How to Reduce Fear & Anxiety About Disease & Death

Found these steps on the Psychology Today website and I thought they were pretty good (from a non-theist point of view)

10 Tips for Reducing Health Fears.

1. Understand that fear sells and you're being manipulated.
2. Assess the real risk.
3. Shield yourself from the media.
4. Meditate.
5. Tap into your inner knowing.
6. Dissociate from your fear.
7. Push the limits of your comfort zone.
8. Affirm your courage
9. Surround yourself with courageous people
10. Trust the Universe (God from a Christian perspective)

Source: How to Reduce Fear & Anxiety About Disease & Death

The sad truth is that too many people are operating on fear and blindly taking in all the fear-mongering from social media, print media and the like.  We really need to stop, take a step back, look at all the things we still have and be grateful.  Think about the real issues and analyze facts to make decisions, not feelings.

I am not a germaphobic, hypochondriacal child

Wearing a mask when you are out and about and not sick does not make any sense. Granted, if you are going into a healthcare facility situation where there is a high prevalence of the virus then by all means wear something if you want (I don't plan to), but as a general rule walking around in public please knock it off with the masks. In those countries cited for wearing masks in public, the people that are sick are the ones wearing them. The healthy people are not wearing a mask. Wearing a mask does not prevent you from getting sick, it is meant to prevent the larger droplets from a sick person from being spread around. If you are not sick the mask does not prevent anything. Why would you put up a chain-linked fence to keep out mosquitoes? That is the scale we are talking about when it comes to the size of a virus and the size in the pores in the cloth of the typical mask people are using. If someone is immunocompromised, they should already be taking precautions since even a common cold would be trouble. Those people don't ordinarily go out into the public and mingle, and the people that do visit them stay away if there is any chance of getting them sick. There are also many studies that show that wearing a mask when you are healthy is actually detrimental to your health. Also, wearing a mask in a healthcare facility is an entirely different scenario and would be comparing apples to oranges. The masks the workers use are fitted to their face and designed to filter out virus-sized particles. They are very different from the handmade ones that are cropping up all over the place. Never in the course of human history has a disease outbreak been treated like this. History will look back and say "What a bunch of lily-livered, frightened children."

Getting Ahead

There is little doubt that most people want to get ahead in life.  What is puzzling is that many of those same people want things to change for the better, but do not want to do anything different to facilitate that change.  In other words, they want it handed to them on a silver platter; win the lottery / jackpot / powerball / fill in the blank.

Real and lasting success does not work that way.  It takes time.  It takes effort.  And it also takes a coach or mentor.  It is rare to be that one person that comes along to change the way things are done so the common folk have to get training.

That is not a bad thing.  It is a very good thing, but one needs to know where to get advice and coaching from.  Does the person doing the coaching have the results you want?  If they do not then you need to find another coach.

It's like that for anything in life not just sports; finances, personal relationships, etc.  They all should be done with a coach that has the results you want and a method that is simple to copy.  Also, people need to be willing to get out of their comfort zone and do things when it is not convenient.

Much Ado About Nothing

Have you ever run across those people that magnify or fabricate trouble in a situation which makes things worse or harder than they need to be?  Have you ever had to work with those people?

It is one thing to encounter them in passing, but to have to deal with their hypersensitivity and exaggeration on a regular basis is quite exhausting.  I have found that the most effective way to handle them is to put them on the side after responding to them one time.  Fueling the crazy does not work at all and serves to make the spiral into absurdity even faster.  I like to keep things simple and uncomplicated as much as possible.  The more complex the solution becomes, the more likely something is going to screw up.

With email, Outlook makes this really easy with rules and separate folders where they can spin in their own little world all to themselves while the actual important things are taken care of.

Text messages are trickier.  I need to find a messaging app that does the kind of message sorting that Outlook does except for text messages.   There might be one out there, I'm almost positive there are, but I have not taken the time to seek one out.  Maybe I should.

Phone calls are both simple as well, but could become a tricky situation.  Caller ID makes forwarding calls easy, but having the right phone system to use it effectively or even have the forwarding functionality problematic.  However, eventually calls have to be taken and/or returned.

Rememberance

It has been 13 years since the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.  There are many things going on to commemorate and remember that day.  I'm a little more sanguine about things with regards to the goings on in the world.  That is not to say that there are not a lot of problems happening or that serious things are on the horizon, but I choose to stay on the positive.  I remember a line from Deep Space Nine that Sisko said during a monologue he was doing for his personal log.  "The souffle will either rise or it won't.  There's not a damn thing you can do about it, so you might as well sit back and wait, and see what happens."  Suffice it is to say, don't fret and worry about things out of your control and focus on the things you are able to change.

With that being said, things have definitely changed over the past decade.  Some for the better, some for the worse.  However, more and more people are growing up with no idea how "things used to be" which is good and bad.  I think "the way things used to be" gives a certain perspective that is important.  I think it's helpful to know how to "do things the hard way" so you can appreciate the way things are done now.

