Convincing Ourselves

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...

Businesses are increasingly becoming visual. Not just in how they communicate with customers, but all stakeholders for that matter. Training videos have been around for decades, graphics to present financials have become increasingly complex yet explanatory. Even yearly end financial of listed companies sometimes looks like colorful magazines. Business processes have been visualized since the beginning. Instead of just visualizing strategic tools, whole corporate strategies are now presented in visuals. As the world moves into a more media-rich environment, we display screens everywhere, we can only expect this trend to accelerate.  When one looks at the 'self', the usefulness and utility of visualization can actually be even more important. Visualization is a common tool in performance psychology such as when dealing with Athletes. It helps one condition and acclimatizes to a future event and it can also help motivate oneself to achieve a...