HOW TO KEEP HOPE ALIVE 35 PAGE Our brains hold on to negative experiences and unpleasant feelings to help prepare us for challenges and protect us from harm. This natural tendency to overemphasize the negative means we have to work extra hard to focus on the positive. Here are some strategies taught in the College of Health undergraduate class Emotional Well-Being: Tools for Positive Mental Health. Be present and enjoy the moment. Put away distractions and be present with the people around you. Ground yourself by thinking about your senses: what can you hear, see, touch, smell and taste? Take your time enjoying a favorite food or drink. Use uplifting self-talk. “I got this!”“I can do this!”“I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to do it all.” “This may be part of my day, but it doesn’t have to define my day.”“I am enough.” Take care of your well-being. Eat healthy foods, exercise and get enough sleep. Move your body throughout the day. Spend time in nature. Make time for your favorite hob- bies. Listen to music. Read for fun. Pause to take slow, deep breaths in and out. Name three things you feel grateful for. Connect with others. Share a laugh with a friend. Start a relationship with someone new. Send a text or email to a loved one to let them know you’re thinking about them. Spend time with friends, family or a caring community. Do something nice for someone. – Shauna Tominey Check in with yourself. Stop and consider how you’re feeling throughout the day. What led to what you’re feeling now and what are your feelings telling you? What do you need right now? What can you do to keep feeling this way or to change how you’re feeling? 1 3 2 4 5 can’t come fast enough. Beckman remembers a public presentation when a member of the audience described the plight of her husband — breathing with a ventilator and unable to move from his wheelchair. He won’t live to see a cure, she said, but what about her three young sons? “Is there anything you can do for them?” Each time Beckman’s lab announced a new finding, the volume of letters spiked from ALS patients wanting to volunteer for clinical trials, desperate for a glimmer of hope. Beckman does remain hopeful — stubbornly so.Why, with progress so slow? “There are answers,” he said. “We’re just going to have to look under a lot more rocks to find them.” Officially retired a couple years ago, he continues his research, building a collaborative network with ALS Northwest, former students and other scientists around the world, with the support of LPI endowed director Emily Ho. No administrative work means more time to focus on the science. “I spend most of my hours thinking about it,” he said. The tools he uses now would have been unimaginable at the beginning of his career. Seeing them in action would have been like reaching into a TV and pulling out a functioning Star Trek tricorder. As he puts it, we’ve gone from blindly hitting a cellular box with a hammer and looking at the results to viewing and measuring, in real time, what’s happening in a cell during an experiment. Beckman even founded a spinoff company based on new technology for mass spectrometry, which now benefits scientists studying everything from cancer-fighting drugs to methods for detecting explosives. “You think, ‘I wish I had that 30 years ago.’ Undergrads complain about how hard it is.” A hint of Indiana Jones growl slips into his voice. “You don’t know how lucky you have it, kid!” Sometimes nothing works. But every wrong answer is a step on the path to the right one. What upsets Beckman is not a “failed” experiment but when a grant application is rejected. It takes a few days rowing on the river before he stops swearing. Then he’s back to work, ready to prove them wrong. When a breakthrough does come? The tougher the problem, the greater the joy. “How many jobs are there where you can realize something no one ever did before?” he said.“And then it’s even more exciting when you present it and someone says,‘Oh, that changes the way I think about things,’ and it affects their work. “You’ve got to stay at it.” 5 TIPS FOR HOLDING ON TO OPTIMISM THERE ARE ANSWERS, WE’RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO LOOK UNDER A LOT MORE ROCKS TO FIND THEM.
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