A good week

I always have the fear of jinxing things when mentioning how well things are proceeding, but one needs to bite the bullet and mention the good things anyway just so that it doesn't look like it's all bad ... because it isn't.

This week is a continuation of last week's fortuitousness:

• A firmware upgrade for a server went off without a hitch.  
• A virtual server migration completed without any issues.  
• A system set up completed smoothly.

This week, after months of going back and forth between vendors and a multitude of hours of troubleshooting, a process is doing what it is supposed to be doing and data is moving between systems as desired.  (Cross-fingers that it continues)

Unexpected acts

Sometimes things happen out of the blue that server to restore my faith in humanity, in the short term at least.  A few weeks back I lost my driver's license somewhere in the Ala Moana area.  I had taken it out of my wallet so that I would only be carrying a minimal amount of valuable things, i.e. car keys, license, phone, water; nothing of value that I would be particularly stressed about losing.

Suffice to say, in a rather ironic or perhaps tragic way, I lost my license.  It must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during my workout boot camp.  I spend a good 30 minutes after the class was finished looking for the darn thing in the sand, but all for naught.  I had to use my phone as a flashlight to keep looking.  I resigned myself to the fact that it was gone for good.

The replacement process was surprisingly quick and relatively lacking in headache; I only spent a half hour at the satellite city hall getting a replacement.  I had to walk away with a paper copy since the real license would take 4-6 weeks to arrive (not sure why that would be, but at that point I wasn't in a complaining mood)   If nothing else, it provided a talking point / ice breaker.

Fast forward a month / month and a half, I receive a letter from the DMV with my replacement license.  In the same bundle of mail is a letter from someone I did not know or even heard of, but it was addressed to me.  Inside was my original license that they had found.  I was very surprised to say the least since it is not common for such acts of kindness; small as it might be.

So, while the world blows up around us (it's always going to be blowing up from what I can observe), we can take comfort in the fact that there are people around that will do the little things to make things a little better.

Crazy? Possibly.

Insanity.  Albert Einstein described insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Hawaii is definitely insane according to this definition.   Originally a French saying, "The more things change, the more things stay the same" is a quote that is equally apropos.

The same politicians get voted into office, the same problems happen every year time and again ... and people have the same complaints year after year which they, themselves, caused by voting the same politicians into office.  And even if there is a new face, they do things the same way as those that came before which amounts to the same person being in office.

There are spots of change here and there from the Republican side which shakes things up for a little while, but then they are replaced with another establishment Democrat who does the same broken, and even somewhat crooked, things as before.

I have to state the caveat that I am not affiliated with any party so it is not merely an "unga, democrats bad, smash" reaction.  I object to the fact that there is virtually no opposite side to the equation and that is a major problem which would be the same if the situation were reversed and Republicans were the extreme majority.

So what is the solution?  I honestly am not sure.  I know what the answer is, but getting things changed to make things better is a Quixotic task.  I am fairly certain I will be ok when the ultimate break down occurs, but I really do not want that to happen any time soon.  Time will tell.

Armchair quarterbacking

I have to say that reading the comment sections of articles is both entertaining (get some buttered popcorn and watch the show) and disturbing (how can anyone be this retarded).  I'd hazard to say that most of the comments stem from a distinct lack of information and a heavy focus on the emotional vs the rational.  While it is not necessarily a bad thing to become emotional about a topic, people should always temper that with logic and facts.  Too many times there is a conclusion drawn based on incomplete information.

People also do their thinking from the safety of their home in a comfortable chair rather than in the moment of an event which could be wrought with high stress and high emotion.  A person could react very differently from one set of circumstances to the next and often the general public is not privy to every detail of the situation.  That in itself can lead to widely different conclusions.

This is the main reason why decisions should never be made from an emotional stand point.  Too many times they are reactionary, completely wrong and do not solve the problem.  Doing something just "to do something" is by far the worst reason to do something.  Doing nothing and accurately evaluating a situation before acting produces the most effective results.  One does not need to look farther than their local government to see how many screwed up results come from knee-jerk reactions.

New phone

Finally got a new smart phone (Galaxy SIII). The deal was too good to pass up (both the phone price and the monthly). When smart phones made their debut on the market I was lukewarm about them. I don't really consume content to the degree that warrants a smart phone. I navigate quite well without needing a GPS device or anything else to tell me where I am or where to go.

 The Galaxy SIII is the first smart phone I actually wanted. It has a sleek design, light and fairly easy to use. Now that I have one, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I've started making ringtones for my different contacts and configuring the various settings needed for the different apps.

 Some people might prefer the iPhone to the SIII; more power to them. It's a good phone and I'm not going to waste my time bashing it with my opinions nor will I make any comparisons since that too is a waste of time. People will like what they like. Research the options and pick the one that best fits your needs or pick one based on your own criteria.