http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6611967/not-google-plus

Watching ‘Stress, Portrait of a Killer – Full Doc 2008 by National Geographic’ ( a 15 minutes version is also available) I’m not so sure about the hard wiring. If baboons can change their culture so radically from aggressive into peaceful why could humans not do it, too?

True, for the baboons the cultural change was only possible after the aggressive stressor jerks of the community were killed by their own damaged immune systems (and some infected meat stolen from humans)…

Epicurus and his friends did not wait for all the aggressive human bullies to kill themselves but formed intentional alternative communities for the cultivation of human flourishing through stress-FREEDOM and friendship.

In fact, in our own days, too, more and more human groups are opting out from the majority’s aggressive hierarchical competitive structures and build alternative communities with different structures, like the 200 year old ordered anarchy on Tristan da Cunha or the hundreds of intentional communities in the US and West Europe.

http://www.politicsofwellbeing.com/2011/06/kalle-lasn-founder-of-adbusters-on.html?spref=fb

Ancient Epicureans had up to 30 “buy nothing days” a month. Even wealthy Roman Epicureans reserved 3-7 days a month for austerity: they slept on the hard floor and ate only bread and drank only water. The sense of this exercise was to keep up their faith in the doctrine that what [is thought by most people as] hard is in fact easy to put up with. It showed them that they can be happy without their belongings, supplies and services – a state pretty often achieved in cases when the emperor wanted their property for his friends and exiled them.

I had periods in my life when I had to live on extremely meager resources and I can say that this fact never affected my mental well being. Even if I don’t need to convince myself of this fact I still keep a bread-and-water day every now and then, just as a reminder of one of the techniques of stress-FREEDOM.

“pride is an inward directed emotion that exemplifies either a high sense of one’s personal status or ego (i.e., leading to judgments of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection.” (Wikipedia)

Especially Epicureans should be ashamed of it and work hard at getting rid of it as soon as possible since its ugly head indicates an over-inflated ego or a dangerous vulnerability to praise. If independent self-reflection should lead to pride one ought to improve one’s self-reflective skills. Urgently.

I can’t help feeling proud of my friends, though.

It took me over forty years to understand that I don’t understand the correlation between my needs, my desires and the way I satisfy those desires, resulting in stressing myself, my  friends and family, my coworkers and supervisors, clients and suppliers. It took me another five years to read all the relevant books on Epicurean life techniques and happiness studies to work my way out of the jungle and another five years to hone my tools by using them to set people free of their self-defeating beliefs and  unhealthy habits and help them dismantle the walls they build between themselves and their pathway to happiness through congruence and stress-FREEDOM. It took me another year and the invaluable support of my wife to write a wise AND funny book for those who are interested in spending the rest of their lives walking toward their own happiness instead of working for their own or someone else’s greed.

My friends, however, must have been born wise and don’t seem to need the distilled fruits of hard-earned practical wisdom packed in nicely wrapped palatable pieces of advice. They must be champions in analyzing their desires, in satisfying their natural needs through synergistic satisfiers, in keeping their lifestyle and behavior patterns in line with their values and attitudes, serenely threading down their own proven pathways from pain to pleasure, producing their own happiness though congruence and stress-FREEDOM.

I must assume they do all this judging from the absence of their comments on the excerpts of my book that I have been publishing in sequels in my blog. The only topic they mildly reacted to was sequel 15: “How Is It Possible To Find Romantic Love? “

Complete strangers ask me when  will my book be available in print and on kindl, when will I start training and coaching sessions on the Galenian Epicurean Conduct of Life, or at least publicly speak about it. (Which I don’t’ know yet. I still have to take care of my health and the happiness of my family.)

But it’s a relief that my friends are doing well, confidently threading their own pathways toward happiness.( Or what they believe is happiness?)

It’s a shame to feel proud but who could help not being proud of them? (Maybe Epicurus?)

You might be wondering how you’re supposed to find your soul mate when, on one hand, Maslow and Max-Neef declare love and affection and sex to be important needs, while on the other hand, you’re not supposed to be needy and scare off anyone who’s not of a mind to serve as your rescuer. That’s a darn good question, with a fairly simple answer.

