tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90748258045387354522024-03-12T17:25:33.131-07:00The Real SecretWhat to do when the universe hasn't delivered... everything you ever wantedAnnabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-59136441089314163842011-10-27T02:37:00.000-07:002011-10-27T02:41:13.162-07:00Why we need to sleep well<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">All of us have trouble sleeping now and then, and notice how much it can reduce our ability to focus, function and feel well the next day. For the majority of us for whom this is only an occasional inconvenience – or a finite period, like the parents of new babies – we usually take it in our stride and catch up with sleep the next night, or week, or month. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">If, though, you are someone who currently suffers from poor sleep, or regular insomnia, the effects may be seriously affecting your life and your sense of wellbeing. And more people suffer from this condition than many of us imagine. Recent figures show that:</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">On average, 50% of people slept badly last night</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Over 30% of the population suffers from insomnia or another sleep disorder<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;">27% of people have sleep problems at any one time<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;">10% of people have chronic insomnia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;">And far from being a minor irritation,<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><strong> </strong>sleep disorders put sufferers at significantly greater risk of physical and mental health problems, ranging from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder to immune deficiency and heart disease.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;">“Whilst great emphasis is rightly placed on the importance of diet and exercise, sleep has for too long been neglected as a major influence on the physical and mental health of the nation.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/site/18976/21258/dr-andrew-mcculloch" title="Dr Andrew McCulloch"><strong><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="color: #990000;">Dr Andrew McCulloch</span></span></strong></a></span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;">, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation</span></strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The UK charity, the Mental Health Foundation’s report, “Sleep Matters” shows the impact of sleep on health and wellbeing and details how, far from being a minor irritation, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">sleep disorders put sufferers at significantly greater risk of health problems. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its data also reveals the extent to which sleep disorders like insomnia affect everyday issues such as relationships and work. Taken from the “Great British Sleep Survey”, the largest ever survey of the nation’s sleep (conducted by sleep organisation Sleepio), the data shows that compared to people who sleep well, people with insomnia are:</span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Four times as likely to have relationship problems </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(reported amongst 55% of survey respondents with mild, moderate or severe insomnia, compared to 13% of respondents who slept well)<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Three times as likely to experience low mood </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(83% compared to 27%) <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Three times as likely to lack concentration during the day </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(78% compared to 26%) <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Three times as likely to struggle to ‘get things done’ at work or elsewhere in their lives</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (68% compared to 23%) </span></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span></i><span style="color: #7f6000;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Over twice as likely to suffer from energy deficiency </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(94% compared to 42%)</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Sleep Writing</strong></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">One way of helping improve your sleep is to keep a sleep journal. Each morning, note down how easy or hard it was to get to sleep and the quality of the sleep you experienced. On good days, analyse what your evening routine was, what you ate and drank and describe your state of mind on going to bed. On days when sleep was elusive, do the same, noting what might have stopped you sleeping in terms of your own activity, attitude and consumption, or what outside factors kept you awake (noise, light, temperature). At the end of each week, look at the positive and negative influences on your sleep and try to incorporate the first into a regular routine, and minimise the second. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"></span></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">By the end of a month you should have a very clear idea of what helps and hinders you getting to sleep; the things which cause you to wake up in the night; and how to use this information to improve your sleeping habits.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><em><span style="color: #7f6000;">“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”<o:p></o:p></span></em></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, scientist<span style="color: black;">, <span style="color: #990000;">doctor, educator, mother <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #990000;">(1926-2004)</span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #990000;">Golden Glow</span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Another tip is to actively relax before sleeping. Download and listen to the free "Golden Glow" relaxation audio on </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Video-audio.html"><strong><span style="color: #7f6000;"><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em> website</span></strong></a><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong> </strong>while lying in bed at night and get into the habit of clearing your mind of anxious and repetitive thoughts while relaxing each and every muscle in your body.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #7f6000;">More info on insomnia in </span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/we-all-know-we-need-sleep-when-we-dont.html"><span style="color: #990000;">this blog post</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000;">, and on reducing stress and taking control of your life in <em><strong><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></strong></em>, available in print and Kindle formats on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.com</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000;">.</span></span></div>
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</div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-69683092403780536022011-09-25T13:18:00.000-07:002011-09-25T13:25:29.664-07:00Rage - How To Stay In Control<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>We all know what anger is, </strong>and we’ve all felt it: either as mild irritation or at times as extreme displeasure. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats; it inspires powerful, often aggressive feelings and behaviours, which allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked. A certain amount of anger, is, therefore, necessary to our survival and a completely normal, healthy, human emotion.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>But when it turns to rage,</strong> it is anger that is out of control and destructive. Although rage stems from anger, rage is never heathy. Rage denotes a complete loss of control and is characterised by shouting, threats of violence as well as acts of violence, and involves a degree of aggressiveness that is out of proportion to any provocation. Unlike anger, rage is not a normal, healthy emotion. Rage is destructive and harmful to all involved.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>If you find yourself acting</strong> in ways that seem out of control and frightening – both to yourself as well as to the victim of your rage – you will need to seek help to find better ways to express your anger and deal with your emotion. There are psychological tests which can test your ability to express anger apropriately, but most of us know if we have a probem with rage. We understand, almost instinctively, that our anger is not healthy anger.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>It’s worth having an idea</strong> of the common ways in which most of us deal with anger. In general people use a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. The three main approaches are <em>expressing, suppressing,</em> and <em>calming. </em></span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><em>1. Expressing your angry feelings</em></strong> in an assertive, not aggressive, manner is the healthiest way to express anger. To do this, you have to learn how to make clear what your needs are, and how to get them met, without hurting others. It can sometimes be very difficult to tread the line between assertiveness and aggression – especially in the heat of the moment.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><em><strong>2. Anger can be suppressed</strong></em>, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger, stop thinking about it and focus on something positive. The aim is to inhibit or suppress your anger and convert it into more constructive behavior. The danger in this type of response is that if it isn’t allowed outward expression, your anger can turn inward on yourself. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or depression.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticising everything, and making cynical comments haven’t learned how to constructively express their anger. Not surprisingly, they aren’t likely to have many successful relationships.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><em><strong>3. Finally, you can calm down inside</strong>.</em> This means not just controlling your outward behavior, but also controlling your internal responses, taking steps to lower your heart rate, calm yourself down, and let the feelings subside. This response can be especially helpful if things have become over-heated and you need to restore your balance before expressing your anger in an appropriate and uselful way. Many people find that by removing themselves, physically, from the situation is also helpful. However, it’s important that the anger is addressed later when your feelings have calmed down and you are again in control.</span></span><br />
<br /><strong><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Strategies to help you calm down angry feelings include:</span></span></strong><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000;">Simple relaxation</span></a></strong>, such as deep breathing and relaxing imagery.</span></span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breathe deeply and slowly, from your diaphragm; breathing from your chest won’t relax you. Picture your breath coming up from your “gut”.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Slowly repeat a calm word or phrase such as “relax”, “take it easy.” Repeat it to yourself while breathing deeply.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use imagery; visualise a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">You can download our free relaxation audio from <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000;"><em>The Real Secret</em> website</span></a></span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Practise</strong> these techniques daily. Learn to use them automatically when you’re in a tense situation.</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Think! </strong>When you’re angry, your thinking can get very exaggerated and overly dramatic. Try replacing these thoughts with more rational ones. For instance, instead of telling yourself, “oh, it’s awful, it’s terrible, everything’s ruined,” tell yourself, “it’s frustrating, and it’s understandable that I’m upset about it, but it’s not the end of the world and getting angry is not going to fix it anyhow.” Remind yourself that getting angry is not going to fix anything, that it won’t make you feel better and may actually make you feel worse.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Logic defeats anger</strong>, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is not out to get you, you’re just experiencing some of the day to day irritations that are a part of everyone’s daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you<em> get a</em> more balanced perspective. </span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Angry people</strong> tend to jump to and act on conclusions, and some of those conclusions can be very inaccurate. The first thing to do if ywhich ou’re in a heated discussion is slow down and think through your responses. Don’t say the first thing that comes into your head, but slow down, breathe, and think carefully about what you want to say. At the same time, listen carefully to what the other person is saying and take your time before answering. Try to stay as cool as you can, reminding yourself that allowing yourself to get into a rage will not solve anything.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">I have only touched the tip of the iceberg that is rage. There is a great more to say but that will have to wait for another day. My main aim today has been to look at the ways in which we typically deal with anger and to offer some simple techniques for dealing with anger that has the potential to become an unhealthy rage.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Victim support</strong>: We would like to know more about the experience of being on the receiving end of a rage attack and so it would be very helpful if anyone reading this blog and who has had such an experience could comment on how they coped and what strategies for coping they would recommend.</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">Posted by Annabel</span><br />
<br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">There are exercises and activities in <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><strong><span style="color: #990000;"><em>The Real Secret</em></span></strong></a><em> </em>which can help you gain control of your life, communicate more effectively and process anger, grief and trauma. You can buy it in paperback or Kindle formats on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.co.uk</span></strong></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.com</span></strong></a>, as well as other online booksellers; you can order it through any bookshop.</span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-87454374334518131642011-09-22T13:14:00.000-07:002011-09-22T13:14:56.356-07:00Seven Steps to Self Help<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="320" id="il_fi" src="http://www.docleaf.com/critique/May0708/self.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="239" /></span></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you browse the ‘self-help’ shelves of a bookshop you will come across a vast array of different self-help strategies and approaches. You could spend some time going through the different books looking for the one that you think will best suit you and your particular problems. Nothing wrong in that – after all we are all different and our problems come in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, a ”one size fits all” approach to therapy is very unlikely to be effective.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are, however, a few underlying principles which form the backbone of all good therapeutic approaches and these basic principles also apply when you're trying to make changes in your life with or without a self help programme. Once you have the basic principles under your belt, the question of which approache you should consider will become very much easier. The First and Most Important Principle is to:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>1. Trust Yourself</strong> <strong>to Find Your Own Solutions</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best help for you will be the help you create for yourself. You need to find your own solutions and any therapist or any self-help book worth their salt will help you do just that. Rather than imposing a “cure all” they will seek only to help and support you find your own way out of any difficulty. It’s true that therapists may have studied and know more about techniques and treatments than you, and you may well need their help and guidance, but no-one knows yourself better than you do. Recognising this, a good therapist should ask you to <em>Trust Yourself</em> to work things out above all other advice. This is because until you trust yourself to help yourself you will never be helped – no matter how knowleagable or experienced your therapist. Beware the books that tell you they have a magic cure. There is no magic cure. No quick solution that doesn’t involve you doing most of the work. Sorry – but you know I’m right. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Remember You Are Not Alone</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When suffering we often tend to feel as if we are the only one. Everyone else seems so much happier or at least, even if they do have problems, they seem to be in control and able to cope so much better that us. The truth is, we all have problems and we all cope as best we can. It’s true that some people cope better than others for some things – but they may well do worse in other areas. One thing is for sure – if you are human you will suffer. Scratch the surface of any of us and you’ll find a story comparable to your own – you are not alone. Keep this in mind especially when you find yourself feeling a bit slef-pitying.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you’re feeling particularly downcast, one tip is to think of someone who’s faced a similar situation and handled it well. What can you learn from their situation and the way in which they dealt with it? It could be someone you know, but just as helpful are examples from literature or film. Another suggestion is to imagine your current life and its difficulties as a film with you as the scriptwriter. What different solutions or endings can you imagine?</span><br />
