REGINA COELI: RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO BECOME DISCOURAGED

Vatican City, 13 May 2012 (VIS) - "As Mother of the Church, Our Lady always wants to comfort her children at the time of their greatest difficulty and suffering", said the Pope today before praying the Regina Coeli with thousands of faithful who had attended his Mass at the "Il Prato" park in the Italian city of Arezzo.

"Through Mary, we invoke moral consolation from God, so that this community and the whole of Italy may resist the temptation to become discouraged and, strengthened by their great humanist tradition, may set out again on the road to spiritual and moral renewal which is the only thing that can bring authentic improvement in social and civil life".

After praying the Regina Coeli, Benedict XVI made a private visit to the cathedral of San Donato where he paused before the Chapel of Our Lady of Good Comfort to adore the Blessed Sacrament and venerate the image of the Virgin. From there, he travelled to the bishop's palace where he had lunch with bishops from the Tuscan region.

This is a very good practice to follow to prevent any unwanted bereavement thoughts. Ask the Holy Mother of God to provide comfort to you and your loved ones. Most Importantly is to have a Family Rosary recited each night during the recent loss in your lives.

Negative Thinking

This is a tough situation to escape because it’s self-perpetuating, as anyone stuck in negative thinking knows all too well.  Your negative experiences feed your negative expectations, which then attract new negative experiences.

In truth most people who enter this pattern never escape it in their entire lives.  It’s just that difficult to escape.  Even as they rail against their own negativity, they unknowingly perpetuate it by continuing to identify with it.  If you beat yourself up for being too negative, you’re simply reinforcing the pattern, not breaking out of it.

I think most people who are stuck in this trap will remain stuck until they experience an elevation in their consciousness.  They have to recognize that they’re trapped and that continuing to fight their own negativity while still identifying with it is a battle that can never be won.  Think about it.  If beating yourself up for being too whiny was going to work, wouldn’t it have worked a long time ago?  Are you any closer to a solution for all the effort you’ve invested in this plan of attack?

Consequently, the solution I like best is to stop fighting and surrender.  Instead of resisting the negativity head-on, acknowledge and accept its presence.  This will actually have the effect of raising your consciousness.

Overcoming negativity

You can actually learn to embrace the negative thoughts running through your head and thereby transcend them.  Allow them to be, but don’t identify with them because those thoughts are not you.  Begin to interact with them like an observer.

It’s been said that the mind is like a hyperactive monkey.  The more you fight with the monkey, the more hyper it becomes.  So instead just relax and observe the monkey until it wears itself out.

Recognize also that this is the very reason you’re here, living out your current life as a human being.  Your reason for being here is to develop your consciousness.  If you’re mired in negativity, your job is to develop your consciousness to the point where you can learn to stay focused on what you want, to create positively instead of destructively.  It may take you more than a lifetime to accomplish that, and that’s OK.  Your life is always reflecting back to you the contents of your consciousness.  If you don’t like what you’re experiencing, that’s because your skill at conscious creation remains underdeveloped.  That’s not a problem though because you’re here to develop it.  You’re experiencing exactly what you’re supposed to be experiencing so you can learn.

The Challenge of Staying Happier

A researcher at the University of Missouri has developed a model to help people become happier and stay that way.

The search for happiness can be a never-ending quest, noted psychologist Dr. Kennon Sheldon.

“Previous research shows that an individual’s happiness can increase after major life changes, such as starting a new romantic relationship, but over time happiness tends to return to a previous level,” he said. “Through our research, we developed a model to help people maintain higher levels of happiness derived from beneficial changes.”

The model consists of two components: The need to keep having new and positive life-changing experiences and the need to keep appreciating what you already have and not want more too soon, he explained.

In their study, Sheldon, along with co-author Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, surveyed 481 people about their happiness. Six weeks later participants identified a recent positive change in their lives that had made them happier.

Six weeks after that, the psychologists evaluated whether the original happiness boost had lasted.

For some it had, but for most it had not, they reported. The psychologists then tested their model for predicting whose boost had lasted.

“The majority got used to the change that had made them happy in the first place,” Sheldon said.

“They stopped being happy because they kept wanting more and raising their standards, or because they stopped having fresh positive experiences of the change.

“For example, they stopped doing fun things with their new boyfriend and started wishing he was better-looking. A few were able to appreciate what they had and to keep having new experiences. In the long term, those people tended to maintain their boost, rather than falling back where they started.”

Due to genetics and other factors, individuals have a certain “set-point” of happiness, he said. Some people tend to be bubbly, while others are more somber. Sheldon theorizes that people can train themselves to stay at the top of their possible range of happiness.

“A therapist can help a person get from miserable to OK; our study shows how people can take themselves from good to great,” he said.

And buying stuff isn’t the path to happiness, Sheldon adds.

“The problem with many purchases is that they tend to just sit there,” he said. “They don’t keep on providing varied positive experiences. Also, relying on material purchases to make us happy can lead to a faster rise in aspirations, like an addiction. Hence, many purchases tend to be only quick fixes.

“Our model suggests ways to reduce the ‘let down’ from those purchases. For example, if you renovate your house, enjoy it and have many happy experiences in the new environment, but don’t compare your new decor to the Joneses’.”

What is a Critical Incident?

Contact Dr. Nicholas on all Critical Incidences, which happen in your lives. Dr. Nicholas can provide professional debriefings to cope with the distressing events in life.  Contact Dr. Nicholas at 877 867 8556 Twenty-four hours - Seven days a week.   

A "critical incident" is any event that causes an unusually intense stress reaction.  The distress people experience after a critical incident limits their ability to cope, impairs their ability to adjust, and negatively impacts the work environment.  Examples of traumatic events that produce such reactions include:

• A coworker’s or student’s death or serious illness
• Suicide
• A violent or threatening incident in the work setting
• Natural or man-made disaster that affects the workers’ ability to function in the workplace

Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is a process that prevents or limits the development of post-traumatic stress in people exposed to critical incidents.  Professionally conducted debriefings help people cope with, and recover from an incident's aftereffects.  CISD enables participants to understand that they are not alone in their reactions to a distressing event, and provides them with an opportunity to discuss their thoughts and feelings in a controlled, safe environment.  Optimally, CISD occurs within 24 to 72 hours of an incident.

Psychological Stress

Psychological stress is a form of stress which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal body to respond appropriately to a cognitive or emotional threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. It includes a state of alarm and adrenaline production, short-term resistance as a coping mechanism, and exhaustion. It refers to the inability of a human or animal body to respond.


Common stress symptoms include irritability, muscular tension, inability to concentrate and a variety of physical reactions, such as headaches and accelerated heart rate.
The term “stress” was first used by the endocrinologist Hans Selye in the 1930s to identify physiological responses in laboratory animals. He later broadened and popularized the concept to include the perceptions and responses of humans trying to adapt to the challenges of everyday life. In Selye’s terminology, “stress” refers to the reaction of the organism, and “stressor” to the perceived threat. Stress in certain circumstances may be experienced positively. Eustress, for example, can be an adaptive response prompting the activation of internal resources to meet challenges and achieve goals.


The term is commonly used by laypersons in a metaphorical rather than literal or biological sense, as a catch-all for any perceived difficulties in life. It also became a euphemism, a way of referring to problems and eliciting sympathy without being explicitly confessional, just “stressed out”. It covers a huge range of phenomena from mild irritation to the kind of severe problems that might result in a real breakdown of health. In popular usage almost any event or situation between these extremes could be described as stressful.