Latest news with #neurotic
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
5 Signs Things Are About to Go From Bad to Worse
How to improve that gut feeling. I'm slightly neurotic — but can generally drag myself back into the realm of rationality. Yet every now and then, I get a feeling that 'Something is very wrong.' The few times I've had this feeling, something actually did go wrong. Our gut instincts are usually right. Yet that doesn't mean they detect every threat. Here are a few more signs. 1. Requests for private conversation Years ago, I was in one of my first corporate jobs. I thought things were going fine. I was working hard and hitting my performance metrics. Suddenly, the company lost a key client that generated 60% of revenue. Within a few months, rumors spread that layoffs were coming. First, managers assured us everything was fine. Then managers said they didn't know but not to worry. Then they said if there were layoffs, but we'd get advanced notice. Then — employees' desks started turning up empty. Near the end, I thought I was in the clear — until I got a meeting invitation from an HR manager I'd never met. I got the invite on two hours' notice, which was also ominous. Still, I'd somehow convinced myself, 'Nah, they can't be firing me. I've been doing everything I'm supposed to do.' As I walked into the meeting office — there were two HR women waiting. The energy in the room said everything. I sat down and felt numb. She talked but I didn't hear or remember much of what she said, other than near the end, with her saying, 'I'm sorry.' A few minutes later, I walked out without my employee badge. I quietly slinked out of the building, feeling a strange and new sense of shame. You never think it's going to be you. Many more would be let go by the end. The lesson it taught me It's often a very bad sign if a manager asks you to talk privately, or off to the side. It's especially precarious if you get a meeting invite from HR, and the meeting has no title. Getting let go makes you tougher. It teaches you to have a survival instinct, and not to buy into the 'we are family' nonsense that executives love to spew. Any company can say they are family. But they still fire family. 2. The sign that you should run, literally In the military, there's a saying, 'If you see an EOT run — run.' EOT stands for Explosive Ordnance Technician. They're the guys who detect and defuse bombs, as depicted in The Hurt Locker. The saying also highlights the importance of listening to your seniors. If someone with more experience than you, who is ordinarily calm, starts getting nervous, even if it's over a trivial detail — pay attention. Their concern usually means that trivial detail isn't so trivial. They've seen stuff go down. You can look at this another way too. If you're collaborating on a project with an experienced partner — don't be nervous if they are still calm and confident. They'll let you know when to worry. 3. The signs you need to get out sooner Years ago, I learned from a divorce counselor that the sooner a personality issue bubbles up in a relationship, the harder it is to make go away. This might seem counterintuitive. For example, if you see jealousy signs sneaking past a person's guard early on, it's probably only going to get worse. The problem is that people who are jealous, angry, or unstable, are not that way because of the relationship. They're that way because it's who they are. Studies have shown that these traits are often genetic and also encoded in childhood. They don't just flip and change on a whim. You have to chip them out of concrete (figuratively speaking). Nobody ever wakes up and says, 'Hey, I want to date a possessive, unstable tyrant.' It happens because people don't see it until it's too late. If character flaws start bubbling up early on, don't sell yourself that tacky line, 'I can change him!' Eventually, you'll find yourself doing things not to make someone happy, but to avoid making them angry. And that's when you know you're in a dark place. 4. Signs you are about to get sucker punched I worked as a bouncer and learned a ton about fights and de-escalating them. For the record, I didn't last long as a bouncer. I'm not some tough guy. I only got the job because I'm a larger guy. Here's what I learned If someone is in your face, angry, and overcome with emotion —you are always at risk of being sucker punched — full stop. The biggest danger is that they are too close. Things trend worse if they're repeating themselves over and over. It means adrenaline has hijacked their brain. They're on the verge of sucker punching you. There's no way to predict a sucker punch. They are all different. Sometimes he looks away first. Sometimes he looks at the ground. Other times, they look right at you. There's an old saying by Bruce Lee, 'Never take your eye off your opponent, even when you are bowing.' If they are yelling and aggressive, keep them at arm's length. That's the best thing you can do, and just reiterate that you can't let them get that close to you. But be willing to walk away. One of the most dangerous things you can do is get into a street fight. To you, it might be a street fight. To them, it might be much more. You win every street fight you avoid. 