Alrighty, let's continue on. Okay, so we know that the news is both your friend and enemy and you now know you're going to kind of control your consumption of the news. Eventually where I hope to get to here is to give you more general suggestions about how to survive in an isolation kind of situation. And I'm going to take a look at these components we talked about. And I'll talk about the need for structure in your life and will think about how we could sort of imagine a day with these components in it. So part of that day already will be yes, we're going to consume some news but we're going to do it in just a couple maybe three blocks of time. And so what do we do in the rest of the time? Well, so I really want to talk to you now about the importance of distractions, the critical art of mental distraction to crowd out stressors. Your mind, one of the cool things about the conscious mind is that it can really only ruminate on one thing at a time. And if you're watching the news all the time, that's what's going to be ruminating in your mind. But you can kind of change the channel on your conscious mind if you can successfully pull it away from whatever it is that's causing your anxiety. So that's what we're going to talk about here. And I'm going to give you some ideas of really powerful distractors, but let's start with this concept of crowding out because I just want to make sure that's all cool. And this is a concept that psychologists rely on quite a bit. So for example, if somebody say spends a lot of time eating food like this fast food and they're gaining a ton of weight. And they say, and they know the way to lose weight is to not eat so much of this food. But if they're only focusing on that, they're trying to avoid, I don't want to stop at McDonald's when I go by. I don't want to whatever and now they're thinking about McDonald's all the time. What they're kind of doing is priming McDonald's. They're making themselves want McDonald's by having it in mind as something to avoid. So it's like anxiety, right? So if you try to tell yourself to not be anxious, you're thinking about your anxiety and you're making yourself more anxious. What you have to do is focus on the opposite. So we already saw this with the relaxation, focus on relaxation and you can crowd out the anxiety. In the dieting world, they will say they will tell people, I'm not necessarily going to tell you to eat less junk food. What I want you to focus on, I want you to kind of put that aside. What I want you to focus on is eating more good food. So I'm going to give you this diet but the diet will just say eat certain good quality nutritious foods at certain times a day. And if you eat enough of those, well, the stomach is only so big, right? And our appetite is only so big so if we've say associated it with a bunch of good stuff, then we don't have that urge for the junk food because there's no room for it. You've crowded it out. So rather than thinking about reducing that, you think about increasing something else. Rather than reducing junk food, increase the good food and that itself will crowd out the junk food. And that's a psychologically much better way because now your mind is focused on the good thing, right? And so that's the kind of context. So what we want to talk about is crowding out anxious thoughts. Again, not by saying, stop being anxious but by actually focusing our mind on something else, filling our consciousness with something else, and thereby pushing the anxiety out because there's just not enough room for it. Okay, so that's the basic psychological concept of a lot of these that you can sort of change your mind. You can again, we're all talking about controlling our mental states, which is something we often don't spend enough time doing. And this is actually a good opportunity for me to highlight mindfulness because mindfulness comes into psychology everywhere. And it certainly when you're attempting to change your way of being and especially when you're attempting to take control of your mental states, often the first step is to attend to your mental states in the first place. Because in a normal way of being, it's kind of like our body just runs away with us and it runs away with our mind too. And sometimes there's all these things going on in our mind and we don't even kind of think about how much time we're thinking about this or thinking about that. So one of the first steps is to learn to introspect, to learn to actually pay attention to what's on your mind, to be mindful of your conscious thoughts and to start getting control of them. So if there's too much anxiety coming up there, well, how can you change those thoughts? Okay, so here's where I'm going to really point to your environment and we can pick TV as one medium but it is just one medium. But what I would suggest is trying to find some things that you enjoy watching. Now, sports for many of us is known as our great distraction, right? It's what we go to to kind of unwind from from life. And again, this is something we sort of do naturally anyway. At the end of the day, we watch some TV to get the workday out of our mind, same concept here. Now, sports is tricky now because there aren't any [LAUGH] there in any live ones, but you can still do things. My wife and I are big Formula 1 fans for instance and and we are now watching the 2012 season from the beginning. We all remember what happened. It turns out it's all on YouTube. It's supposed to be one of the best seasons in Formula 1 ever. So we're starting, we're on race two now and we're working [LAUGH] our way through. And it's something we enjoy thinking about. It's something that grabs our mind and so it works out really well. So you might want to consider doing that too. Go back in time and reexperience some great moments in sport, maybe like when Team Canada beat Russia in the 70s. Sorry, all you Russians. I had to bring that up. All right, comedy, okay, I will highlight this more later, but don't underestimate laughter. It's a huge anti-stresser, smiling, laughing, feeling good. It's really a great way to oppose anxiety. So if there's something, if it's Mr. Bean, some silly slapstick thing, whatever it is, if you find yourself chuckling and laughing while you're watching it, that's fantastic. So yeah, things like that are great and maybe it's just a movie, maybe it's just some sort of movie that's on and you want to really pull your mind away for two hours. A good movie can do that. Again, I would maybe recommend comedies but comedies can be tricky. I mean, it's hard to make people laugh in movies. It really is, comedies are hard art to pull off. So it doesn't really matter what it is, but I just wouldn't pick disaster movies or anything [LAUGH] that's full of scary, going to kick up your anxiety. I would pull a deep drama that's going to pull you into a storyline, something like that. The key, again, is something that will really fill your mind and crowd out the anxiety. So you can see your TV as one way of doing