My Dearest Gang,
Good Morning!
When we are so engrossed with our daily grind, day to day, over and over again, doing the same routine...we can just get lost in the convenient, bland sea of sameness...We simply get used to the same routines and get buried in them...as changes are inconvenient acts.
Boredom sets in!
Unhappiness sets in!
Smiles get wiped out from the entire face!
We end up being ugly and grumpy to our husbands! To our family!...And we don't want that now...do we?
A lot of us do not realise how important it is to have changes in life, both in the short term and the long term. We do not realise how changes can be value-added to our well-being, to our health in general, to our life's happiness. Changes make our brain tick. Tick happily!
One of the best ways to have changes, is to have many friends. We, being girls, of course, it goes without saying, that is being in touch with many girlfriends. This is my current personal experience. I have girlfriends of varying ages (both younger and older), of varying professions and backgrounds, of varying races and cultures. This association is so enriching. It opens up my world to the different perspectives of life. It makes me do new things in my life. New Changes!
I learn more today, than I ever did before, through the various friendships, I have struck along the way. It mellowed me somewhat, with sharing of both happiness and sadness with our girlfriends. It is through these friendships that I learnt life is not a bed of roses for anyone. Not a single soul, I dare guarantee. That inculcates humility in me, which at times I do lack, I admit.
Life is fair!
(Though this is hard to understand, if we compare on single item basis...but if compared on a totality basis, you will find, that life is fair!)
It is never a greener pasture for anyone.
One can find happiness within one's confines, if one works at it. It is elusive to think that it is greener on the other side. This is truly the way to unhappiness. What I learnt is, we can make our own pasture greener, with simple appreciations of life.
One great way is to have strong friendships with girlfriends. This can make our pastures greener anytime. Friendships bring in much joy, fulfilment, laughter and most importantly simple changes to life's routines. Having coffee together. Go shopping together. Go to value-added seminars together. As one other OG said in a magazine, chinwag together. Go to movies together and even bowling! Do hobbies together, knitting perhaps...don't laugh!...I read that knitting is most therapeutic and its the latest Hollywood celebrities' craze. No more the grandma's image. I even read that one Hollywood star would bring along her knitting tutor to wherever she goes!! (That, in itself, is every indication, as to how stressfull tinsel-town is!) A digression here!
So there you go! There are plenty of secrets of happiness to life, gang. Most of them are truly simple and really at arms length, but we always put them on the back burners.
To a lot of us (blame it on the series of the 'Life of the rich and famous'), happiness is the complex and the complicated and most times the unachievable dreams. Big holidays to Paris Disney (exotic dream venues, changes every hols, at least 3 times a year). Big palatial houses (in at least 4 or 5 cities, London-home is a must-have, or you are not up-to-the-minute then!) At least 20 cars (5 Merc-Brabus at least, a his and hers custom-made Aston Martin), then...I'll be happy! Millions in the bank and then...I'll be happy! If we are looking for happiness, I would strongly advice that we don't go that route! That material route. (Materialism can be consuming, distracts us from happiness).
Have those things, it's ok. Go on then.But! Can't guarantee happiness. Sorry! By the time you are there it might be too late...still not happy perhaps. ((Don't wish to be a dampener...I'm sure there are people, that have attained happiness through this route perhaps. But for sure it is few and far between! (Perhaps these few lucky ones, whilst having all these dream possesions, do still appreciate the simple things in life, rare though!). Forgive my rambles! I'd say, we know so...a little about life, a teeny weeny bit! Ha ha ha!)).
You want the sure method to happiness? Here it is....brace yourself!!
Decide to be happy now! This instant. Seize this moment! Be happy with simple joys! There you go! Call up girlfriends. Instead of buying that pair of shoes, splurge on lunch with girlfriends. Ha ha ha! How simple it is.
Happiness is a personal decision. Either you decide to be happy or you don't. It is a decision indeed! Don't have to wait for 5 Merc-Brabus to be happy (though it helps, I do admit...Ha ha ha! Double-standards me!)
Go for value, not material! Always!
Friendship is about value and not material.
Today, I write as a prelude, to this article 'UCLA study on friendship among women', that I received from a new wonderful girlfriend that I met at our recent dinner, 'Budaya di semai Budi di Tuai', last 3rd July at Palace of the Golden Horses. She is one of our OGs, K Asma Abdullah. She is an anthropologist and I'm proud to say that she is an author of a few books, one of them, 'Understanding Multicultural Malaysia'. Way to go OG!
Though K Asma did not write this article that we are sharing today, nevertheless, being in touch with her, I get some great articles from her, and this one, I wish to share with my other friends on the blog, my gang, for our common good, to encourage friendships amongst us, girls/women.
At the same dinner too, I managed to touch base beautifully again with my MCE73 friends who made effort to be present that night. Datin Zeila, Noi, Kamarul Faridah, Irene, Datin Mona, Dr Anita, Datin Shifak, Wan Yam (Yumbo) and of course Saadah (who has two daughters at TKC). It was lovely seeing each other again.
Be encouraged! Be happy! Go for value always! Smile gang!
Love,
Ruby Ahmad.
p/s...This photo of four 'lady-musketeers' think-tanking for the blog, web, events, seminars...but heyy! no complaints! Just fun and laughter (the only way to work) and sipping beautiful latte at our fav joint, in one of the most powerful settings in the country, if not the world (ehem!)...at the Twin-towers of course. (click on all photos twice to get larger view).
Meet at great places that inspires, always! Our next meeting is scheduled at Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao! (A place I'd like to visit next).
My other three colleagues, Pi (diogonally opp to me), Gi (on my left) and Xi (directly opp me) and how their lovely names r-h-y-m-e folks! Ha ha ha!
Top photo, taken during 'Budaya di Semai, Budi di Tuai' Fund-raising Dinner on 3rd July, at Palace of the Golden Horses. My friends from left, Wan Yam, Kamarul, yours truly, Datin Zeila, and Noi.
Here we go.....
UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
By Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuousness world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are.
By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down.
"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Bio behavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors.
"It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers. Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight". In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect.
This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. "Estrogen", she adds," seems to enhance it. "The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who're talking one day in a lab at UCLA ."There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something. The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health. It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "TEND AND BEFRIEND" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer."
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%. Friends are also helping us live better. .The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!
And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stress of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D
co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press,1998).
"Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience. "Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.. L.,Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). "Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight", Psychological Review, 107(3),. 41-429. C
