CRASHING AND NOT BURNING

CRASHING AND NOT BURNING I can emotionally and rationally handle that I cannot change the oil in my car and cannot perform by-pass surgery because both are tasks that I do not care to learn how to execute. Let those more qualified than I do the assignments. When it comes to my computer, I go insane when something goes wrong and I have no clue what is going on. While I have Computer Gigolo Kevin who always comes to my rescue, he does not live in my closet to be brought out at a moment’s notice. A new study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council, a communications industry think tank, found that ''Today's digitally dependent consumers are increasingly overwhelmed and upset with technical glitches and problems.” The Combating Computer Stress Syndrome report identified sources of peoples' pain as ''frustrating, complex computers and devices, technical failures, viral infections, and long waits to resolve support issues.''

According to AFP News findings were based on a survey of more than 1000 people in North America. ''Because they are so important to us, computers are a two-edged sword,'' said Murray Feingold, an American physician credited in the study with giving the syndrome its name. 'When they are functioning properly, they're great. But when something goes wrong, we immediately go into panic - this is what I call the computer stress syndrome.''

So how do we learn to handle the frustration of accepting what we have no control over? Dr. Ian Smith, currently the medical/diet expert on VH1’s highly-rated “Celebrity Fit Club,” the creator and founder of The 50 Million Pound Challenge and a medical contributor on the nationally syndicated television show “Rachael Ray,” has written Happy: Simple Steps to Get the Most Out of Life.” Dr. Smith is also the author of six books, the #1 New York Times Bestseller Extreme Fat Smash Diet, the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Fat Smash Diet, the New York Times Bestseller The 4 Day Diet, the critically acclaimed The Blackbird Papers (2005 BCALA fiction Honor Book Award winner), Dr. Ian Smith's Guide to Medical Websites, and The Take-Control Diet. Smith said in an interview that, “Happiness is about internal things. The real science of happiness is that people can control 40% of what makes them happy. Happy people understand that the world does not revolve around them. They concentrate on what they have and not what they don’t have.” So I have to teach myself to accept that I don’t have the skills to fix my computer and that the world does not revolve around me. I can do the former, but not the later because the world does revolve around me and that makes me HAPPY!