Convincing Ourselves

Anxiety is everywhere and for some people all the time. We get anxious if we have to talk in a social setting, anxious for assignments, anxious sometimes for no reason at all. However, there is a way to use anxiety for our advantage. A wonderful 2014 research study by Alison Wood Brooks from the Harvard Business School revealed something very interesting. Alison asked participants to either say and feel, ‘I am anxious', ‘I am excited’ and nothing at all, before a task. The results were shocking. Those that were asked to say and believe that they are excited we're able to perform better on various tasks, from singing to a math problem. According to Alison, it is easier to go from one arousal state (anxiety) to another (excited) rather than cooling down and therefore this helps individuals perform better. Now this research can be critiqued for many reasons, however, the implications can be impressive. When feeling anxious, all we need to do is to say out loud, and b...

Why do we enjoy some things and no others? well, there are two reasons. We like to do things that are easy, but not too easy. This depends not only at the task at hand but also to our own ability to do the task. This is why, if we are good at a board game, but its challenging, we get hooked. It is also the same reason why we like to play sports with someone who can challenge us, but is not so much better  than us that we get frustrated. If we are able to convince ourselves that the task at hand is easy, in a challenging sort of way, it will become engaging and to some extent fun as well. We can convince ourselves for this kind of thinking for any task. It can be cleaning the dishes, or even talking a walk. Its fun, because its invigoratingly easy! To repeat, it is not about thinking or hoping that something that is hard becomes automatically easy (if that works for you, good enough) but acknowledging that it is tough, yet fun and challenging. When we say it is ea...

Just watched the Tony Robbins Documentary on Netflix called 'I am not your Guru' that chronicles Tony's legendary 'Date with Destiny' Seminar. At the end of the documentary Tony asked everyone that they need to ensure that whatever they take with them from here will stay with them for the rest of their lives and advocated a daily practice. As always, I do not recommend anything, but I do recommend trying an approach and seeing if it works for you. The Technique: The take away from the video was that once you know your values, beliefs, eg Love, passion, strength, fearlessness whatever you think is important, whatever quality or belief you want, you need to convince yourself of it. Tony believes that when we put emotion into something and focus on it, it gets embedded into our psychology more (Think surprises or trauma). In the same way, tony wants us to use all our sense and shout, scream, jump, whatever it takes, to make us believe that we are 'Strength' ...