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Frogs and Stress
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# 09 / 40 – March 2007


The 77% Weekly
Dear Greetings!

The 77% Weekly: The Religion-Outside-The-Box Newsletter helps people find and be with (the) God (of their understanding) 40
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Frogs and Stress
 

Someone told me that if you place frogs into boiling water, they will promptly jump out. On the other hand, if you put frogs into cool water and gradually raise the heat, they will just stay there until they boil to death.

We are like those frogs.

The stress in our daily lives adds up slowly, so subtly that we don’t even notice, until we (figuratively) find ourselves in boiling water.

Stress raises the levels of Interleukin-6 in the blood. Higher than normal levels of this chemical are associated with heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, type-2 diabetes and certain cancers.

Moreover, people who are stressed are no fun to be around.

I grew up on the only small island in the world that encourages stress – Manhattan. The zeitgeist of the over 8 million souls who live there is that small levels of stress will make you sharper, more productive and more clever.

But it’s simply not true – stress kills.

Life isn’t meant to be stressful.
Really.

  • Take a breath.
  • Ask yourself, “How important is it?”
  • Meditate on the following, “The proper response to the inevitable is relaxation.”

With love,



Rabbi Brian


An important note

The story of the frogs isn’t true! I just found out that researchers at the University of Georgia Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, put this popular analogy to the test.

The frogs will jump out! (For the link: click here)

Regardless, stress is still bad.

(I’ve always been a bit skeptical of lessons from the animal kingdom. When I first heard “a tiger can’t change its stripes” – a phrase used to underscore the moral that some things just can’t be changed – I said, “but a chameleon can change its appearance.”)

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article went up last week.

And, if I could ask…

If you liked what you read and are thinking of sharing it with others, please use the link below that says forward email… this way the formatting and graphics will be retained when they see it.

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Rabbi Brian

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I rewind the etymology podcast 15 seconds because I missed the details about the origin of the word travesty. I want to listen again—more closely—so I learn it, so I can recall it later in conversation… because if I tell you how travesty—from “traverse” and “clothing”—came to mean “shockingly unfair,” you’ll think I’m smart. Lost in that thought, I suddenly

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The Soup We Are In

Most of the time, even when we don’t really need to be rushing (and sometimes without realizing we are rushing) a really large percentage of us rush anyhow. Seems we are angled forward, always striving to get ahead. I get it. It’s the soup we are in. Our society conflates productivity, hurriedness, and worth. We take on the flavors around

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