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by frenchfries

Learning A Balance Of Attitude

February 19, 2018 in Be Positive

up and downThis semester, I joined a new student organization at the University of Pittsburgh called Creative Minds Driven to Overcome (CMDO). I had the idea that service should be a fun, enjoyable experience for people to have and knew that a lot of students saw it as a chore instead. This philanthropy-based club has a carefree nature and emphasis on education and fun. Essentially, we hold events that the members are interested in and raise money to donate to a cause that the members choose.

But as much as I am excited and passionate about building this new project, I am just as nervous and pessimistic about it. What if we raise no money? What if no one joins? No one is going to join and we aren’t going to raise any money. No one is going to come to our events. This club is going to be a failure and disappear after I graduate.

Except we’ve already held a very successful event this semester. Despite this success, I still think no one is going to join the club and that we won’t raise any more money than we already have.

This negative thinking is something that is harmful for my mental health—but in a way, it drives me to work harder with the rest of the club’s members and increase the chances of CMDO’s success even more.

If I have enough resilience, thinking negatively can be one way I exercise that resilience and develop the skill of not being disappointed if or when life circumstances don’t turn out to be successful. However, if I don’t have that enough resilience, negative thoughts can also become a barrier for me to achieving your goal. For example, I could be so pessimistic about an event that I prevent it from being successful because I believe it won’t be successful. (This is called a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”)

On the other hand, being positive has many ups and downs as well. Someone who is too positive may get too confident and not put enough work into something to make it successful. Staying positive can also be motivational and help someone put more energy into their project. After a failure, utilizing positivity is very important. Staying positive after a stumble is essential for continuing on your journey to achieving what you want and learning from your mistakes.

It matters how you identify and respond to your positivity and negativity. I’m still trying to figure out how to balance these for my organization.

Hopefully, this blog helped you think about your positive and negative thoughts and how they affect your behavior. What are some ways you can become overly positive or negative about your endeavors? What does resilience really feel like to you?

 

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by frenchfries

Why I Quit Social Media

January 26, 2018 in Social Media Guide

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The internet is not going anywhere—there is no doubt that it’s an essential part of our lives. The online world can make our lives more convenient. It gives us the means to communicate efficiently, purchase anything we want, and access our favorite forms of entertainment with a click of a button.

However, like most tools, the internet can help or hurt us, depending on how we use it.

When I was using social media compulsively, it had many more hurtful qualities than helpful ones. Apps such as Snapchat and Instagram were especially hurtful to me and people I knew when we used them without limits. When using them that way, it was hard to resist the feeling that other people’s opinions are extremely important. This attitude toward social media has caused many young adults to live with Instagram constantly in the back of their minds, with every other thought being what they should post next. That’s obsessional use.

Instagram was the most harmful platform for me, because I allowed it to create a world of unrealistic expectations. I was always motivated to put my best foot forward, whether that meant only posting the prettiest selfies or purposely featuring all my most expensive items in one picture. Many compulsive Instagram users see the best side of everyone else, and in turn, they will try to show only their own best sides.

This one-sided way of using Instagram caused a cycle of unrealistic images, which eventually harmed me because I couldn’t keep up with everyone else’s photos. I have seen social media cause people to question their self-esteem based on a photo or post that might not show the whole picture or situation.

Using Instagram and other apps can become compulsive, where your brain is primed to open it every couple of minutes.

The instant gratification that social media gave me prevented me from looking at the bigger picture of how it could be bad for my mental health. Even if we are aware that being on social media for half our day is unhealthy, we may overlook this hurtful aspect and continue anyway.

These are just a few of the problems I have experienced with social media.

I think that social media can be good if it’s used in ways that are not obsessive—that have better limits and more awareness. But when I used social media, I wasted so much of my time. I invested hours of my days mindlessly scrolling through my phone, which made me feel pretty bad about myself most of the time.

About a year ago, I deleted all my social media accounts. Since then, I have been so much more productive and I feel that the quality of my life has increased.

I am not suggesting that everyone delete all their social media accounts. I’m recommending that the next time you scroll through Instagram or watch Snapchat stories, maybe really think about the attitudes with which you’re using social media, and whether those attitudes are harming you.

Here are some links to help us establish better attitudes toward our use of social media:

The Healthiest Way to Browse Instagram

Ten Ways to Have a Healthy Relationship with Social Media

The Healthy Use of Social Media—this article includes tips on:

  • Using critical thinking skills to evaluate the quality of information
  • Recognizing the agendas of the content creators
  • Learning skills that enable creativity and self-expression
  • Learning how to monitor your own attitudes about why you’re using certain apps

What are your own attitudes when you open your social media apps? What strategies do you use to put your social media accounts to good use? Can you add to the list of tips for resisting the possible unhealthy habits of social media?

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by frenchfries

How You Can Make Stress Work For You

January 3, 2018 in Be Positive, Educate Yourself

It seems to me our generation sees stress as a burden that weighs us down and prevents us from being happy. We’ve heard for our entire lives that stress is a bad thing that can even make us sick. But more recently, researchers have been finding that stress can actually be good for you.

Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and author of The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It, gave a TED Talk in 2013 called “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” She talked about the health benefits of learning mental and emotional stress-management skills.

Her talk has more than 15 million views on the TED site and 5 million more on YouTube—that’s how many people want to know how they can manage stress better!

I think her talk can really help young people, especially students with mental health difficulties. Here are some points she makes—but if you want the entire picture, listen to the whole talk.

  • Attitude can affect life-expectancy. If you think stress will hurt you, you may well get hurt. A study that tracked 30,000 people in the United States for eight years found that the folks who had a lot of stress and believed that stress is harmful were 43 percent more likely to die. But: people who had a lot of stress and didn’t view stress as harmful had the lowest risk of dying than anyone in the study—even less than people with little stress.
  • Attitude can affect cardiovascular health. Usually, physiological responses to stress include constriction of the arteries, which is associated with cardiovascular disease. In a study where participants viewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed relaxed. This is a much healthier state for your body to be in and prevents the harmful effects that stress may typically have.
  • Stress can make you social. Oxytocin is a hormone that’s usually known as “the cuddle chemical,” because it’s released when you look into the eyes of someone you love or when you hug loved ones. But McGonigal says it’s also released during stress. It primes you to strengthen close relationships and makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about—and also to ask for help. Oxytocin also helps your heart cells heal from any stress-induced damage—so it actually protects your heart. The effects of this hormone are enhanced by social contact and support, creating a positive cycle of recovery and stress-resilience.
  • Caring creates resilience. McGonigal says another study found that people who went through major stressful life experiences and who spent time caring for others showed no stress-related increase of dying.

You can transform the harmful effects of stress when you choose to view your inborn stress response as helpful. So as you begin the new year and all its challenges, or the next time you have an important exam or interview, remember that stress is not weighing you down but actually helping you rise to the challenge.

Can you think of a time when you felt tons of stress, and negotiated well?—or, on the other hand, not so well? What helped you, or what could you have done differently?

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