Stable Mental State Quotes

Tell me. Why would you consider me insane, but the man who can't hold a job, who cheats on his wife, who can't keep his temper in check? You call him sane? ... Plenty of sane people can't manage to keep it all under control. Their mental state--stress, anxiety, frustration--gets in the way of their ability to be happy. Compared to them, I think I'm downright stable.

The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and happiness, brought about by purely mental means, which thereby automatically eclipses any pleasure arising in dependence on material objects. Thus absorption functions as a powerful antidote to sensual desires by divesting them of their former attraction.

The rats that Marian Diamond studied had either an enriched or an impoverished environment. That changed their brain state. If you’re surrounded by a nurturing physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual environment, you’re in one brain state. If you’re surrounded by danger, uncertainty, and hostility, you’re in a quite different brain state. Brain states, along with mental, emotional, and spiritual states, run the gamut. When the brain’s Enlightenment Circuit is turned on, you’re in a happy and positive state. When the Default Mode Network (DMN) of Chapter 2 predominates, you’re in a negative and stressed state. State Progression Cognitive psychologist Michael Hall has been fascinated by human potential for over 40 years. He has studied the most advanced methods, authored more than 30 books on the topic, and mapped the stages by which people change. Unpleasant experiences are what usually motivate us to change. These involve mental, emotional, or spiritual states. Examples of such states are despair, stagnation, anger, or resentment. Hall calls these “unresourceful” states. We can cultivate resourceful states, such as joy, empowerment, mastery, and contentment. To describe the movement of a person from an unresourceful to a resourceful state, Hall uses the term “state progression.” Hall’s “state progression” model has several steps: Identify the unresourceful state. Identify the desired state. Countercondition dysfunctional behavioral patterns that maintain the unresourceful state. Activate change toward the desired state. Experience the target state. Repeat the experience of the desired state. Condition new behaviors that reinforce the desired state. That’s the promise of directing your attention consciously rather than defaulting to the brain’s negativity bias. Attention sustained over time produces state progression and triggers neural plasticity. If you focus on positive beliefs and thoughts repeatedly, bringing your mind and focus back to the good, you then use attention in the service of positive neural plasticity. When we have practiced sufficiently to be able to maintain this focus, we achieve a condition that Hall calls positive state stability. Our minds become stable in that new state. Their default setting is no longer to focus on the negative. The brain’s negativity bias is no longer hijacking our attention and directing it toward the negative things that are happening, either in our own lives or in the world. We have moved through the stages of state progression to positive state stability.

The addition of new neurons to handle new operations is only a part of the process of encephalization. The other parts are the gradual modification of ancient reflex patterns, the diversion of neural flow from the older channels, and the creation of new chains of command in the ordering of specific sequences of motor activity. The net result has been that the higher cognitive centers have become increasingly influential, while the older time-worn patterns have become less authoritative, more variable. Conscious mental states have begun to condition the system just as much as the system conditions these higher states of consciousness. But new powers and new subtleties do not appear without new complications, new conflicts. In bodywork we continually feel the muscular results of the intrusion of newer mental faculties into older, more stable response patterns. A good deal of the work is simply reminding minds that they are supported by bodies, bodies that suffer continual contortions under the pressure of compelling ideas and emotions as much as from weight and physical stresses, bodies that can and will in turn choke off consciousness if consciousness does not regard them with sufficient attention and respect. It is possible—in fact it is common—for the mass of new possibilities to wreak havoc with older processes that are both simpler and more vital to our physical health. Thus with our newer powers we are free to nurture ulcers as well as new skills, free to inspire paranoia and schizophrenia as well as rapture, free to become lost in our own labyrinths as well as explore new pathways. We have unleashed the human imagination, to discover that there is no internal force as potent to do us either good or ill. With the addition of these new cortical faculties, the quality of our muscular responses—from digestion, to posture, to locomotion, to expressive gesture, to chronic constriction—is dependent not only upon stimulations from the environment, and not only upon patterns characteristic of the species, but also upon individual experiences, memories, unique associations, personal emotions, expectations, apprehensions, the entire legion of personal psychological states.

OUR STATE OF mind plays a major role in our day-to-day experiences as well as our physical and mental well-being. If a person has a calm and stable mind, this influences his or her attitude and behaviour in relation to others. In other words, if someone remains in a peaceful and tranquil state of mind, external surroundings can cause them only a limited disturbance.

