Convincing Ourselves

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...

::SPOILERS::: I just finished watching the first and only season of the German/Austrian Netflix Orignal 'Freud'. A reimaging of the early life of Sigmund Freud, before he became famous for his work in psychoanalysis. The show starts off as an autobiography. It shows a young Freud who has just encountered hypnosis and is trying to convince his peer of its powers. The show gives the impression that Freud was a big believer in hypnosis early on and among his peers was the only one who believed that neurosis was due to 'thoughts and beliefs' rather than physiology. This is not entirely accurate, but the show does a good job of portraying him as a genius waiting to be discovered. The show quickly turns into a crime thriller with Freud coming into contact with a group of Hungarian rebels. These Hungarian rebels at first glance seem like trickers playing around with the feelings of people and letting them talk to their dead loved ones through Fleur, the medium. Howeve...

It seems that popular topics find their way into academic circles more often these days. I came across a great example of Harvard Business Review by Reiken et al called “ How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems”. The article has been re-posted several times across a variety of academic sites and it is surely worth a review. To begin with, mindfulness is essentially about living in the moment and paying attention to simply what is. The authors compare linear, or convergent thinking with divergent thinking, where several options are explored on top of the starting point, to generate a number of ideas and hence favours creativity and innovation. The article makes the claim that most engineers are trained to be liner, convergent thinkers and even though it's important, for the best solutions one requires both convergent and divergent thinking. The authors performed two studies to look at the impact of mindfulness meditation, which is an exercise known to...

Is there such a thing as too little food? Well, there is surely is. Eating too little, going on a crash diet or leaving out a food group for no obvious reason are all examples of a haphazard, rash approach to managing health and weight. The main reason why we tend to go for these crash diets are  1. Impatience. 2. We want to look good rather than be healthy. The above two points usually manifests themselves in a ‘deadline’ usually around a wedding, a holiday or some other social event. As important as it might be for our egos to look for other people, the reality is that that we only look as good as we feel, and nothing good comes quick. One of the most extreme ways in which such black and white thinking becomes reality is anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is, of course, something I myself have struggled with. I have had loved ones who have struggled with Bulimia. Anorexia is essentially a killer, as it has the highest mortality rate of any mental heal...

O ne of the very basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is Positive Statements that are used to replace negative statements once they are identified. On the internet, in the self-help space as well as the New Age community, these are known as affirmations. However, I believe those practicing Affirmations can learn a bit from CBT and related therapies such as DBT, and expand the way they talk to themselves. The idea is to give themselves evidence of what they are telling themselves. The simplest way to do this is to add ‘BECAUSE’ after the affirmation or positive statement you are repeating to yourself and improvise from there. For example, if your statement “It's easy for me to eat healthy food”, just add ‘because’ after it…so it becomes “It's easy for me to eat healthy food…because”….eg “I understand the value of health” or “I enjoy healthy food” or “I enjoy taking care of my body” and so on There is really no limit to how many statements you can have after ‘...

The Instagram fueled modern times of ours has lead to so many fad diets that it's hard to keep count. From Atkins and Keto to Vegan and even raw food, there is so much misleading information out there and people are so hungry for a quick fix, as well as for validation and acceptance, that most have tried at least one of these. The reality, however, is not that different from the early days of the exercise machine fad. Since the 80s late-night commercials have promised us the holy grail of fitness by selling us some cheap plastic exercise machine. Those days are well behind us as most have realized that the answer to fitness has been all around us. The bottom line was that there is no easy or painless way to health and everyone's path truly differs. The same goes for food. There truly is no holy grail where one can follow a diet and achieve glowing skin, muscular strength, excellent mood, and longevity. Even reading this sentence makes it obvious how diets have sold t...

Everyone has experienced burnout at least once in their life. Taking on stress for long periods of time will eventually lead to collapse, physically as well as mentally. Burnout is now gaining more recognition among practitioners, however, it remains somewhat taboo in high-performance settings such as Top universities or investment banks. One's capacity to go the extra mile, after all, is expected when competing against the best in the world. However, there is one area where Burnout has been recognized and dealt with effectively for years. Sports. Coaches and sports psychologists have worked with burned-out athletes for decades. After all, Athletes are expecting to eat great, sleep well and rest enough to ensure they can achieve peak performance. Burnout is now recognized among sports and is one of the things coaches consider. The easiest and best way to overcome burnout is of course rest. Regardless of the stress being mental or physical, going on a vacat...

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...

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...

To change and improve, it is necessary to identify the problem. If a problem is left unidentified or unacknowledged, there is little one can do about improving a situation. There maybe a lingering feeling of 'incompleteness' or 'urgency' but no direction to work on and no plan to implement. Clarity: Clarity of purpose by identifying a problem is therefore necessary. This is not something that is workable only for helping one improve oneself, or in any therapeutic setting, it is, in fact, the very essence of life itself. Identifying issues is necessary to improve everything from problems with ones exercise regimen or one's beliefs, to asserting quality governance in an organization to cutting costs in a company. Without clarity of the problem and issues at hand, one may simply take a haphazard effort of correcting whatever 'seems' to be the issue. More often than not this may make one attempt what is already being done, or what is easy, rather than wha...

I have written about failure before but it is not something discussed so often these days. Literature and gurus are out there to preach the path to success and how it is inevitable, when in reality the fact of the matter is that every now and then failure will come looking for you. Successful people are not those that never fail, they are the ones who keep going despite failing. When one fails, it is hard to get an objective look at the situation however one of the best ways that I have found of being able to convince myself that failure is only a part of life is by looking at other successful people are recognizing how many failure they have been through themselves. Keep in mind who failed Steve Jobs : The greatest example in modern times may very well be Steve Jobs. The once upon a time young heartthrob of silicon valley who was thrown out of his company. More than a decade later he came back and implemented the biggest corporate turnaround in history. His story, if anyone has...