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Tag: fear

  • How the Fear of Innovation May Directly Cost You as an Individual | Entrepreneur

    How the Fear of Innovation May Directly Cost You as an Individual | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years now. That’s mind-blowing to me because it seems like just yesterday that I was driving down to New Orleans for my first year of law school. But the fact remains, 20 years have passed, and I seem to be way better at getting injured doing harmless things than I was back when I was 23 years old. But what is really scary is how little the practice of law has changed in the 20 years since I started. Let me explain.

    Twenty years is a long time, but technology (good technology) existed back then. We had powerful desktop computers, laptops and handheld devices (queue the Blackberry jokes) that could still do amazing things, automating complex tasks and allowing us to communicate across the country with ease. Yet, when I would go to state court for hearings, we would use carbon paper (yes, carbon paper) to make duplicate copies of orders. If you needed a document from a prior case, you would head down to the clerk’s desk and ask for the redweld so you could leaf through the paper file. I would record my time in six-minute increments on a daily basis by writing it in pen on a paper time sheet.

    For the 11 years I was in private practice, nothing changed. In fact, I’m not sure anything has changed in the nine years since I left private practice. For all I know, attorneys are still looking for the least used piece of carbon paper to make sure they don’t have to press too hard to make a legible copy. Many court decisions are still memorialized solely in paper files or unscannable pdfs. There is an abundance of attorneys who are demanding a return to in-person hearings instead of virtual proceedings.

    Related: Why Embracing Change is the Best Catalyst for Growth

    The costs associated with ignoring innovation

    While this all seems amusing (and a little mind-boggling), it speaks to a larger problem in the legal industry and several other industries as well. The entrenchment of ideas and processes. The fear of the novel. The trepidation associated with changing things from “the way they’ve always been done.” I don’t mind tradition, and it most certainly has its place. But the fact is, there are real costs associated with doing things the same way simply because they are familiar and comfortable. And those costs can trickle down.

    Let’s take a basic example of in-person hearings. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon for an attorney to have to attend a status hearing in person, even if it was occurring across the country. That would necessitate airfare, lodging, meals, as well as additional travel time billed to the file. Depending on the number of attorneys involved in the case, it is not remotely inconceivable that an in-person hearing could cost the client five to ten times what a Zoom hearing would cost, maybe more. If the company has a lot of litigation, those costs will increase exponentially for each case on the company’s docket. In contrast, with a basic Zoom hearing, an attorney can now jump into the proceeding, inform the court of the status and jump back out, all while never leaving their desk. But not all attorneys like virtual proceedings. Because they’re novel … different.

    Related: The Power of Innovation

    Why should you care?

    Why do you care, you may ask? Well, those are costs associated with doing business that need to be mitigated or paid for somehow — which may mean an increase in prices passed on to consumers. Long story short, the impact doesn’t simply end at the company’s income statement and balance sheet. Even worse, those dollars could be better spent on human capital, technology, training, education, and yes, innovation.

    These issues aren’t relegated to the law, however. Insurance is a good example. There are now several exciting apps that allow you to document damage by using your phone. Some even use AI to evaluate and price the repairs. Despite these innovations, it isn’t uncommon to have insurance companies that require you to get an in-person estimate from an examiner or to take your car to a physical repair shop so the damage can be evaluated. There are costs on both sides of the transaction in those instances. You may incur costs by missing work and taking time out of your day, while the insurance company incurs costs associated with compensating the adjuster and/or the repair shop. These may get passed along to you through increased insurance premiums or in other ways.

    Does the adoption of technology and acceptance of innovation solve all of these problems? No. But there are consequences to ignoring innovation. The most direct are the ones described above which may be passed down to you as a consumer. But there are ancillary effects as well. The next amazing product may not flourish if the old-school mindset continues to dominate. The next great entrepreneur may never get off the ground because their idea flies in the face of hundreds of years of “tradition.”

    Related: 11 Innovation Strategies That Can Effectively Increase Your Businesses’ Growth

    Innovation and change can be scary — particularly if innovation threatens your job directly. But we now live in an innovation culture. For example, you can communicate across the globe from the palm of your hand. Tourists are going into space. You can ask a computer exceedingly difficult questions and get thoughtful and reasoned answers. None of this is going away. But there is still an abundance of entrenched old-school mindsets out there that continue to rail against new ways of doing things. Unfortunately, that can cost all of us. As mentioned above, there is certainly a time and place for tradition. And technology doesn’t fit for everything. But if we don’t at least consider the options out there, we all end up paying the price.

    Collin Williams

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  • How To Stop Fearing The Unknown, From A World-Class Mountaineer

    How To Stop Fearing The Unknown, From A World-Class Mountaineer

    You don’t need to be a mountaineer to be familiar with uncertainty. We all deal with it in our professional and personal lives, especially during these times of pandemics, wars, economic turmoil, and a never-ending negative news cycle.

    It’s human nature to dislike uncertainty—and actually prefer something bad (but certain) to happen. Case in point: a 2016 University of London study1 published in Nature found participants displayed less stress when they knew a bad outcome was coming (in this case, an electric shock) than when they were uncertain whether or not the shock would come. In test after test, the researchers found that any element of unpredictability significantly increased people’s discomfort.

    The higher the uncertainty, the more energy our brain spends trying to resolve it2, and thus the more stress we feel.

    Another study on uncertainty found that when securities traders were under stress, their thinking tended to become slow and impaired. The more urgent the response needed, the greater the impairment.

    When we face the unknown, we become more risk-averse and slower in taking action. This is not sustainable. Clearly, we need to develop healthier ways of dealing with uncertainty and managing our discomfort around it.

     

    Olga Koroleva

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  • Layers Of Fear: The Kotaku Review

    Layers Of Fear: The Kotaku Review

    There’s a lot to admire about Layers of Fear, Polish studio Bloober Team’s new reimagining of its (relatively) excellent surreal, psychological adventure horror series.

    Developed alongside Anshar Studios, which previously assisted Bloober in expanding its sci-fi horror Observer in 2020, this new version of Layers of Fear compounds the original 2016 game, its DLC, Layers of Fear 2, a new DLC, and a new story meant to fill the gaps into one beautifully complex, decayed rose. But while the series has never looked better—Layers of Fear was made with Unreal Engine 5—its narrative is contrived, choking sometimes on its own ambitious intricacies.

    My disappointment is poetic. Most of the characters the game lets you choose—The Painter, his wife The Musician, The Actor, and The Writer, who is introduced to the series for the first time in this game—suffer from the same sickness: getting squished under impractical aspirations. Through Layers of Fear’s divided chapters, I play each of them in first-person and piece together their distressing pasts through notes and their own commentary.

    Letters with scratched-out names, found sentimental objects like a cracked conch shell, and a barrage of enigmatic voiceover tell me that the Layers of Fear cast has been successful in art before, and so they’re determined to keep striving, however unreasonable their goals start to feel in the game’s morphing, pitch-black houses. Only boring things can hold them back, earthly things, like the brown liquor The Artist depends on, or the marred skin stretched painfully over The Musician’s burnt fingers.

