The 'Busy' Trap. The manic defence is the tendency, when presented with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, to distract the conscious mind either with a flurry of activity or with the opposite thoughts or feelings. A general example of the manic defence is the person who spends all of his time rushing around from one task to the next, and who is unable to tolerate even short periods of inactivity. For this person, even leisure time consists in a series of discrete programmed activities that he needs to submit to in order to tick off from an actual or mental list. One needs only observe the expression on his face as he ploughs through yet another family outing, cultural event, or gruelling exercise routine to realize that his aim in life is not so much to live in the present moment as it is to work down his never-ending list.
If one asks him how he is doing, he is most likely to respond with an artificial smile and a robotic response along the lines of, ‘Fine, thank you—very busy of course! ' Why Do Depressed People Lie in Bed? If you've personally suffered from depression or known someone who has, you know that when people are really depressed, they have a strong urge to stay in bed. Why do depressed people lie in bed? It isn't because of great snuggle time under the blankets.
It's because depressed people can't bring themselves to get of bed. Almost any activity or task becomes a painful ordeal, even things as simple as taking a shower or getting dressed. Beds are the location in the house most associated with inactivity A perfectly able-bodied person can't bring him or herself to rise out of bed.
The intuitive answer is that a lack of motivation is to blame. The intuitive answer is okay as far as it goes. First, we have to detour to contemporary evolutionary psychology , which tells us that moods have a function: Moods help us pursue goals efficiently. These relationships between moods, goal, and effort hold for a variety of species. So this alternative theory turns the standard explanation on its head. How to Create a Happy Mood. Salvador Dali's Creative Thinking Technique. You're Stronger than You Think. Thank you for spending some time with me at my new Psychology Today blog! It's an honor to be here, and I hope I can contribute something to the wonderful community of bloggers here.
While I plan to blog on various topics, one theme I hope to revisit on occasion during my stay here is the potential within each of us, the amazing things we human beings can do when we put our minds and hearts to it. So much you read these days seems to emphasize what we can't do rather than what we can . For instance, don't blame yourself that you can't (say) pass up those cookies, because you're evolved—or genetically predisposed, or trained by your upbringing—to crave them. Any or all of those things may be true, of course. Our tastes and desires—especially those that flow from our basic drives—may be out of our control. Take procrastination , for example: people have devised many brilliant coping mechanisms and workarounds to cut down on procrastinating behavior. Famous Failures. The 7 D’s of Relationship Destruction.
All of us sometimes engage in behaviors that make our partners uncomfortable. The actions listed below can tear your relationship apart and if they have become part of how you relate to each other, you will have significant problems sooner or later. It's important to avoid the following: 1. If you don't tell the whole truth as soon as possible, when your mate finds out, it could kill your relationship. Whatever it was you did that you need to fess up to, do it now, so it can be forgiven and dropped. The lies only get more complicated as you withhold the truth, and your partner will only distrust you more when those lies are revealed. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
When you puts chemicals into your body, it puts you on a different level than your partner and relating will be more difficult. Avoid these actions and you may actually find yourself living happily ever after. Dr. Surviving Tough Times. Dick Marcinko, author of and other books about the Navy Seals and related topics, says that when he is looking for tough men for his units, he looks for warthogs, not gazelles. A gazelle is fast, lovely, and elegant.
Warthogs are ugly and slow. To Marcencko, a gazelle is someone who does things effortlessly and well. They're smart and talented. Everything comes easily to them. But the problem with gazelles is that once they go down, they're down. Because they've never to dig deep, they don't know how to do it. To get into Seal Team 6, you go through days of grueling, hard grunt labor. The Navy Seals swim - one of their primary missions is underwater reconnaissance They got to one point in the testing where the men were supposed to grab two buckets full of rocks and swim across the pool with them. Some of them did - those guys made the team. One guy grabbed the buckets, jumped in the pool, and started running. "I can't swim! " He made the team. That's what warthogs have: grit. food sunsets. Are you thriving? Here is a checklist. In my last post I advocated that we move beyond resiliency as a goal to as a goal.