If we all had identical upbringings during which we successfully satisfied all of our needs, progressed in an orderly fashion up Maslow’s hierarchy, and dodged serious mental problems, we’d all enter the find-a-mate marketplace on equal footing where needs are concerned.

But that’s a huge, probably impossible, “if.” We’re not all sitting atop a solid brick foundation; most of us are missing a brick or two. For instance, those of us who grew up in poverty may not have had all of our safety needs satisfied. As a result of not having much money, maybe our parents could not afford good health insurance coverage, so trips to the doctor were few and far between, which resulted in our not having received the medical care we needed at a critical time. As a result, our teeth are crooked and stained, or we’re obese, or we have acne scars, or we need thick glasses.

Maybe we wore unfashionable hand-me-downs instead of the latest trendy clothes that everyone else — or so it seemed — got to wear. Maybe we couldn’t participate in sports because we had to work every day after school. These circumstances certainly don’t make us unlovable, but they very well could cause us to have very low self-confidence, low self-esteem and low expectations — in short, unmet needs.

This is where self-knowledge comes in handy. If we understand ourselves and our perceptions, shortcomings and idiosyncrasies, we can learn to accept ourselves as we are and push forward with a healthy relationship, rather than focusing on our sorry past and expecting someone to assume the job of parent and fill the chinks and gaps in our faulty foundations.

Our goal should be to be able to state with confidence and sincerity: “I need you because I love you.” Can you see how this is very different from “I love you because I need you”?

To read my complete Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The  Proven Pathway to Happiness” go to http://stressfreedomguide.com/

I knew, I even signed a paper proving that I was told, that radiation therapy of the abdominal area can cause, among other side effects, also diarrhea.

Which it did.  At first only on the treatment free days on weekends giving me a good excuse to skip the mandatory family walks.

The last three treatments were made with higher doses of radiation on smaller surfaces, in order to boost the curative effect. Which I assume they did, but they definitely boosted the side effects as well.

For the last three weeks (two weeks before and one week after finishing the radiation therapy)  I have had the worst case of diarrhea in my life. The last three days I have been practically living on crackers, broth and cranberry juice.

However, during the 6 weeks of treatment I lost 12 pounds (5.4 kg) weight, a side effect of the side effect diarrhea, that I don’t mind at all.

The flipside is that the side effects of the therapy should dwindle away in 3-4 weeks after finishing it and I am going to put on weight again, adding to my overweight – if I don’t dwindle away myself in the process. Which would be too much loss of weight, even if my body mass index had turned into ideal.

Which I hope it won’t since  my last  motto is:  better overweight in the bed than ideal weight in the casket.

I am planning on a wild experiment today: to gormandize a whole  boiled potato and a whole grated apple today, on top of the beef broth and cranberry juice liberally served by my wife. It will have a win-win outcome: if I can hold them, I will keep, or, maybe even slightly increase my weight while definitely increasing my energy and pleasure levels. If I can’t: I will improve my body mass index.

If this isn’t positive thinking, I don’t know what is.

SLAVERY (4) >> LET’S PUT OUR FEARS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

First, keep in mind that there is a great deal of overlap among the fears I’ll describe; each can be entangled with another. Second, it’s entirely normal to have a few fears. (If someone is completely overwhelmed with fears, however, he or she should consider living in a basket.)

Fear of pain

The pain may be emotional or physical; it is a state of being uncomfortable, or in agony, or somewhere in between. First, fear of physical pain: Physical pain is inevitable. We learn that the first time we fall out of a tree or get stung by a bee or endure that first headache, and we learn to accept it. And with all the pills and creams on the market today, the pain can have a short shelf-life. Chronic pain can be a bigger burden, and fortunately there is an ever-increasing arsenal of weapons to combat it.