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</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">3. Take one small step at a time</span></strong></span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;"></span></strong>Problems come in all shapes and sizes and our responses to these problems differ enormously but one thing we all sometimes do is to make our problems appear bigger than they really are. We need to keep things in perspective, or risk feeling overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed can lead to a sense of helplessness, and it’s this helplessness that you need to avoid at all costs. Whatever the size of the problem, the way to begin tackling it, is not to expect to deal with it all at once. Like climbing an enormous mountain you need to take one step at a time. If you spend too much time thinking about the size of the mountain you would probably give up before beginning. The same applies to problems and difficulties – concentrate on the small steps you <em>can</em> take and keep going.</span></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">4. Are you sure about wanting to change?</span></strong></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;"><br />
</span></strong>This is a tricky one. Many of us say we want to change things because we feel unhappy with the way things are at the moment. We talk about making "life changes" and, indeed, there are now hundreds of books on the subject. Of course, it’s fine to make changes, but before we can even begin we really need to know not only what it is that we want to change but, far more importantly, we need to imagine what our lives will look like when we have made those changes. What’s your life going to be like when you no longer have the particular problem that so upsets you now? There is no point setting out on a difficult journey – change is always difficult – if you don’t know where you’re headed or even if it’s where you want to be.</span></span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">5. Filling in the gaps</span></span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s important to consider what your new life will look like <em>after</em> you have dealt with those things in your current life which you wish to change. In doing this you will come to realise that some of your old habits will need to be replaced by new habits if you are to be successful. What, for example, are you going to do with the time you’ll save when you no longer have to deal with the problems that so beset you now? Filling in those gaps with positive behaviours will help support, in the long term, any changes you make now. In other words, you need to think about the positive aspects of change and make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of seeing only problems.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>6. Be Open to Change</strong></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The notion that there is a perfect life just waiting for you to discover, once you’ve got over present difficulties, is nonsense. There is no such perfect life. Not for you and not for anyone. An interesting life, on the other hand, will be constantly interrupted with problems and difficulties that you’ll need to sort out or overcome. Being open to change will give you the necessary flexibility to deal with these problems, so don’t be afraid of change. Change can open up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Try to see change as a positive force and avoid seeing change as a necessary evil.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">7. What Role Do You Play In Your Difficult Life?</span></strong> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is no easy question and one that asks you to be scrupulously honest with yourself. Is there any chance that you could perhaps be making things worse for yourself ? Is there any chance that you are actually maintaining the difficult situation by refusing to acknowledge your own part in it? Perhaps the hardest part of any resolution of life’s problems is taking responsibility for our own actions, accepting that perhaps, just perhaps, we might in fact be a big part of the problem. One way of gauging the part you are playing is to return to imagining your current life as a script – a book or a film. What other actions could you have taken to avoid the situation that now troubles you? In the light of that, can you think of anything that you could do now to make things better in the future ?</span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Short: Is it always someone else’s fault?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">There are exercises in </span></span><a href="http://www.audible.co.uk/aduk/site/product.jsp?p=BK_CREA_000010UK&BV_SessionID=@@@@1979324848.1248097243@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccchadehkkfddhecefecekjdfikdfij.0" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>A Simpler Life</em></span></strong></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> – our audio book – which can help you reconnect with your authentic self and your personal values, and </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><em>The Real Secret</em></strong></span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is a flexible self help book which you can use to create your own self development programme. They are both available on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">www.amazon.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">www.amazon.com</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posted by Annabel</span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-53448028968619691652011-09-21T22:45:00.000-07:002011-09-22T00:38:48.171-07:00The Importance of Learning to Listen<div class="mceTemp" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><img height="239" id="il_fi" src="http://diresta.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Non-effective_listening.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></strong></span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>On every measurement of human happiness</strong>, good relationships with other people rate very high, if not top of the scale. And how many times have we all been told that communication is the key to good relationships? So how come, when we start talking, at work or at home, about something we know the other person doesn’t share our views on, we </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">end up so often with a predictably pointless discussion, or worse, <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-end-relationship.html"><span style="color: #990000;">aggressive argument</span></a>?</span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We can’t force other people</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> or circumstances</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> to change, but we can modify our own outlook and behaviour, which in turn will elicit different responses from others. One of the most frequent causes of friction in close relationships is that one, or both parties, believes their point of view is not being heard. You may feel this yourself, but a way to improve the situation is to make sure that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> are listening properly to what the other person is telling, and asking of, you. You might find that what they want from you is very different to what you had assumed.</span></span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 2cm; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one fact that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”</span></i></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 2cm; text-align: right;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">William James, psychologist (1842-1910)</span></span></span></b></div><div class="mceTemp" style="text-align: left;"></div></span><br />
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</div><div class="mceTemp" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Neurolinguistic programming</strong> quite rightly tells us that amongst the most important factors in good communication is the use of rich and varied language, which appeals to the sensory bias of the other person. So someone who employs phrases like <em>“I hear what you’re saying”</em> will understand you better if you use auditory metaphors; a person who <em>“sees your point”</em> will see it more easily if material is presented in a visual way; while it’s helpful to appeal to the emotions of someone who tells you <em>“I feel very positive about…”.</em></span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Added to which</strong>, ensuring that the way you speak and your own body language are aligned to your words, and learning to read and interpret the body language of other people, are as important in communicating as the content of what you are actually saying.</span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>However you process information</strong>, or present your material, nothing is more infuriating than sensing that the other person has not properly listened to you or your point of view. And it works both ways – if there’s a long standing disagreement festering in any of your relationships, you may unintentionally be failing to listen to what your partner, child, friend, parent, boss or colleague is trying to make you understand. My earlier post also points out how important listening is to </span></span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/happiness-at-work-facts-and-figures.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Happiness At Work</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span> </div><div class="mceTemp"></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 2cm; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><em>“<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.</span>”</em></strong></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 2cm; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: #7f6000;">Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)</span></strong></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 2cm; text-align: right;"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp" style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Step 8 (Richer Relationships) of </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Real Secret</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, we describe the skill of <strong>Empathic Listening</strong>. It involves focusing exclusively on the other person, using both your intellect and intuition to understand what they want and need you to hear from them – particularly on a difference of opinion - and ensuring that what you've understood them to say is what they intended you to hear.</span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>When you listen empathically</strong>, you use your whole self not just to hear what the other person is saying, but to gain insights into what they are thinking and feeling. By extending this courtesy to them, you also allow the other person the space and time to communicate in a more relaxed and less combative manner.</span></span></div><div class="mceTemp"><br />
</div><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>When you are listening empathically</strong>, you will find yourself:</span></span></div><ul><li><div class="mceTemp"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><em>Engaged and interested, with your attention focused outwards on the other person</em></span></span></div></li>
<li><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intent upon and looking toward the other person, only glancing away occasionally to process what they are saying</span></em></li>
<li><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mirroring the other person’s posture and gestures</span></em></li>
<li><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Using language which is “you” (not “I” or “me”) centred; using key words and language patterns that match the other person’s.</span></em></li>
<li><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Asking the other person open questions rather than expressing your own beliefs.</span></em></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>You can find more information</strong> for developing Empathic Listening in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316669118&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a>, which is available in paperback and Kindle format on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316669118&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a> and <span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.com</span>, as well as most other online booksellers. You can order it through any bookshop, too</span></span><a href="http://www.mywonderfullifeselfhelp.com/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></strong></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posted by Lucy</span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-23489749748573212772011-09-19T05:18:00.000-07:002011-09-19T06:22:25.617-07:00How to Change Your Eating Habits<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="221" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfC1t7IABelYSzW78v8wqMYiTcKhc4dgGxxnPM_a-A1nzLH7mC9PmRLXcXOUgWWUfBOiTt9JZZXm7OdraURbWvIpyBVpzyReiMUtUs8TtLmxXeD98RHkkBV9WdNOANDdDkUZF6MEaaLekW/s320/movie-theater-popcorn.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Are you someone who likes to eat popcorn in the cinema? I am; it’s a built-in part of the enjoyment of the whole experience – though not in the theatre, where I just still crave the childhood treat of a little tub of ice cream in the interval. It’s silly, really, because I never buy popcorn on any other occasion, and I only eat ice cream when I’ve bought it for guests or children in my own home. Or do I? Let’s be honest; sometimes when I’m feeling tired or fed up, I will go and see if there’s some ice cream lurking in the freezer and have a surreptitious </span><span style="color: #7f6000;">bowl to cheer myself up. And chocolate… let’s not go there.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The fact is, when we associate a particular kind of food with a pleasant experience, we’ll seek it out to boost our mood in other situations. R</span></span><span style="font-family: Tahoma;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">esearch</span> on chocolate has shown that, contrary to what we like to believe, it doesn’t in itself make us feel happier. "There is some slight evidence that chocolate triggers the release of opiate-like chemicals in the brain but really its relationship with our emotions operates in the reverse direction," says Professor Andy Smith of Cardiff University. "We seek out a chocolate snack when we feel upset or are emotional because, in the past, we have had pleasant associations with it. That is why it is a comfort food."