| Happy Sunday, everyone. First I'm going to talk about a perennial favorite (stress). Then I'm going to talk about music. Stress is a weird one. In many ways, it's a modern scourge. THE modern scourge. I don't have to explain how and why. We all know why. We all deal with it. It's just there. But it's always been with us. Seeing as how we have a "stress response" that's been preserved for millions of years (other, lesser animals have it), stress isn't new. Organisms have been undergoing stress for billions of years—as long as stimuli have been throwing our sense of homeostasis into disarray. So we're not going to eliminate stress. Stress is unavoidable and ancient. It's that there's just a lot more of it nowadays and it comes at us from all angles. Today I'm going to give you that one weird trick for beating stress. Don't take on the stress of others. By others, I mean: Strangers on the Internet. Strangers on the news. Your significant other freaking out over something you know isn't worth the trouble. Your kids throwing tantrums. Exist outside of it. Exist above it. Understand that you reside in your own body and the stress of everyone else is separate from that. Keep telling yourself that. Once you can do this, then you can help and snuff out the stress where possible. Because sometimes your significant other is freaking out over something that is important, and you care about them and don't want them to feel like that, but you need to be there with a calm, cool mind ready to help. You can't be melting down. Okay, on to the next. In last week's How I'd Change School post, Jenny commented: "You only missed the advantage of being a musician at school – there are all ages in an orchestra – and respect comes from your ability to play and to join in well!
I loved the article." How could I have forgotten music? Yes, absolutely. That and dance belong in school. If not required, then heavily encouraged. My big regret in life is that I didn't really focus on learning an instrument as a kid. I've since picked up the piano and have been dabbling in the drums, but man, there's a HUGE difference between trying to learn at my age and trying to learn as a kid. You want to talk about compound interest, learning music (or any skill, really) as a child is a relatively small initial investment that quickly accumulates value. And most importantly, it never loses value. You learn the thing when your brain is still physically developing and the thing becomes embedded in the physical structure of your brain. It's almost impossible to forget a skill like that. What skill did you learn as a kid? Can you still do it today as an adult? How do you deal with stress? Anyone else find it helpful to tune out and prevent all the stress others are feeling from worming its way into your psyche so that you can be useful? Let me know in the comment section of Weekly Link Love. Thanks for reading, as always! I appreciate you all. | 