5. The signs your company is in trouble Years after I was laid off, I wisened up. I noticed something important for job security. After I moved up as a financial analyst, I was able to sit in on executive meetings. These meetings gave full visibility into the health of the company. These executives saw trouble long before most of the grunts did. If your COO, CFO, and CMO, all suddenly leave within a few months of each other — that's generally a very bad signal. In stock trading, executive turnover is an actual sign analysts use to downgrade a company. Most executives are competent and high performers. They don't suddenly lose their touch en masse and get pushed out. They know something is wrong and see trouble on the horizon first. You should too. Recap for memory: 5 signs things are about to get worse Someone who knows more is getting concerned (or runs). Top-level executives are fleeing the company en masse. You are asked to speak privately by your superior. An aggressor has lost control of their emotions and is repeating themselves. A new person you've just begun dating starts showing character flaws (jealousy, anger). Solve the daily Crossword
Irish Times
20-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Let's inconvenience some oligarchs before we come for exhausted mothers
It's just not sustainable , my friend and I say together. We're talking about her work /life imbalance, the juggling of domestic and professional responsibilities that has her absurdly multitasking, barely pulling it off, always failing someone or something, always guilty. (In case you were wondering, no, the answer is not that she should stay at home in a frilly apron baking cupcakes instead of practising medicine. The answer is that adequate childcare should be available and affordable.) Something sustainable is literally something that can be held up, from the Latin 'tenere' as in 'tenacious'. If a course of action is depleting resources faster than they are generated, causing a net loss, it's unsustainable because sooner or later there will be nothing left. Harvesting peat is the obvious local example but others would include losing weight, overwork and lack of rest. We're used to sustainability as a buzzword around care for the environment, and often such terms feel reproachful, as if we're being told off for using too much, taking more than our share. We should buy less, throw away less, drive less, fly less. It feels as if what's sustainable for the planet is unsustainable for individuals trying to survive capitalism, as if living sustainably is another demand to do more with less. It doesn't have to be that way. [ Sarah Moss: 'I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic' Opens in new window ] I've always thought it's deeply unfair to position new parents like my friend at the sharp end of green scolding. Especially when space and money are tight, disposable nappies are a godsend to a household and also horrible for the environment. You can transport babies on bicycles – people do it all the time in places with safe cycling infrastructure – and you can get pushchairs on buses and trains, but in Dublin it's not easy, pleasant or reliable. Maybe let's inconvenience some oligarchs before we come for the exhausted mothers, and while we're at it provide a subsidised laundering service for cloth nappies. READ MORE Human energies also need care, which is not in opposition to but part of care for human environments. Much of our excessive consumption comes from various kinds of scarcity: time, affordable fresh food, active transport infrastructure and reliable public transport. Some people are obviously making active choices to prioritise their own egos and individual power over everyone else's health and safety (SUV drivers, I mean you), but most of us are muddling through in environments engineered to create scarcity and to direct us to solve this engineered scarcity by unsustainable consumption. For most of us, the necessary changes must be collective and corporate. Only the well-resourced can consistently resist powerful systems as individuals. I can cycle everywhere because I live within 10km of most of the places I need or want to go, because I have a high degree of control over my own time and the immeasurable blessing of physical health. In this situation, the choice to cycle enhances and does not deplete my life. It is (most days) more of a joy than a sacrifice. It would make no sense to try to insist that people in more difficult circumstances make the same choices; better to change the circumstances. My household's diet is based on organic and mostly Irish fruit and vegetables, delivered weekly. If everyone could eat as we do, more people would be in better health, Irish organic farming would be more sustainable and there would be shorter supply chains and less food waste. But this is possible for us because we can afford the additional cost, I have the time and knowledge to cook and none of us has allergies or intolerances. It's stupid to say that everyone should do what we do unless we also say that everyone should have what we have, which is the truly sustainable position. [ I enjoy Ireland's weather, take pleasure in rain and whinge on hot days Opens in new window ] And so my point is that social justice and climate justice are not in opposition. Some of the reasons for our unsustainable habits are moral failure (SUV drivers, I still mean you), but most are systemic failure, or rather the success of a system engineered to maximise profit and economic growth at the expense of humanity as well as the rest of the natural world. Sustainable behaviour involves rest, companionship and pleasure as well as separating your recycling (but protest the wanton stupidity of most food packaging) and taking the bus (protest the fact that it's late and crowded).
