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The Psychology of Your Future Self and How Your Present Illusions Hinder Your Future Happiness. Dan Gilbert: The psychology of your future self. Increase Your Motivation by Consulting Your Past and Future Self. Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self. Entanglement : Invisibilia. The Backfire Effect: The Psychology of Why We Have a Hard Time Changing Our Minds. By Maria Popova How the disconnect between information and insight explains our dangerous self-righteousness. “Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind,” I wrote in reflecting on the 7 most important things I learned in 7 years of Brain Pickings.

It’s a conundrum most of us grapple with — on the one hand, the awareness that personal growth means transcending our smaller selves as we reach for a more dimensional, intelligent, and enlightened understanding of the world, and on the other hand, the excruciating growing pains of evolving or completely abandoning our former, more inferior beliefs as we integrate new knowledge and insight into our comprehension of how life works. That discomfort, in fact, can be so intolerable that we often go to great lengths to disguise or deny our changing beliefs by paying less attention to information that contradicts our present convictions and more to that which confirms them. So where does this leave us? Donating = Loving. Harness Your Mind's "Future Self" Bias to Make Better Decisions. How Traditional Parenting Is Harming Children ... And Benefiting Conservative Ideology.

Photo Credit: PathDoc/Shutterstock.com May 8, 2014 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. From The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting by Alfie Kohn. Reprinted courtesy of Da Capo Lifelong Books. When you hear someone insist, “Children need more than intelligence to succeed,” the traits they’re encouraged to acquire, as I’ve mentioned, are more likely to include self-discipline than empathy. But what if it turned out that persistence or an inclination to delay gratification was mostly predicted by the situations in which people find themselves and the nature of the tasks they’re asked to perform? The ability to defer immediate gratification. This critical shift in thinking fits perfectly with a large body of evidence from the field of social psychology that shows how we act and who we are reflect the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Why We Stay In Crappy Situations (And How To Get Out Of Them) Change sucks. That’s why we stay in bad relationships, eat at the same restaurants, and take the same path to work every day. Humans like comfort, even when that comfort is uncomfortable. We’re creatures of habit, and breaking habits causes everything from anxiety, to depression, to eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. For example, I spent nine years in a relationship when I should have left after five. But, as we all know, change doesn’t happen overnight. Sure, we have growth spurts brought on by moments of clarity and the desire to stop playing small. Often, we grow in waves, a cycle known as evolutionary catharsis.

So how does this work? Right before we have a growth spurt, many of us have a temporary feeling of discomfort. 1. Some hallmarks of this technique include: yelling compulsive behaviors sickness 2. Features of this trait include: depression withdrawal loss of appetite 3. Distractions can take many forms, including: any form of addiction dissociation watching a lot of television. Do You Procrastinate? Maybe It's A Form Of Wisdom. Procrastination can make us feel guilty, unproductive, riddled with failure. You know what it feels like and how it looks: Just one more round of checking social media. A spontaneous Netflix marathon. That closet that suddenly really needs to be organized.

What if I told you that procrastination can be a form of wisdom? In an age of “instant” and “gotta-make-it-happen-now” productivity, our hesitation can (erroneously) be labeled as procrastination. Look, we all put things off. How can you actually benefit from your procrastination? 1. Are you hesitating because you doubt your abilities? 2. Ask yourself: What about these circumstances has me pausing? 3. Maybe you like the work you’re doing but not the client. Think about what you can change, quit, and delegate. When you examine your procrastination, you get clear. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com We're thrilled to present revitalize, a two-day summit with wellness experts from around the world.

Go. Dan Gilbert: The psychology of your future self. Ask Yourself These Three Questions to Reinvigorate Your Motivation. The metamorphoses of the self-employed. And so it continues. Yesterday’s labour market statistics showed that the self-employment figures are up once again. Close to 75,000 more people became self-employed in the last 3 months of this year, which means we’ve seen an increase of around 340,000 over the last 12 months alone. A report we published a few weeks ago takes a closer look at who these people are, why they’re starting up in business, and what being self-employed means to them personally. Our attempt was to paint a much richer picture of what life is like for the self-employed, and to show how complex and diverse this community really is. While we dug much deeper than most – for example, by creating a typology of self-employed ‘tribes’ – it still feels as though we only scratched the surface of this group.

A common theme that came up time and again in our interviews with business owners was that it took around 2 years for their venture to finally ‘begin working’. How do we do this? The Psychology of Getting Unstuck: How to Overcome the “OK Plateau” of Performance & Personal Growth. By Maria Popova “When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.” “Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself,” William James wrote in his influential meditation on habit, ”so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances.”

