An American, a Frenchman and an Indonesian

An American, a Frenchman and an Indonesian are stranded on a desert island. They find a magic lamp, and when they rub it a genie emerges, promising to grant each of them a wish.
The American says, "I am a businessman, and I need to get back to New York."
He disappears in a puff of smoke.
The Frenchman says, "I own a restaurant in Paris and would like to go back there." Another puff of smoke and he disappears.
The genie then asks the Indonesian what he wants.
"I feel kind of lonely. Can you bring my two friends back?"

Peluru pun Habis ...

Tak lama setelah bubarnya Uni Soviet . Sosialisme hancur , dan para birokrat tak punya pengalaman mengelola sistem ekonomi pasar bebas . Di masa sosialisme , memang rakyat sering antri untuk mendapatkan macam-macam kebutuhan pokok , tapi manajemennya rapi , sehingga semua orang kebagian jatah . Sekarang , masyarakat tetap harus antri , tapi karena manejemennya jelek , antrian umumnya sangat panjang , dan banyak orang yang tidak kebagian jatah .

Begitulah , seorang aktivis sosial berkeliling kota Moskow untuk mengamati bagaimana sistem baru itu bekerja . Di sebuah antrian roti , setelah melihat banyaknya orang yang tidak kebagian , aktivis itu menulis di buku catatannya , " roti habis " .

Lalu dia pergi ke antrian bahan bakar . Lebih banyak lagi yang tak kebagian . Dan dia mencatat " bahan bakar habis !" , kemudian dia menuju ke antrian sabun . Wah pemerintah kapitalis baru ini betul-betul brengsek , banyak sekali masyarakat yang tidak mendapat jatah sabun . Dia menulis besar-besar " SABUN HABIS ! " .

Tanpa dia sadari , dia diikuti oleh seorang intel KGB . Ketika dia akan meninggalkan antrian sabun itu , si intel menegur " Hey bung ! dari tadi kamu sibuk mencatat-catat terus , apa sih yang kamu catat ? " .

Sang aktivis menceritakan bahwa dia sedang melakukan penelitian tentang kemampuan pemerintah dalam mendistribusikan barang bagi rakyat .

" Untung kamu ya , sekarang sudah jaman reformasi " , ujar sang intel , " Kalau dulu , kamu sudah ditembak " .

Sambil melangkah pergi , aktivis itu mencatat ;
" Peluru juga habis ! " .

6 lessons for handling stress

NO. 6
THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO RELIEVE STRESS

THIS IS PROBABLY THE TOUGHEST LESSON TO INTERNALIZE BECAUSE when stress
overwhelms the system, your choices often seem more limited than they are. Behavioral scientists have a name for this psychological reaction. They call it learned helplessness, and they have studied the phenomenon closely in laboratory rodents, whose nervous system bears striking similarities to that of humans.

Here's how the experiment works: if you provide mice with an escape route, they
typically learn very quickly how to avoid a mild electrical shock that occurs a
few seconds after they hear a tone. But if the escape route is blocked whenever
the tone is sounded, and new shocks occur, the mice will eventually stop trying
to run away. Later, even after the escape route is cleared, the animals simply freeze at the sound of the tone--despite the fact that they once knew how to
avoid the associated shock.

Obviously, humans have more intellectual resources at their disposal than mice
do, but the underlying principle remains. When too many of the rules change,
when what used to work doesn't anymore, your ability to reason takes a hit. Just
being aware of your nervous system's built-in bias toward learned helplessness
in the face of unrelieved stress can help you identify and develop healthy
habits that will buffer at least some of the load (see box).

But the one thing you should not do is ignore the risks. Animal research has
shown that there is a relatively small window for reversing the physiological
effects of chronic stress. Studies of people are starting to produce similar
results. Once a person's cortisol level gets completely blunted, it seems to
stay that way for years. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones not to let
that happen.

So let's be a smart people and starting to manage our stress for a better life, cheers

6 lessons for handling stress #3

NO. 4
STRESS CAN AGE YOU BEFORE YOUR TIME

SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG SUSPECTED THAT unremitting stress does damage to the immune
system, but they weren't sure how. Then two years ago, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at white blood cells from a group of mothers whose children suffered from chronic disorders like autism or cerebral palsy. The investigators found clear signs of accelerated aging in those study subjects who had cared the longest for children with disabilities or who reported the least control over their lives.

The changes took place in microscopic structures called telomeres, which are often compared to the plastic wrappers on the ends of shoelaces and which keep chromosomes from shredding. As a general rule, the youngest cells boast the longest telomeres. But telomeres in the more stressed-out moms were significantly shorter than those of their counterparts, making them, from a genetic point of view, anywhere from nine to 17 years older than their chronological age.

NO. 5
STRESS IS NOT AN EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

IN 1995, IN A NOW CLASSIC EXPERIMENT, SCIENTISTS AT THE University of Trier in germany subjected 20 male volunteers to a situation guaranteed to raise their stress levels: participating in a mock job interview and solving arithmetic problems in front of strangers who corrected them if they made mistakes. As expected, each subject's cortisol level rose at first. But by the second day of the trial, most of the men's cortisol levels did not jump significantly. Experience had taught them that the situation wasn't that bad. Seven of the men, however, exhibited cortisol spikes every bit as high on the fourth day as the first. Only by the fifth day did their stress reaction begin to disappear.

More recently, researchers have found that subjects with low self-esteem are more vulnerable to stress. Jens Pruessner at McGill University in Montreal believes that the hippocampus, a finger-size structure located deep in the brain, is at least partially responsible. It turns out that the hippocampus, which helps you form new memories and retrieve old ones, is particularly sensitive to the amount of cortisol flooding your cerebrum. So when cortisol levels begin to rise, the hippocampus sends a set of signals that help shut down the cortisol cascade. Using several different types of brain scans, Pruessner has shown that people who test below average on self-esteem also tend to have smaller-than-average hippocampi. The differences become clear only when you compare groups of people, Pruessner notes, so you can't look at any single person's brain scan and determine whether he or she has low self-esteem. But when you look at overall results, they suggest that a smaller hippocampus simply
has more trouble persuading the rest of the brain to turn off the stress response. Still unclear is how the body goes from having repeated activation of the stress response to showing the typically blunted cortisol levels of someone suffering from burnout. "We are still studying this," says Samuel Melamed of Tel Aviv University in Israel. "But if there is no relief and the cortisol stays up for long periods of time, the body stops responding and readjusts the level."

Still continue....