You Don’t Need to be Crazy to be an Entrepreneur…

 


 

…but being hypomanic seems to help, according to John D. Gartner, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and author of The Hypomanic Edge

In his article for The American Enterprise Institute, America’s Manic Entrepreneurs Dr. Gartner writes,
“Successful entrepreneurs are … are highly creative people who quickly generate a tremendous number of ideas—some clever, others ridiculous. Their “flight of ideas,” jumping from topic to topic in a rapid energized way, is a sign of hypomania. … It is a temperament characterized by an elevated mood state that feels “highly intoxicating, powerful, productive, and desirable” to the hypomanic, according to Frederick Goodwin and Kay Jamison, authors of the definitive book Manic-Depressive Illness. “

–John D. Gartner, Ph.D.
American Enterprise
Jul2005, Vol. 16 Issue 5, p18

I highly recommend the article to anyone who is or works with high-energy business leaders.

 


 

Another Good Reason to Meditate

 


Dr. Peter Suedfeld, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and an expert in human cognition. …told us that creativity is a “very mysterious thing” that “exists in pretty much everyone” — but that there are indeed ways to improve it. One method he has studied extensively is what he calls the Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique (REST) — putting people into places with no light or outside stimuli.

“What I’ve found,” he said, “is that far from making people crazy, moderate deprivation lowers blood pressure, improves mood, and makes people more creative.”

From: “Outside the Box”: The Inside Story
By Martin Kihn, Fast Company, June 2005

Found in:

IDEAS IN THE NEWS
A biweekly publication of MeansBusiness
Vol. VI No. 8 — June 29, 2005 

 


 

See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.

 


Meditation for Managers video


 

Best-borne trials

 


 

This child — he thought — has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!

 —Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop

 

 


 

More Reasons You Are Wise to Walk

 


 

I have written before about the health, mind, and business benefits of walking. I even went so far as to build a treadmill desk so I can walk while using my computer. To bolster your motivation toward movement read this overview of clinical and anecdotal evidence assembled by Arianna Huffington. New in 2022, this from Science News: Do we get our most creative ideas when walking?

 

The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

Henry David Thoreau

 

 


 

Embrace the Pain

 


 

To live is to suffer.

–The Buddha

 


 

But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, there must be a in meaning in suffering. … Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

— Viktor Emil Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning

 


 

One always finds one’s burden again. … The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

–Albert Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus

 


 

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness

 


 

People who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives have the same [inflammatory response] as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. …

 

Meaning was defined as an orientation to something bigger than the self.

Happiness was defined by feeling good. …

 

“Empty positive emotions are about as good for you for as adversity,” says Dr. Fredrickson. …

 

From the evidence of this study, it seems that feeling good is not enough. People need meaning to thrive. In the words of Carl Jung, “The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” Jung’s wisdom certainly seems to apply to our bodies, if not also to our hearts and our minds.

 

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness
by Emily Esfahani Smith
The Atlantic Magazine

 


 

Too Hard Tonight? Try again in the morning.

 


 

How many times do I need to relearn this fact of life? Last night I tried to correct a troublesome Excel spreadsheet until I gave-up in frustration. This morning, I fixed it in five minutes.

 

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

–Macbeth (2.2.46-51)

 


 

Been down so long it looks like up to me


 

The point at which what we are given is difficult beyond endurance is a point that pierces and refines the soul. And (though this may be hard to believe) it is possible to be so fluid and centered, so filled with trust in the intelligence of the universe, that even the horror can pass through us and eventually be transformed into light.

Stephen Mitchell
Genesis: A New Translation of the Classic Bible Stories
Quoted in Psychology Today, December 1, 1996

 


 

A quick and novel technique for integrating difficult moods and experiences is here Resistance is Futile on this blog.

 

See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.

 


Meditation for Managers video


 

How to Increase Employee Cooperation and Collaboration

 


 

Would you like to more than triple the chances that your employees will volunteer to help a colleague or a customer? In just two months. For free.

Easy. Encourage your staff  to meditate for 20 minutes per day. That is the conclusion from a recent study.

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help.

From Grey Matter: The Morality of Meditation
by David DeSteno, Ph. D. in The New York Times
describing research
by Paul Condon, Ph. D., Northeastern University
published in Psychological Science

 


 

See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.

 


Meditation for Managers video