Convincing Ourselves

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...

The skepticism to the phenomenon of hypnosis is quite prevalent and for good reason. Hypnosis has the same reputation that perhaps politicians do. Ridiculed by the public imagination and my media in general, you can't deny there are those who have good intentions, but then again there are those who tend to over-promise. There is, of course, significant literature on the uses of hypnosis in therapy and it is, in fact, a common tool. In fact, it is essentially a recognize mind-body therapy and has the same recognition in medical circles that meditation or yoga has. To put it in the bluntest terms, it is considered viable integrative medicine. Apart from my own personal experience, one can go through academic journals and case reports of hypnotherapy patients. Apart from the usual reduction in anxiety or depression, there are numerous cases of people who have been able to quit smoking, give up drinking, resolve irritable bowel syndrome, skin problems and in one case even s...

The markets last night took a dive globally. Everywhere from New York to Karachi, we saw sudden selling and almost panic in the past 24 hours. All of this on the back of coronavirus. Coronavirus? Coronavirus or nCOVID-19, is a new coronavirus that has been identified. It spreads as easily as the common flu and is about 10x more fatal. That may sound like a lot, however, considered the low mortality rate of flu, cCOVID-19 is only slightly more dangerous than pneumonia and far less dangerous than the recent Ebola or SARS, although it spreads more easily. Impact? The main reason why nCOVID-19 has become such a big deal is that in the beginning of the outbreak, no one was really sure how high the mortality rate would be. China was vigilant and the media reports were haunting, to say the least. Wuhan remains the city with the highest mortality rate and it set the stage for how coronavirus would be portrayed throughout the world. According to worldmeters.info there have been 11...

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...

Introduction Influencing the general public is a hotly debated topic in the policy. In any form of government reforms and agendas have to be 'sold' to the public. The government has traditionally been done through information dissemination through the media and done so quite effectively. An example can be of course selling wars or military interventions to the public. When the intent, however, is misinformation on a large scale, it becomes 'propaganda'. Despite its negative connotations, it is surely been present in democracies, as much as in dictatorships. A few years ago we have seen a move towards 'Nudging' individuals also called the Nudge Theory. This was popularized by Book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their book ' Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness '. An example of this could be the wording on a referendum to discourage a certain outcome or perhaps limiting choices for the consumers on the type o...

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...

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 ...

Back in Pakistan now. As you know, one of the hazards of business travel is delicious food. Warm coffee shops, exotic treats, late-night dinners. How can you say no....however I meditated with a positive statement that I kept on using days before my travel ...... and kept it going as much as I can during my travel. Helping me balance healthy foods with indulgences, important dinners with some time for my self. It was not always easy, but it was not excruciating either. It has taken me a lot of time to reach this spot but I do not believe THIS IS WHERE I SHOULD BE. I believe there is no point we should EVER BE, just a journey to improve ourselves, our habits, our lives... May you all live the best life possible, may your journey to the top never stop Umair Usman is a Rapid Transformational Therapy practitioner, a businessperson, and a blogger. You can know more about him at https://buff.ly/2zmc9rj . To book a free consultancy session, please f...