While it is commonly accepted that our behavior is controlled by our brains, the experiences we have quite literally form our brains. For example, stress can have tangible effects on the body, directly contributing to numerous physical problems, heart disease and asthma. But new medical research suggests we should be much more worried about stress, because there is good evidence it could also cause actual physical brain damage and directly shrink our grey matter.The finding partly came about through the study of one of the most stressful experiences of all - war. Back in the mid 1990s military combat veterans in the USA had their brains scanned with the very latest imaging machines. The surprising finding was that in those who had seen more action, who had been nearer and longer at the front line, the brain structure called the hippocampus tended to be significantly smaller . It looked as if being at war actually caused parts of the brain to shrink and wither away.
The hippocampus - the word derives from the Greek for sea horse because this small paired structure near the centre of the brain resembles the shape of a sea horse - now appears to be the part of the brain most vulnerable to sustaining structural damage secondary to mental stress.
Stress causes an increase in a variety of hormones released into our bloodstream, but of most interest is a group called glucocorticoids, which raise the heart rate, boost the immune system and suppress energy-intensive systems such as reproduction. Such changes are clearly useful for an animal trying to escape from a predator, but a side-effect of decades of chronic stress is that overexposure to these particular stress hormones seems to shrink your hippocampus.
But do you have to go to war to damage your brain? Is less extreme stress still a danger? Sure enough, studies have now established that the longer you have experienced symptoms of mere depression, the smaller your hippocampus is.
For example, Yvette Sheline and her colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis recently reported a brain imaging study that revealed that the hippocampi of depressed patients were on average 12% to 15% smaller than those of controls of the same age, height and level of education. Numerous other studies have found similar results. `It is absolutely clear that really prolonged major depression is associated with loss of hippocampal volume,' concludes Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University - the first neuroscientist to discover from his work with primates how vulnerable the hippocampus was to stress.
Exactly why the hippocampus shrinks is still open to debate, but we also know that the hippocampus is one of the few parts of the brain where new nerve cell growth occurs and this may be because it's a key part of the nervous system involved in memory. It now seems that when we lay down new memories it's because new nerve cells have grown in our hippocampus to code for these recollections.
The particular kind of memory coded for by the hippocampus is spatial memory - when you are looking for your misplaced keys it's your hippocampus that will be activated.
Taxi drivers recently given brain scans by scientists at University College London had a larger hippocampus compared with other people - it appears that their extensive geographical knowledge leads to remarkable growth in this part of the brain. The hippocampus grew larger as taxi drivers spent more time in the job, so the chances of finding your destination are increased by hailing a cab driver with a larger hippocampus. The hippocampus is significantly bigger too in birds and animals for whom navigation is a vital part of their evolutionary strategy. For example, birds that use space around them to hide and locate food have larger hippocampal volumes than closely related species that do not.
If the hippocampus codes for spatial memory and shrinks when stressed, it is intriguing to note that stress can have important effects on our memory. Traumatic stress often leads us to avoid a place where we experienced shock, or to become anxious as we get near that location again, particularly as a result of our vivid memories for the traumatic incident. For example, those involved in automobile accidents often become more upset as they get closer to the precise road where the event occurred, suggesting that the hippocampus which codes for spatial memory is playing a key role in how stress affects us.
Princeton University neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould has found that exposing monkeys to chronic stress blocks new nerve growth and perhaps it is cell destruction combined with a lack of new growth that produces the effects of stress on our hippocampus.3o
Intriguingly, several treatments for depression might have the opposite effect. Some anti-depressants, for example, increase the amount of serotonin in the gaps between brain cells, and serotonin is a well-known promoter of cell growth. Ronald Duman of Yale University and his colleagues have found that rodents given anti-depressant drugs or electroshock therapy all have significantly more newly grown cells in the hippocampus. This suggests, Duman says, that increased nerve cell growth is a common effect of antidepressant treatment and could even be the main mechanism by which anti-depressants work.
Doctors had assumed that depression results from changes on a more molecular scale - an imbalance in chemical messengers that communicate among brain cells. But perhaps the real issue is the way the actual physical structure of the brain is altered in depression or stress.