About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

The coach of a college football team can make thousands, hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even millions of people many of them otherwise stable and superficially reasonable adults insanely angry. I experience churning gastrointestinal distress on Saturdays during the season until Michigan has a lead of at least seventeen points. In my idle moments, when taking showers and driving my three children around northern New Jersey, I spend more time mentally debating self-posed hypotheses such as. "Did Jim Harbaugh corner himself into a no-man's land between the Wisconsin Iowa system development model and the Ohio/Penn State talent acquisition model?" than I do thinking about any other question, including things such as, "Do I have the right career?" and "What are parents' and children's obligations to each other?" and "What happens to our souls when our bodies die?" This kind of fixation, conducive to neither peace of mind nor personal productivity, is very common. Why are so many people like this?

Tomorrow I will still feel anxious, but it doesn’t mean that everything is hopeless. I improved my mental state today, and I will be able to do it again tomorrow.” This attitude combined with the ability to notice small positive changes along the way is key to long-term and stable results.

Our correctional practices prioritize vengeance and suffering over justice and rehabilitation. Incarceration in America routinely makes mentally ill people worse. And just as routinely it renders stable people psychiatrically unwell. Our system is quite literally maddening—a truth that categorically undermines our stated goals of safe and secure communities.

The addition of new neurons to handle new operations is only a part of the process of encephalization. The other parts are the gradual modification of ancient reflex patterns, the diversion of neural flow from the older channels, and the creation of new chains of command in the ordering of specific sequences of motor activity. The net result has been that the higher cognitive centers have become increasingly influential, while the older time-worn patterns have become less authoritative, more variable. Conscious mental states have begun to condition the system just as much as the system conditions these higher states of consciousness. But new powers and new subtleties do not appear without new complications, new conflicts. In bodywork we continually feel the muscular results of the intrusion of newer mental faculties into older, more stable response patterns. A good deal of the work is simply reminding minds that they are supported by bodies, bodies that suffer continual contortions under the pressure of compelling ideas and emotions as much as from weight and physical stresses, bodies that can and will in turn choke off consciousness if consciousness does not regard them with sufficient attention and respect. It is possible—in fact it is common—for the mass of new possibilities to wreak havoc with older processes that are both simpler and more vital to our physical health. Thus with our newer powers we are free to nurture ulcers as well as new skills, free to inspire paranoia and schizophrenia as well as rapture, free to become lost in our own labyrinths as well as explore new pathways. We have unleashed the human imagination, to discover that there is no internal force as potent to do us either good or ill.

Only then did scientists realize the rather profound conclusions of the experiment: REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity. Describe these symptoms to a psychiatrist without informing them of the REM-sleep deprivation context, and the clinician will give clear diagnoses of depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. But these were all healthy young individuals just days before. They were not depressed, weren’t suffering from anxiety disorders or schizophrenia, nor did they have any history of such conditions, self or familial. Read of any attempts to break sleep-deprivation world records throughout early history, and you will discover this same universal signature of emotional instability and psychosis of one sort or another. It is the lack of REM sleep—that critical stage occurring in the final hours of sleep that we strip from our children and teenagers by way of early school start times—that creates the difference between a stable and unstable mental state.

It is the lack of REM sleep—that critical stage occurring in the final hours of sleep that we strip from our children and teenagers by way of early school start times—that creates the difference between a stable and unstable mental state.

the house, her adoptive family had her committed to a state mental institution. The State of Virginia sought to have her forcibly sterilized. The 8-to-1 majority decision was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the most respected judges in American history. It reads like something out of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto, Mein Kampf. Which, in fact, was partly inspired by the American eugenics movement. Justice Holmes wrote: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not

Incarceration in America routinely makes mentally ill people worse. And just as routinely it renders stable people psychiatrically unwell. Our system is quite literally maddening—a truth that categorically undermines our stated goals of safe and secure communities.

Unlike fleeting mental states, inner strengths are stable traits, an enduring source of well-being, wise and effective action, and contributions to others.

My medical expertise is in mental health—specifically in acute cases of danger and distress. And what I found once I began working in the prisons was a system that runs counter to every principle of human flourishing that I know. Our correctional practices prioritize vengeance and suffering over justice and rehabilitation. Incarceration in America routinely makes mentally ill people worse. And just as routinely it renders stable people psychiatrically unwell. Our system is quite literally maddening—a truth that categorically undermines our stated goals of safe and secure communities.

Plenty of ‘sane’ people can’t manage to keep it all under control. Their mental state—stress, anxiety, frustration—gets in the way of their ability to be happy. Compared to them, I think I’m downright stable. Though I do admit, it would be nice to be left alone. I don’t want to be anyone special.