    But these are temporary setbacks—the splendor of their art and genius can’t be contained by something as small and imperfect as a body, the characters suggest. So they turn to the Rat Queen, the series’ villain formally introduced in 2019’s Layers of Fear 2, with her long teeth and black marble eyes, and she forces them to take her supernatural path to greatness.

    Screenshot: Bloober Team / Kotaku

    Layers of Fear is my favorite walking simulator

    With its emphasis on piece-by-piece discovery and exploration, there isn’t much typical “gameplay” in Layers of Fear, so I spend the majority of my time in it digesting this information. The series frequently has been called, with a little bit of a scoff, a “spooky walking simulator,” and that’s what I spend over 10 hours doing—walking, and, sometimes, screaming at sudden sounds, like dissonant, echoing piano chords.

    There aren’t options to do a lot more. Aside from walking, I can run—or, more accurately, walk with more DualSense feedback—and pick items up by hitting right trigger. I can zoom in on secret codes and puzzle solutions since they’ve all been changed from their original iterations, and in the Layers of Fear 2 section, I can crouch into vents.

    The Layers of Fear Rat Queen hovers over a boy seated on a stage.

    Screenshot: Bloober Team / Kotaku

    The most significant gameplay adjustment between this Layers of Fear and previous titles is the introduction of a handheld light source. It isn’t particularly shocking, but it breaks the series’ passivity tradition, since the lights are not only practical, they’re violent. By hitting both triggers, my beam becomes incendiary, and I use it to singe a fresh puzzle type—it appears like a blurry blob and obscures exits and key items—as well as approaching enemies. For The Artist, who has shunned electricity in his palatial 1920’s home, this means pointing a glowing gas lantern at visions of my dead wife, who may or may not have deserved it, but other characters get to use flashlights to illuminate the rot around them.

    Anyway, I don’t mind just walking. The game’s level and puzzle designs are immaculately unpredictable. They shift when I’m not looking, and I get a nervous thrill from not knowing what will happen if I turn back around. Will I find a film photo? A chopped-up finger? Am I about to get trapped in a looping hallway, or locked closet, or bedroom with no windows, or keys, or air to breathe?

    That is what makes Layers of Fear scary, and therefore entertaining. With its rebuilt graphics, the game shapeshifts as convincingly as a terrified chameleon. If I look behind this empty picture frame, a door will appear. If I begin to play this roll of film, a big, white moon will descend and enrapture me. It’s scary to move with determination toward uncertainty, and Layers of Fear exploits that, diffusing in me a tumbling ocean wave of unease.

    But, oh, God, the story.

    Layers of convoluted lore

    This is what makes the game both aggravating and appealing: If Layers of Fear were a person, it would live its whole life with its head up its ass. It wants, somewhere in its shifting staircases and infinite basements, to discover the psychology behind great art.

    Since this is a horror game we’re talking about, its interpretation of that psychology is insufferable. I understand quickly that the environments I’m in are physical manifestations of artists’ looping thoughts and cobwebbed instincts, knotted with metal chains and wet candle wax. A creative mind is an uncomfortable and unsatisfying place, the game tells me, and really lays on the metaphor.

    Layers of Fear routinely makes references to legendary creative work like The Picture of Dorian Gray, Faust, The Shining, and so on, and I am hit on the head with how important art is; “Great art carries a heavy cost,” a note says, “To create is to reach into chaos,” a voiceover instructs. “Chaos is darkness. Warm. Soft. Swarming. He understood it in the end. Will you?”

    Um, not really, TBH.

    Taking cues from its influences, Layers of Fear’s demon is the Rat Queen, who is featured more prominently in the added Writer and Musician content. But Unlike Dorian Gray or Faust, in which men knowingly give up their souls in exchange for sex and knowledge, the characters in Layers of Fear are traumatized people the Rat Queen coerces into pursuing unattainable perfection. As a result, Layers of Fear isn’t a cautionary tale about selfishness.

    I don’t really know what it is. It points out things it wants me to feel without letting me feel them. The most egregious case of this happening is in The Musician’s DLC, where found diary entries describe her house as a “prison.” Eventually, I place a dead songbird back into its cage. Yeah, I get it.

    Whereas something like Faust satirizes the tortured artist, conveying that creative people aren’t necessarily special people, that they can be as bad as anyone, Layers of Fear seems to say that art is uncontrollable. It’s a hungry, magical force, and if a wife, or a sister, or a daughter are caught and bloodied in its insatiable mouth then, well. So be it.

    I find that difficult to accept. I think it’s damaging, too, to contextualize art as something dangerous and wild, however reverentially Layers of Fear phrases it. Art isn’t the boogeyman. It’s not the problem—people are, usually. Blaming a monster, like the Rat Queen, feels too easy to me. That’s a narrative issue I’ve had with Layers of Fear since the beginning, and the new Writer and Musician stories have unfortunately made it snowball.

    Still, I am impressed with Bloober’s ground-up transformation of its series into a compact nightmare with white rats. The game is a show of strength, despite fans’ reservations for the studio’s upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, and I admire a game that cares about art as deeply as its characters do. I only wish that it weren’t so annoying about it.

     

    Ashley Bardhan

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  • Do One Scary Thing a Day | LoveAndLifeToolBox

    Do One Scary Thing a Day | LoveAndLifeToolBox

    Linda Graham, MFT looks at the benefits of doing something scary every day which can build the brain’s capacity for resilience.

    The scary things we could choose to do each day could vary quite a bit from person to person or even for ourselves from one day to the next. Choosing to go through our records to prepare for an IRS audit would feel pretty scary on any day, but some days just checking our bank account to see if we have enough money to go to the grocery store is plenty scary for that day. Some days we’re scared but determined to ask the boss anyway for extra time off around a holiday; other days just checking voice mail to see who called (or if no one called!) is the scary thing.

    Why would deliberately choosing to do one scary thing a day be good for you?

    • There’s an immediate benefit when you do one scary thing a day. You get to check one more thing a day off the To Do list, scary or not. For those of us who relax a bit when we see ourselves getting through a list, that relaxation can be very real. We return to a state of calm equilibrium in the body-brain, which in turn makes it possible to reduce our fears further about anything else scary.  Even more precious than feeling good about ourselves for getting through the list is feeling wholesomely proud of ourselves when we’ve faced a fear and walked right through it. We get a hit of self-approval that can be very useful to us as we continue to face the rest of our day.
    • In the short term, by chunking down a big task that really scares you into smaller, more manageable chunks that scare you a little bit, and doing those little scary things every day, you might actually get the bigger, scarier task done. A client of mine wanted to go to law school – a big decision to commit to three years of hard work, only to graduate $100,000 in debt and then search for a job to commit to working even harder. By chunking the task down – talking to a brother-in-law who had made a similar move three years ago, looking at one potential law school brochure a day for 15 days/schools worth, researching dates to take the LSAT, choosing a date to take the LSAT, etc – over two months time he managed to apply; continuing the practice for the next six months, he began his law school classes with far more confidence and trust in himself than when he had started.
    • In the intermediate term, we can begin to make headway against old automatic habits of procrastination, avoidance, distraction, denial, which carry their own cascading costs down the line. We begin to re-wire the habits of our brains so that it become more natural (this can truly happen!) to show up, give it a try even if we don’t exactly know what we’re doing or what might happen if we make a mistake. Creating a new habit of “learning to find ease in risk,” as the poet John O’Donohue would say, can become the new “unconscious competence.”
    • Over the longer term, every time we succeed at doing one scary thing today, we are creating a bank of “memories for the future” in our brain’s explicit memory system. “I’ve done scary things before; I can do them again now.” We can then intentionally draw on those memories to help us get through the next scary thing today. That is building out the brain’s capacity for resilience.
    • Over the long haul, doing one scary thing a day is a path to cultivate feeling better about ourselves for the rest of our lives. The nag at our sense of self when we know we’re blocked by fear really does erode our sense of self-esteem over time, and not so subtly either. Our sense of competence begins to shrink; a healthy sense of pride begins to disappear.