There is also the physical discomfort that comes with feeling very cold or very hot or very hungry or thirsty. Thousands of years ago our ancestors feared it as well. We know that they took steps to alleviate their discomfort, and our measures are very similar to theirs. We have blankets, clothing, indoor plumbing, and a never-ending supply of food that we can store in our refrigerators and freezers. The problem is that quite often we placate our fear of pain to a point of excess, which results in more discomfort and stress. How? Through purchases of way-too-many winter coats, way-too-large homes, luxurious swimming pools, spas, whirlpools and hot tubs, gourmet foods and expensive liquor.

I’m not suggesting that acquiring possessions is wrong in any way. What is problematic is letting our outgo exceed our income. Isn’t it ironic that our worries can cause us to lay awake nights in silk pajamas on a huge splendid bed in a palatial ocean-front home because our credit cards are maxxed out? Happiness can never be attained in such a state of stress.

This brings us to the other kind of pain: mental and emotional pain. We may or may not play a role in our internal pain. There can be causes out of our immediate control (e.g., being married to a deployed soldier, the serious illness of a loved one, or hereditary mental conditions) and causes over which we can exert some degree of control (a miserable marriage, a crime-ridden neighborhood, a dead-end job, intolerable in-laws).

We’ve established that a credit card is a popular way to deal with the fear of physical discomfort (real or imagined). It probably won’t take you more than 30 seconds to answer this question: What are some of the common methods people use to combat mental and emotional pain? Some of these would undoubtedly be on your list:

•Exercise                                                          •Ecstasy

•Cigarettes                                                       •Counseling

•Beer                                                                                •Dope

•Meditation                                                       •Vodka

•Pain-killers                                                       •Prayer

Sadly, a too-common outcome of some of these weapons against pain is criminal activity, civil disobedience and addiction, which greatly magnifies the original pain, especially if someone is killed by a driver who is returning home after drowning his pain in a nearby pub. Doesn’t sound to me like a clear path to stress-FREEDOM.

<end of sequel 4 – to be continued>

My answer is:

I am firmly convinced that it could help lots of stressFREEDOM seekers, stressed adults and teenagers find their peace, supervisors and employees resolve their conflicts if they used the 2300 year old techniques I re-discovered, re-engineered and modernized.

I might even find the time to edit and review my notes.

But: I am not sure I will have time and energy left enough to

• coach and train the ECOL – Epicurean Conduct of Life™  stressFREEDOM coaches™ and stressFREEDOM therapists™
• coordinate the process of their certification
• set up the organizational structures needed to ensure the quality of instruction and supervision of practice of ECOL – Epicurean Conduct of Life™ stressFREEDOM coaches™ and stressFREEDOM therapists™

They countered that this would be feasible with support from committed laymen and experts.

I believe they are right but I am not sure that they will find a committed team for this project.

At least most probably not in my (seemingly more and more limited:) lifetime…

Also: I am not convinced that people know that stressFREEDOM is a constitutive element of a happy life. The prevalent education systems and media make them believe that in order to be happy they should strive for “success’ by being better than others and accumulate more possessions or buyable experiences than their neighbors. Nobody teaches them that the moment they decided to compete they have already lost…

As a child I was always scared to death when the doctor was preparing to give me a shot because I anticipated the pain it would cause. I remember once the family physician saw my tears and asked me ironically whether the shot he was only preparing already hurt. I said: “No, it doesn’t hurt YET, but it’s surely going to…”

Stoics prepare for the adversities by imagining every morning all the possible and probable inconveniences they might encounter so in case something unpleasant really does happen they would be prepared.

The Epicureans do not deem it necessary to spoil half of the forenoon by just imagining all kinds of unpleasant experiences. They just tell themselves something like: “Yes, the sh*t does hit the fan every now and again but I will deal with it when it will actually happen and won’t spoil my day by imagining now how I would deal with it when and if it happened.”

I know now what Epicurus and his followers knew before me:  that our “bad experiences” are never sooooooo bad as we imagine them in anticipation.

Therefore I stopped the habit of anticipating pains.

(But of course there is nothing wrong in anticipating future pleasures, like for instance a great sleep under sedation:)

Luckily we are reminded of our mortality by the news on the TV or by the diagnosis of a rare but aggressive carcinoma that life should not be wasted and the chances of enjoying leisure should not be delayed.