8 Things to Know About Concentrating “Music helps me concentrate,” Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder. Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. On his desk next to his computer sat crunched Red Bulls, empty Gatorade bottles, some extra pocket change and scattered pieces of paper. In the pocket of his sweat pants rested a blaring iPod with a chord that dangled near the floor, almost touching against his Adidas sandals. Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. Do you know a person like this? The Science Behind Concentration In the above account, Mike’s obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it’s almost an impossible routine to get out of. When we constantly multitask to get things done, we’re not multitasking, we’re rapidly shifting our attention. Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert When Mike decides to start writing his History essay, blood rushes to his anterior prefrontal cortex. Phase 2: Find and Execute
5 Ways to Change Someone's Mind An expert recently claimed that knowing--and using-- a few simple rules can help you change the minds of other people. The first rule of changing minds is to keep your message short, sharp, and simple. People tend to respond less well to long convoluted arguments, according to Kevin Dutton, Ph.D., author of Dutton's book isn't itself a short or oversimplified how-to book. The crux of Dutton's message is contained in his five elements, made easy to remember with the acronym . IMPLICITY: Keep your message short, sharp, and simple to convince people it's true. ERCEIVED SELF-INTEREST: Con men agree it's the key to getting us to do something we didn't think we wanted to. NCONGRUITY: Surprise people -- tell them your cupcake is 400 cents rather than four dollars and they're far more likely to buy it. ONFIDENCE: The more confident you are, the more we believe you're right -- even when we know your facts are wrong. As I read , I had a question about good versus evil . Read Kevin Dutton's blog .
Stages of Learning to Say "No" Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote) One of the most important skills we can learn that will help us manage and fulfill our priorities is to say "No." Once we get there, it becomes easier and easier, but initially it can be extremely awkward and unpopular with others. Knowing the stages we’ll go through can help us realize that what’s happening is natural and that its not just that we can’t seem to do it. Stage 1: Identifying Opportunities In this initial stage we have identified our need to learn to say "No" and have made it a goal. Stage 2: Backing Up This next stage of learning and practicing saying "No" is the most difficult. Stage 3: Doing the Right Thing at the Right Time Within this stage, we have arrived at a place where we are able to say no at the right time: immediately. Author's Bio: Donna Birk is a writer, trainer, coach, and Licensed Social Worker.
How to Motivate Someone To motivate another person, you have to appeal to their values. You motivate an intellectual like me, for example, by promising that I will learn something or advance my ideas if I do what you want. You motivate a high school athlete doing poorly in school by not permitting him or her to play ball unless the grades improve. You motivate my wife by showing her how doing what you want would benefit her family or enhance her parenting skills. This may seem simple and straightforward but it isn't. Individuality is much greater than is commonly supposed. People have a natural tendency to think their values are best, not just for themselves, but for everyone. Because we assume other people would be happier with our values than theirs, we have a tendency to try to motivate other people by indoctrinating them in our values. The first step in trying to motivate another person is to identify their values.
A Feel-Good Theory: A Smile Affects Mood PUTTING on a sad face or a smile directly produces the feelings that the expressions represent, according to a new theory of how emotions are produced. This view elaborates on ideas proposed more than a century ago by Charles Darwin and William James, the philosopher and psychologist. It holds that facial expressions are not just the visible sign of an emotion, but actually contribute to the feeling itself. The theory does not propose that facial expressions are more important than thoughts or memories in prompting emotions. But it points to the physiology of facial expression as a cause of emotions in its own right. The theory has been gaining gradual support over the last decade among psychologists. In one, researchers found that simply inducing people to place the muscles of their face in the pattern of a given emotional expression elicited that feeling. To be sure, no one suggests that putting on a happy face can cheer up someone who is in mourning. Dr. In Dr. In 1984, Dr.
