v5.0 - Day 4

Morning folks,

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Day 4!! One more day after today and I''m officially on vacation!

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I''m quite tired this morning. I decided yesterday to take a break from gaming and just sit back and do nothing. I fired up my collection of Battle Star Galactica (new series) and began watching. I made it to episode 8 of season one before it was 11:30pm when I started falling asleep at the keyboard. Great series!

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I remember watching shows like Battle Star Galactica and Buck Rogers when I was a kid. The remake of BSG is great and the special effects are quite nice for a TV show. I plan on watching the remainder of the series soon and then I may go back and watch the 3hr movie opener.

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Like I mentioned yesterday in my musing, since changing my mind set here at work I''m finding my productivity going up and my stress levels going down. I have come to the conclusion that stress is all in our heads. I took a little time yesterday to look up stress on the interent and found a TON of guides and help sites for those dealing with stress. I also found out a few things about stress which I thought were interesting. First off, I want to copy/paste some things a person can say when feeling stressed. If ever you''re feeling stressed or on the verge of a mental break, open up Musing over Coffee v5.0 and refer to this list again :)

I feel the need to let you know where I stand on a few issues first.

I do believe there is such a thing as stress.

I do believe stress can be debilitating.

I do believe stress can be difficult at times to overcome.

I do not believe a chemical imbalance is the cause of stress. There is no scientific proof of a chemical imbalance.

I do believe when a person is stressed they have an endocrine change in their body. (This is different from a chemical imbalance.)

I do believe there are two areas that should be addressed when dealing with stress.

1. The cause of stress
2. The handling of the endocrine change caused by stress

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I honestly feel that by acknowledging the stress is the first step toward overcoming it. As it says above, Stress is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the body (or hasn''t been proven to be).

So what is this Endocrine mentioned above?

Endocrine: Of or relating to endocrine glands or the hormones secreted by them.

Endocrine is that chemical in our bodies that makes us "feel" heavy or light depending on our mood. Based on the secreation of endocrine, people may experience changes in appetite, mood swings and motivation drop offs. This isn''t to say that these symptoms mean you are stressed. Generally when people are stressed they experience similar "feelings" which is caused by the endocrine in their system.

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So what exactly causes stress? Well, nobody knows for certain what "causes" stress, but they have found that job loss, stress over money, stress from the job or the loss of a loved one etc. are the primary causes. However, as I also mentioned above, I believe stress is all in your heads; namely your frame of mind.

Frame of Mind: Mental or emotional attitude or mood; a temporary psychological state.

State of Mind: The state of a person''s cognitive processes.

Cognition: The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

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In basics, a person Frame of Mind (also State of Mind) is directly related to their mental processes. Things like awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment. Therefore, depending on how cognitive you are, you could be easily stressed or have the ability to withstand stress.

Keeping all that in mind, lets analyze my situation for a moment. For starters, I have been going through a hard time here at work due to having extra work load added. Also, there is an unknown factor in my job as to whether I will be laid off in the near future due to this merger. This mixed in with some personal issues at home and I could be a mental wreck; or was a mental wreck.

So what do people typically do in these situations? They dwell on it. Day in and day out I thought of nothing but my job and my home life and those two coming together on a daily basis. My frame of mind was affecting my life due to my lack of proper thinking and cognitive reasoning. Only through this experiement I''m running this week have I truely felt like I have unlocked the secret to being not stressed. In fact, I have a smile on my face as I write this :)

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Folks, stress can also have long term effects on your physical and mental bodies. Your thought process is all messed up and due to the hormonal imbalance you eat less making you weak and prone to sicknesses. Time to crack the whip, stand up and clear our heads.

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Anyway gang, don''t mean to preach here. I like to inform and teach, not preach.

I''m going to take off now and get... nothing done :) I want to send out a Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Rick who doesn''t read my musings. ;)

Take care my friends and remember to watch for falling ice!

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Cheers,

Al