy and paste the address into the location window on your browser and click Enter/Return.
When the web page comes up, click on FREE DOWNLOAD in the box with brainworks.exe file. Enjoy the adventure!
This concludes your spring 2002 edition of the eXpress Yourself newZletter. Don’t forget about our new web site addresses:
Hole in the Garden Wall book:
http://www.holeinthegardenwall.com/XYZ Newsletter subscriptions:
http://www.holeinthegardenwall.com/newsletter.htmlXYZ Newsletter Archives:
http://www.kohlquest.com/xyzarchives.htmlMay this spring continue to bring you every blessing you deserve. Thanks for sharing these moments with me.
Prudence Kohl
KohlQuest Associates
3271 Polk County Line Road
Rutherfordton, NC 28139PLEASE NOTE: KohlQuest does not rent or sell lists of e-mail addresses. We honor and respect the privacy of each and every one of our subscribers.
The eXpress Yourself newZletter is copyrighted © 2002 by KohlQuest. All rights reserved. This document may not be copied in part or full without express written permission from the publisher.