that. But of course, it goes much more beyond TV. So let's just talk a little bit about certain distractions because these are the ones, and I'm going to get more into the idea of those of you with children at home and helping them to control their mental states, manage their mental states. There are certain activities you can do. Remember, we're not going to watch news very much. So we have a lot of day to fill with activities. One of them by the way, I just realized it's not even going to be on this slide but let me mention it. Some of you with kids at home, this idea of sitting down like home schooling your child, which is something you're not used to doing. But I want to mention that's a really good distraction. And it's a really good, rich, deep interaction to sit down with your child and helps them or maybe they help you understand some concept that they're learning. Usually, we let teachers have those interactions but those are really nice interactions with our children. It's a chance to really communicate about deep things in a cool way where you're helping them or they're helping you. If they're teaching you what they're learning, that's fantastic too. So I'd say that's something we'll throw out there that that's kind of cool. But here are the things that I wanted to just kind of bring you to. So I've already kind of highlighted this with Mr. Bean but laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter, things that will make you and your family laugh together should be sought out. You should be looking for funny things. Look on the online for the funniest family movies or whatever it is, yeah, prioritize laughter. Singing has been shown to be a very powerful stress reducer that has a suggesting right here, right down to the neurochemical components. So cortisol, I'll just mention cortisol. By the way, cortisol is you can measure how much of it is in the blood and it directly reflects stress or anxiety. So we can know if something is reducing stress by looking at cortisol levels, and we know that singing is a great therapy. Now, by singing here, I don't mean standing up in front of a bunch of other people and singing. I do that, that can be stressful. That can be anxiety-producing. I mean, singing for the joy of singing, just find some old, whatever the old music is that you love. And by the way, those of you who have older family members that are very anxious right now, find the music that was big when they were 15 to 25 years old. Create a playlist and in some manner, get them that playlist. And that can be a great way. They will naturally sing along. They will smile. They will feel happy. That is a powerful, powerful way to control their anxiety. And of course, it works on YouTube. My wife and I the other day listened to Beatles 1. So it's all their number one songs. We know every one of them and we can sing along and doing that together and singing along together, fantastic way to reduce stress. Dance if you're so inclined. Very similar to kind of singing, it's a very primitive, think what we did back in the day, right, around the campfire with a rhythm and dancing and singing. And that sort of thing brings us together for one thing and it just releases a lot of positive endorphins that are a great antidote to stress. So let me just highlight this point. I talked about crowding out. So the real core is get your mind somewhere else, but what I'm suggesting here is there's certain somewhere else that are medicinal in a sense. They are not just going to pull you away from the anxiety. They're actually going to give you something that sort of fights on the neurochemical level, that anxiety response. So that's why I say they have extra mojo, they're special. A couple of others for the list, if you're into yoga and that kind of thing, from the guided relaxation, it's all about relaxing your body and feeling that relaxation. People who do yoga, first of all, meditation is usually part of that, which is great. And by the time you're finished the yoga session, your body feels probably more relaxed than it does in the guided relaxation session. So again, it's another opportunity for you to really feel what relaxation feels like by first holding some poses where you are holding muscles and stretching them. It's very similar to some extent but then you release the pose and you get to feel the release of that tension and stress. So yoga's great. And then here's one we don't completely understand but we've known this for years. Aerobic activity enhances emotional positivity. So people who engage in aerobic activity on a regular basis are happier. They feel better. They have more positive emotional states. They are less stressed. So if you can fit aerobic activity now, we're starting to imagine our day, right? We have a little bit of news in there, maybe we're going to spend some time doing aerobic activities of some sort, exercise of one form or another, maybe yoga, maybe jogging, for example. We're going to find some other times when maybe we work on homeschooling, but maybe we have some times when we think about singing or dancing or laughing. We can schedule these things into our day and that schedule itself will make our days better. We'll get there. Okay, here's my number one recommendation, especially to families but to anybody, a lot of our Smart TVs have some sort of built-in karaoke. If you go in the menu, you can usually find a karaoke in there. Sing along with your family. And if you're not a good singer, fantastic, maybe they'll laugh at you. If they laugh at you, laughter is powerful. That's very, very, cool, laugh with them. In fact, maybe see this as an opportunity to, and this is a theme I'm going to bring up a little bit. You're going to be home with your kids a lot. Those are you there, maybe there are opportunities for them to really learn something through this whole experience. And one of the things you could teach them is how to laugh at yourself, such a great skill. So often, with kids, when somebody laughs at them, they feel their feelings are hurt and it turns into a really negative experience. You can maybe model for them and they're watching you every minute. People laughing at you and then you laughing along with them and going yeah, whatever, I'm trying, man, I'm trying. Maybe a different song, I'll be able to sing better. But if you can laugh along with them, first of all, all that laughter and singing combined is fantastic. If they're dancing while they're singing, all the better. It's a thing you can do as a family and have a lot of fun doing it. So that's my number one recommendation, kind of brings together some of these things. All right, so that gives you an idea about how you can use stimuli in the external world and activities you engage in to pull yourself away from the anxiety, and in some cases, to actually do something that opposes the sort of neurochemical effects that anxiety can cause. And so I recommend those highly. Okay, let me leave it there. See you in the next video, bye-bye.