</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">It’s all too easy to create an association with a particular kind of food or, indeed, a subconscious habit. An experiment reported in the August 2011 issue of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/08/20/0146167211419863"><span style="color: #990000;">Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</span></a> </i>shows just how much our past experiences influence our eating habits; but also offers some hope for simple ways in which we can break habits that we want to.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The researchers gave people a bucket of either nice, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn just as they were going into a cinema to watch a film. Some of the audience were habitual popcorn eaters and some were not. The film goers who didn't usually eat popcorn in the cinema ate far less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn because it didn’t taste as nice. Duh! Obviously, you would think.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">But viewers who usually ate popcorn while watching movies, ate about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale. In other words, the ingrained habit of eating popcorn in the cinema overrode the fact that the stale popcorn didn’t even taste nice.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">"When we've repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present," said David Neal, lead author of the study, who was a psychology professor at USC when the research was conducted and now heads a social and consumer research firm.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">"People believe their eating behaviour is largely activated by how food tastes. Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn," said corresponding author Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC. "But once we've formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We'll eat exactly the same amount, whether it's fresh or stale."</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The researchers controlled for hunger and whether the participants liked the popcorn they received, and they also gave popcorn to a control group who watched movie clips in a meeting room – an environment not normally associated with popcorn. In the meeting room, even habitual film-watching/popcorn eaters ate much less stale popcorn than fresh, demonstrating how much environmental cues can trigger automatic eating behaviour.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">But there is hope for those of us who overeat, or eat the wrong foods because of ingrained habits or associations.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">In another experiment, the researchers tested a simple disruption of automatic eating habits. Once again using stale and fresh popcorn, they asked participants going into a film to eat popcorn, but this time using either their dominant or non-dominant hand. Using the non-dominant hand seemed to disrupt eating habits and cause people to pay attention to what they were eating. When using the non-dominant hand, viewers ate much less of the stale than the fresh popcorn, and this worked even for those with strong film viewing/popcorn eating habits.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">So if you’re trying to change eating habits, check whether there are times and places when your body and mind have come to expect a certain type and amount of food, and avoid or change them. There are ways of tricking your brain, such as using smaller plates to contain smaller portions, and your body by drinking a glass of water before you eat a meal. Or simply try eating with the wrong hand.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">"It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat," Wendy Wood said. "More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters to actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat." And then there’s also the Hawthorne Effect, which shows that just paying attention to what we do, results in our doing it better. More on this and taking control of your eating habits in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #cc0000;">The Real Secret</span></a> </i>Step 5, “Healthy Body”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Lucy</span></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">You can get your copy of <em>The Real Secret</em> in paperback or Kindle format on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>www.amazon.co.uk</strong></span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>www.amazon.com</strong></span></a><strong> .<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-14202724365525545782011-08-24T01:19:00.000-07:002011-08-24T01:19:23.722-07:00More Happiness Less Crime<div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><img height="280" id="il_fi" src="http://www.littlemummy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Maslow-Hierarchy1.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Since the outbreak of riots and looting in London and other cities in the UK, politicians and commentators have blamed the lack of morals in the younger generation, single-parent (specifically single-mother) families, lack of fathers and “black” culture (from a right wing perspective); and government cuts, closure of youth services, inequality and poor moral leadership from the top (bankers, MPs, the police and press) from the left. </span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">I favour the latter group, but maybe many of these have had a part to play; maybe some represent aspects of an underlying malaise that affects British youth – a malaise called unhappiness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Bill McCarthy, a UC-Davis sociology professor, and Teresa Casey, a postdoctoral researcher at UC-Davis, have recently presented their new study at the 106th Annual Meeting of the </span></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.asanet.org/"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">American Sociological Association</span></span></a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">. <span style="color: #7f6000;">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Get Happy! Positive Emotion, Depression, and Juvenile Crime</b>” suggests that, in addition to their other benefits, programmes and policies that increase childhood and adolescent happiness could deter nonviolent crime and drug use.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The authors used data from nearly 15,000 seventh- to ninth-grade students in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the largest, most comprehensive survey of adolescents ever undertaken, over two years (1995 and 1996). They found that about 29% of the young people surveyed reported having committed at least one criminal offence, and 18% said that they had used at least one illegal drug. The researchers then correlated these reports with self-assessments of emotional well-being. They claim theirs is the first study to investigate the association of happiness with juvenile crime. Unlike positive psychologists, sociologists have spent little time studying the consequences of happiness – or lack of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">McCarthy and Casey’s research found that happier adolescents were less likely to report involvement in crime or drug use. Adolescents with minor, or nonclinical, depression had significantly higher odds of engaging in such activities. They argue that positive emotions also have a role: "We hypothesize that the benefits of happiness— from strong bonds with others, a positive self-image, and the development of socially valued cognitive and behavioral skills— reinforce a decision-making approach that is informed by positive emotions.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The study also found that changes in emotions over time matter. Adolescents whose happiness levels decreased or depression levels increased over a one-year period were more likely to be involved in crime and to use drugs. The odds of drug use were notably lower for youth who reported that they were more often happy than depressed, and were substantially higher for those who indicated that they were more depressed than happy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">But what needs do young people need to have met in order to have a reasonable level of wellbeing? Back to the positive psychologists: Ed Diener from the University of Illinois has taken a new look at an old theory – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, first published in 1954. Maslow claimed that humans need their physiological needs (food, shelter etc) to be met first, followed by safety; only then can social needs for love, belonging and self-esteem be met; with “self-actualisation” the pinnacle of his famous pyramid. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Diener, also a s</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">enior</span> scientist for the Gallup Organization, helped design the Gallup World Poll, a landmark survey on well-being with 60,865 participants from 123 countries, conducted from 2005 to 2010.<span style="color: #990000;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-2-354.pdf"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">His results</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">agreed with Maslow’s view that there are human needs that apply regardless of culture, but not with his ordering of these needs. "Instead of working from the bottom up, to be happy we need all of them at once - and the needs that are most linked with everyday satisfaction are interpersonal ones, such as love and respect. Our troubles, conversely, relate most to lack of esteem, lack of freedom, and lack of nourishment. It’s only in retrospect, when we look back on the quality of our lives thus far, that basic needs become significant indicators for well-being.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Ed Diener believes that public policymakers should take serious note. Since each of Maslow's needs correlates with certain components of happiness, he says "all the needs are important all the time. Our leaders need to think about them from the outset, otherwise they will have no reason to address social and community needs until food and shelter are available to all."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">University of Pennsylvania psychology professor </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.psych.upenn.edu/people/seligman"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">Martin Seligman</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, who says the study might be a breakthrough, adds: "Governments should take these measures seriously and hold themselves accountable for public policy changes for the well-being of their citizens.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the charities The Place To Be and Kids Company, has </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/camila-batmanghelidjh-caring-costs-ndash-but-so-do-riots-2333991.html"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="color: #990000;">written eloquently</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> about how the social needs of some young people in the UK are simply not being met:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #7f6000;">“An absence of morality can easily be found in the rioters and looters. How, we ask, could they attack their own community with such disregard? But the young people would reply "easily", because they feel they don't actually belong to the community. Community, they would say, has nothing to offer them. Instead, for years they have experienced themselves cut adrift from civil society's legitimate structures… It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Happiness is important; the happiness of young people is crucial – not only to each individual and their growth into a mature, balanced and productive adult, but for the society in which they live alongside all of us. One of the implications Ed Diener draws from his findings is simply this: “</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The findings indicate that improving individual life must include improving societies.” In his Take Home Message, he says “We also found that societal need fulfillment— particularly of basic needs— has effects independent of an individual’s personal need fulfillment, so that it is beneficial to live in a society with others who have their needs fulfilled. Improving one’s own life is not enough; society-wide improvement is also required.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Lucy</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The 12 step programme of </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em></a><span style="color: #7f6000;"> could raise happiness and lower depressive tendencies in a young person you know. It is available in paperback and kindle format on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.com</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.co.uk</span></a> <span style="color: #7f6000;">as well as other online booksellers; and can be ordered in any bookshop.</span></span></div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-304184365738451832011-08-23T13:00:00.000-07:002011-08-23T13:44:08.238-07:00The Top Ten Mistakes We Make When trying To Change Our Behaviour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KcLWGWmqPds/TlQEwCKfIRI/AAAAAAAABWs/WaI9Ml1_o0o/s1600/change.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KcLWGWmqPds/TlQEwCKfIRI/AAAAAAAABWs/WaI9Ml1_o0o/s1600/change.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is behaviour difficult to change? How come some of us find it easy and others very difficult? A group of researchers at Stanford University have looked at this question and come up with the top ten mistakes we make when trying to change our behaviour.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1. Relying on Willpower.</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Willpower doesn't exist - it's just another excuse we all use to explain why change is so hard. There is no evidence for willpower. No special gene. It's all been a cover-up.You need to forget about willpower. Pretend it doesn't exist. Forget the pretend <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(sorry - still coming to terms with the loss).</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Attempting <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Big Leaps</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> instead of small steps</span></span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One small step at a time. You're after small successes remember not giant leaps for mankind - you haven't landed on the moon.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3. Ignoring How Your Environment Affects You</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to change your life then you need to change the context. You'll have to read </span><a href="http://therealsecret.net/"><em><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Real Secret</span></em></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> if you want to know how - I'm not giving all our secrets away!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">4.Trying to Stop Old Behaviours instead of Creating </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13;">N</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d;">w</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;">O</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">n</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">s</span></span></span></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;">Forget all that advice about avoiding old behaviours. Takes too much time and effort. Concentrate instead on the new behaviour. Stop avoiding the </span><strike style="color: #783f04;">old</strike> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;">and start</span> <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">doing</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"> the</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">n</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">w.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5. Stop Waiting for Motivation</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've told you this before - </span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/i-have-problem-with-motivation.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - I'm not telling you again</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>6. Underestimating The Power of Triggers</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Behaviour is always, always triggered. Feel thirsty? Hungry? Enraged? Sleepy? Upset? Work out what it is that triggers the behaviour you want to change, then think before you act.