    When we choose to do one scary thing a day, every day, no matter what, our sense of pride and self-esteem begins to recover and fill out. It’s not the size of the thing we choose to do that matters so much, or whether it’s scary to anybody else. It’s that we choose to face a fear and do what needs to be done anyway. Deeply in our brains, we’re re-wiring a sense of ourselves as competent, as courageous, as resilient. The practice creates the experiences which, over time, gel into a conviction that we are a noble, worthy, valuable human being.

    Linda Graham, MFT

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  • 3 Expert-Backed Strategies for Facing Fear

    3 Expert-Backed Strategies for Facing Fear

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Comedian Jim Carrey might not seem like an expert in facing fears as an entrepreneur, especially since many of us associate his corporate experience with losing a fight to a ballpoint pen in the 1997 film Liar, Liar. But in 2014, he delivered a commencement speech to the graduates of Iowa’s Maharishi International University, and he had some surprisingly sage words.

    “So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality,” he said. “What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect.” But fear, he says, isn’t so much about practicality as it is about focusing on worst-case scenarios. He goes on:

    “My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

    Being an entrepreneur is inherently risky. But the usual risks have magnified in recent years given the uncertainty of the economy in the wake of Covid, the new challenges of managing remote or hybrid teams, and even unrest and conflict abroad. Here’s how to keep moving forward, even in these trying times.

    Related: These Are the Thinking Habits Most Likely to Destroy Your Life, According to a Therapist

    No action is still action

    It might seem as though staying still will somehow protect you, like a deer that freezes when it hears human footsteps. But as Harvard Business Review‘s Sabina Nawaz points out, “not making a choice is, in itself, a choice.”

    Rather than trying to shrink from decision-making, Nawaz suggests starting small. “Instead of ignoring the requests to make a decision, assign resources or launch a project, identify one next step to get moving. For example, you can poll half a dozen customers about how they use your product to further inform the path forward,” she writes.

    Changes, whether they’re within your business or the economy as a whole, will happen with or without your consent. Trust yourself to make decisions with confidence, and do the best with the resources you have. Remind yourself of all the obstacles you’ve overcome and the challenges you’ve confronted head-on to get to where you are. What tools did you use in those moments? What skills did you develop as a result? Keep those times in mind, and remember that you’re more resilient than you think.

    Related: 5 Fears All Entrepreneurs Face (and How to Conquer Them)

    Silence the noise

    In 2020, I fell into a trap that consumed many of us: Doomscrolling. The constant assault of bad news and scary statistics took its toll on my mental health, and I found my sleep and appetite were out of whack.

    When we’re afraid of something, it’s often easier to give in to distractions or worse, validate those fears with information we find online. But spiraling doesn’t fix whatever it is we’re afraid of; in fact, it makes it worse.

    Instead of hunting for evidence to support your fears, turn down the noise and focus on your actual concerns. Nawaz suggests naming the “perceived nemesis you’re avoiding,” and then creating a spreadsheet with three columns: Worst-case scenarios, the current situation and the ideal outcome. Note down what would need to happen for each possibility to occur. Mapping out the route to these outcomes may help you discover that the worst-case scenario really isn’t all that bad, or it can be avoided with a shift in direction.

    At the same time, it’s also helpful to limit the amount of negativity you’re subjecting yourself to. After I started restricting my news consumption to just 15 or 20 minutes daily, I found myself feeling less anxious and more able to run my company with a clear mind.

    Related: Why Many Entrepreneurs Fear Success — and How They Can Overcome It

    Get in touch with your emotions

    Being an entrepreneur requires a high degree of emotional intelligence — and part of that involves understanding how your feelings are influencing your behavior. For instance, if everything you do suddenly seems terrible, take a step back. Is it actually terrible? Is everything really going to fail? Or is this less about reality and more about your mindset?

    The good news is that emotional self-awareness can be learned. One method I’ve found helpful is practicing mindfulness. When I feel anxiety clouding my judgment, I like to use a method called RAIN, which meditation teacher Tara Brach talks about in her book Radical Compassion:

    • Recognize the fear when it comes up. Is it related to work, or home?
    • Allow it to coexist within you. Sit with the fear, rather than trying to fix, control or judge it.
    • Investigate it. Focus on your body, and try to pinpoint the origin of the fear.
    • Nurture the feeling. “You might just put your hand on your heart and offer a kind or soothing message to yourself,” Back advises. “You can say to the fear, ‘Thank you for trying to protect me; it’s okay.’”

    The urge to be risk-averse makes sense. As Brach points out, fear is your mind’s way of trying to protect you. But for most of us in the modern age, fear is more existential than it was when our brains evolved. In some cases, fear is a good thing: It keeps us on our toes; it can motivate us to do our best work. The key is learning to use it to your advantage, rather than paralyze you.

    Related: 7 Deadly Misconceptions About Entrepreneurship and Starting a Business

    Aytekin Tank

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  • The Dark Night Of The Soul: Stages + How To Get Through It

    The Dark Night Of The Soul: Stages + How To Get Through It

    The concept of the dark night of the soul was first coined in a poem by Saint John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet. The idea of a spiritual depression, however, is a part of many different spiritual and religious traditions, including Buddhism, where it’s referred to as “falling into the pit of the void.”

    According to Anna Yusim, M.D., a psychiatrist and the author of Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life, “The dark night of the soul is essentially any time when our darkness comes to the forefront. It’s as if we are doing everything we can to stay afloat, and it seems as if the universe, the world, and life is against us.”

    Yusim adds that the dark night of the soul will often involve suffering, setbacks, and obstacles. Nevertheless, she says, “Oftentimes, a dark night of the soul is a necessary part of people’s spiritual evolution.”

    As Shannon Kaiser, spiritual teacher and author of Return to You, tells mbg, “It often happens to guide us to find our purpose in life, pay back or balance karma, and understand deep karmic and spiritual lessons. The dark night of the soul is a breaking away from the illusions of fear and ego to shift our alignment and values to what is real and true, the connection to the divine, and ultimately pave the way for your life purpose and mission here on Earth.”

    Sarah Regan

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  • 7 Misconceptions About Starting Your Own Business

    7 Misconceptions About Starting Your Own Business

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Starting a business can be one of the most exciting and rewarding things you’ll ever do. The process has its challenges, but it’s important not to let misconceptions about them stop you from trying. In this article, we’ll go over seven common misconceptions about starting a business.

    Misconception 1: You don’t need a business plan.