A more natural anti-depressant - exercise - may also encourage brain cell growth. Exercise has been shown to increase the level of serotonin in the brain and can often help patients shake off mild depressive symptoms. Neuroscientist Fred Gage and colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California report that rats with access to a running wheel had more than twice as many newly growing brain cells as did mice with no running wheel. Since the rodents ran an average of nearly five kilometres per day for several months, it would seem that next time you pass an ardent jogger you should admire the size of their hippocampus.
But one question continued to trouble scientists despite these exciting developments: how could they be sure that the smaller hippocampi that the depressed and stressed seemed to have was a consequence of stress? Perhaps it was still remotely possible that it was having a smaller hippocampus in the first place that predisposes some to mental problems? Which comes first - the small hippocampus or the large stress?
Mark Gilbertson and colleagues at Harvard Medical School brain scanned seventy identical twins - one of each pair was a Vietnam combat veteran who had clearly been exposed to the huge stress of war, while the other had stayed at home and had no combat exposure. Sure enough the men who went to war, and who ended up suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), also had smaller than average hippocampi. But more astonishing yet was the finding that their identical non-combat twin also had a smaller hippocampus, of roughly the same size as that of the twin who had served in war and then developed PTSD.
So one group went through combat trauma while their siblings were not in the war, yet both groups had small hippocampi. So instead of brain shrinkage happening as a consequence of the stress of trauma, a small hippocampus must have preceded the experience of war. The amazing finding suggests that having a smaller hippocampus predisposes you to develop traumatic stress, and may even predict that you will suffer from mental health problems if you are stressed.
It could well be, with more research to explore and confirm this finding, that a small hippocampus should be viewed as a risk factor for PTSD and thus, like a heart murmur, should be an exclusionary factor for some types of military service. It could even be that brain scanning our hippocampi might help predict who is going to develop depression or other mental illnesses in the future.
Just because identical twins were involved in the study does not mean that having a smaller hippocampus is a purely genetic effect. Identical twins can have much more similar foetal environments than do non-identical twins. A `two hit' model is possible whereby early childhood stress caused the hippocampus to shrink a lot and it was this prior vulnerability combined with the second hit of stress from then fighting a war that later tipped those who finally got PTSD over the edge.
Some support for this `two hit' model comes from Mark Gilbertson's finding that those who developed PTSD had a shared higher chance of experiencing childhood abuse with their co-twin who had not gone to war. Oddly enough the `two hit' theory has dramatic implications for the population back home when an army is abroad fighting, which is that the first `hit' could be happening as mothers who are pregnant experience the stress and uncertainty of war.
Research by psychiatrist Jim Van Os and colleagues from Holland has found that the chances of a mother giving birth to a child who later grows up to develop schizophrenia went up by at least 28% if she was pregnant during the very stressful time of May 1940, when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. The maternal stress hormones or glucocorticoids that can damage the hippocampus in adult life might even be capable of damaging the hippocampus of an unborn child.
It would seem that it is vital pregnant mothers try to stay as relaxed as possible during such troubled times and in particular ensure that their healthy diet remains undisturbed by perturbations of mood. Otherwise their stress, and in particular possible temporary loss of appetite, could affect the brain development of their unborn children, and become the first of the two hits needed to cause later problems like depression or traumatic stress. In other words, to echo the words of one psychiatrist whom Robert Sapolsky likes to quote, and who oversaw a ward full of PTSD sufferers in an American Veterans' Administration hospital: `You have to understand that these boys had a lot of mileage under the hood before they ever set foot in Vietnam.
But even given these constraints of biology, the latest neuroscience research still suggests that we are responsible for being the persons we are. This conundrum is admitted to by philosophers like Santayana who ask, if we are not responsible for ourselves and our outcomes, `who then should be responsible?