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>7. Believing that Information Leads to Action</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well it just doesn't - we aren't that rational. You'll need to read </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314132046&sr=8-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Book</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>8. Focusing on Abstract Goals rather than Concrete Behaviours</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Abstract : get fit</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Concrete : walk for 15 minutes a day</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See <span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309598230&sr=1-1">The Book</a></span> for more help setting and achieving goals.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>9. Wanting to change a Behaviour<i> </i>FOREVER</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Wrong!</i> You need to concentrate on a fixed period - remember small steps?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>10. Assuming that Behaviour Change is Difficult</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Behaviour change is not difficult - when you know how. </span><a href="http://therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read The Book</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So there you have it - the top ten mistakes we all make when trying to change our behaviour. Personally I can think of a few more but these ten are apparently the ones we all make.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posted by Annabel</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"> </span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-61511259157195445872011-08-15T14:20:00.000-07:002011-08-15T23:35:03.782-07:00Love Is The Drug - or a Form of Madness<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="320" id="il_fi" src="http://rlv.zcache.com/heart_addicted_to_love_tshirt-p235473148851750913qjha_400.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">A friend of mine is in love. She’s in love with a man who loves her, but who also has a wife and children. When she sees him, she’s in seventh heaven; when she can’t see him, especially for any length of time, it feels like a kind of hell. In between the two she thinks of him obsessively and longs for texts, emails or phone calls that relieve the pain. She says they make each other happy, but with the situation as it is she wishes desperately she wasn’t in love with him. The only solution she can see would be for her to fall in love with someone else (more available, perhaps); despite the suffering, she won't be taking our advice on <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-end-relationship.html"><span style="color: #990000;">how to end a relationship</span></a></span><span style="color: #990000;">.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Another friend of mine is not in love. She has had a number of relationships in recent years, the latest of which she ended a few months ago. She has suffered from depression before and feels she is slipping into depression again. She thinks that in the past she might have unconsciously used the emotional high of falling in love to repeatedly ward off depression. Despite this insight, and that she knows he didn’t and couldn’t make her happy, my friend is tempted to reconnect with her ex to get another hit. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Both these women are intelligent and self aware, but both find it hard to overcome the intense feelings that “being in love” produces; both talk in terms of “addiction”, “obsession”, “highs”, “withdrawal symptoms”… the language of drug abuse and madness. The neuroscience of love suggests this is completely appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Research suggests that there are three forms of love for a partner (or potential partner): lust, romantic love and attachment. The three different categories involve different brain systems: lust (craving sexual gratification) is driven by androgens and estrogens such as testosterone; romantic love (attraction), which is characterised by euphoria, mood swings, focused attention, obsessive thinking and intense craving for the loved one, is driven by high levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine, and low serotonin levels; while attachment (peaceful, long term relationship) is driven by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, originally located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love by looking at brain scans of students who said they were madly in love and analysing their patterns of brain activity. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">It appeared that a relatively small area of the human brain is active in romantic love, compared with that involved in ordinary friendship; and the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain involved in being “in love” include the one responsible for gut feelings and those which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people in love don’t look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but rather like those of people snorting coke. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Jim Pfaus, a psychologist at Concordia University, in Montreal, says the aftermath of lustful sex is similar to the state induced by taking opiates. A mix of chemical changes occurs, including increases in the levels of serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids (the body's natural equivalent of heroin). Love, it seems, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. We are literally addicted to love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The description of being “madly in love” isn’t far off the truth either. Some researchers suggest this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic phase of manic depression. Dr Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, and author of the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Love-Helen-Fisher/dp/0805077960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313430703&sr=1-1">Why We Love</a>,</i> suggests that the obsessive thought patterns and actual behavioural patterns of those in love — such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one — resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Dr Fisher says that love is not so much an emotion as a drive; a motivation system and part of the brain’s reward system. It is a need which compels us to seek a specific mating partner and links the drive to all kinds of distinct emotions according to how well or badly the relationship is going. The emotions are powerful whether positive or negative: one study shows that when a female prairie vole mates, there is a 50% increase in the “feel good” hormone, dopamine, in the reward centre of her brain; another that 40% of people who had been dumped in the past eight weeks experienced clinical depression, and 12% severe depression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Lust, romantic love and attachment are connected, not just in body and mind but in brain circuitry. Dr Fisher tells people not to have sex with people they don’t want to fall in love with, because often that is the result. The testosterone of lust can activate the neurotransmitters of love, while an orgasm can raise the attachment hormones which promote long term affection and monogamy. She believes romantic love is a stronger craving than sex, but that when oxytocin and vasopressin kick in (around 18 months later), they may interfere with the dopamine and norepinephrine pathways, so making the passionate “in love” feelings start to fade. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">It is also around this time, especially if the attachment hormones haven’t established themselves, that reality can kick in and lovers start to be released from their addiction. People realise that the objects of their adoration are not god-like, that their relationship may be causing them more pain than pleasure, or that they are simply bored. Relationships often fall apart after about two years, sometimes because one member starts (perhaps unconsciously) to crave the high of a new addiction.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">This is a pattern my second friend recognised in herself, but it seems we all embed patterns of attraction and relationship early, starting with our very first love. Interestingly, both my friends’ relationships are/were with early boyfriends they have reconnected with some twenty years later. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Very few experiences in our lives are as intense and overwhelming as our first love, which most often takes place in our teenage years. Although it may evaporate fast, teenage first love is more intense than love in adulthood because of our high energy levels and flooding hormones. The memories we retain are deep and strong – and in women particularly, the “in love” state causes increased activity in brain regions associated with memory recall. Websites like Friends Reunited were publicly blamed for breaking up marriages as people rekindled the thrill of first <span style="color: #7f6000;">love</span> after contacting old lovers.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">So, if the state of “being in love” is neurologically similar to taking drugs and mental illness, could we treat it as we do addiction or OCD? Researchers think there is a short and finite period between lust turning to romantic love when we could consciously choose not to fall, but we would have to be very self aware and very strong and use strategies akin to cognitive behavioural therapy. Anti-depressants which raise serotonin levels might alleviate the pain of break </span><span style="color: #7f6000;">up, or reduce the desire for or ability to fall in love. </span></span></div><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">In general, though, the best defence against the madness and/or addiction of love is to maintain your personal levels of emotional wellbeing. Having high levels of self-esteem and resilience makes you more likely to attract a similarly well-balanced and positive partner with whom you can form a mutually supportive and enduring relationship, and less likely to become obssessed with or adicted to someone who causes you pain. (See our post on <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/laws-of-attraction.html"><span style="color: #990000;">The Laws of Attraction</span></a>.)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The twelve steps of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a></i> can help you, or a young person making early relationships, to become grounded in a positive outlook and self-confidence, and has advice on how to achieve Richer Relationships. It is available in paperback and kindle on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.com</span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> </span>and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.amazon.co.uk</span></a> .</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Lucy</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-51287739610152608842011-08-09T08:12:00.000-07:002011-08-10T15:06:10.679-07:00What type of happiness do you want?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><object height="374" width="526"> <param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param><param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talk/stream/2010/Blank/DanielKahneman_2010-320k.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanielKahneman-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=512&vh=288&ap=0&ti=779&lang=eng&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=what_makes_us_happy;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=unconventional_explanations;event=TED2010;tag=brain;tag=economics;tag=happiness;tag=mind;tag=philosophy;tag=psychology;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="526" height="374" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talk/stream/2010/Blank/DanielKahneman_2010-320k.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanielKahneman-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=512&vh=288&ap=0&ti=779&lang=eng&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=what_makes_us_happy;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=unconventional_explanations;event=TED2010;tag=brain;tag=economics;tag=happiness;tag=mind;tag=philosophy;tag=psychology;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"></embed> </object></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we think and talk about happiness what exactly do we mean? The presentation above by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman draws an interesting distinction: there may be two very different types of happiness. </span></span><br />
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first is being happy <em style="border-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in your life</em>. It is happiness that we experience immediately and in the moment.</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second is being happy <em style="border-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">about your life</em>. It is the happiness that exists in memory when we talk about the past and the big picture.</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can enjoy nine-tenths of something blissfully in the moment, yet a lousy ending can bias us and ruin the memory forever.</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We often plan holidays around the memories they will later give us ("Mexico!"), rather than doing something we'd enjoy far more in the moment ("catching up on sleep and spending more time with friends.") </span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Kahenman suggests we ask ourselves ahead of time what kind of happiness we are seeking.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"></span></span><br />
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">If you want the rich memories of happiness we should deliberately select for that: go on that exotic holiday, definitely have children and strive to make as much money as possible. These are all things shown to make us happy <em style="border-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">about</em> our lives.</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">If you want to be happy <em style="border-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in the moment</em> don't travel to fancy places, keep it simple. Don't have children because moment for moment they will dramatically reduce your happiness with crying, complaining, chores and worry. And certainly don't toil to earn more than 30K a year because beyond that, experiential happiness flat lines.</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">It's a question we all face: Is living in the moment, as encouraged by every Hollywood movie, the right way to live or is it the path of impulsive hedonism?</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">Is living to create great memories the goal of the mature individual or does it make us a miserable weaver of a fiction that never was?</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">I leave the answer to you. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">But there is advice about being happier in both senses in <em><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/">The Real Secret</a></span></em>, which is available in paperback and kindle format on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">www.amazon.com</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/">www.amazon.co.uk</a> .</span></div><div style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">Posted by Annabel</span></div>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-82872001014589714022011-08-07T16:29:00.000-07:002011-09-22T00:43:08.068-07:00How to end a relationship<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><img height="273" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkSeSQqOzsA0unmO4ZU8B7Nono3tB2_kqEZZmnmSKutP6YBoc_FFE2e8fXH8FzNF4ga-TUA_GY69wfuExo5ALjE30IYOJcMdoyynrTJSTDRffEK4faTnJ_llSWv2TYku2zhl1I4SAc0ySL/s320/Divorce%252520Mediation.