    There are a lot of misconceptions about starting a business. One of the most common is that you don’t need to write a formal business plan. It’s easy to understand why this would be so — after all, who has time for more paperwork when you’re trying to keep things going as efficiently as possible? The problem with skipping the planning stage is that it can lead to wasted time, money and a poorer product or service than what you could have created.

    An example of this is advertising: many start-ups spend thousands on ads without thinking through their audience, budgeting, or messaging strategy. Writing out a marketing plan before investing in any ad buys would help prevent these issues from arising and save you some cash along the way.

    The reality is that there are several different kinds of plans — business plans (which detail your company’s overarching goals) and financial plans (which provide projections for revenues and costs) are examples — but they all have one thing in common: they help you visualize where your company is headed over time.

    Related: 7 Common Misconceptions Young People Have About Entrepreneurship

    Misconception 2: You can entirely rely on your financing.

    Learning the basics of running a business before seeking financing is essential. While it might sound great to have all that money at your disposal, you could end up in debt before you even start.

    There are two common financial mistakes made by people who don’t have a lot of experience running a company. The first is relying too much on financing and not having enough personal money invested in the business. This leads to an over-reliance on loans, which can be difficult if the company goes under or runs into trouble. The second mistake is spending too much money on things that aren’t helping your business succeed — like a fancy office space or expensive furniture.

    Misconception 3: You’ll have to choose between work and having a personal life.

    You will not have time to handle every single detail. After all, you are now the head of your own company. That means you’ll have to balance running your business with everything else. You will not be able to handle everything by yourself. It’s okay if you need help from someone else. It’s expected.

    You can delegate tasks that don’t require special knowledge or training, such as answering phone calls or taking out the trash at the reception. Still, there are some things only you can do because they involve special skills and experience that only come from doing them before.

    For example, setting up marketing campaigns requires understanding how different channels work together for maximum effectiveness; updating website content requires knowing what keywords people search for when looking for information on a particular topic; creating invoices requires basic knowledge about accounting software programs like QuickBooks Pro.

    Related: Having A Work-Life Balance is Nonsense. To Reach Your Goals, Follow Another Approach

    Misconception 4: Everyone on your team will work as you do.

    When you are starting a business, there will be times when things get complicated. The longer you have been in business, the more complex the challenges can become. This is just part of the journey; everyone has their own way of dealing with these feelings.

    In my experience, though, I have found that rarely anyone will tell me when it’s time to stop and go home. And chances are you’ll keep working if you haven’t set boundaries. No one else should be expected to work as you do. After all, this is your company. You should temper your expectations of yourself with what you expect from an employee — and then act accordingly. If you fail to do this, your expectations will be unrealistic, and ultimately, nobody will want to work with you.

    Related: Good Leaders Treat Their Employees Like CEOs. Here’s 4 Ways They Do It.

    Misconception 5: You must compare yourself to other companies.

    You’re new in your space. It’s important to capitalize on what makes you unique and slowly carve a market share for your product or service. At this stage, comparisons are unproductive and could lead to jealousy or negativity. Instead of comparing yourself to other companies, focus on your goals and how you can achieve them in the most effective way possible. You can learn from others, but don’t try copying their success — it’s not likely that someone else’s approach will work exactly as well for you as it did for them in their industry.

    Misconception 6: There’s no room for error.

    As a founder, it’s easy to mount a full load of responsibility on your shoulders. So much more becomes personal when you’re an entrepreneur. But remember, everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. If you’re not making any mistakes, you’re either not trying hard enough or have lost your ability to think creatively and independently — and that’s a problem.

    Mistakes are part of the process. They tell you what works and what doesn’t. They teach valuable lessons about yourself, your product, service, customers and competition — all invaluable information for any entrepreneur building their business.

    Misconception 7: Taking a risk is too risky when first starting.

    Not making decisions based on risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. Fear is why many people don’t try to start their own business in the first place — or even leave their current job for a new chance. When you can overcome your fears and take calculated risks that match up with your values and goals as an individual or company, you can do more than survive; you might thrive.

    When fear enters your mind, remind yourself that it is often a sign that there’s something more prominent on the horizon if you choose to overcome it — and if there isn’t something bigger on the horizon for you right now, then find it. There are many opportunities out there waiting for those ready to take them on.

    Related: Here’s What Science Says You Should Do to Achieve Greater Success

    Christopher Massimine

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  • Your Fear Is Lying to You. Here Are 3 Steps to Overcome It.

    Your Fear Is Lying to You. Here Are 3 Steps to Overcome It.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I recently shared the stage with comedian, actor, writer, and marine veteran Rob Riggle. Rob is a good friend of mine. In fact, we’ve fished, golfed and vacationed together for years now. But walking onto that stage with him to have a casual conversation in front of 30,000 people was a different experience altogether. It was a little nerve-wracking, to say the least.

    Now that it’s over, I look back and wonder why I was so fearful.

    Fear is all at once commonplace and strange. I’ve seen how it affects anyone and everyone in different ways, but I’ve been very interested in how it can stymie and limit so many talent-filled entrepreneurs — and what they can do about it.

    Fear’s powerful effects

    Fear keeps far too many of us from realizing our full potential. It disallows us to make the kind of money we should and pushes us away from leaning into our passions or seeking investment to fuel our enterprises. Ultimately, it stops us from taking risks that could lead to our ultimate success.

    Related: Fear Can Kill Your Drive. Keep Your Entrepreneurial Passion Alive with This Simple Trick

    But why? Why do our body, mind, and neurological system respond in such a way that limits action and ultimately holds us back? I wanted to answer these questions and, quite possibly, give the reader some actionable items to help overcome fear the correct way in order to find more success and fulfillment in life.

    I spoke with a good friend Tracy Litt, a life coach whose approach combines neuroscience, consciousness, and practical spirituality to deliver next-level results and unprecedented success with those she works with. Her brand, The Litt Factor, has helped thousands of women and entrepreneurs multiply their revenue, realize their potential, and overcome their fear in practical, ever-improving ways.

    Here are three key things she taught me about fear.

    Why we feel fear

    Why do we feel fear in the first place? Fear is a deeply-embedded biological response. Neurons fire, letting us know we’re in an uncomfortable or unfamiliar situation, putting us into a sympathetic nervous state in order to protect us.

    Here’s an important distinction: fear is not danger. Although they may feel the same, there is a massive difference between a shark fin coming towards us in the water and wanting to speak up in a board meeting. Even though they may feel the same, one is not life-threatening. Tracy says that recognizing the difference, along with understanding why fear is present, is the first step in overcoming it:

    “Fear only comes on the scene when you’re expanding. Something is deemed a threat to your system. When you’re an entrepreneur that could be anything because everything is scary and expansive in nature. Every single thing you do (whatever it is) is completely unlike anything you’ve ever done before. So your body lets you know that you’re uncomfortable in a nervous-system-based way. However, if we identify that what we’re experiencing is not dangerous or life-threatening, we can begin to thank our fear and find appreciation that we are in yet another situation to find growth.”

    At the end of this part of the conversation, Tracy said, “The goal is to learn to love your fear, appreciate it for what it is and what it means we’re about to do.”

    We’ve been taught to combat fear incorrectly

    Ok, great. You know where your fear comes from, but guess what? It’s still present in your day-to-day life. Are slogans going to help? “Feel the fear and take the leap!” Right? No way! “Square your shoulders and be the man!” Fat chance. This masculine approach to powering through fear is not only unhealthy but 100% ineffective.

