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 ...

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...

The idea of having healthy levels of self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence is well recognized in psychology literature. In fact, since at least the 70s there has been a lot of work done on this and for a few decades raising self-esteem and self-worth was considered pivotal in treating clients with psychological disorders, bringing up healthy children, and even success in general. The idea of 'ego strengthening', as it came to be known in hypnosis literature, was ubiquitous in almost all kinds of therapy and change. However, while going through some videos of Jordan Peterson discussing the idea of social hierarchies and going through some literature on related ideas, I begun to wonder if ego strengthening alone is enough, or perhaps have we defined it well enough. Success in a society means being on top of the social hierarchy. You are the CEO, the Politician, or were born in or married into money and power. Whatever shame or form it takes, success is being on to...

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...

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...

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...

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...