As this school year is rolling towards an end we all begin thinking of what's next. All my friends are stressing about exams and getting into schools. I personally am taking a year off after highschool and I am so happy that I have kept to that decision. In english my teacher just showed us a great video about how you think about stress and what that can change for you. I highly suggest watching it. Stress is defined as a physical or emotional mindset that is derived from the circumstance that is troubling or uncomfortable. Stress is often thought of as a bad thing, but why is that? Many people think of stress and the idea of a jittery hands and shaky tone come to mind. But are these things the body's way of showing anxiety or preparing you for the task ahead. This Ted-Talk about stress could change your life. During this presentation Kelly McGonigal provided facts from researches that proved that the idea of stress is all in the mindset in which you think of it. If you believe it to be a negative thing, then that's exactly what it will be. Then she even said that the people that thought of stress as a negative thing were 30% more prone to death! Where as people that thought of stress as something that can help them, were no more likely to die than those that had little stress.Thats pretty damn scary considering the general outlook on stress. So this brings to mind how can you make stress a friend and not a foe. In life everyone will face stress as some point. Whether it is a family death, a threat of losing your job, or just the overwhelming feeling of life. The important thing is not to allow stress to drag you down like a small ship in a tidal wave, but to become the voyaging ship that sails through the rough water. This is done through personal development and grothe. You must think of each stressful time as a building block of life. Or perhaps a stepping stone. Each situation that creates stress is another tidal wave coming to wipe you away. Instead of allowing that take a deep breathe and think about why this situation is stressing you. From there you have to accept your feelings and devise a plan to work though you stress. This plan will not come overnight however. It will have to be developed over time and with each challenge you will become stronger and more resistant. As my tests are approaching an important evaluations i'll just remember what i'm looking forward to when it's all done and soon i'll go back to that video and revisit my feelings towards stress- you should do the same.
Matthew F
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Everything went black for a few seconds. I heard voices fading in the distance. I opened my eyes and saw everyone staring at me. I was confused. The referee was asking me if I was okay and if I needed a minute to rest. I quickly refused and insisted we continue the game. In that moment, I didn't think anything was wrong, ignoring the fact that I was still in shock, and resumed playing. In my soccer games, we are taught to play aggressively and make physical contact with opposing players, which is what I normally do. Every game I have very minor injuries, which I thought was the case. I continued my day. After my game, I went to brunch with family. I had developed a headache during my brunch but didn’t think it was a big deal. Later on, as I was driving home, I knew something was not quite right. I had to turn down the radio! It was insane, I NEVER SIT IN A CAR WITHOUT THE RADIO ON! I didn’t even have the energy to sing. I just wanted to sleep. As soon as my mom and I pulled into the driveway, I ran up the stairs, went to my bedroom, slammed the door shut, and just slept for a few hours. When I woke up, my head was in extreme pain and I was very uncomfortable. I tried to remember everything that happened that day, and I was able to. I went downstairs and turned the lights on and started doing my homework. I noticed it was taking me a long time to read and just go over the actual assignment criteria. I started getting very frustrated and just decided to clear my head. The next day was worse. I was unable to concentrate. I forgot everything that happened the previous day. My responses were delayed when I was asked questions. I was irritable. Most of all, there was an uncomfortable feeling of pressure in my head. The thought of me having a brain injury was not even in the picture until then. All I wanted to do was sleep. Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by the amount of homework I did not complete due to my ‘setback.’ After sitting in the ER for a couple of hours, I was told I had a mild concussion and needed to just rest. School. My biology assignment. My math test. The stress just kept building. I was told I needed to take a leave of absence from school in order to get better. I felt I was missing so much school and already falling behind. That Monday morning, while everyone was at school, I was sitting at home ’resting.’ I was off of school, soccer, work, and volunteering. I thought to myself this is absolutely ridiculous. Then, after a moment of realization, I learned that throughout this terrible experience, I have a lot of friends and family who really care about me. The teachers were very understanding, more than I expected them to be. This experience has taught me that people have setbacks in life, and there is nothing we can do. Most importantly, I gained an understanding of not always being in control of situations. Things happen, but all we can do is reset and think positive. Maya S If I were to simply ask you, “who are you?” I'm sure that everyone would be able to answer this question. But if you go deeper, do you actually know yourself and not just the name. We all lack the ability to see ourselves and accept how the outside world thinks of us.