    Related: Your Problem Isn’t Laziness. It Is Fear.

    We need to learn how to approach fear correctly and realize that how we’ve been taught about fear is incorrect. Tracy teaches:

    “Societal messaging preaches an over-addiction to willpower and motivation, which is a well that runs dry really quickly. It’s not sustainable or suitable for how your mind functions. You’re not working with your human/spiritual self when you’re trying to power through fear.”

    “When your fear response is ignited, it shifts you into a sympathetic nervous system state (fawning, flight, fight, or freeze) because we’re wired to protect ourselves. This is your stress state. So, instead of trying to power through it, we need to bring about safety by activating our Vagus nerve (deep, slow breathing), taking us to a parasympathetic state or our calm state. Your pre-frontal cortex comes back online. Now, we can make our new conscious choice.”

    Sounds complicated, right? It might be easier than you think.

    Here’s how to overcome fear correctly

    Now, here’s the most important part. In Tracy’s words: “Information without application is useless, but information with application is transformation.” So, let’s help you transform your fear into power and give you some wonderful tips that will enlarge your ability to expand and succeed.

    First: Notice it. That’s the prerequisite for doing any other work internally. Allow yourself to non-judgmentally understand what fear is keeping you from doing. Why is your power being abdicated to fear? Notice the moments it keeps you from acting.

    Second: Create safety. Safety, safety, safety. Our fear response combats “unsafe” situations by employing self-doubt and other negative neurological responses. So, we need to give our system the safety it craves. What does it look like? It looks like breathing on purpose. We should start to breathe in a deeper, slower cadence. 4-4-4-4 breathing (count in a cadence in, count in the same cadence out). We start to place our neurological feet back on safe ground, allowing our conscious mind to take over and make powerful decisions. Once we master this process, we can create safety on demand.

    Third: Get to know and learn how to communicate with your higher self. This isn’t woo-woo or weird. Your higher self can be described as who you want to be five years from now. This is the better version of you. Who is that person? How would they respond in situations your present self feels fearful? The better you can understand who that person is and how they act, the easier it is to envision yourself acting similarly in the present. Then, you can more quickly step out of fear and into conscious, confident decision-making.

    These tips are not only powerful but self-sustaining. The better you get at mastering each of them, the higher your threshold for overcoming fear. Tracy says that with this method, she’s watched thousands of women not only reach their potential but see that their previous potential was only a part of what they could actually achieve.

    Randy Garn

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  • Danger, Death, and Disgust: Why You Just Can’t Look Away

    Danger, Death, and Disgust: Why You Just Can’t Look Away

    Oct. 24, 2022 — Halloween Ends? Yeah, sure. Like that’ll happen.

    The market for horror remains robust 44 years after the original Halloween movie premiered. Part of the reason (besides Michael Myers’s charm) is that we humans appear to be hard-wired to enjoy getting scared.

    Whatever happens in Halloween Ends, the latest entry in the long-running film series, you’ll leave the theater with a sense of relief and satisfaction. You had fun and survived. It feels good.

    And you and most of the rest of the world will do it again and again – go to other movies, play scary video games, listen to true-crime podcasts, read Stephen King books, visit haunted houses. A survey by the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark found that 55% of Americans enjoy scary media, and 90% had dipped into the horror world at least once in the past year.

    Our penchant for fear dates back millennia. But new research is testing the theory that indulging in morbid curiosity and scary play can help us build psychological resilience, overcome phobias, and deal with genuine scares. So far, the answer is yes.

    When you scare yourself on purpose, you’re “learning your limits and learning a bit of self-reliance in the face of feelings of danger or fear or anxiety,” says Coltan Scrivner, PhD, a researcher at the Fear Lab and the author of several papers on horror.

    Our fascination extends to real life, however conflicted we may feel. “When we pass by a car accident or see a gruesome photo, our minds are compelled to attend to it and gather information,” Scrivner says. “This is the essence of morbid curiosity.”

    Greg Siegle, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, says it makes evolutionary sense. “It behooves us to pay attention to possibly threatening things. We learn very quickly, and we encode them deeply.” 

    For example: Roadkill reminds us to look both ways before crossing the street.

    This field of science seems like a bloody good time. Researchers visit haunted-house attractions and interview visitors. They show scary movies to wired-up viewers and check heart rate, eye movement, brain activity, and other measures of arousal. 

    Zombies even play a role. In a pilot experiment, Siegle and colleague Margee Kerr, PhD, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, put actors in costumes and makeup for a virtual-reality film of zombies on a train. Subjects in VR goggles “enter” the train car to find zombies, but at the end, the actors strip away the makeup and everyone has a laugh.

    It’s a 21st-century reboot of exposure therapy, the 70-year-old technique in which patients are exposed to something that makes them anxious until they can deal with it. “The problem with exposure therapy is that it’s horrible,” Siegle says. “People drop out rather than be exposed to their fears. What if we made it fun?”

    Everyday moviegoers are doing a “home-brewed method” of exposure therapy, Scrivner says. “Morbidly curious horror fans spend time sitting with those feelings in a playful context,” he says. “They have a bit more experience feeling afraid or feeling anxious, and learn how to regulate those feelings.”

    The benefits are becoming clear.

    You’ll Become More Resilient

    Scrivner and others grabbed a chance to indirectly test this theory during the pandemic. It turned out that horror fans showed “greater preparedness for and psychological resilience” about the pandemic, they wrote in a 2021 study. They found that “exposure to frightening fictions” can help people “practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.”

    Our inborn fondness for play-acted fear and surprise can be seen in peekaboo with a baby, or hide-and-seek and playing tag with young children. “They’re out to get you, or you have to run from them,” Scrivner says. “To a kid, that’s a pretty scary concept.”

    Scrivner cites the work of Helen Dodd, PhD, a child psychologist in the U.K. who found that children who engage in risky, thrilling play “tend to have kind of an inoculation against anxiety in adolescence.”

    “It’s young kids listening to scary stories, riding their bikes too fast, climbing up too high in trees, teenagers watching horror movies or listening to true crime stories,” says Mathias Clasen, PhD, director of the Fear Lab and author of A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies.

    “The idea is that they’ve played with fear, or played with scary instances, played with anxiety, and presumably built some tools for dealing with those feelings,” he says.

    You’ll Feel Better

    Scary media is fun because it allows people “to engage with difficult feelings like anxiety or fear in a safe and playful setting,” Scrivner says. “You can draw your attention away from your cycle of rumination.” And you’re in control: You can turn the sound down and the lights up, cover your eyes, and know it’ll end in 90 minutes.

    Scrivner, Clasen, and others examined three types of horror fans in a 2022 paper. Adrenaline Junkies seek maximum stimulation and feel great during the excitement. White Knucklers tolerate the fear but enjoy learning something about themselves. And Dark Copers get the mood boost and the self-enlightenment. 

    Some people find horror an excellent head-clearing experience, says Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. In her research, people who go through a haunted-house attraction show “a global decrease in brainwave activity.” 

