Stop exaggerating

Outside of obvious jokes, I make it a habit to avoid exaggerations like “I’m starving” or “This is devastating” or “Everyone thinks I’m…”.  (Really?  Everyone?) Our tendency is to believe our own thoughts, and the over-reactive sensational ones aren’t helpful.  It’s unlikely that I have ever actually been starving.

Don’t trick your body into feeling exhausted, freezing, or any other distorted extreme.  It’s possible that you just need a nap or a warm coat, and those can be attained without invoking stress hormones and going into crisis mode.

Yet another reminder to be vigilant with your thoughts and words.  And to remember…you don’t have to believe everything you think anyways.

Boost your immune system

Our nervous system can’t distinguish between being chased by a tiger and the nerves we feel just before a speech.” For urgent, life-threatening matters (which, unless you’re President Lincoln do not include public speaking), our bodies are doing their jobs by turning on stress hormones so we can run or fight for our lives.

It’s a glitch in our DNA to produce the fight/flight reaction because we are embarrassed by something, or anxious about some imagined future.  Because our bodies are impressive in their ability to prioritize and dispatch resources, we weaken our immune system by starving it of resources and instead send them to non-urgent, non-emergencies.

Boost your immune system!  Heal faster!  Avoid getting sick to begin with!  More practical reasons to do our best to proactively reduce stress.  Not that we needed more reasons.

Do the right thing

It’s often difficult to assess what is “right”.  Other times, it’s obvious. The difficulty in doing what we know to be right is that we may feel like we’re losing something, or perhaps won’t be rewarded.  You might get away with not reimbursing someone for the loan they forgot about.  You get no praise for averting catastrophe because there’s no catastrophe to show that your actions were warranted.

But YOU will know.  And every little decision and action solidifies the person you are.  Of course we won’t always know what’s right.  The question is: are you the kind of person who does the right thing when the answer is clear?