Convincing Ourselves

While going through a wonderful book written by H.E Stanton about the psychology of trading, I came across a simple concept. Dr H.E Stanton himself has had considerable experience as a performance coach and is a clinical psychologist himself. In short, he knows how to apply theory to practice, something that I am very interested in. In one of the chapters, Dr Stanton goes on to discuss the psychology of change, and rather than going full-on theoretical, he discusses a very simple to understand, practical, and from the viewpoint of an academic, unconventional idea. He discusses the model of change as described by Tony Robbins. His choice to use Tony Robbin's ideas, someone who has no academic background of psychology is intriguing. It speaks to Dr. Stanton's pragmatism if anything. The model is simple a) decide what you want b) identify what is stopping you c) associate pain to not changing and pleasure to enable change, d) interrupt the existing pattern e) create a ...

The fallacy of knowledge and human understanding is truly remarkable. Our pomp and self-confidence, even as a civilization, can go well beyond the point where it makes sense. A perhaps more relatable example is the situation with Covid-19. Regardless of what discussion is, it's obvious that each side thinks they know the best and many times disregard the facts for emotions. This fallacy of human understanding is exploited by marketing communication, by politicians, hell even by therapists. It's a good thing if we understand it and use it for the better of the world, but also a bad thing when it goes too far. Now I have read a lot of this fMRI mapping research. They said it would spawn a new age of discovery into the way the mind works. Neuromarketing, Neuro this, neuro that. We finally seemed to know how the mind works and can dissect our thoughts minutely and really know what makes people tick. Amazon is full of books from the past decade, from various researchers, pub...

Self-efficacy, confidence in one's own ability to create change, undertake behaviors, is essential for optimum mental health. So much so that it is a major marker for depression. In fact, while doing through the literature on psychological fir aid for disaster and trauma survivors, I came across building self-efficacy, of a community or an individual, as an important part of the rehabilitation process. So how does one go about building self-efficacy, especially after one has gone through immense failure and loss? Staying the realm of psychology only, one can go down the route of regular counseling, and even hypnotherapy or EDMR, which has shown great success for trauma victims. However psychological first aid adopts a more behavioral approach. Building self-efficacy in such a case is best developed through a series of practice situations, given to a survivor (or even a community). It could be as simple as collecting water or cooking food. However, these practice sit...

I recently came across the idea of Energizing Meditation (EM) in the "National Council for hypnotherapy Journal SUMMER EDITION". The protocol has been proposed by Howard Baron, a retired management consultant, whom I believe still dabbles in workshops and corporate training. While traditional meditation is about staying mindful and relaxing, Energizing Meditation (EM) aims to converse and boost one's energy. Basically, you are to feel 'energized' after an EM session. Howard has an interest in managing oneself under highly stressful situations, and I can see how he came up with the protocol in order to ensure managers and leadership can function in the best manner when confronted with difficulty (we are talking oil spills and disasters here!). Given Howard's background is in management consultancy, I feel Energizing Meditation (EM) is worth looking into. The protocol has been deliberately keeping very open and flexible because he rightfully believes...

The world is currently wrapped up in a pandemic, and an associated economic crisis. With this comes a whole lot of other problems, from logistics, to governance, and of course healthcare. Times are uncertain a lot of people may feel anxious or downright threatened. Its as if everyone is having to tread blind, while surrounded by danger, and no clue when it ends. Moreover, people are not just worried about themselves, but also about their loved ones. This is and of itself is a mental help challenge as well. The whole world is going through an emotional and cognitive crisis and this may have repercussions on our own health and well being as well. If not managed well, just like the health or economic crises, the effects could be lasting. Focus on what you can control: In a situation, where most of the variables are out of your control, one must focus on what can be controlled. This is necessary to bring a sense of control and therefore certainty back to the person. Even in war...

This post is based on a thought I had after listening to Bilal Hafeez on his last appearance on Bloomberg, talking about the impact of the coronavirus on the markets. I am not an expert in finance by any means and Bilal is essentially a veteran of the industry. He discussed what many others before him have spoken about as well. Algorithmic trading is now a massive part of global financial markets and trading. The thinking goes that because machines are doing a lot of trading, it is possible that they will make irrational mistakes and make the market crash eg during the recent Coronavirus incident. Modern Algos: Algorithmic trading is essentially now mainstream. The biggest and most successful of fund of them all is the legendary Madallion fund run by Renaissance Technologies. The fund uses leverage but is capped and not open to outside investors. It is arguably the most successful fund of its size. However, RenTech and its many funds are not the only players. Citadel is als...

