How can we improve our relationships?

How can we improve our relationships? I love this TED talk by John Gray, which explains why changes in the workplace have resulted in women’s stress levels being so much higher than men’s, and what we can do to improve the situation.

High stress levels weaken our immune system and put us at increased risk of health problems including cancer.

The way we cope with stress, and in particular our relationships at home, can play a huge part in helping us cope effectively.

The world of work is designed around speed and problem solving, which women can do at least as well as men, but with higher stress levels. Oxytocin can reduce women’s stress levels in the same way that testosterone reduces stress for men. Working in an atmosphere of competition, urgency and emergency does not produce a lot of oxytocin, so women’s stress levels stay high, and we need to find balance in order to stimulate oxytocin, or our health will suffer.

If the home is not a nurturing environment, then a woman’s stress levels will increase further. A sense of emergency and not enough time to achieve what needs to be done just compounds the problem. We need to create an environment where we feel we have enough time and are able to do what we love.

One of women’s vulnerabilities is that when our stress levels rise, blood flow goes to the back of the brain, which is the reactive rather than responsive part of the brain. This allows us to react faster, but we stop making the smart, creative decisions that we make in the front part of our brain. We stop being responsive to our partners’ needs, and just get into a cycle of criticism.

The challenge of women deprived of oxytocin is that we need a constant supply of it, which is difficult for men to understand. Men relax at the end of the day to replenish their testosterone.

For men, communication is all about conveying information. For women, communication also conveys love.

When a woman’s stress levels are low, she has twice as much energy as a man, because physiologically women have 25% more fat cells. It is a source of extra energy, which is needed because our brains are more active. At the end of a day, a man relaxes, but there is more activity in women’s brains, which can be seen in brain scans.

Under moderate stress there is eight times more activity in a woman’s brain than that of a man. This happens in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala, which connects to the hippocampus and causes our emotional memory to focus on negative memories when we are under stress.

We need to regularly increase our oxytocin levels as women, in order to decrease our stress and increase our happiness levels. We need to balance the world of work with the emotional support we need in our personal life. We need courage and resilience to learn how to deal with stress effectively. We can then welcome each other and motivate each other, leading to greater intimacy and understanding.

Project 365

I set up this website after deciding that I want to build a more creative life for myself, so I can give up my job and be in control of my own destiny.

I have set myself a goal of publishing an article on my website every day this year, to document my journey from employment to self-employment.

The name I chose was Project 365 because I see this as a year that I have dedicated to learning and self-development, as I countdown to freedom. It started on 1st January 2021, so I have 183 days to go!