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="275" /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our intimate relationships are said by most of us to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> most important aspect of our lives. </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For many people, getting the relationship with their partner right is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a> </i>to a happy life. </span> We've talked about how to tell if </span></span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-tell-if-your-marriage-will-last.html"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">your relationship will last the distance</span>,</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> but if you have decided that yours can no longer be sustained, the way you choose to finish it can make all the difference between a rancorous and an amicable separation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">If you are the one initiating the break up (three-quarters of divorces are initiated by women), the way you tell your partner will have a big effect on the way they react,behave towards you and deal with the situation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;"><strong>The Shock Factor</strong></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">First, it's important to assess realistically whether they will have seen this coming. If you're not happy, it's reasonable to assume your partner is also dissatisfied with the relationship, but will the fact that you want to separate or divorce come as a shock? The more surprised they are, the longer it takes someone to accept the end of a relationship.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">Psychological Advantage</span></strong> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">If you are the person who wants to leave the relationship, recognise that you are probably in a stronger position psychologically, and in your social circle. You may have discussed your decision with close friends or family and got their support, whilst your partner, as the left person, will feel rejected and wounded - possibly made a fool of. The harder you make your "leave-taking" statement, the worse their wound will be; the worse the wound, the more likely they are to behave in "wounded-animal" ways. This is why you need to think carefully about how to tell them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;"><strong>When, Where and How to Tell</strong></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Break the news during the daytime; morning is best. Choose a time when the two of you will have some uninterrupted time. Turn off the phones and make sure the children are elsewhere and secure. Consider breaking the news in a public place with some privacy -- an uncrowded beach, street or restaurant - if the setting will encourage your partner to respond in a more restrained and rational fashion. Do it when neither of you have been drinking. Be confident. Walk firmly. Be physically as much at eye-level as possible. Speak calmly. Try to make your statement neutral and non accusative, but decisive. Talk about your own position and feelings, not their shortcomings as a partner. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;"><strong>Be Prepared</strong></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would be easiest if your partner just accepted your statement and went away to consider the ramifications, returning with a calm, accepting response - but the reality is you should be prepared for a long discussion, or a series of discussions; for attempts to get you to change your mind, for anger (more anger the greater the shock) and accusations. You should expect all sorts of guilt to be laid on you (bad wife or husband, bad father or mother, unfaithful, cruel, selfish, etc.), and for verbal abuse. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prepare to respond calmly. Do not defend yourself. Know what you will say. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000;">However unfair or hurtful the other person's response may be, try to avoid responding in the same way. Say any kind things you honestly can to bolster their self esteem; their anger is a mask for deep hurt and probably fear. If you have tried <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/importance-of-learning-to-listen.html"><span style="color: #990000;">empathic listening</span></a> before, now is a good time to use it (if not, read Step Eight of <em><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/">The Real Secret</a></em> in advance). Allow your partner to talk and yourself to listen without interrupting. It could help you to summarise the other person's position at regular intervals, but that doesn't mean you should listen to abuse. If it becomes too unpleasant, say you'd like to talk again when you're both calmer; leave or hang up. Remember to take slow, deep breaths during difficult conversations to help you relax. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000;">If you fear a physical response, have somewhere that you can stay, temporarily, organised in advance. You may have to just leave, and perhaps not let your partner know where you are until they have come to terms with your separation.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000;">What To Expect</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;">You can expect a rejected partner to make promises to change. This is a fear response which, even if made with good intention, they may not be able to carry out. Do not expect alcoholism or drug abuse to change, despite promises. Evidence shows that once you say you are going to leave, your partner's problems with alcohol or drug abuse will become even worse. Sometimes they become temporarily better, but without therapy or other interventions they usually become worse fairly soon. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000;">Children</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;">If you have children, reassure your partner that they are still their parents and this will always be important to you. Talk right away about telling the children together, calmly. This is important for the children. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000;">Don't Debate</span></strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's highly unlikely that you will come to an agreement about the history of your relationship, but it's important to acknowledge that both of you have contributed to the present situation. </span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Repeat your belief that you don't believe it can be repaired</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and separation or divorce is the only alternative you can see. Refuse to debate who is to blame for the past; insist only on talking about how to move into a future that is better for both of you, and, if children are involved, your whole family. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309598230&sr=1-1"><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em></a><span style="color: #990000;"> has instructions for Negotiating, Empathic Listening, Breathing, and other tools for managing anxiety and stress through difficult times such as relationship breakup. It will also support you with rebuilding a new life after a separation. <em>The Real Secret</em> is available in paperback or kindle on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">Posted by Lucy</span></div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-38363698635881879832011-07-29T08:24:00.000-07:002011-07-29T08:28:59.367-07:00Happiness Habits - The Real Secret to Beating Depression<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="230" id="il_fi" src="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/ffximage/2008/05/07/happy_faces_lead_wideweb__470x339,0.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></span></div><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/The-Experiment.html"><span style="color: #990000;">Happiness Habits Experiment</span></a>, which we carried out this year, was unfunded, therefore smallscale and short term, but nonetheless produced some very positive results.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We asked participants to carry out between one and six simple, sensible and scientifically supported positive activities for three weeks; then to give us feedback on whether these had affected their happiness levels and whether they felt the repetition had embedded the activities as habits.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In our <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/The-Report.html"><span style="color: #990000;">Report</span></a> we told you that:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Overall, carrying out daily Happiness Habits raised happiness levels for almost two thirds (62%) of <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">respondents, with "Three Good Things" the most effective (65%), followed by "Smile" (58%) and "Fun To-Do Lists" (50%)....</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Happiness Habits Experiment provides supporting evidence to the existing body of research demonstrating that happiness levels can be raised in many individuals by simple physical and psycho-physiological interventions."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">Participants said: </span></span><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You just can't feel too bad when you are smiling even if things seen awful, it changes you, I felt lighter."</span></i></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><i><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It is a great feeling to know that level of happiness can be changed for the better just knowing the keys."</span></i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Researchers at the <a href="http://www.ucr.edu/"><span style="color: #7f6000;">University of California</span></a>, Riverside and Duke University Medical Center have reported on a much further-reaching research project and have come to a similar conclusion: that practicing positive activities may serve as an effective, low-cost treatment for people suffering from depression.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <a href="http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/acm/17/8"><span style="color: #990000;">“Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders”</span></a>, </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the team of UCR and Duke psychology, neuroscience and psychopharmacology researchers have proposed a new approach for treating depression – Positive Activity Interventions (PAI). <br />
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PAIs are intentional activities, such as performing acts of kindness (our "Spreading Happiness"), practicing optimism (eg, our "Yes I Can"), and counting one’s blessings (Happiness Habit: "Three Good Things") which have been taken from decades of research into how happy and unhappy people differ. They could be the way forward to helping depressed people who don't want or don't respond to anti-depressant drugs, who are not able or willing to find therapy, are waiting for therapy, or fall below the threshold at which either of these is prescribed. It represents a much less costly intervention, could save the time of doctors and therapists, and may be a quicker and more effective way of improving mood and raising happiness levels. Added to which, this kind of self help comes without the stigma attached to "mental health problems" and has no side effects.<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman;"> <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Between 8% and 12% of the UK population experience depression in any one year and it affects one in five older people (The Office for National Statistics <em>Psychiatric Morbidity</em> report, 2001).</span> <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">About 8% of the US</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> population</span> (about 16 million adults) – suffer from either major or chronic depression. About 70% of reported cases either do not receive the recommended level of treatment or do not get treated at all, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that depression affects more than 100 million people.<br />
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The research team – Kristin Layous and Joseph Chancellor, graduate students at UC Riverside; Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology and director of the Positive Psychology Laboratory at UC Riverside; and Lihong Wang, MD, and P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, of Duke University – conducted a rigorous review of previous studies of PAIs, including randomised, controlled interventions with thousands of normal men and women as well as functional MRI scans in people with depressive symptoms.<br />
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Sonja Lyubomirski said, “Over the last several decades, social psychology studies of flourishing individuals who are happy, optimistic and grateful have produced a lot of new information about the benefits of positive activity interventions on mood and well-being." <br />
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And P. Murali Doraiswamy commented that “Very few psychiatrists collaborate with social scientists and no one in my field ever reads the journals where most happiness studies have been published. It was eye-opening for me as a psychopharmacologist to read this literature.” </span></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;">Although the paper found that positive activity interventions are effective in teaching individuals ways to increase their positive thinking, positive affect and positive behaviours, only two studies specifically tested these activities in individuals with mild depression and in one of these, lasting improvements were found for six months. Effective PAIs used in the study included writing letters of gratitude, counting one’s blessings, practicing optimism, performing acts of kindness, meditating on positive feelings toward others, and using one’s signature strengths, all of which feature in the Steps of <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Excerpts.html"><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em></a>. <br />
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The researchers’ review of brain imaging studies also led them to theorise that PAIs may act to boost the dampened reward/pleasure circuit mechanisms of depressives and reverse apathy – a key benefit that does not usually arise from treatment with medication alone. <br />
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A major benefit of positive activities is that they are simple to practice and inexpensive to deliver.<br />
