MSI Press Blog

  Anger, in its narrow form, is one of the stages of dying that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified quite some time ago in her book, On Death and Dying . People go through various stages, according to Kubler Ross (though her stages have been disputed ), the second of which in her model is anger (though she herself later stated that the stages are not necessarily sequential).  While anger of the patient was the focus of Kubler Ross and of most books and posts about cancer (and other dying) patients, my recent experience is that anger comes also within and from the caregiver, who had not planned on this life-changing (and time-changing) activity and likely is not prepared for it, whether it be lack of skills, lack of knowledge, lack of medical communication or options, lack of time to accomplish all that is necessary and thereby creating considerable stress, or lack of temperament/patience, causing anger to well up as a reaction to inability to control the environment and limited to no time

  Difficult Relationships That Take More of a Toll As We Age Long-standing relationships that are chronically stressful begin to take a greater toll as we age. We know that chronic stress and mental anguish have a greater impact on our physical bodies as we age. Making a final attempt to mend difficult relationships or to let go and to stop obsessing about them becomes an essential task when you are on the cusp of old age. Mental distress robs us of valuable time and energy we need or want for other pursuits so it becomes essential to pick our stresses. Difficult relationships are not those friendships that seem to have a natural ebb and flow and enter and leave a life. Most of us have countless relationships that we can pick up after years. Difficult relationships, on the other hand, become tiresome, unbalanced, and demanding. If resolving a difficult relationship were easy, we would have done it long ago. However, we somehow have gotten entangled in old feelings, responses, hurts, an

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Mental Management   What is a goal without a plan? A dream? Mental management techniques work at turning dreams into reality by requiring the setting of goals and establishing a clear and comprehensive (and do-able) plan. In his book, With Winning in Mind (2011, The Mentashowinl Management System), Lanny Bassham discusses the importance of setting goals and tracking progress. The right—and positive—mental attitude can definitely assist a person in accomplishing his or her goals.   Defining mental management Mental management is the process of being able to improve your progress or show your prowess  while under stress. Have you ever been under stress in a language course? Of course, you have! If any of these following circumstances apply, you could benefit from training in mental management: ·         You draw a blank on a test even though you know the material well; ·         You have trouble sleeping the nigh

  Breakthrough means breakdown first It has often been said that as humans we will do far more to avoid pain than we will to maximize pleasure. We realize that most people think that they want to find joy, happiness, or pleasure, but in truth most of our efforts are in the opposite direction. One look at evolution, however, will quickly demonstrate that it is through pain, failure, and breakdown that we get better, stronger, and smarter. What is it that we learn in these painfully tough moments or experiences? Let’s first dissect what happens in a total breakdown. What do we actually mean by breakdown? It is important to differentiate that we are not discussing something like a “nervous breakdown.”  That is something that should be handled by a medical professional, and neither this book nor this specific chapter are intended to solve these kinds of problems. That being said, please read what follows through this important filter.  Breakdowns are, in fact, epic. Breakdowns are t

Excerpt: Lessons from Children Rule of the Road: Forge your armor out of resiliency Mile Markers : War Zone, Trauma, PTSD, Suicide, Dutch Levees, Bounce Back, Magical Thinking, Easy Temperament, Vulnerability, Consumer Nation, George Foreman, Mentoring, Open Communities, Persistence, Tree of Resiliency, Self-Evaluation, Exploitive Culture In the days and months after that game-changing ride home from Bob , I began to ponder how I might go about amending my own life to better reflect the principles first emphasized in my youth and latter reinvigorated by the example of this modest soul. As someone who had firsthand experience with poverty and minimal assets, I was surprised at how quickly I had bought into the desire to demonstrate to outsiders that here was a man who exceeded his humble beginnings. Now that I was equipped with a new self-awareness, would this knowledge translate into real and lasting change? Temptation to buy and consume in an attempt to feed the appeti

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star The Brain Scape in Language Learning There are some psychological phenomena that exist that are not exactly cognitive distortions but have a similar effect on learning capacity and performance. They might be called cognitive distractions, except that they also have a strong emotional component. Three representative “cognitive distractions” include tolerance of ambiguity, ego boundaries, and mental management. The uniqueness of this trio is that they are continua with strong poles and weak poles. The strong poles—ability to tolerate ambiguity, thin ego boundaries that allow you to approach the native speaker with comfort, and mental management that puts you in charge of your own performance. Tolerance of Ambiguity Do you feel lost if you cannot understand 100% of everything going on around you in your classroom, including every single word you hear? Do you need to know every work in a reading text, broadcast, o