ANSIEDADE – ANXIETY -  BEDENKLICHKEIT

Dear blog readers let’s talk about anxiety! Today is Easter and because of that many of us are spending time with our families and friends. Due to the fact that is not my case at the moment, I decided to use my free time to help others and myself as well with this new text.  I hope these reflexions can lead us to become better persons, today that we celebrate the rebirth of Christ. 

Well, where does anxiety come from? From a biological point of view it comes from an over activation of our warning system. We are equipped with a complex group of hormones and those are chemicals in our body that regulate some of our autonomic responses; those that we cannot consciously control. The effects that hormones of stress usually activate are heart rate increase, body temperature changes, sweating glands activation and many others. The thing is that anxiety; because of being an over reaction becomes very annoying. It makes our body to become accelerated and ready for the danger. It generates a feeling of prediction, usually biased to the negative outcome. It informs that something may harm us somehow in the future, so that we become ready for the fight/flight stress response. But I would say anxiety is annoying and unpleasant because even though the self-defense system makes sense from a survival point of view the anticipation of the possible harm outcome makes it unnecessary in a great number of occasions. In some situations it makes us fail to response accordingly, to react without reasoning or to postpone a decision fearing the consequence. It is a break that stops many of us to enjoy life experiences to the fullest. 

The psychological part of anxiety is also very interesting. My readings have taught me that anxiety is “excess of future”. The time frame we are inserted in makes us to live a lot of times out of the now. When the attention is taken towards the future, anxiety appears. Similarly, excess of past leads to depression, but for now I will just leave it for other text. The problem to live according to the future (actually to the expectation of what the future might be) freezes many of our actions. We fear and do not risk because of that. And even worse, we live an illusion. The life as we know can happen only in the now. I know that the society has been told that we should also take precautions to avoid pain of any sort in the future. That is why we have savings accounts (money for some emergency), car insurance (in case we hit the car), life insurance (in case we die and our family suffers) and so on. This is neurotic. This is no life. To make plans is very wise, yes, but cannot rule our life. The risk taking must be developed in such a way that we dare to take steps that are usually out of our comfort zone NOW. Otherwise, we are living like a plastic flower, who may look very beautiful but has no life inside. It is a theoretic way of experiencing life. And anxiety is the reflexion of the amount of importance we give to the future over the present moment. But, it is of vital importance to notice that we live a sequence of NOWS, and not in any other time construct. Excess of past=depression. Excess of future=anxiety. This belief is so into our society that the bestseller drugs in the market are either antidepressants or anti-anxiety pills. We have become a society out of the present moment and that has turned a great portion of the population sick. Anxiety is just the tip of a bigger problem. And this leads not only to legal drugs consumption, but also alcohol, gambling, smoking and ilicit drugs, to name a few harmful consequences of being out of the now towards the future. 

The cure? It is not in any of those strategies. The cure resides on our effort to understand that life is risky, has many dangers along the way and those cannot be predicted. One must face it and to take action, which in my opinion is always better than the “watch and see” approach. Anxiety can be controlled, only when we understand that there is no reason for us to worry too much because of the upcoming events. As long as we are in tune with our values and life goals, things will naturally resolve. And then anxiety simply dies, due to the fact that the future will be there anyways but we decide not give the future any power to put us down. So, relax, take the present moment seat and enjoy what you can NOW. Wish you all a nice Easter!