We now know that the experiences we have shape our brains physically as well as mentally, but we also choose our experiences and these choices are shaped by our brains. It would seem that the latest neuroscience research is teaching us to be particularly careful about our freedom to choose what we do with our lives because, having chosen, our consequent experiences shape our brains, which might limit further choice. In other words, we should be vigilant about our current life choices because once chosen they could produce brain changes that then constrain future options.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, set forth some of the existential ideas for which he became famous, namely, the proclamation that `God is dead' and the doctrine of `eternal recurrence' - the idea that one is, or might be, fated to relive for ever every moment of one's life, with no omission whatsoever of any pleasurable or painful detail.
Nietzsche's atheism - his account of `God's murder' - was voiced in reaction to the concept of a single, ultimate, judgemental authority who is privy to everyone's hidden, and personally embarrassing, secrets; his atheism also aimed to redirect people's attention to their inherent freedom, in the presently existing world, and away from all escapist, pain-relieving, heavenly other worlds. To a similar end, Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence was formulated to draw attention away from all worlds other than the one in which we presently live, since eternal recurrence precludes the possibility of any final escape from the present world. The doctrine also functions as a measure for judging someone's overall psychological strength and mental health, since Nietzsche believed that it was the hardest world view to accept and affirm. In 1887, The GayScience was reissued with an important preface, an additional fifth book and an appendix of songs, reminiscent of the troubadours.
Nietzsche's own account of this peculiar idea of eternal recurrence is described in The Gay Science thus:
How, if some day or night, a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliness and say to you: `This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh ... must return to you all in the same succession and sequence even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over and you with it, a mere grain of dust.' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: `You are a god, and never did I hear anything more godlike!' If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, `Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?' would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation ... ?
This idea has been captured beautifully by the Hollywood film Groundhog Day, which is probably the only commercial movie to be dedicated to explaining the Nietzschian philosophy of existentialism! Ken Sanes, a columnist and critic living in Boston, USA, has written several beautiful analyses of the film that explain its links with Nietzschian philosophy.
One of the key points about the film is that if we don't take control of our lives we are doomed to be the pawns of fate, and we only take responsibility for our lives when we fully grasp that there is no alternative to the current one. Sadly it seems that only if we were forced to live the same life we have led over and over again would we begin to take our decisions seriously. So maybe we should consider that possibility in order to get a better handle on our control over our destiny. The true test of whether you have led a life worth living is whether you would choose to repeat it ad infinitum, without any change whatsoever.
In the movie, actor Bill Murray plays Phil, an arrogant, Scroogelike weather foritaster who spends the night in a small remote town - Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He is there to make a broadcast the next day about the annual ritual of the `coming out of the groundhog', which by local folklore is supposed to predict future weather, like the length of winter.
Bill Murray wakes up the next morning, does his story (which he finds tedious and beneath him) and is annoyed to discover that he is trapped in Punxsutawney (a town he hates) for a second night because of an unexpected snowstorm after the groundhog ceremony.
When he wakes up in his guest house room the next morning, something very peculiar appears to have happened to time: it is the morning of the day before all over again. Everything that happened to him the previous day - the man trying to start a conversation at the top of the stairs, the old high school acquaintance recognizing him on the street, the ritual of groundhog day - happens again, exactly as it did before. He alone appears to be aware that the same day has already happened.
And, once again, due to inclement weather, he is forced to spend the night. When he wakes up the next morning, it is the same day as yesterday and the day before, with the same oncoming snowstorm keeping him stuck in town and the same events repeating themselves like a broken record.
And so it goes, day after day, as this misanthrope of a human being finds himself trapped in Punxsutawney on groundhog day in what science fiction would refer to as a time loop. With each `new' day, he alone remembers what happened in previous editions of the same day but no matter what he does, he seems trapped in time, fated to repeat the same day again and again.
At first Murray's character responds with bewilderment. Then he despairs and begins to treat life as a game - after all, he finds there are no consequences - he will wake up the next morning and repeat the day again, even if he breaks the law or smokes there is no jail or cancer to bother him. So he risks his life and gorges on food, expressing both his sense of hopelessness and his growing recognition that, no matter what he does, time will reset itself and he will wake up as if nothing had happened.
Then one day he discovers that someone actually likes him for who he is, and he finally figures out a constructive response to his situation - he begins to live his life in the day allotted to him, or, rather, he begins to live the life he never lived before.