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“If we’re serious about tackling a problem as large as depression, we should be as concerned about the scalability of our solutions as much as their potency,” JosephChancellor said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To quote from the conclusions of our own <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/The-Report.html"><span style="color: #990000;">Happiness Habits Report</span></a>: "</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A nationally available, low level self help intervention based on Happiness Habits, could be delivered from GP surgeries and provide immediate support for people of all ages suffering from ‘life’, as well as those with mild depression and/or anxiety. Such a programme could also substantially reduce mental health problems in young people and other marginalised groups, reduce the prescription of antidepressants, reduce pressure on GPs and therapists and prevent people waiting for psychological treatments from getting worse.</span>"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">If you, or anyone you know, suffers from mild to moderate depression and/or anxiety, this research suggests it would be worthwhile to try the Steps and Habits of <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;"><em>The Real Secret</em></span></a> to alleviate symptoms, either with, or instead of, anti-depressant medication, while awaiting or after completing a course of therapy. <em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em> is available in paperback or kindle format on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.com</span></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311952773&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Lucy</span></div></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"></div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-71130572453587047212011-07-25T00:58:00.000-07:002011-07-25T02:50:32.369-07:00Happiness At Work - The Facts and Figures<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="196" id="il_fi" src="http://timsstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Happiness-At-Work.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we've <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/happiness-brings-success-not-other-way.html"><span style="color: #990000;">said before</span></a>, success doesn't necessarily bring happiness, but happiness is an underlying factor for success. Happiness leads to more successful relationships, parenting, better jobs, and higher earnings. As a work-life balance expert, I've been telling employers and managers for many years that happier (better balanced) employees will bring their organisation or team greater productivity and creativity, higher levels of commitment and less sickness absence and staff turnover. Despite the evidence, it can be a hard sell. Some bosses already know it intuitively and have been working in a people-centred way all along; others really find it hard to believe that the wellbeing of their staff is anything more than a "soft" issue, promoted by HR for the wrong reasons. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Jessica Pryce-Jones' well-researched book called <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Work-Maximizing-Psychological-Capital/dp/0470749466/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311578280&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success</span></a>, she demonstrates</span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, with convincing examples, how employees who are happier at work achieve their highest potential, earn more, are promoted more readily, and are much more productive than unhappy staff members. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having interpreted the data of a four year research project, in which she interviewed at one end of the scale CEOs, like Willie Walsh, of British Airways, and at the other, a refugee server in Au Bon Pain, Boston, and Brother Paulus Terwitte, the Capuchin Friar who was passionate about enabling everyone to finding meaning in what they do, Jessica found that "at some core level, people believe that happiness at work is a mindset which helps you maximize your potential. You do that by being aware of the highs and lows when working alone or with others. In other words it’s the way you approach things, manage yourself while understanding that your happiness as a valuable resource."</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div><div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She makes the case that happiness is indeed very closely associated with productivity, so if organisations were to start to drive it through addressing what makes their workforce happy – which need not be difficult or costly to do - workplaces could be very different, and more successful, environments.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those people who still believe that workplace wellbeing is a soft and fluffy subject, or indeed for those who are trying to convince them otherwise, here are some useful statistics:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People who are happiest at work are 47% more productive, take 300% less sick leave and intend to stay about 200% longer in their jobs. In other words there’s a high price for low happiness. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Individuals who are happiest at work have a host of benefits. They: </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• are 180% more energised</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• experience 155% more happiness in their jobs</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• find 108% more engagement</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• feel 50% more motivated</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• find 50% more belief in their potential</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• are 40% more confident</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• think they have 35% more control over what they do. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People who are happier at work will also be happier with the home lives too; their general happiness scores are 150% higher than their least happy colleagues. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Jessica Pryce Jones said that two of the things that surprised her most from her research were: the importance of <strong>listening</strong> for happiness at work and enabling great performance; and the research data that showed <strong>money</strong> has no effect on overall workplace happiness (although it does affect overall general happiness). </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She claims the five Cs for happiness at work are:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Contribution</strong>, which is the effort you make and your perception of it</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Conviction</strong>, which is your motivation in good times or bad</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Culture</strong>, which is about how well you feel you fit</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Commitment</strong>, which is about your level of engagement</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Confidence</strong>, which is about your ability to take a risk</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"They matter because they affect everything you do and without them your happiness levels will take a dive – fast, and in turn your performance will plummet too... </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a clear line of sight between happiness and performance" </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">If you are not happy in your work and are not sure how to make changes, a good place to start is with yourself. By following the Steps of <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;"><em>The Real Secret,</em></span></a> or identifying those which relate to your situation, you can raise your personal happiness levels, which will impact on those around you at work and at home. You can also learn how to listen better (empathic listening), improve relationships at work and at home, as well as build confidence and deal with difficult people. It is available in paperback and kindle on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311498851&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk </span></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311579952&sr=1-2"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Amazon. com</span></a></span></div><br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">Posted by <strong>Lucy</strong></span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-6695830600919031552011-07-17T15:28:00.000-07:002011-07-29T11:31:18.384-07:00Seeing Another Person's Point of View<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="260" id="il_fi" src="http://www.calebstorkey.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Looking-at-things-from-others-point-view.jpg-.png" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have a 15-year old French student staying with us for a fortnight to improve her English, see something of our culture and experience British family life. There's nothing like someone from outside coming into your home to make you see yourself and your way of life from another perspective. Charlotte is a charming, polite girl who fits in with whatever we're doing, but her presence has really made me question -- everything, really, from my parenting style, levels of empathy, domestic routine and cooking skills, to my ability to explain the idiosyncracies of the English language with its irregular grammar and often bizarre idioms.</span></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apparently, Americans and people from Western cultures are more challenged than others in our ability to understand someone else’s point of view because our culture encourages so much individualism. By</span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> contrast, the Chinese, whose culture encourages a collectivist attitude, are much better at understanding other people's perspectives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boaz Keysar, Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago, says that our Western problem in seeing another's person's point of view is partly to do with communication. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Many actions and words have multiple meanings. In order to sort out what a person really means, we need to gain some perspective on what he or she might be thinking and, Americans for example, who don’t have that skill very well developed, probably tend to make more errors in understanding what another person means,” Keysar said.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keysar is the co-author with graduate student Shali Wu of “The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking,” which discusses their research and is published in the journal <em><span style="color: #990000;">Psychological Science</span></em>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We know from studies of children that the ability to appreciate another person’s perspective is universal, but it seems not all societies encourage their members to develop the skill as they grow up. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Members of collectivist cultures tend to be interdependent and to have self-concepts defined in terms of relationships and social obligations,” say Keysar and Wu. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“In contrast, members of individualist cultures tend to strive for independence and have self-concepts defined in terms of their own aspirations and achievements.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To study this cultural difference in interpersonal communications, their team devised a game that tested how quickly and naturally people from the two groups were able to access another person’s perspective. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They chose two groups of University of Chicago students, one consisting of 20 people from China who grew up speaking Mandarin, and another including 20 non-Asian Americans who were all native English speakers.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were testing the hypothesis that interdependence would make people focus on others and away from themselves, and did this by having people from the same cultural group pair up and work together to move objects around in a grid of squares placed between them. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the game, one person, the “director,” would tell the other person, the “subject”, where the objects should be moved. Over some of the squares, a piece of cardboard blocked the view of the director, so the subject could clearly tell what objects the director could not see. In some cases there were two similar objects, one blocked from the director’s view and one visible to both people playing the game. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Chinese subjects almost immediately focused on the objects the director could see and moved the correct objects. When Americans were asked to move an object and there were two similar objects on the grid, they paused and often had to work to figure out which object the director could not see before moving the right one object. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Americans spent on average about twice as much time completing the moves as the Chinese, and often</span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> ignored the fact that the director could not see all the objects; </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">65%of American subjects failed to consider the director’s pespective at least once during the experiment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Although we'd all like to think that we can put ourselves in other people's shoes better than the American students above, I have found myself questioning my assumptions about what a French student would want to experience and achieve from two weeks in England - and how well I'm fulfilling those desires. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Of course, different languages and cultures do add to the difficulties of seeing another person's point of view, and in </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">a separate</span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"> piece of research, Boaz Keysar with Anne Henly showed that speakers readily overestimate their effectiveness in communicating meaning. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">They asked speakers to read an ambiguous sentence (such as “Angela shot the man with the gun”) in a way that communicated one of its two possible meanings. The speakers routinely overestimated their listeners’ accuracy in perceiving the intended message and presumed that what was obvious to them would be similarly obvious to their audience. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">I become particularly aware of this when I hear my children talking to Charlotte far too fast and indistinctly for her to understand, and using phrases and metaphors that make no sense to her. Suddenly the ordinary seems ridiculous - how could any non English person be expected to understand what "It's chucking it down" or "In yer face" means? Not to mention, "A military legend" - a phrase my 9-year old has inexplicably latched onto, but completeIy misunderstood!</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span><span style="color: #7f6000;">It may not be comfortable, but it's certainly salutary when something or someone comes into your life and makes you question your abilities to empathise with others and see things from their point of view. The question is, will the insight enable me to make Charlotte's English experience the best it can be.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><strong>Posted by Lucy</strong></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For information and advice on ways to increase empathy and develop intimate and other relationships, get your copy of </span><a href="htttp://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The Real Secret</em></span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in paperback or Kindle on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310940894&sr=8-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> or </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-universe-delivered-ebook/dp/B004F9PAK2/ref=kinw_dp_ke?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazon.com</span></a></span><strong> </strong><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"></span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-56877427466140230052011-07-11T06:44:00.000-07:002011-07-11T06:49:49.557-07:00How not to sabotage yourself with false pattern-finding<div style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="320" id="il_fi" src="http://www.crosswordfiend.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/rorschach-test.gif" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="316" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">The weekend before last my daughter had an "atypical migraine episode" and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance. Last weekend my computer was stolen and we had the police round to view the scene of crime and take statements. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">"Do you realise we've had a different emergency service out two Saturdays running," said my daughter after the CSI team had left. "That must mean we're going to have a fire next Saturday, as it's the only one left."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Even writing this makes me feel I might be tempting fate, although I know rationally that the two events were entirely unconnected and that "bad luck" doesn't come in threes, as the old saying claims - it's simply that the human brain has developed an amazing ability to find patterns in not only landscapes and images, mathematics and geological events, but also in our own experiences and expectations.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Some of us are better at finding patterns in different things than others, and the different patterns we each see are indicative of our ways of perceiving and thinking about our experience. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">The Rorschach inkblot test (also called the "Rorschach" test), in which participants are asked to describe pictures or patterns they see in random inkblots, is a method of psychological evaluation. Psychologists use this test in an attempt to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. This test is often employed in diagnosing underlying thought disorders and differentiating psychotic from non-psychotic thinking in cases where the patient is reluctant to openly admit to psychotic thinking. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">You can take the <a href="http://theinkblot.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">Inkblot Test online here</span></a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">What do you see in the image above? The first thing I see is a woman wearing earrings and a full skirt carrying a basket on her head. The blot at the top to the right reminds me of a clipped poodle. The one to the left could be a dog's head in profile looking at the "woman". If I try hard enough I see two empty nightshirts (like cartoon headless ghosts) on either side of her waist with their arms out. The bottom blobs say nothing to me, even though I've tried hard to make them into meaningful shapes. The fact is, none of the meaning is there. We have a strong ability - and an innate desire - to find meaning by seeing patterns in every element of our lives.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">The ability to find patterns in landscapes and weather, for instance, was vital to our ancestors' survival and still plays a crucial role in our lives now. We need to be able to work out genuine cause and effect: what makes us ill or unhappy on a regular basis; what has positive effects and brings us pleasure.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">But sometimes our pattern-finding abilities go into overdrive and tell us that patterns exist where none do. This is the cause of much superstition of the "I wore my red t-shirt to both the exams I came top in, so it's a lucky t-shirt and I'll always wear it so I'll do well" type. People who score highly on pattern-finding tests also tend to have more "paranormal" or weird experiences than average - such as seeing mysterious faces in a pool of water, or religious symbols in a vegetable. This can also be related to suggestibility - and our earlier post <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-gullible-are-you.html"><span style="color: #990000;">How Gullible Are You?</span></a>, and it has also been shown from research by <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/02/mind-control-pattern.html"><span style="color: #990000;">Adam Galinsky and Jennifer Whitson</span></a> of the University of Austin, Texas, that the more insecure or out of control we feel, the more likely we are to see patterns or make connections that don't exist. In times of economic hardship, for example, far more people read their horoscopes.</span><br />