Below is an abstract of the paper I wrote for " Telling the story of business: story-driven research in entrepreneurship, business, and marketing",  held at the University of South Wales in January 2020.  ================================================================= A Narrative Inquiry into the role of psychological factors in helping a Pakistani Family Business owner-manager, navigate turbulent market conditions   By Umair Usman, Usman Carpet House, Lahore, Pakistan Abstract This is an ethnographic narrative inquiry to identify the psychological factors that helped my father, a Pakistan family business owner-manager, through the great recession of 2006/2007. The study is retrospective in nature where I discuss my time, as a part of the family business during this period we experienced. I recall what I observed, and experienced, were psychological and mental factors that were inherent in my father and supported him through this...

The Article reviews the paper "Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, and weight loss: A systematic review" published in the Journal "Eating Behaviours" in 2014 by Katterman et al. The paper itself takes a meta-study approach and examines 14 different studies where Mindfulness Meditation has been used as the primary method to influence emotional eating, binge eating as well as weight. One of the reasons why the authors may have looked at mindfulness meditation as the primary, rather than the only intervention, is probably because in real-life clinical settings, it is difficult to find practitioners using only one method alone. At the very least interventions are accompanied by some form of counseling or psychoeducation. It must be kept in mind that traditionally, it would be common to find practitioners using such mind-body approaches adjunct to another mainstream approach such as CBT. The authors looked at emotional...

Business travel brings with it many instances where one has to be out of their comfort zone. Being away from home, one is at the mercy of their surroundings, which at times can be very limiting. As someone who takes a lot of care in eating right and eating well, it often becomes difficult for me to find a balanced meal. This is an issue not only while in the plane or in an airport or train station, but also during business meetings and dinners. Unlike at home, or in one's daily routine, there is little control over the situation. During my previous trip I Took inspiration from Self Hypnosis and related CBT techniques to self regulate what I eat and how much I eat, while keeping my energy levels relatively high. This included several sessions of self hypnosis before I left for the trip which seemingly had little result. However, one on the trip, some positive statements stuck with me in my mind which kept me in check. The results were actually very good. Much better ...

Milton Erikson is considered one of the grandfathers in psychology circles and there is a good reason for that. Erikson essentially combined talk therapy and hypnotherapy in a way that made it clear how therapy itself was more of an art than a science. Milton’s biggest contribution was perhaps his open definition of what can be called hypnosis and how therapy could be done. Apparently not limited by definition, and protocol, many of Erikson’s cases seem improvised. It seems as if he was trying to figure out what worked and how and at the same time employing methods far removed from what could today be considered hypnotherapy. The best example is when asked what he does when clients cannot go into a trance, and his reply was that he ‘bores’ them into one. Erikson was controversial and still remains to this day. His methods have been extended and studied to create ‘Eriksonian’ methodology that apparently many go on to study. Erikson himself probably found the confines of what cam...

Exercise is necessary to maintain good health, there are no doubts about that. However many of us find it difficult to stay motivated to exercise long term. However what if there was a way to make exercise more palatable and enhance its benefits even further? Enter Active Alert Hypnosis. A little known and sparsely studied form of hypnosis that is essentially induced with vigorous body movement rather than relaxation. While regular hypnosis helps you ‘ focus and relax ’ , active alert hypnosis helps you ‘ focus and arouse ’ .  It is simple to induce. While exercising, focus on body movements and tell yourself you are becoming ‘ active ’ rather than ‘ relaxed ’ . It will help you go in a sort of ‘ zone ’ while exercising and while in this ‘ zone ’ you can exercise and perform sports activity better. Theoretically, you can also include other hypnotic suggestions as well that have to do with the activity you are doing or anything else So there you have it. Using Ac...

Everyone talks to themselves. Some do it loudly, others do it in the mind. Some consciously and some unconsciously. What we tell ourselves shapes our whole life. Nothing is more important than making sure we tell ourselves the right thing. This is an important aspect of performance psychology as well. When a student is studying for an exam, they might tell themselves that their struggle makes them a loser.  An Athlete may be going through a bad patch. and tell themselves they don't have it anymore. A person sitting bored in an office may mistake his boredom as anxiety as there is nothing to do.  So what to do?  When we are not taking action, we are telling ourselves something wrong. Adjusting our self-talk, therefore, helps us not only feel better but take actual action. The student can look at their struggle as a normal aspect of preparation, the athlete can tell themselves that success is right around the corner, while the office worker may build a...