There is a common phenomenon in today's society: to think too highly of oneself. And this phenomenon appears in most events. For example, many people consider themselves above the average. Often, we are particularly susceptible to this "false superiority" when making judgments about the qualities we most or least want to have. Do you believe you are someone's best friend? Are you sure you can be a blockbuster artist? Or do you consider yourself the smartest person in your class? If that's in your head, you're at the beginning of a phase of self-knowledge -- self-doubt. The ability to doubt yourself is a sign that you're starting to have a hard time with yourself. Here are four stages of self-knowledge: -doubt -deny -observe -cognitive Many people suffer from self-perception bias. This is not because they think they are too high or low, but because they are unable to determine the standard of self-evaluation. This self-perception bias leads to the duck effect, which is defined as "the lower the ability, the more likely people are to have a high evaluation of themselves, at least their ability evaluation above the average level; People with higher abilities tend to underestimate their abilities, which is a cognitive bias." GUAN W In life each one of us makes millions of small and big decisions. We make small decisions like what to wear and we make big decisions like whether to go to college. Which decisions we make can and will change our lives, either in a good or a bad way. Even the smallest decisions, for example what to wear to a job interview, can the first impression on the interviewer is. Even more important are the big decisions. Who you are choosing to be friends with or where you’ll go to school and college, will have a influence on what you’ll work as, how and where you are going to live and it might even determine who your family is going to be. In the course of our life we will make a lot of bad or wrong decisions. But making wrong or bad decisions is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that we could do is not learning from those bad decisions. Even though there are a few irreversible decision, you can still learn a great deal from those bad decisions. If you learn from those decisions you will make a lot more good and better decisions. because if you have done a mistake once or twice, you will probably not make them again. All that means that even if you make more mistakes than others in the early stages of your life you can still learn from those and turn your life around by making better decisions than others. The most important part about making big decisions is, that you should always take your time, because they can and will literally change your life. There is a study by moran cerf from the northwestern University, in which he found out that people only have a limited amount of decisions per day. Those decisions could even be small decisions, like what to wear or what to have for dinner. But if you have reached that certain amount of decisions made in one day and you want to make a big decision that could change your life, that decision you force yourself to make will probably be bad. And that’s why you should always take time to make important decisions. Henri R
Ugly; Fat; Nerd; Anorexic; Disabled; Gay; Stupid; Bitch....People call these just words, I call them discrimination that can become effective bullying’ but not like this one that you see in movies, where people make fun of someone; this is more difficult to find out because most of the time it’s not a “public show”, but it plays with the victim’s mind. People can think that this affirmation is exaggerated, because they don't think you can bully someone with a word it’s just an expression after all, right? Well, imagine listening that term every day for months or years, but even for some weeks, how would you feel? Bad, sad and insecure, of course; now you know what a lot of people experience in the world every day for different reasons. The worst thing is that often the bully is no stranger; it's common that a bully can be a friend, someone close to you, that you trust and believe in ; this is actually the most terrible kind of bullying because the friendship gives more power to the words that became a stab in the victim’s self confidence. As I’ve already said this bullying is more complicated to figure out because not everyone can understand the effective potential of a single word to someone's mind; it’s also for this reason that sometimes, and with this I mean rare cases, neither the bully knows to what kind of pain he is creating. Now, with all of this I’m not telling you to not express your opinion, judgment or advice toward something and someone, I’m just saying to think about the words that you use to express them, because words count and can change someone's life. Beatrice M |
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