Power to Change – 10 Tips to Effective & Active Listening Skills Do you ever need someone to listen to you? Our mentors are available. Listening makes our loved ones feel worthy, appreciated, interesting, and respected. Ordinary conversations emerge on a deeper level, as do our relationships. When we listen, we foster the skill in others by acting as a model for positive and effective communication. In our love relationships, greater communication brings greater intimacy. Listening skills fuel our social, emotional and professional success, and studies prove that listening is a skill we can learn. The Technique. While the ideas are largely intuitive, it might take some practice to develop (or re-develop) the skills. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Have you tried and tried but your best is still not good enough? 8. 9. 10. As you work on developing your listening skills, you may feel a bit panicky when there is a natural pause in the conversation. Ironically, as your listening skills improve, so will your aptitude for conversation. Keep your relationship growing:
The Power of Saying, "No" Your rating: None Average: 4.7 (6 votes) ======================= "No" is such a simple word.... ======================= only two letters. Yet saying "No" out loud is harder for most people than saying, "I'll be glad to..." (eleven letters)or "When do you need me to..." (seventeen letters) Most of us said, "No!" Many of us grow up to be people pleasers. ======================= The unassertive "No" ======================= is accompanied by weak excuses and rationalizations. You might even make up an excuse to support your "No." ======================= The aggressive "No" ======================= is done with contempt. Sometimes the aggressive "No" includes an attack on the person making the request. ======================= The assertive "No" ======================= is simple and direct. ======================= Strategies to make the assertive "No" easier ======================= 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Make it a project to say, "No," to something every day.
Color Psychology by David Johnson Like death and taxes, there is no escaping color. It is ubiquitous. Yet what does it all mean? Why are people more relaxed in green rooms? Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. Black Black is the color of authority and power. White Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity. Red The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. Blue The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. Green Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. Yellow Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. Purple The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. Brown Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. Colors of the Flag In the U.S. flag, white stands for purity and innocence. Food for Thought While blue is one of the most popular colors it is one of the least appetizing.
How to Lift Your Mood? Try Smiling My personal trainer sometimes gives me an odd piece of advice during workouts: "Relax your face." For a long time, I found this advice confusing. Isn't physical exertion supposed to be expressed in grimaces? I thought of the face as a pressure-relief valve that helps emit the pain the body is experiencing. But the trainer suggested I think about it the other way around — that controlling the face can help control the mind. I was skeptical until I read a paper in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Psychological Association. In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper, David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University and Bob Willingham of the Center for Psychological Studies in Berkeley, Calif., present the results of the first study ever conducted comparing the facial expressions of blind people with those of sighted people in a natural, nonlaboratory setting. See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
Is Your Business Stuck? Use Your Two Most Important Resources Wisely | 42function If you have been at your startup for a few months, or even longer, and you’ve seen a halt in growth, do you know why? Were things going well, only to stop abruptly and make you feel stuck? Just about every business owner goes through it as a result of not adjusting accordingly. Sometimes a way of doing business works great for awhile, but just as business grows, so must our habits and ways of doing business evolve as well. If you are in a phase of your business where things were going great, but you feel stuck, then you probably need to re-adjust. You don’t use your two most important resources efficiently: time and money. The two main resources of any business is time and money. How much to you spend on advertising costs or other ways of investing in your business? How much time do you spend actually doing work? Re-evaluate what you have to invest in time and money, and where each should go. Example #1: The Freelance Feast or Famine Cyle How have you created a shift in your business?
The 8 Key Elements of Highly Effective Speech I’d like you to take a moment to the following sentence, taken from a recent article exploring the nature of human consciousness: “Neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort systematically alter brain function.” Exciting? Hardly! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Effective communication is based on trust, and if we don’t trust the speaker, we’re not going to listen to their words. Gentle eye contact increases trustworthiness and encourages future cooperation, [3] and a happy gaze will increase emotional trust. [4] However, if we see the slightest bit of anger or fear on the speaker’s face, our trust will rapidly decrease. [5] But you can’t fake trustworthiness because the muscles around your mouth and eyes that reflect contentment and sincerity are involuntary. The tone of your voice is equally important when it comes to understanding what a person is really trying to say.
15 styles of Distorted Thinking 15 styles of Distorted Thinking Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. Checklist for Hidden Anger Procrastination in the completion of imposed tasks. Leadership DynamiX – Executive Coaching, Workshops and Forum What Are MindSkills Techniques? These short carefully crafted techniques are about ‘HOW’ to run your business brain to get better results, learn skills faster and make lasting life changes. Based on accelerated learning, applied behavioural modelling research (NLP) and advances in management psychology. These next (3G) generation techniques stretch from ‘remedial’ (past) to ‘mindful’ (now) to ‘generative’ (future). They are a unique and skillfully designed and regular series of tightly-focused, high-impact mind/body strategies designed to boost personal effectiveness and take your capabilities, skills and traits to the next level. Clusters - Families of techniques (‘protocols’) - eg. decision-making, delegation, visioning, power, creativity, assertiveness, time management, networking, strategic visioning, gravitas, deep calm, trust, collaboration, and so on). Models - Chaining of ‘clusters’ and ‘protocols’ - eg. Protocols are the new exercises. © Copyright.