For example, he begins to take piano lessons from a music teacher who is continuously surprised at how proficient he is, since she always believes it is his first lesson. Then, an encounter with death - an old vagrant dies - has a deep effect on him. At first, he can't accept the man's death and, in at least one subsequent edition of the day, he tries to be good to ;the old man, taking him out to eat (for a last meal) and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep him alive.
Ken Sanes, the US columnist and critic, argues in his essays on the film that it is only when Bill Murray's character stops trying to force death to relent that his final defences fall away and his compassion for the old man transfers to the living. He begins to use his knowledge of how the day will unfold to help people. Knowing that a child will always fall from a tree at a certain time, he makes it a point to be there and catch the child every time. Knowing that a man will choke on his meal, he is always at a nearby table in the restaurant to save him..
Slowly, he goes through a transformation. Having suffered himself, he is able to empathize with other people's suffering. Having been isolated from society, he becomes a local hero in Punxsutawney. Now, he sees the day as a form of freedom. As he expresses it in a corny TV speech about the weather that he gives for the camera, at the umpteenth ceremony he has covered of the 'coming out' of the groundhog: `When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.'
In other words, having accepted the conditions of life and learned the pleasures afforded by human companionship, he is no longer like all those people who fear life's travails, and try to use the weather forecast, by human or groundhog, to control events. He accepts `winter' as an opportunity.
Finally, the female TV producer of the weather programme falls in love with the good person he has become and she spends the night (although he falls asleep so there is no sex). They wake up in the morning. She is still there and it is finally the next day. Having tried to lead a worthwhile life for the first time and used his day properly, Bill Murray is at last liberated to move on and use his new-found tools of acceptance, positivity and generosity in the world.
What is so powerful about Groundhog Day is the way it lets us it lets us experience what it would be like to make a breakthrough like this in our own lives. The movie shows us a character who is like the worst in ourselves. He is arrogant and sarcastic, absorbed in his own discomforts, without hope and cut off from other people. Like us, he finds himself in an inexplicable situation, seemingly a plaything of fate.
But, unlike us, he gets the luxury of being stuck in the same day until he gets it right. Whereas most of us go semi-automatically through our (very similar) days, he is forced to stop and treat each day like a world unto itself, and decide how to use it.
In the end, he undergoes a breakthrough to a more authentic self in which intimacy, creativity and compassion come naturally - a self that was trapped inside him and that could only be freed by trapping him. Like many of the heroes of fiction, he can only escape his exile from himself by being exiled in a situation not of his choosing.
In telling this story, the movie hits on a message that is commonly found elsewhere and that appears to express an essential truth: when we get beyond denial and resentment over the conditions of life and death, and accept our situation, life ceases to be a problem and we can become authenfic and compassionate. Murray's character makes two such breakthroughs: first he accepts being condemned to being stuck in the same day, and then he accepts the fact that everyone else is condemned to die.
Robert C. Solomon, writing in the Journal o f Nietzsche Studies, points out that like such existentialists as Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche is a powerful defender of what one might call `the existential self', the individual who `makes himself' by exploring and disciplining his particular talents and distinguishes himself from `the herd' and the conformist influences of other people.
On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that we are all `thrown into' our circumstances, born with (or without) certain talents and abilities to varying degrees and with or without dispositions to certain physical liabilities and limitations. We are all products ('victims' some would say) of our upbringing, our families, our culture. Even without bringing in such spooky words as `fatalism', we recognize in ourselves and in others the heavy baggage of our backgrounds and the fact that our choices and our so-called autonomy are both quite limited.
Nietzsche's favourite 'pre-Socratic' philosopher, Heraclitus, presented a contrasting vision when he declared, `Character is fate.'
Nietzsche may be unclear about the extent to which character is agency and how character and specific actions are related, but he is very clear about the fact that we, whatever we are `given' in our natures, are responsible for cultivating our character. Not that this is easy. Nietzsche describes giving style to one's character as `a great art'. But whether rare or commonplace, whether limited to a few `higher men' or something that we all do, cultivating one's character goes hand in hand with Nietzsche's conception of fatalism.
