The TED Talks

TED talks have been prevalent in streaming video outlets for a few years now, but I've only delve into it recently. I like it because it features real people who share their experiences and expertise with the objective to inform and/or make life better to all who would hear. 

Technology, Entertainment, Design, is what TED stands for; their motto is “Ideas Worth Sharing,” and it's concept is to feature anyone who has something worthwhile to share and allow them to do just that for 18 minutes. The speakers impart their field of expertise to an audience held in a closed venue. 

While past speakers have included glossy personalities like Bono, the Clintons and so on, it's really the real and salt of the earth people I pay attention to. My top 3 fave talks so far are: Dr. Amit Sood, a medical doctor doing his darn-est to steer people away from stress; Nick Vujicic, a man born without limbs but has more sense of hope than most people I know and Jon Jandai, a farmer from Thailand who quit university to prove that we don't need a degree to achieve the nuclear dream of owning property, having good health and ease in life. 

A bloke named Richard Wurman began TED, and he was succeeded by Chris Anderson who took it global. They award choice speakers with prizes but that to me is already adding more ingredients to something basic like freshly-squeezed orange juice. Many if not all are found on You Tube and subjects vary from technology, lifestyle, science, cuisine, mathematics, you name it. Check this out why don't you? if you haven't already, there is a “talk” with your name on it I'm sure. “TED Talks” is your oyster. 

Having a Happy Brain

First, something noteworthy about your brain:

"The pursuit of gratitude and compassion will make you happier than the pursuit of happiness." ~ Dr. Amit Sood, M.D. 

This post is from someone who - just earlier in the day banged her fist on a table in front of delivery boys who failed to deliver an order of important items for her business, therefore, this is for me more than anyone else. Admitting that I have anger and frustration issues is not a problem, failing to deal with it is. Sometimes I am at the end of my tethers and I come up with excuses for anger such as: cyclical hormones, lack of sleep or wonky chemical receptors. People give me a pass sometimes, but really to be candid, these are hapless excuses. 

All this prologue, led me to the work of a stress-free guru type medical doctor named Amit Sood. Dr. Sood postulates that negative events cannot be avoided in life, it would rather be better if one will have the emotional resilience to deal with the bad things we will encounter. Emotional resilience he says, means having positive emotions and recovering quickly from negative emotions. The 5 principles in developing emotional resilience are: 

~ Gratitude: recognizing and being thankful for blessings.

~ Compassion: taking note and being empathetic to the suffering of others and doing something to alleviate it.

~ Acceptance: this essentially translates to making lemonade out of lemons, when there are no strawberries for strawberry shortcake. Just kidding. But you get the gist.

~ Meaning: meaning focusing on who you are, why you are here, what this world means to you.

and lastly,

~ Forgiveness: even if, even if, you don't love me anymore. Sorry, couldn't help it. Forgiveness to Dr. S. means accepting another person's humanness (is this a word?) and recognizing we are all fallible and vulnerable to ignorant thoughts and actions. 

I like it that these solutions from Dr. S. has spiritual connotations even if he, for all intents and purposes works at the very secular Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Minn. He is not reinventing the wheel by any means, merely reinstating that the brain (a physical thing) is very closely wired to our mind, (that intangible aspect in the brain) and paying attention to the spiritual is just as important and addressing the physical.  In many cultures, anger is after all is a grave sin. Yes it is grave, take my case for example, I still feel bad about what I did in front of the delivery boys many hours after. 

We all wish we had more control of our emotions, minds, lives and world around us and so on, but how? I may give Dr. Sood's study a tumble and use it like the ones of the many I have tried before. This and massage, lots of sleep and more prayers from people who I will ask to do just that - for me.