Why settle for less? But what does thriving look like? I feel like I am thriving in my life right now (it has not always been the case). So here is my own personal take on what contributes to thriving. {*style:<b>DAILY PRACTICES </b>*} Laughing in delight Being playful with others Getting good sleep (in the dark to prevent cancer) Being physically active Mindfulness Attending to the beauty of the natural world Eating well and enjoying healthy food Expressing creativity (for me: cooking, writing, playing music, singing, writing poems) Caring for others and getting caring when you need it Practicing gratitude Enjoying uplifting experiences that take you beyond yourself (e.g., music, religious or spiritual practices) Confiding in at least one close friend (most days) Not succumbing to temptations too frequently (like dessert!)
Finding a mentor for areas where you want to improve Taking risks to connect to and help others. Meat Eaters Downplay Animal Minds. The decision about whether to eat meat has a moral dimension to it. The animals that we use for food are complex creatures. Deciding to eat them means accepting that they will be killed so that you can eat them.
That is not to say, of course, that people grapple with this decision at every meal, but in some way everyone has to make some decision about whether to eat animals. And before I go any further with this discussion, I should mention that I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years now for a combination of economic, health, and moral reasons. An interesting question about eating meat involves how people grapple with the issue that many animals people eat are reasonably intelligent creatures. An interesting paper in the February, 2012 issue of by Brock Bastian, Steve Loughnan, Nick Haslam, and Helena Radke suggests that when people eat meat, they tend to downplay the minds of the animals that they eat.
It isn't just thinking about animals being used for food, though. Study Smarter, Not Harder. Good students don't just study harder, they study smarter. A study published this week identifies some habits of successful college students. I'll describe the new study shortly, but first: How should students study ? A growing body of cognitive psychology research emphasizes the value of two principles: Principle one is space your studying out over time . If you study something and then study it again right away, it's fresh in your mind the second time. Principle two is test yourself . Ironically, students often rate spacing and testing as counterproductive. According to the study that came out this week , the good ones do. In summary, low performers were especially likely to base their study decisions on impending deadlines rather than planning, and they were also more likely to engage in late-night studying.
Why spacing wasn't significantly related to GPA isn't clear. It's always important to remember that correlation doesn't equal causation. Developing Good Study Habits Really Works. Knowledge is the essence of smart thinking. No matter how much raw intelligence you have, you are not going to succeed at solving complex problems without knowing a lot. That's why we spend the first 20 (or more) years of our lives in school.
Robert Bjork and fellow PT blogger Nate Kornell have explored some of the study habits of college students in a 2007 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . Research on memory provides a number of important suggestions about the most effective ways to study. Of course, guidelines from memory research come from studies in idealized circumstances. To address this question, Marissa Hartwig and John Dunlosky related the study habits of college students to their grade point average (GPA) in a 2012 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . The students with the highest GPA were more likely to study by testing themselves than the students with lower GPAs. All college students tend to focus their study on upcoming assignments. Sometimes, Happiness is a Choice. {*style:<b>Marcus Aurelius </b>*} “Hey, that’s not !”
Do you remember the first time you heard or said these words? Maybe it was while playing hopscotch, tag, or “Monopoly” with your friends or siblings. Or, like me, you may recall that expression from the school playground, when someone broke the rules of the touch football game. The fact is, most of us grew up in a culture that places great value on “fairness” and “playing by the rules.” There’s just one problem with this noble ideal: the world simply doesn’t work that way.
This is perfectly understandable. Yes, these feelings make sense—but past a certain point, they may do you more harm than good. Indeed—but what can be done to achieve this “radical acceptance” of life’s unfairness? When you hear the term, “Stoic,” you might picture those stiff-upper-lip types on Masterpiece Theater, repressing their roiling emotions as they look down their noses at the kitchen staff.
The Stoics were not joyless, godless, logicians!