LIBERDADE - FREEDOM - FREIHEIT

Dear blog readers. Today it is a special day for Brazil. Those who are brazilians have been following the corruption scandal involving the former president, Lula and the worker's Party. I want to do now a reflexion using this as background theme, but in one attempt to expand the real complexities under the term freedom in my view. To start, I want to say that I consider myself free to write and to think on my own way. As this is a reflexion about freedom, I am also considering that many may not agree and I respect their freedom to choose so, with no bad feelings. What I think is happening is that the concept of freedom has been lately taken in to the wrong direction. Many of us believe that freedom is the possibility to do whatever we want without asking someone's else opinion and in accordance to our own desires. In humans, this system is way too complex. The variables are in my view not possibly to be organized in such a way where we can eliminate all the bias. The perceivable bias relies mainly on where we were born, how we were raised/in what kind of culture and what were the values/beliefs thought to us along our childhood and adolescence in order to create our  adult identity. Add to  that the fact that this is also not enough to explain everything. In my studies of many writers and alternative science readings I have found out that the concept of self-construction goes way beyond any boundaries we know in formal academia. I would include, even though there is no scientific proof, that we have a self-awareness identity even before we were born. I dare to suggest that because of biological reasons. When we get to check two identical twins, with exact the same DNA code into their billions of cells, we should assume that they should develop at least similar if not identical personalities constructs, given the fact they are usually raised togheter. In practice, we NEVER see that. They are always different individuals. Therefore, something before the conception may have come along with this new physical body.  This concept comes from one of my inspirational teachers, Dr. Sergio Felipe de Oliveira, a brazilian doctor who is interested in the study of the pineal gland. In his opinion the reason for our self is the presence of the spirit (and I agree with that, even though no one has ever "proved" the existence of a spirit through a measurement, either photography, thermal camera or spectral analysis of any kind). Moreover, especially nowadays, the access to vast amount of information allows us to modify concepts and beliefs in light speed if we compare to 30 years ago. The personal resiliency is much more present nowadays, because we can prove or disprove something very quickly (not by googling of course, but by doing a deeper research over the internet). Freedom then is a mix of complex components, playing a role togheter. In the end freedom creates a unique  musical piece of values, which is individually tailored and never identical (even in biologically identical organisms as stated above).
Then it comes to how we manifest our freedom. We learned through or life journey all that we know now and then we want to apply those values to our day-by-day life. And at the moment we express our choices, backgrounded by our freedom, we are already in disagreement with anyone next to us. This is inevitable. It is human nature not to think the same way in comparison to other human being. This is in my view the way the nature has created mankind, to challenge all human life in one attempt to ascend as biological life. As far as science has reached to date, there is no reason to discredit that we are in this world to get better (as we systematically try every day to improve, e.g. in my case to become a better doctor by doing a PhD). So, freedom is never 100%. Even when we do not tell anything. The freedom to remain silent is maybe a high level of freedom, because it demands a high amount of self discipline. When we feel that someone has been unfair to us, as an instinct behavior, we react with self defense mechanisms, aiming homeosthasis, aiming  to prove our beliefs, aiming  to decrease our anxiety, aiming to be right  and ultimately to feel that our freedom allowed us to be different and express ourselves. When we judge someone's else action (or no action) we are actually hurting their universal right to be free according to their own set of rules. And the concept of wrong or right is then buried. Let's remember that laws are human created. They prevent us to do/act someways considered to be inappropriate, wrong. Bringing now Brazil's situation to the context, I feel that the people in the country are strongly lost in the way they express freedom. And this creates violence, war, hate and anger.  Naturally, it is very sad  to see our politicians being so unaware of those basic rules of choices. Freedom should be regulated on a set of rules that does not exist at the moment. Even though this is not a religious driven text (apart from the fact that I believe in a supreme intelligence that has created all of what we experience), I imagine that the Bible's quotation "do for the others what you would like them to do for you" makes an absolute sense. Even for atheists. It creates a possibility to have a self-developed set of rules that is standardized on our own unique values. With exception of some people with psychiatric disorders who are inclined to commit  self-destructive behaviours, the majority of people do not want to put themselves down. They wish instead to get better, to feel good, to be happy and to continuously improve until they die.  That is the fuel that makes me to get up everyday and it should be the aim of everybody. So freedom is not a comprehensible concept at this point of time. This is the reason so many discussion still raises out of divergent opinions. The real truth, as stated by the courts of justice and which is the final outcome justice pursues is also far from be understood by our limited minds. The absolute truth will never exist in my opinion, in any subject. And that is also the reason we should try to build a relative truth based on the prevalent beliefs we develop through the big adventure of being a human. I wish that today the brazilians can step forward towards a more balanced sense of justice, where the individual values can resonate in one big act and represent the relative truth that may take the country out of the situation. With no ideology from political parties.  To conclude, I wish that the invisible dimensions and universes (those already being proposed by physicists) which are way beyond our understanding may have a certain degree of influence over the outcome of such a big event, and that this "inspirational" energies that we cannot still grasp consciously, can bring  discernment  to people and wisdom  for them to make the best choice towards the future of the country, which will change as the freedom concepts of its people change.