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Science Says Introverts Like Me Should Hate The Gym. Here's How I Learned To Love It Anyway
I'm pretty obsessive about fitness – I write so much about its longevity-boosting, anti-ageing benefits, after all, that I can't help but buy into the hype. I love running, or at least I'm learning to fall back in love with it. I've started lifting weights and trying fitness trends like 'Japanese walking' and 'Jeffing', partly because they improve vital metrics like my VO2 max, but mostly because of the mood-boosting benefits. But I was not always this barbell-lifting, creatine-guzzling person – and a new study from scientists at the University College London may reveal why. I'm an anxious introvert, and I didn't get into fitness until about 23. So it makes sense that the paper found that, in very simplistic terms, exercise is more appealing to extroverts. In particular, outgoing people seemed to love high-intensity workouts like weightlifting and spin (both of which I only finally managed to try this year). More neurotic, private types like myself were likelier to find the whole thing mortifying, the paper said. I definitely felt that way, too, at the start. Here's how I built activity into my life anyway. I skipped every PE class throughout secondary school because I found the whole process of exercising so chillingly embarrassing. The Frontiers paper found that neurotic people who weren't extroverts preferred 'being given space for independence and privacy when engaging in exercise', too. But, like me, these people saw the most significant stress reduction when they did stick to a programme. I began running in a low mental health dip, but I took it slow (with a Couch to 5k app) and ran away from people, at off-peak park hours. I also began doing home workouts, which were easy to achieve in the comfort of my own home. This is a great option for people who fear judgment. You can also, as the study noted, use your personality traits to your advantage. For instance, those described as being more 'conscientious' (who are not necessarily extroverts) are more likely to stick to a plan when they know its health benefits. As someone who falls into that camp, I've found that this tendency is big enough to outweigh my panic. That's not just because I felt too attached to my new health plan to let crying mid-fitness class and leaving the gym in shame (which has happened twice), stop me forever. I am simply too convinced by the masses of research outlining exercise's benefits to ignore them – my likely neurotic preoccupation with doing 'the right thing' has proven a cheat code to sticking with at-first embarrassing attempts to lift. Your traits may require different motives. Perhaps extroverts will be drawn in by adrenaline-packed spin classes, while less outgoing people might enjoy short bursts of activity and a well-rounded mixture of aerobic and strength training, the paper found. And those who hated being perceived in the gym also didn't respond well to devices tracking things like their heart rate and pace (for what it's worth, I would never have finished my first 5k if I'd started off tracking my pace). Study author Dr Flaminia Ronca said 'we could potentially use this knowledge to tailor physical activity recommendations to the individual – and hopefully help them to become and remain more active'. Due to the endless benefits of staying active, that's the most important result, the authors add. If that means nabbing some resistance bands and doing some strengthening moves in the privacy of your living room, so be it. If you hate long, arduous workouts like lengthy runs, opt for shorter bursts of exercise instead. The key, this paper shows, is mercy, patience, and self-compassion; and having once been terrified of gyms, I can honestly say I'd never have set foot in my new favourite spot without those. I Tried 'Jeffing' And My Running Pace Skyrocketed I Tried Walking Like A Jane Austen Heroine, And My Step Count Has Never Been Higher I'm A Longevity Professor – These 3 Walking Rules Can Help You Live Longer