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</div><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes the false patterns that we read into our experiences work for our benefit - for instance, wearing the red t-shirt that I believe to be lucky could give me confidence, stop me panicking and therefore I will do better in the exam because I'm wearing it. This, of course, will verify my false pattern-finding and give me even more belief in my lucky red t-shirt - until I fail an exam while wearing it, perhaps more than once, and I have to re-evaluate the pattern I've perceived. Perhaps it will then become my unlucky t-shirt.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the other hand, perceiving false patterns in our experience can work against our best interests and well being. "Self-defeating assumptions", as psychologists call them, build in our minds when we make an association between negative incidents and create a false pattern from them. For ancient survival reasons, our brain has a bias towards the negative and often pays more attention and gives more weight to negative than positive. So if in the past we have been </span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-to-do-when-youre-made-redundant.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">made redundant</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and this happens to us again - despite the fact that we may have had a number of successful jobs we have chosen to move on from, or that this current unemployment is more to do with the economic situation than our performance - we may be more ready to find a pattern of employment failure in our life - which will affect how we view our past and approach new work.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, it's important to recognise whether we might be creating or have created false negative patterns - and avoid self-defeating asssumptions. If you lose a job or a partner leaves you, it is important not to internalise the rejection and assume you'll never be employed or loved again. Don't allow one rejection to derail your dreams, make you fearful of the future or lower your self esteem. The more in control and secure you feel, the less likely you are to find negative false patterns in the events of your life.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"><strong>"Give a person a sense of security and control, and defensiveness and obsessiveness melt away."</strong></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">Jennifer Whitson</span>.</strong></span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll let you know for sure next week whether my daughter's pattern-finding in emergency service visits was false - assuming I haven't lost another computer in the fire!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Posted by Lucy</strong></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's more about taking control of your life, defeating negative beliefs and low self esteem in </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The Real Secret</em></span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> which is available in paperback and Kindle on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310390222&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310390382&sr=8-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazon.com</span></a></span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-36270315020395260832011-07-05T14:35:00.000-07:002011-07-06T11:44:09.668-07:00How To Deal With Difficult People<div align="center" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img height="217" id="il_fi" src="http://www.ievolve.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ar120076263919617.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></div><span id="internal-source-marker_0.280570625445943" style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dealing with difficult people can be... well difficult, or it can be incredibly easy. The choice is yours. As always. Again, it really does depend on how you choose to respond. You can get all involved and tied up with negative disagreement, and possibly anger, or you can keep your cool as well as your sanity. Keeping your cool does not mean you will necessarily win any battles - actually, you’ll probably lose a large number, but in the end it’s the war with yourself that matters.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, it’s something to aim for.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nor should you imagine that there is a simple solution, albeit tiresome, that can be applied each and every time you come across a difficult person. No such luck - it’s a fresh challenge on each occasion.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Difficult people come in all shapes and sizes. Some are easy to spot (these ones tend to shout a lot), some come quietly and stab you in the back (as Oscar Wilde remarked, friends would stab you in the front).The worst are the ones who pretend to listen and say they understand, but don’t do either.They are the worst because they suggest that maybe </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">are the difficult person. Maybe you are. It’s been intimated.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are some helpful hints. They work for me. Sometimes.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s Not About Them, It’s About You</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not personal, so why take it personally? People are often so upset and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them. Or they just want to find someone else to blame. Just say no thank you. Well not actually say it; just adopt a non-confrontational expression of non-interest and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">don’t,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> whatever you do, look into their eyes - look at different parts of their face as though you were scanning their face for possible clues to something completely unrelated. At this point you can look mildly interested. This will unnerve them because, a) you don’t appear to be taking them seriously, and b) you can’t possibly take someone seriously if you’re scanning their face for defects. In other words, difficult people should not be taken seriously. It’s bad for your health and dangerous to theirs. This is not about them, it's about you. Your response.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Some people suggest that you should try to imagine the difficult person as a baby and that way you’ll feel more kindly towards them. This doesn’t work for me because I love babies and refuse to have their good name contaminated by difficult adults. I forgive babies everything - especially difficult babies. This is not the same feeling I have with adults where my instinct calls for wringing necks.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t Engage With Anger</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well not unless you want to feel angry yourself. Some of us do, perversely, I know. It’s so easy to stoke anger - you only have to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">imagine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> feeling angry and there it is, all up and ready to fight. Actually engaging with an angry person... well, you are definitely asking for it. You can hardly blame the other if you go swimming with them.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Theories Of Anger Management</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I have this theory about how to deal with difficult people - it’s the same theory that I apply to minor irritations. And it isn’t what you’ll find in most self help books. Most self help authors suggest that the best way to deal with the potential build-up of anger that can all too often arise from minor irritations is to let it out. Punch a bag or a pillow. Imagine the pillow is the person that is annoying you. This works, apparently, because you’ll be violent to a pillow and not to yourself by holding in all that irritation. This is the "catharsis hypothesis" - the notion that it’s better to vent your anger than keep it bottled up.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, I don’t agree. Not least because, despite my perversity, I’m also a non-violent person. I really don’t want to punch even the idea of a person. It’s still violence to me.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I also never really understood the metaphor of bottling things up, but apparently if you do let things bottle up then one day, and soon, you’ll explode with the pressure of it all. What began as a minor irritation will eventually release itself in the form an aggressive rage. Same problem that difficult people display, I’d say. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I really do think this is a shaky hypothesis and hypothesis is all it is because I couldn't find a scrap of evidence to support it. I looked all morning. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What I did find was some fine research which indicates that venting actually makes things worse. Rather than punching pillows, this research suggests doing something incompatible with anger, such as reading or listening to music. Of course this won’t in any way address the cause of the irritation (typical) but it will leave you in a better state to do so. So that’s good. Just like losing some battles in favour of winning the war - makes sense to me. The lazy woman's way.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">More Seriously..</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I do think it’s important not to engage in the first place. I learnt early on not to wage war with the outside world on inconsequential things, and instead I now turn my attention inward towards myself. This simple shift of attention has changed how I experience my world, including all the outside irritations, including difficult people, that used to drive me insane. As a result I am now more content and a whole lot more tolerant. Apparently. I do my best.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is what I do:</span><br />
<ul><li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When faced with a difficult person I stop and</span><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hapiness-habits-experiment-habit-2-and.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> breathe</span></a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I pay attention to how I am feeling and what I am thinking. This allows me to recognise how my old habits work so that they now no longer control me.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I become aware of my (new) self.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I then scan the face of the difficult person, looking for those defects I mentioned earlier, whilst maintaining a composure of polite indifference. Stress on polite - you don’t want to incite rage, remember. If you can manage quizical then that’s best. Quizical is very confusing.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I then think of the people I love the most and I pour this love onto my irritation much as you would put balm on a physical wound*. </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rinse and repeat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*It doesn’t always work - principally because some of these people that I love the most can also be incredibly difficult. It’s hard to treat difficult love in the same way as treating difficult people you don’t love at all. There’s advice for that, but not for now... you’ll just have to read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000;">our book</span></a>.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mind Over Matter - does it really matter if you are right?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What we focus on tends to expand itself because where attention goes, energy flows. In other words, don’t waste your precious energy. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If the person doesn’t matter then you don’t mind.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Feel free to lose battles that do not matter. Getting upset is just a waste of tea time.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Freedom Of Speech</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">People are as entitled to their opinions as you are yours. Some may have a less than eloquent way of expressing themselves – it may even be offensive, but they are still entitled to do so. Difficult people have the right to express their own opinions and we have the right to choose your responses. Allow them to express how they feel and let it be. Remember that it’s all relative and a matter of perspective. What we consider positive can be perceived by another as negative. Sorry to be the one who tells you, but it’s sometimes the case that you are in the wrong. Just occasionally. Not a big problem. Honestly.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Check Their Shoes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As cliched as this may sound, we tend to forget that we become blind-sided in some situations. Try putting yourself in the difficult person's position.This understanding might give you a new perspective and may help you see where the problem lies. On the other hand it may reinforce your absolute certainty that this is a very difficult person who needs to be left well alone. Check their shoes first - it’s only polite.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stop Talking About It</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stop talking about difficult people because the more we talk about something, the more of that thing we’ll notice. Do your best to not repeat the story to others. You are depriving difficult people of oxygen remember, not looking for attention. If you haven’t got something good to say about another person then best to say nothing at all (but don’t actually say this because it’s a dead give away. Obviously). On the other hand, gossip away with trusted friends - that’s what friends are for, after all; just don’t get het up and all upset about it for long because that’s just boring, even to the best of friends.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Go For A Run</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">… <a href="http://bit.ly/isp737"><span style="color: #990000;">or a walk</span></a>, or a swim. Works well. For a while.