Achievement - Realização - Leistung

Dear bloggers, coming back after a small pause. The word today is achievement. Achievement has been part of my life since sometime. It took time for me to understand what is this about. I tend to think now that achievement can have many different nuances and I will try to reflect some of those in this text. If you bring to the conclusion that achievement is just a goal that was completed, you are probably meaning only the outcome, and this is very simplistic and superficial. Achievement is the whole process. In order to really state the real meaning of the word achievement,  I believe we need to have a flaw, a challenge, something in our life or within you for which a development aiming an objective makes logical sense. In my case, and probably in most people's case, the great motivation is to start it all over. When something suddenly just brakes our life path in a meaningful way, the tendency is that this fact may have the potential to be our best fuel towards growth in life, and eventually an achievement will be the final result. I believe that because our evolutionary level is still somehow very primitive, to have our breakthroughs solved, is still necessary to suffer in order to achieve something. However, I believe this is only the start. If we decide after the suffering process that it was enough, and you try to be 100% committed with our own self to get better in whatever aspect, I dare to state that the suffering feelings are replaced by other more advanced evolutionary feelings towards becoming the best version of ourselves. Nothing takes out of my head that the only path to be fully satisfied with life is to work on our own flaws. That said and understood, we will have the start to begin  the deep understanding behind achievement, which is the final product of our choice to change. Change is key to achieve something. On top of that, resilience, self-discipline, willpower, persistence will keep us fearless and focused. There is no way to succeed but to keep continuously trying. And failing is part of the path. No one who has achieved something good, and who could be really considered an outlier in terms of success (to the upside of the curve), have had no failures. I dare to state that failures tend to be more fruitful than the success itself. Because to reach the good, the bad was somehow necessary at the moments preceding the good. In other words, we must thank the universe and the destiny to put obstacles in our way. The secret is to see them as a great (if not the greatest opportunity) to move forward and do something in benefit of ourselves and in many cases of others as well. As soon as we see that "shit happens" but this is no big deal, we start to crave for problems to come. If everything is in place, perfect, believe me, something in our life is not in place. Maybe we are not pushing enough or our choices are not in tune with our real purposes. I believe that a great sign of development towards achievement is to feel that something is out of place.  And to look at it saying from the deepest "thank you for that". It takes effort to see from a positive perspective things that are not pleasant to our eyes at first, but if we face them positively and with courage, they may become our greatest gift. The gift that our life has given us for free, so from there, we can move, and do, and be. To be is essential. To be ourselves. No fear, no restrictions, no blocks.  And the achievement will come. More interestingly, at a higher level of self realization we will notice along the path that the achievement will come when we feel good. The physical representations may be e.g. a  job promotion, or the fact that we could get a new house or have our first child. The "thing" itself is irrelevant, because the beauty of being  unique beings, makes us incomparable to each other and the physical world is just a construct so we can see it with our brains. I think that at this stage you will start to be aware that competition is only a human mindset of something very subjective. There is no need to compare ourselves to others when we feel 100% safe on our own skin. Moreover, there is NOBODY in the world like us, and this give us a particular, single custom way of perceiving the reality without giving too much of our energy to someone's else opinion or judgment. Achievement is for me when we get to a point where we look at the mirror, we see our own reflection and we can feel from our deepest roots that it is completely enough only to exist as what we are and that all the  other things society tells to be necessary are just noise. We are our greatest treasure, and that is why if we find ourselves stuck or unhappy, we will have to work this pain with wisdom to step in the direction of satisfaction and achievement that really will be forever attached to us: our own self.