Nietzsche's watchword is `Become who you are' (cf. the subtitle of Ecce Homo, 'Wie man wird, was man ist'). This short phrase captires Nietzsche's position in a nonparadoxical way. One is insofar as one has predetermined and limited possibilities - one's talents, abilities, capacities, disabilities, limitations. A child at an early age (perhaps almost from birth) displays a real talent for music, for language, for spatial relations, for gymnastics, for dancing, for leadership. But it is perfectly obvious that these promising possibilities are no more than that, that they require development, encouragement, training, practice and dedication.
As Sartre says in a much-quoted 1971 interview (in New Left Review), `The idea I have never ceased to develop is in the end that a man can always make something out of what is made of him.' So, too, for Nietzsche. Nietzsche writes, `What alone can our teaching be? - That no one gives a human being his qualities - neither God, nor society, nor his parents or ancestors, nor he himself.'
Nevertheless, we have those qualities, and we are responsible for the way in which we develop them.The basic problem is that humans are not good, sharing, generous creatures. Children are what we remain our entire lives ... greedy, manipulative, brats. Some people disguise this fact better than others. Children are not nurtured to behave poorly. In fact, the challenge is to socialize a child. We struggle to be social creatures. Society is unnatural. Rules are difficult. `Mine' is naturally a child's way of thinking. It is soon followed by `I didn't do it!'
Existentialism as a philosophy and an approach to life as championed by Nietzsche requires the active acceptance of our nature. We spend our lives wanting more and more. Once we realize the futility of worldly desire, we try to accept what we have. We turn to philosophy or religion to accept less. We want to detach from our worldly needs - but we cannot do so. It is the human condition to desire. To want. To seek more, even when that `more' that is `more of less'. It is a desire to prove something to ourselves, as well as others.
The existentialists, in contrast, mock the notion of a complete and fully satisfying life. The life of every man, whether he explicitly recognizes it or not, is marked by irreparable losses. 'Man cannot help aspiring towards the goods of this world; nor can he help aspiring towards the serene detachment from the things of this world that the traditional philosopher sought; but it is not within his power to achieve either of these ambitions, or having achieved them to find therein the satisfaction he had anticipated.
Existentialism assumes we are best when we struggle against our nature. Mankind is best challenging itself to improve, yet knowing perfection is not possible. Religions present rules, yet the believers know they cannot live by all those rules. The 'sin-free' life is beyond human nature. Is that any less reason to try to be good, generous, caring and compassionate?
In other words, first a man or woman exists, and then the mclividual spends a lifetime changing his or her essence. Without life there can be no meaning; in existentialism the search for meaning the search for self. We define ourselves by living; suicide would you have chosen to have no meaning.
TEN STEPS TO BETTER FRIENDSHIPS
(1) A vital ingredient that is too often missing in relationships, and explains why so many people don't have the friendships they want, is time. People who give more time to others have more friends, and the number of friends you have throughout your life is enormously dependent on how much time you have to spend on others. Research has found that the typical seventeen-year-old (who has generally a lot of time on their hands) has on average nineteen friends; this number drops to only twelve for the average twenty-eight-year-old, but rises again to sixteen friends for the average forty-five-year-old.
(2) When people are asked to focus only on the relationships that are most satisfying, intimate and close, however, the number of true friends drops dramatically from the higher numbers used to quantify acquaintances, and falls to around six on average. What separates a true close friend from an acquaintance seems to be loyalty and the ability to keep confidences. Practically this is most recognized as refraining from public criticism of a friend. So although we all enjoy a good gossip, true friends don't slander each other. Although you may find betraying another friend's confidences makes you temporarily the centre of attention, it will lose you respect and trust from those who were considering making you a good friend.
(3) The fact that friends choose to spend time with you is in itself a compliment and a boost to self-esteem. It is this effect of good friendship - enhancement of self-esteem - that is vital, so to be seen as a good friend you should learn how to make people feel good about themselves with praise and compliments. Perhaps the biggest compliment of all is to be interested and affected by other people's lives.