     

    That’s a positive thing in this context. Their mood was boosted, they felt more confident, and they were able to “shut down or turn down inner thoughts,” she says. “This gives an idea as to why people like to experience these scary activities.” When our sympathetic nervous system is amped up, and hormones and neurotransmitters surge, it can lead to a euphoria akin to a runner’s high. “Also the feeling of achieving something – ‘We’re still alive!’” 

    Kerr and Siegle co-authored a paper in the journal Emotion subtitled “Why we like to be scared.” It said the improved mood was especially notable among “tired, bored, or stressed” people.

    Siegle points out that it’s hard to tell the difference, physiologically, between “high positive” and “high negative emotion.” (“High-fear faces and orgasm faces” often look the same, he says.)

    “So what if we crave these high-arousal experiences?” says Siegle. “That’s what puts us in a flow state. That’s what makes us giddy. We could get it through some ecstatic positive emotion – like dancing with a partner you love. Or we could get it with a haunted house.” 

    Or a crime scene photo or a graphic medical show. “Disgust is an emotion that raises arousal,” Siegle says.

    People seem to find a personal “sweet spot” for their frightening and morbid experiences: not too scary, not too boring, Scrivner says. (Makers of adaptive video games use research from the Fear Lab to calibrate a game’s fright factor.)

    The closer you can get to your sweet spot, the more you’ll get out of the experience, Scrivner says. “You want something that puts you near your limit, so you can test the waters.”

    You’ll Get to Know Yourself Better

    “Surviving” a haunted house or horror movie helps you become more attuned to your body, the researchers say. Part of that, Clasen says, is improving your “interoception” skills – perceiving and understanding bodily responses like a racing heart or sweaty palms. An anxious person feels that happening and becomes more anxious. Triggering those responses in a safe setting – like on your couch – may help break that cycle.

    Scary films indeed are triggering. When scientists showed people horror movies and measured brain activity with functional MRI, their “threat response network” lit up as though they were in danger, a study in Neuroimage showed.

    You may even gain insight into your personality. Scrivner has a fun quiz on his site to measure morbid curiosity. The questions cover four domains: the minds of dangerous people, the paranormal, body violation, and violence. You’re asked to rate your level of agreement with such statements as: 

    1. I am curious about the minds of violent people. 

    2. I think the supernatural is an interesting topic.

    3. If a head transplant was possible, I would want to watch the procedure.

    4. If I lived in ancient Rome, I would be interested in attending a gladiatorial fight.

    A strong “yes” to all of those, according to Scrivner, means you’ll probably score well above average for morbid curiosity. Statistically, you’re “a little more likely to have elevated levels of traits like openness to experience, rebelliousness, and anxiety.”

    That’s right – “Morbidly curious people are somewhat more likely to be higher in anxiety,” Scrivner says. “A core aspect of anxiety is vigilance toward threats. Events or situations that pique our morbid curiosity are often threatening events or situations we can safely explore.”

    It’s important to note that that strong agreement “doesn’t mean that there is something pathological or unhealthy about their curiosity.”

    Horror fans aren’t sickos, in other words. “There are people who score really high in empathy and in compassion who also love torture porn and slasher movies,” Scrivner says. The movie Hostel, for one grim and graphic example, contains several scenes that focus on the victims’ suffering, not the sadist’s pleasure. “That’s a very powerful tool causing you to empathize with the victim,” he says. 

    At the very least, Kerr says, a voluntary scary experience can stir self-reflection, feelings of growth and competency, and that can improve our “cognitive flexibility.” That flexibility helps us regulate our emotions and spurs us to engage with other people and new experiences – all of which promote well-being, she says. 

    And though you’re not likely to face zombies, “Maybe you get better at handling a job interview, or a presentation at your company, or a date,” Clasen says.

    That boost in emotion-regulating ability comes up in a 2016 paper in the scholarly journal Preternature (peer-reviewed articles about spooky stuff). The paper, titled “Grotesque Gaming: The Monstrous in Online Worlds,” examined “how players enjoy landscapes of the monstrous and the grotesque in order to engage with and tentatively conquer our inner fears and anxieties.”

    “It is our human nature to be attracted to the horrific and obtain pleasure from encountering it, because this is how we gain a partial and temporary victory over ourselves,” the paper said.

    “That these games exist shows that we need horror.” 

    Source link

  • Danger, Death, and Disgust: Why You Just Can’t Look Away

    Danger, Death, and Disgust: Why You Just Can’t Look Away

    Oct. 24, 2022 — Halloween Ends? Yeah, sure. Like that’ll happen.

    The market for horror remains robust 44 years after the original Halloween movie premiered. Part of the reason (besides Michael Myers’s charm) is that we humans appear to be hard-wired to enjoy getting scared.

    Whatever happens in Halloween Ends, the latest entry in the long-running film series, you’ll leave the theater with a sense of relief and satisfaction. You had fun and survived. It feels good.

    And you and most of the rest of the world will do it again and again – go to other movies, play scary video games, listen to true-crime podcasts, read Stephen King books, visit haunted houses. A survey by the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark found that 55% of Americans enjoy scary media, and 90% had dipped into the horror world at least once in the past year.

    Our penchant for fear dates back millennia. But new research is testing the theory that indulging in morbid curiosity and scary play can help us build psychological resilience, overcome phobias, and deal with genuine scares. So far, the answer is yes.

    When you scare yourself on purpose, you’re “learning your limits and learning a bit of self-reliance in the face of feelings of danger or fear or anxiety,” says Coltan Scrivner, PhD, a researcher at the Fear Lab and the author of several papers on horror.

    Our fascination extends to real life, however conflicted we may feel. “When we pass by a car accident or see a gruesome photo, our minds are compelled to attend to it and gather information,” Scrivner says. “This is the essence of morbid curiosity.”

    Greg Siegle, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, says it makes evolutionary sense. “It behooves us to pay attention to possibly threatening things. We learn very quickly, and we encode them deeply.” 

    For example: Roadkill reminds us to look both ways before crossing the street.

    This field of science seems like a bloody good time. Researchers visit haunted-house attractions and interview visitors. They show scary movies to wired-up viewers and check heart rate, eye movement, brain activity, and other measures of arousal. 

    Zombies even play a role. In a pilot experiment, Siegle and colleague Margee Kerr, PhD, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, put actors in costumes and makeup for a virtual-reality film of zombies on a train. Subjects in VR goggles “enter” the train car to find zombies, but at the end, the actors strip away the makeup and everyone has a laugh.

    It’s a 21st-century reboot of exposure therapy, the 70-year-old technique in which patients are exposed to something that makes them anxious until they can deal with it. “The problem with exposure therapy is that it’s horrible,” Siegle says. “People drop out rather than be exposed to their fears. What if we made it fun?”

    Everyday moviegoers are doing a “home-brewed method” of exposure therapy, Scrivner says. “Morbidly curious horror fans spend time sitting with those feelings in a playful context,” he says. “They have a bit more experience feeling afraid or feeling anxious, and learn how to regulate those feelings.”

    The benefits are becoming clear.

    You’ll Become More Resilient

    Scrivner and others grabbed a chance to indirectly test this theory during the pandemic. It turned out that horror fans showed “greater preparedness for and psychological resilience” about the pandemic, they wrote in a 2021 study. They found that “exposure to frightening fictions” can help people “practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.”