As we’ve seen, one of the most insidious forms of such habitual autopilot — which evolved to help lighten our cognitive load yet is a double-edged sword that can also hurt us — is our mercilessly selective everyday attention, but the phenomenon is particularly perilous when it comes to learning new skills. In the 1960s, psychologists identified three stages that we pass through in the acquisition of new skills. Color restoration of archival Einstein photograph by Mads Madsen The Mozart family on tour: Leopold, Wolfgang, and Nannerl. How Long It Takes to Form a New Habit. By Maria Popova Why magic numbers always require a grain of empirical salt. “We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle proclaimed. “Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state,” William James wrote. But how, exactly, do we rewire our habits once they have congealed into daily routines?

We already know that it takes more than “willpower.” When he became interested in how long it takes for us to form or change a habit, psychologist Jeremy Dean found himself bombarded with the same magic answer from popular psychology websites and advice columns: 21 days. In a study carried out at University College London, 96 participants were asked to choose an everyday behavior that they wanted to turn into a habit. This notion of acting without thinking — known in science as “automaticity” — turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be a central driver of habits. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr. The science of willpower: Kelly McGonigal on sticking to resolutions. It’s the second week in January and, at about this time, that resolution that seemed so reasonable a week ago — go to the gym every other day, read a book a week, only drink alcohol on weekends — is starting to seem very … hard.

As you are teetering on the edge of abandoning it all together, Kelly McGonigal is here to help. This Stanford University psychologist — who shared last year how you can make stress your friend — wants you to know that you’re not having a hard time sticking to a resolution because you are a terrible person. Perhaps you’ve just formulated the wrong resolution. McGonigal has, for years, taught a course called “The Science of Willpower” through Stanford’s Continuing Studies program and, in 2011, she spun it into a book, The Willpower Instinct. The TED Blog spoke to McGonigal this week about how willpower is often misunderstood, and what we each can do to improve it. (We also asked her about today’s talk — Why dieting doesn’t usually work.) It’s a great question. Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work. Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives. By Maria Popova “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: “Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love.

Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…” Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.

One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. The Science of Productivity, Animated. William James on Habit. By Maria Popova “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.” “We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle famously proclaimed. “Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Perhaps most fascinating in Michael Lewis’s altogether fantastic recent Vanity Fair profile of Barack Obama is, indeed, the President’s relationship with habit — particularly his optimization of everyday behaviors to such a degree that they require as little cognitive load as possible, allowing him to better focus on the important decisions, the stuff of excellence. I found this interesting not merely out of solipsism, as it somehow validated my having had the same breakfast day in and day out for nearly a decade (steel-cut oats, fat-free Greek yogurt, whey protein powder, seasonal fruit), but also because it isn’t a novel idea at all.

He proceeds to offer three maxims for the successful formation of new habits: The Psychology of Self-Control. By Maria Popova “Everyone’s self-control is a limited resource; it’s like muscle strength: the more we use it, the less remains in the tank, until we replenish it with rest.” Ever since psychology godfather William James first expounded the crucial role of habit in how we live and who we become, modern psychology has sought to figure out how we can rewire our bad habits, maximize our willpower, and use habits to optimize our productivity. And yet, if the market for self-help books and to-do apps and productivity tools is any indication, a great many of us still struggle with either understanding the psychology of habit and willpower or applying it to what really matters. In Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick (public library), psychologist Jeremy Dean illuminates an important common misconception about how willpower shapes our habits and behaviors: Donating = Loving Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter.

Share on Tumblr. What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. Required watching for any TED speaker: The science of stage fright. One thing can strike fear into the heart of the fiercest warrior, the most powerful CEO and the smartest person in any given room: having to speak in public. The thought of it makes the palms sweat, the heart beat faster and the limbs start to shake. An estimated 75% of people have a fear of speaking in public, and it’s something that nearly everyone who takes the TED stage must work hard to overcome. This TED-Ed lesson, the science of stage fright, just might help. In the lesson — which is taught by educator Mikael Cho and directed by animator Robertino Zambrano of KAPWA Studioworks — looks at stage fright not as an emotion, but as a physiological response. In other words, it’s not so much something to be overcome as to be adapted to. “Humans are wired to worry about reputation.

The lesson explains exactly what happens in the body before speaking in public and, of course, gives suggestions on how to calm stage fright. Learn to Play a Musical Instrument in Less Time with Slower Practice. The Secret to Breaking Out of Our Most Destructive Habits. This file illustration photo shows a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI). US researchers have published incredibly detailed images of the human brain as part of an international project aimed at uncovering how brain architecture influences personal Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is one of my all-time favorite stories, as it’s been for millions of others since it was written in 1843.

Who doesn’t start sniffling when reading this classic tearjerker about Ebenezer Scrooge, a cold, bitter old man dragged—by the ghosts of his past, present, and potential future—on a terrifying midnight journey of self-discovery, from which he emerges transformed and redeemed? Most people love movies about driven, selfish people who, struck by the life-altering experience of sudden love or near loss, eventually see the light and blossom into life-affirming menschen.

Miraculous conversion stories appeal to the wishful thinker in all of us. Habits Rule Patrick, Round II 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3.