(4) But good friends are not just interested in us: they also support us in our viewpoints and our endeavours. They may not agree with everything we do, but our closest friends will tend to uphold our positions when we turn to them for support in the face of a hostile world. Because good friends will tend to share our core attitudes, places to find good friends include organizations or activities that reflect our own approach to life.
(5) While reciprocation is the unstated rule of friendships, it is also true that if you never dare to ask a favour of a friend, then in a sense they are not really good friends. Helping friends without obvious expectation of an immediate return for our assistance is an essential ingredient to friendship. Those who don't ever ask for help don't build the kind of interdependence close friendship requires - so fiercely if dependent people don't tend to have too many friends.
(6) All friendships exist because of communication - if you don't communicate then your friendship will wither. In particular, good friendship involves not holding back from saying what you feel in the way you might with a more formal relationship. You should therefore care less about `impression management' with a good friend.
(7) Usually friendships progress through deepening levels of self-disclosure. You notice the other person has revealed something personal about themselves, and you then feel able to reciprocate similarly. Self-disclosing involves trusting, and those who cannot properly self-disclose have difficulty building intimate friendships. If there is an imbalance in who is doing all the self-disclosing then a proper friendship cannot develop. Try to mirror the amount of self-disclosing the other person is achieving and take it slightly further in terms of what you reveal about yourself but without jumping too far ahead of them.
(8) Friends are lost most often when they move away and contact becomes more difficult because of geographical distance. A simple way to maintain friendships when this happens is to try and keep special days each year as those reserved for reunions with particular friends, so they get into the habit of keeping those days clear for you as well.
(9) Friendship also involves patience with those who are unable to reciprocate quite as you would like all the time. Know when a friend is truly incapable of returning the affection and attention you desire, and invest your valuable time elsewhere rather than getting resentful over a friendship that is not working. In particular, realize that we all change with time and friends can grow apart because of an alteration in life direction. Hanging on to friendships that are no longer appropriate reveals an anxiety over how to form new friendships (see step 4).
(10) Never give up on friends you have not heard from for a long time - nothing is lost by sending a card to re-ignite a friendship. If you see yourself as a good friend you will have the confidence to realize others won't want to lose the opportunity to rekindle a friendship with you. As friendship is one of the greatest gifts we can bestow, try to be generous with it.
TIPS FOR OVERCOMING FAILURE
(1) Stop focusing on how terrible the problem is and instead concentrate on thk solution. The successful spend only 10% of their time thinking about their problems and 90% dwelling on solutions. The rest of us devote 90% of our time concentrating on the problem and only 10% attending to possible solutions.
(2) Stop indulging in `wishful thinking' - fantasizing about how different your life would be if the failure hadn't occurred - and accept that the failure is now a challenge that you will have to deal with. In fact, you don't deserve your ultimate success if you cannot overcome challenges like this one.
(3) Observe how others have dealt with similar failures and seek out those who have successfully overcome them to see what you can learn from them. Don't ruminate and obsess about the failure with those who have succumbed to the same problem and are keen to share and reinforce your complaints - comforting though that may be.
(4) See failure as being due to factors that can change. These factors may lie within yourself, in the world at large or in other people, but remember that change is the one constant of the universe, so no failure can be due to a permanent factor.
Remember that if you have never experienced a failure then you probably were not trying to extend your boundaries enough, and were staying too far inside your comfort zone. All failure is the inevitable consequence of seeking to grow and pursue ambition. You should actually therefore pat yourself on the back for failing!
Tips ON HOW TO STOP FEELING TIRED ALL THE TIME
(1) There is a difference between feeling calm tired and tense tired - perhaps the issue is not so much exhaustion but stress. Aim to take the fundamental stress out of your life rather than temporarily resting but returning to high stress all the time.
(2) Tiredness could mask boredom - perhaps you need to rethink your goals if pursuing them is exhausting you. Goals that have real meaning for us energize rather than deplete us.
(3) Learn proper relaxation - often passive resting allows you to worry about problems while involving activities provide a more complete distraction and therefore proper mental rest.
(4) Perhaps you don't lack energy, you merely invest it in the wrong things - if you work hard but have no energy left for
Ray Persaud, read more in my new book "The Movated Mind"