    Our inborn fondness for play-acted fear and surprise can be seen in peekaboo with a baby, or hide-and-seek and playing tag with young children. “They’re out to get you, or you have to run from them,” Scrivner says. “To a kid, that’s a pretty scary concept.”

    Scrivner cites the work of Helen Dodd, PhD, a child psychologist in the U.K. who found that children who engage in risky, thrilling play “tend to have kind of an inoculation against anxiety in adolescence.”

    “It’s young kids listening to scary stories, riding their bikes too fast, climbing up too high in trees, teenagers watching horror movies or listening to true crime stories,” says Mathias Clasen, PhD, director of the Fear Lab and author of A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies.

    “The idea is that they’ve played with fear, or played with scary instances, played with anxiety, and presumably built some tools for dealing with those feelings,” he says.

    You’ll Feel Better

    Scary media is fun because it allows people “to engage with difficult feelings like anxiety or fear in a safe and playful setting,” Scrivner says. “You can draw your attention away from your cycle of rumination.” And you’re in control: You can turn the sound down and the lights up, cover your eyes, and know it’ll end in 90 minutes.

    Scrivner, Clasen, and others examined three types of horror fans in a 2022 paper. Adrenaline Junkies seek maximum stimulation and feel great during the excitement. White Knucklers tolerate the fear but enjoy learning something about themselves. And Dark Copers get the mood boost and the self-enlightenment. 

    Some people find horror an excellent head-clearing experience, says Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. In her research, people who go through a haunted-house attraction show “a global decrease in brainwave activity.” 

     

    That’s a positive thing in this context. Their mood was boosted, they felt more confident, and they were able to “shut down or turn down inner thoughts,” she says. “This gives an idea as to why people like to experience these scary activities.” When our sympathetic nervous system is amped up, and hormones and neurotransmitters surge, it can lead to a euphoria akin to a runner’s high. “Also the feeling of achieving something – ‘We’re still alive!’” 

    Kerr and Siegle co-authored a paper in the journal Emotion subtitled “Why we like to be scared.” It said the improved mood was especially notable among “tired, bored, or stressed” people.

    Siegle points out that it’s hard to tell the difference, physiologically, between “high positive” and “high negative emotion.” (“High-fear faces and orgasm faces” often look the same, he says.)

    “So what if we crave these high-arousal experiences?” says Siegle. “That’s what puts us in a flow state. That’s what makes us giddy. We could get it through some ecstatic positive emotion – like dancing with a partner you love. Or we could get it with a haunted house.” 

    Or a crime scene photo or a graphic medical show. “Disgust is an emotion that raises arousal,” Siegle says.

    People seem to find a personal “sweet spot” for their frightening and morbid experiences: not too scary, not too boring, Scrivner says. (Makers of adaptive video games use research from the Fear Lab to calibrate a game’s fright factor.)

    The closer you can get to your sweet spot, the more you’ll get out of the experience, Scrivner says. “You want something that puts you near your limit, so you can test the waters.”

    You’ll Get to Know Yourself Better

    “Surviving” a haunted house or horror movie helps you become more attuned to your body, the researchers say. Part of that, Clasen says, is improving your “interoception” skills – perceiving and understanding bodily responses like a racing heart or sweaty palms. An anxious person feels that happening and becomes more anxious. Triggering those responses in a safe setting – like on your couch – may help break that cycle.

    Scary films indeed are triggering. When scientists showed people horror movies and measured brain activity with functional MRI, their “threat response network” lit up as though they were in danger, a study in Neuroimage showed.

    You may even gain insight into your personality. Scrivner has a fun quiz on his site to measure morbid curiosity. The questions cover four domains: the minds of dangerous people, the paranormal, body violation, and violence. You’re asked to rate your level of agreement with such statements as: 

    1. I am curious about the minds of violent people. 

    2. I think the supernatural is an interesting topic.

    3. If a head transplant was possible, I would want to watch the procedure.

    4. If I lived in ancient Rome, I would be interested in attending a gladiatorial fight.

    A strong “yes” to all of those, according to Scrivner, means you’ll probably score well above average for morbid curiosity. Statistically, you’re “a little more likely to have elevated levels of traits like openness to experience, rebelliousness, and anxiety.”

    That’s right – “Morbidly curious people are somewhat more likely to be higher in anxiety,” Scrivner says. “A core aspect of anxiety is vigilance toward threats. Events or situations that pique our morbid curiosity are often threatening events or situations we can safely explore.”

    It’s important to note that that strong agreement “doesn’t mean that there is something pathological or unhealthy about their curiosity.”

    Horror fans aren’t sickos, in other words. “There are people who score really high in empathy and in compassion who also love torture porn and slasher movies,” Scrivner says. The movie Hostel, for one grim and graphic example, contains several scenes that focus on the victims’ suffering, not the sadist’s pleasure. “That’s a very powerful tool causing you to empathize with the victim,” he says. 

    At the very least, Kerr says, a voluntary scary experience can stir self-reflection, feelings of growth and competency, and that can improve our “cognitive flexibility.” That flexibility helps us regulate our emotions and spurs us to engage with other people and new experiences – all of which promote well-being, she says. 

    And though you’re not likely to face zombies, “Maybe you get better at handling a job interview, or a presentation at your company, or a date,” Clasen says.

    That boost in emotion-regulating ability comes up in a 2016 paper in the scholarly journal Preternature (peer-reviewed articles about spooky stuff). The paper, titled “Grotesque Gaming: The Monstrous in Online Worlds,” examined “how players enjoy landscapes of the monstrous and the grotesque in order to engage with and tentatively conquer our inner fears and anxieties.”

    “It is our human nature to be attracted to the horrific and obtain pleasure from encountering it, because this is how we gain a partial and temporary victory over ourselves,” the paper said.

    “That these games exist shows that we need horror.” 

    Source link

  • TT US-Based Gospel Singer Authors Experience-Based Advice on Anxiety Issues

    TT US-Based Gospel Singer Authors Experience-Based Advice on Anxiety Issues

    Press Release
    –

    Oct 13, 2022


    MIRAMAR, Fla., October 13, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Highly acclaimed U.S.-based Trinidad and Tobago born Gospel singer Royanne Mitchell has expanded her frontiers. Mitchell has now added the title of author to her range of multidimensional creative and gifted talents and the development of her book launch is underway. 

    The book specifically aims to assist individuals in overcoming anxiety issues: mental conditions plaguing humanity exponentially worldwide. This problem is engaging the attention of psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers who come together to gain a clearer understanding of the root causes and unique intricacies and to provide the most appropriate remedial advice to those who are challenged by the experiences and idiosyncrasies that accompany the condition.

    Mitchell’s book “Breaking Through” is birthed from a place where life demands so much more from us, causing us to develop compulsive tendencies, striving relentlessly to keep up with the myriad levels of responsibility and accountability imposed upon us to make things work. As a consequence, the pressures of modern living affect us to the point of our becoming extraordinarily overwhelmed and subjected to episodes of anxiety amidst life’s inescapable and increasing twists and turns.  

    In her book, Mitchell cites a multitude of situations where stress affects us all so differently and creeps up upon us subconsciously to the point where it eventually pierces the barriers of resistance even among those with the most enduring and stubborn levels of physiological and mental tolerance. 

