Where Does The Fast Lane Go?

"I am a marketing executive working for a company. We are authorized channel partner of a big concern. I have huge targets to be accomplished each and every month but due to the present market conditions I am not able to achieve them. The job is a great pressure and the stress level is much too high for me to cope up with. How can I come to terms with it?"

This person is one of millions trying to live in the fast lane and keep their nerves intact. He is young, educated, dynamic and... disintegrating! The pace of modern life seems so hasty - just a whirl of minutes, hours, and days.

Living in the fast lane is heady. The mind is fully charged and the body keeps on pumping more adrenaline into the blood stream. People are momentarily on a high, but the high is shadowed by the low which comes in its wake.

In metro-cities, commuting to work for an hour each way is normal. Has anybody thought what effect it has on the nervous system and the physique?

Joyce Walsleben, director of New York University's Sleep Disorders Center, says about her research: "We found that people on a long commute, separate from their weight or obesity or age or any other factor, tended to have higher blood pressure and many of them had hypertension."

Walsleben conducted a study of 21,000 Long Island Railroad commuters who travelled more than an hour and fifteen minutes between work and home. "Half of them couldn't stay awake when they had to or they couldn't fall asleep when they wanted to," she says.

Teens today have adapted to busy schedules like they would a second skin. They compromise - on sleep, on homework, on social lives. They learn to get by. Whatever it takes to balance school, sports activities, part-time jobs and family obligations, t complete for a place in college, to have spending money...

Fast food, fast relationships, fast success... people need everything fast. Eating on the run is the most popular mode of eating. Seventy per cent of people in America prefer eating in a drive-through restaurant. "The fat-paced, time-constrained lifestyle that we as a society have developed over the past decade is driving the demand for drive-thrus," says Stephen Spence, served as vice president with Southwest Securities in Dallas. "It's an integral part of the way we eat today."

However, it's not just in America that the fast food craze has taken off. Eateries and fast parlors have mushroomed all over the world and never lack customers.

Life is more exciting but also more tiring. The signs of fast lane fatigue are in evidence. It is clear that the fascination with speed and efficiency has taken a more serious turn. So many people are living in the fast lane, with or without the knowledge that the road ends on a cliff.

But does that mean we should reverse the gear and go back to the good old days? Certainly not. There is no rewinding in the time track. What is more intelligent and creative is to turn the situation into a blessing. Create new devices to relax in the fast lane. Let life run full speed while you sit back and relax in the whirlpool of activity.

It is said that the contemporary man has everything but time. Absolutely true. But what about one-minute meditations? Why not make the most of every minute?

This is what this post is about. There are many fast lane relaxation techniques for you. It's fun, not a serious affair. Life is so short, who has time for lengthy, serious meditations? Let the turmoil be on the surface. Think of the ocean where in the depth there are no waves, no turbulence. It is simply a question of turning in.

If you have a long commute every day, use that time for talking gibberish to relieve tension. Or, sit back and watch the mind. Let the vehicle whir at the top speed, you can slow down within. Be aware of the gaps in thoughts, in feelings, in breaths, between two gears or two cars... Look for the gaps, and your energy will fall into a relaxed space.

Life is full of competition. You can compete with yourself.

Who doesn't get the blues? But you can dance them away.

Especially in these times of panic and fear, it is imperative to hold onto our sanity. If the future seems to be increasingly bleak, start living in the present. Go deeper and deeper into very moment and life in the fast lane will be transformed. Then you will actually start enjoying it without having to suffer from its side effects.

We are really at the crossroad in the world's history. It is absolutely up to us which fork we take - either down towards fear, anxiety, and finally global suicide; or up towards responsibility, consciousness and love - the golden future.

There are millions hits on the internet search drive for Wellness - from mental to physical health, cardiac fitness, cancer, yoga, how to overcome certain ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, stoke, and tips on weight loss and how to grow taller, with many other ideas getting honorable mention. It takes quite a bit of research to find any one site that has so much to offer on all these fronts, let alone one that can combine all the needs for your innermost wellness - joy, bliss and beyond. For wellness' sake you can stop looking out there, and take some time for yourself, a sort of one-stop-shop: Balanced Lifestyle Wikipedia.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Where-Does-The-Fast-Lane-Go?&id=10037309

Why Your Old Friends Are Vital to Your Future

A new study finds surprising links between our youthful and adult social lives.

As social animals we have a fundamental need to feel connected to others. Indeed,loneliness can be a devastating psychological condition, hugely damaging to our physical as well as psychological health. 

But is there a way to predict who might be at risk for becoming lonely later in life?

A new study in the journal Psychology and Aging examined whether the nature of the connections we forge at different stages of adulthood has an impact on our likelihood to become lonely later in life. Specifically, using data collected over a 30-year span, researchers examined how the quantity and quality of the social connections we make in our 20s and 30s are related to emotional and psychological well-being in our 50s.

A 30-Year Study

Cheryl Carmichael of Brooklyn College and colleagues used data from people who had participated in a diary study in 1974 and 1980 (when they were 18 and 22 years old, respectively) in which they documented any social interactions that lasted over 10 minutes and rated them on how pleasant or unpleasant the experience was, as well as on how intimate the exchanges felt. Similar data were collected from same participants between 1985 and 1986, when they were 27-to-31 years old.

The researchers then contacted the participants again in 2007, when they were between the ages of 48 and 52, and collected data about their emotional and psychological well-being; the quantity and quality of their current social connections; how big their social networks were; how socially isolated they felt (loneliness); and whether they were depressed.

The results indicated that in our 20s, it is the quantity of our social connections that predict whether we are likely to be lonely in our 50s. The more connections we have, the lesslikely we are to be lonely and depressed decades later. But once we reach our 30s, it is the quality of our social connections that matters—the more intimate and close our connections are at that stage, the better our emotional well-being is likely to be decades later.

The question is: Why does the function of our social connections shift between our 20s and 30s?

Our 20s mark a developmental stage in our lives in which we're exploring the adult world for the first time independent of our families. As such, we tend to engage in social information seeking, so we can learn as much as we can about the world and gain knowledge about people and relationships that can then allow us to better navigate the relational complexities of modern life in both personal and professional settings.

Once we reach our 30s and we have quenched, at least somewhat, our desire for interpersonal knowledge, our focus shifts. We begin to seek more stable and long-lasting connections, and therefore become more focused on the emotional closeness our connections provide. As a result, the quality of our relationships becomes more important than the quantity.

In fact, having too many social connections in our 30s might even interfere with our ability to increase the emotional closeness and intimacy of our relationships. The study found that people who had an abundance of social connections in their 30s actually fared a little worse in their 50s than those who did not.

We might tend to think of people with thriving social lives as being immune from loneliness—but loneliness is defined purely subjectively. Whether you're lonely depends entirely on whether you feel emotionally or socially disconnected from those around you. Therefore, people who have many friends but lack the deeper intimacy of emotionally close relationships might actually feel extremely lonely despite being surrounded by many friends and acquaintances.

Given the danger loneliness poses to our quality of life as well as our longevity, it is important to take action if you are lonely at any age by becoming informed about the dangers it presents and learning about the steps you can take to alleviate emotional suffering.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201504/why-your-old-friends-are-vital-your-future