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...

Living in the moment All of the new age movement seems to be about living in the moment. Be it mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing, everyone tells us the benefits of experiencing the full moment and living in the now. By having our attention directed to what we are doing at the moment, we can fully experience and react to what is happening now. With focus, we are able to deal with threats and opportunities more effectively, be more productive and enjoy ourselves fuller. By accepting a negative feeling, a failure, a mistake, we can move on quicker. Overall living in the moment makes us healthy. Sure. However..... there are surely times when distraction can help. Moments of Distraction Hypnotherapists understand the power of distraction very well. It is not the fact that we live in the moment that gives us mastery over our sense, it is the ability to direct our attention when and where we need it most. Following are examples of situations where distractions help us out. ...

Confused Confused, indecisive, procrastinate? Sometimes we just cant make sense of things and because we cant make sense of things we don't take action. Of course, nothing is more important than action but when life overwhelms us with choices, information, chores, sometimes it becomes difficult to look past the immediate and take a birds eye view of the grand perspective. There are many such instances where we can simply not think right, ranging from small everyday things, starnge annoyances, all the way to big life decisions eg 1-Buying a new smart phone? --we can be confused about specs, pricing, plans etc 2-Eating out, where to go?-- what to eat, why to go there? 3-Do my classmates hate me? --why do they laugh at me? why do I have so few friends? 3-Which university to go to? --what will it cost, what will be the return, how far will it be from home? etc etc etc Once we convince ourselves that there is a path forward, we can break through all the clutter and cle...

Well, I am not going to give a solution as to what to do when you are confused and afraid. The idea of writing this blog was not to explain solutions to problem but to show how solutions usually reside within us already. It is we who cannot get out of our internal struggle and make things happen, even when we know the solutions already. We set block up to our growth by imagining an easier, better or simpler solution. By waiting for a magical event or someone out there to help us. If that does not happen, many of us just do into depression and feel victimized. There is nothing worse than feeling victimized. Warriors cannot be victims. We are all warriors after all. How you may ask? well, we may be confused about a future work plan or confused about simple things eg what to eat? or which university to join? All complex decisions [and as frustrating as these moments are], we can always get over these and make a decision. We cannot predict the right outcome, obviously, but we can...

Wish they were different Don't we just wish we could change some of the people around us. We wish for all sorts of things to happen. We wish our kid starts acting like a grown up, or our teacher treats us with a bit less harshness, or that neighbor we thought of saying hello to but looks so mean. Whatever the case, be it your friends, your boss or family, we would certainly like to change one thing or the other. However there is one, smart tool to get the change you want in the people around you. Start treating them as if they were already as you want! Another path to change You see, you do not have to wish for someone to change, you can actually make it happen. Now this does not mean that I am claiming this tool to be the 'end all be all' method of getting the girl of your dreams or tackling your problem teenage, however I think its a clever technique to have in your tool kit or skill set to use when required. You can start treating a subordinate as if they can h...

No one wants to talk No one wants to talk to other people these days. Watssapp, yes, text em, yes, go and talk .....uumm..maybe some other time. It is no secret that we all want to be individuals, self reliant, and happy in our own little bubble. But human beings were not meant to be this way. In fact, having a good social circle and relationships around us is one of the fail safe ways of achieving happiness. Everyone knows this intrinsically, but are just afraid of it. Why? Bad moments! In any kind of a relationship, there is the 'good', with the 'bad'. Your best friend may have a fight with you, your loving mom's annoying habit of feeding you cake may drive you mad, or your niece is unbearable when she is nagging to take you to the park, however this is completely normal. The problem is that everyone wants to simply cut out the bad and in doing so simply cut out the person from their life. Not only do they leave out the bad but they leave out the 'good...

Everything we do starts with a question. How will we get that job? how can we start to get fit? how do I grow my company? There are so many questions we have to deal with regularly and often it seems that we have no answers. This sense of 'not knowing' is a big source of demotivation to get something started in the first place. We get so overwhelmed by the problem, the unknown and the task ahead that we either try to find a short cut, that never works, or we delay our plans further ahead. Days, weeks, months and even years go by before we even take  a step in the right direction. However the reality is that we do know the answers to many questions, problems and issues we face. They might not be perfect solutions, as one cannot always get a perfect answer to everything, but certainly these answers can help us set foot in the right direction. Let us look at common issues one by one. How do I lose weight? the answer to this question is not rocket science and not beyond the...

Overwhelmed! Convincing yourself to stay strong and positive through self talk, visualization etc is all great, but there are times in life we get overwhelmed. A surprise all nigher, a failure, a natural disaster, a death of a relative, even yourself getting hurt, are all realistic scenarios that can overwhelm us and leave us defenseless. Even though we may have remained strong, through eg a daily practice of praying to God, or self talk in general, it is these tough times when we have to be strong. So what to do? what to do when we feel nothing works? Despite our work with the therapists, or reading great self help books, and even taking assertion training, what to do when nothing seems to work!!!!? What to do? Once again, it varies from person to person, and I believe we sometimes cannot use the same tool again and again. However below are some of my suggestions. 1-Don't do anything! Sometimes one is overwhelmed with stress, work or the immediate need of the situation tha...