    Readers of Breaking Through will benefit from Mitchell’s own experiences, gain a better understanding of how chronic anxiety and fear really operates, how she dealt with the condition along the way and continues to do so in order to stay firmly grounded. She does not compromise the fact that the experience was undoubtedly challenging, and gives an account of how she was able to overcome the most challenging season of it by God’s grace and maintains the breakthrough, filled with confidence and assurance.

    “Breaking Through: A Christian’s Perspective on a Journey to Freedom from Anxiety and Fear” is now available in Kindle and paperback format via Amazon.

    Click here to purchase a copy today!

    Source: Royanne Mitchell, author

    Source link

  • Why We Love Scary Movies

    Why We Love Scary Movies

    Halloween is nigh, and along with the parade of adorable elves and fairies knocking on your door come some more disturbing phenomena: scary haunted houses, wild parties and, perhaps most jarringly, a new onslaught of ghastly horror films. 

    If you’re not a horror movie fan, you may be puzzled about why some people love watching such movies. Behavioral researchers even coined a phrase for it: the “horror paradox.”

    “No doubt, there’s something really powerful that brings people to watch these things, because it’s not logical,” says Joanne Cantor, PhD, director of the Center for Communication Research at University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Most people like to experience pleasant emotions.”

    Defenders of these movies may say they’re just harmless entertainment. But if their attraction is powerful, Cantor says, so is their impact. 

    Scary Movies: The Fear Is Real

    Is the fear you feel when you watch someone being chased by an axe-wielding murderer any different from the fear you might feel if you were actually being chased by an axe-wielding murderer?

    You’re not really in danger when the violence is on a screen. But your body does get jittery.

     When people watch horrific images, their heartbeat increases as much as 15 beats per minute, Sparks says. Their palms sweat, their skin temperature drops several degrees, their muscles tense, and their blood pressure spikes.

    “The brain hasn’t really adapted to the new technology [of movies],” Sparks says. “We can tell ourselves the images on the screen are not real, but emotionally our brain reacts as if they are.”

    When Sparks studied the physical effects of violent movies on young men, he noticed a strange pattern: The more fear they felt, the more they claimed to enjoy the movie. Why? Sparks believes scary movies may be one of the last vestiges of a rite of passage.

    “There’s a motivation [that] males have in our culture to master threatening situations,” Sparks says. “It goes back to the initiation rites of our tribal ancestors, where the entrance to manhood was associated with hardship. We’ve lost that in modern society, and we may have found ways to replace it in our entertainment preferences.”

    In this context, Sparks says, the gorier the movie, the more justified the young man feels in boasting that he endured it.

    Morbid Fascination

    There are other theories to explain the appeal of scary movies. James B. Weaver III, PhD, says many young people may be attracted to them merely because adults frown on them. For adults, morbid curiosity may be at play — the same kind that causes us to stare at crashes on the highway, suggests Cantor. Humans may have an innate need to stay aware of dangers in our environment, especially the kind that could do us bodily harm, she says.

    Yet another theory suggests that people may seek out violent entertainment as a way of coping with actual fears or violence. Sparks points to a study that showed that shortly after the murder of a college student in a community, interest in a movie showing a cold-blooded murder increased, both among women in the student’s dormitory and in the community at large.

    One popular explanation for the appeal of scary movies, expressed by novelist Stephen King, is that they act as a sort of safety valve for our cruel or aggressive impulses. The implication of this idea, which academics dub “symbolic catharsis,” is that watching violence forestalls the need to act it out.

    Media researchers disagree. They point out that violent media is more likely to make people feel more hostile, to view the world that way, and to be haunted by violent ideas and images.

    In an experiment, Weaver showed violent films (with stars like Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal) to college students for several nights in a row. The next day, while the students took a simple test, a research assistant treated them rudely. Those who had watched the violent films suggested a harsher punishment for the rude assistant than students who had watched nonviolent films. 

    “Watching these films actually made people more callous and more punitive,” says Weaver, a researcher at Emory University’s department of behavioral sciences and health education. “You can actually prime the idea that aggression or violence is the way to resolve conflict.”
     

    Lingering Effects

    For some people, scary movies are just too much – especially children.

    In surveys of her students, Cantor found that nearly 60% reported that something they had watched before age 14 had upset their sleep or waking life. Cantor has collected hundreds of essays by students who became afraid of water or clowns, who had obsessive thoughts of horrible images, or who became disturbed even at the mention of certain movies, such as Nightmare on Elm Street. More than a quarter of the students said they were still fearful.

    Cantor suspects that the brain may store memories of these films in the amygdala, which plays an important role in generating emotions. She says these film memories may produce similar reactions to those produced by actual trauma — and may be just as hard to erase.

    For more on this topic, listen to “Why We Love Fear,” an episode of WebMD’s podcast, Health Discovered.

    Source link

  • Jilati CBD Announces Massive Product Giveaway to Relieve Global Tension

    Jilati CBD Announces Massive Product Giveaway to Relieve Global Tension

    As the Stock Market Drops to its Worst Loss Since 1987 and a New Reality Sets in, Jilati CBD is Offering 2,000 Complimentary Bottles of CBD Tincture

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Mar 16, 2020


    LAS VEGAS, March 16, 2020 (Newswire.com)
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    CBD company Jilati, along with The Emerald Dream Foundation and The NV Ball in Las Vegas, have partnered for a CBD giveaway for those suffering from current world events.

    As the outbreak and rapid spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States and around the globe deepens, more people are dealing with increased stress, concern, and fear. In an effort to give back to the community, Jilati CBD and The Emerald Dream Foundation, along with the assistance of The NV Ball, are giving away 2,000 bottles of CBD oil tinctures to help alleviate tensions.

    To receive the Blissed Tincture Oil – 500 mg Broad-Spectrum CBD with 250 mg of beta-caryophyllene (retail price $64.00), participants are urged to visit www.Jilati.com, and click on the scrolling news banner at the very top to receive a bottle. Jilati is giving the bottle away to U.S. residents over the age of 18 at no cost, albeit a minimal shipping fee.

    Why CBD? Cannabidiol, or CBD for short, is a non-psychoactive natural component found in the hemp plant. It’s one of many potent cannabinoids and is known for supporting the body and mind in multiple ways. Because it is not intoxicating, many people utilize CBD as part of their health routine to support their inner well-being. Among the many positive effects of CBD are a sense of focus, a feeling of calmness, relief from life’s pressures and stress, aid in recovery from exercise-induced inflammation, and promoting balanced sleep cycles.

    Jilati is a leading CBD company dedicated to helping those who wish to help themselves. They teamed up with CBD industry pioneers and specialists utilizing the latest breakthroughs and innovations in order to consciously craft the most trusted CBD products on the market. www.Jilati.com

    The Emerald Dream Foundation focuses on engaging individuals to give back to the community. www.EmeraldDreamFoundation.org

    Located in Fabulous Las Vegas, one of the world’s premier tourist destinations, The NV Ball is a ballroom dance competition reimagined. World-class competitive dancing in a custom-designed ballroom with a fun, high-energy atmosphere turns every day of The NV Ball into a party. www.theNVBALL.com

    Source: Jilati

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