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Write It</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Take out some paper and write freely about the difficult bastard without editing. Continue to do so until you have nothing else to say. Now, roll the paper up into a ball, close your eyes and toss the paper ball into the rubbish. Gone, gone, gone.Good riddance to bad rubbish. Oh dear you missed the basket.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I see that you are already enlightened. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For more advice on how to deal with difficult people you really will have to read <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303809159&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">our book</span></a>. It talks about all those difficult things you really think but find hard to admit to, never mind deal with - such as difficult people that you actually love...</span> <br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">posted by Annabel</span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-9459397302960002922011-06-28T14:36:00.000-07:002011-06-29T15:00:42.967-07:00When The Wolves Are At The Door<div style="text-align: center;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.7793788411288114" style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img height="283" id="il_fi" src="http://jonahhaas.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/big-bad-wolf.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="387" /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When the wolves are knocking at your door, threatening to blow down your house, it’s only natural that you should feel a rising sense of panic. When the panic occasionally subsides you might find in its place an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. This will often show itself in the form of constant worries. Money worries can be pernicious, invading every other aspect of your life. They disrupt relationships both at home and at work and stop you from enjoying even the simplest of things - more troublesome in many cases than the crisis that gave rise to them in the first place.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Whilst we aren’t qualified to give advice on how best to deal with your financial affairs, what we can do is offer some advice on how best to withstand the damaging personal assault that a financial crisis often presents. More than ever, what you need now is to bolster your sense of control and not allow money worries to overwhelm your self confidence. The following advice is given with this aim in mind.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Advice</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>Don’t panic</strong></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Even if the creditors are banging extremely loudly - you must not panic. This is absolutely vital to your survival because you won’t be able to do anything if you are panicking. </span></div><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>Don’t allow your money worries to overwhelm you</strong>.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Worry is not going to help unless it’s directed. You need to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">doing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> something - not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">worrying</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> about something. With this in mind you need to follow this three step process:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>Let go of money worries in a 3-step process</strong></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span><br />
<div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>First</em>, you need to become aware that you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">are</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> worrying. Worry involves having negative thoughts that seem to intrude, usually without your complete awareness. So start paying attention to what your thoughts actually are and whenever you find yourself thinking about a subject for more than a minute, mentally step aside to see what it is you’re thinking about. Then, if you find yourself worrying tell yourself to STOP. Take a deep breath.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Second</em>, in a diary, notebook or on a computer, write down what you are worrying about and any ideas you have about the worry. In no more than two minutes. Absolutely no more than two minutes. When you find yourself worrying again, repeat the STOP and writing down exercise. </span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>The final step</em> is to choose a time and place where you are free to worry about the things you have written down. It could be an hour a week or an hour a day, depending on the severity of your problem. In this time you should </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">do</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> something about the particular worry. Take out your notebook and look at what you have written - then spend the allocated worry-time making a plan to address these concerns and carrying the plan out. At all other times you are free </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">not to worry</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Indeed, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">you are not allowed to worry except at the allocated time</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. If you need more worry-time, then scheule it - but otherwise you must not allow your life to be dictated by this worry which, if allowed to, will undermine all your <span style="color: #783f04;">efforts at survival in times of crisis. You need to take control of worry or it will surely control you.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #783f04;">Your money problems may be to do with having lost some or all of your income. If this is the case, you need to become creative about finding new sources of income and confident that you can and will find a way of earning money - perhaps a better and more enjoyable way than you have previously found. When you have spent your worry-time dealing with debts or other immediate problems, start to use these scheduled times to explore new sources of work. Ask yourself what are the talents you enjoy using and that people might want to pay you for - these might not be professional skills, but ones from your personal life. What have you always dreamed of doing, but never dared to try? Could you retrain; get a grant or a loan to do so? Who do you know, personally or professionally, who could support you now or help you find paid work? If you're not sure which way would be best, try a number of options and see which one(s) take off. If you can step outside your anxiety, you will find yourself able to think creatively and positively about your future. (You might also like to read our post on <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-to-do-when-youre-made-redundant.html"><span style="color: #990000;">What To Do When You're Made Redundant</span></a>)</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;"><em>The Real Secret</em></span></a> we have an exercise we call a "money diet". It's not about curbing excess spending (because when the wolves are at the door, you have no excess to spend), but about feeling more in control and learning the difference between what you want and what you need. We go into more detail in the book, but essentially we suggest you spend the next four weeks noting down every single penny you spend.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">During that period, you should also cut down </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">completely </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">on unnecessary expenditure. By unnecessary we mean all those things you want but don't absolutely need. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Think about every penny before you spend it, and ask yourself if it's absolutely necessary. Be really strict with yourself. Try to keep your list of expenses as short as possible. Think of it as an enjoyable, or at least useful, exercise rather than a burden you have to endure. </span> </div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">During the four weeks of minimal spending, make sure you also double check everything, from your</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> insurance policies, phone and energy tariffs to your mortgage, bank charges and credit card interest rates, and make sure they are all the cheapest you can get. Comparison websites such as uSwitch.com, Moneysupermarket.com and Confused.com make this easy – so spend a while on the Internet, or on the phone to your providers, making sure you are on the cheapest deals possible. Set up i</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">nternet banking on all your accounts, if you haven’t already, and watch your</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> income and expenditure on a daily basis. This is the easiest way to keep tabs on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">your spending and helps ensure you don’t get overdrawn. Make sure you know the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dates of all bills to be paid each month and when direct debits, interest payments </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">etc leave your account so that there is always enough in there and you don’t incur </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">charges.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #783f04;">If you have trouble repaying debts, talk to the people or companies you owe and renegotiate your payments. <span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you still feel overwhelmed, or if the creditors really are threatening foreclosure, immediately contact your Citizens Advice Bureau, local council and/or a local housing organisation which does not charge for their services. Anyone that charges for helping you sort out debt is to be avoided. Go online to find help from local organisations, self-help groups that can get you in touch with other people in similar circumstances and who can help at least by letting you know that you are not alone. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Most money worries are solvable and will pass, and most do have immediate steps you can take to improve your situation. You’ll feel better as soon as you start to take those steps. But they really do depend on you actually doing something to relieve the situation, the most important being talking to your creditors, going on a strict money diet, not allowing the worry of it all to <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">overwhelm you and coming up with new ways to earn money.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you manage to cope with failure, even repeated failure, and go on to achieve success, you have what psychologists call self-efficacy. People with high levels of self-efficacy do not give up easily; they believe they have it in themselves to achieve their goals. When you believe in your own power to exercise control over your life, you are healthier, more effective and more successful. If you can move beyond your fear of the wolves at the door, meet the challenges they pose with assurance and overcome them, you will have laid the foundations of your own self-efficacy</span>. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will find more exercises to reduce anxiety and stress, build confidence and take control of your life in </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309272255&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>The Real Secret</strong></em></span></a><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><em><strong> (UK),</strong></em></span> or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306577021&sr=1-1"><strong><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret (USA)</span></em></strong></a></span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-51632345430058420042011-06-28T03:12:00.000-07:002011-07-28T03:49:48.846-07:00A Simpler Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WydgbTiCo6-iw6YVCV_-ZIWZfepr_qNUUiQkVvzTV-BTE2BqG-3yf16T2NuVfPGfb-ivW7L69P8Gq-laJaoBAdTubITaXsEm6wmJ1XCBItofmpq5ECKrGDrSVNR5hqQZz2OuN1gaz0Pu/s1600/LowdownLife+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WydgbTiCo6-iw6YVCV_-ZIWZfepr_qNUUiQkVvzTV-BTE2BqG-3yf16T2NuVfPGfb-ivW7L69P8Gq-laJaoBAdTubITaXsEm6wmJ1XCBItofmpq5ECKrGDrSVNR5hqQZz2OuN1gaz0Pu/s1600/LowdownLife+cover.jpg" /></a></div><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of years ago, <a href="http://www.creativecontentdigital.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">Creative Content Digital</span></a> asked me to write an audio book to launch their new self-development imprint, “Lifestyle Lowdown”. Our first thoughts were around work-life balance. Flexible working, stress management and work-life balance had been one of my areas of expertise for many years and I had run pilot projects in many organisations which proved conclusively that flexibility and balance in the workplace reduced sickness absence, stress and turnover while improving productivity, commitment and employee satisfaction.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time I was working with Annabel (Shaw) on <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a> programme and self help book and, as we discussed the audio book, the phrase that resonated with all of us, and seemed to sum up what so many people are looking for, was “<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifestyle-Lowdown-Simpler-Life-Unabridged/dp/B002SQ3DIA"><span style="color: #990000;">A Simpler Life</span></a>”.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306577021&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a> self help strategy - “simple, sensible and scientifically supported” - Annabel and I agreed to write our first audio book on how to achieve a simpler life. In it, we don’t tell listeners that they should be ditching their possessions, earning less money or growing their own vegetables, but rather suggesting ways to explore what you fundamentally believe, recognise what you cherish above all else and identify what it is that makes you who you are.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the last twenty years we’ve all been so carried away with doing, having and achieving more, that we’ve left ourselves little time to stop and check on where we’re heading and why we’re going there. The fact is, you can make choices between what really matters to you and those things you’ve come to believe you ought to have, do or be. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In just over an hour, we take listeners through a series of integrated, enjoyable exercises – some of which need pen and paper or a PC; others of which just ask you to sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes and recall memories, emotions and dreams. Working through them, you find yourself on a journey to re-discovering genuine values, needs, desires and hopes with a map offering positive and well-defined goals, clearly marked destinations, a planned itinerary and regular signposts to keep you on track in achieving greater joy and contentment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve been asked whether I take my own advice and the answer is yes – usually! So when in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifestyle-Lowdown-Simpler-Life-Unabridged/dp/B002SQ3DIA"><span style="color: #990000;">A Simpler Life</span></a> we were writing about the value of revisiting childhood dreams, I thought I’d better go back and check my own. There they were, three of them: the earliest and most enduring was to be A Writer; a later one was to be A Psychologist and in my teens I was definitely going to be An Actress.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every job I’ve had has involved writing: initially as a journalist, editor, reviewer and script writer. When I moved out of the media and into researching parenting, children and families, it was still about presenting the material in compelling and comprehensible ways. As a consultant in work-life balance, working with blue chip and public sector organisations, I’ve sometimes battled with the deficiencies of business jargon – but enjoyed learning to blur the boundaries between corporate-speak and campaigning rhetoric in the interests of both productivity and people. Now I also work with other writers as Commissioning Editor of <a href="http://www.bookshaker.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">Bookshaker Publishing</span></a>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although I never became a psychologist, my wellbeing training and coaching, and self help writing involves me in researching how the mind and brain work – and in Annabel Shaw I have a real psychologist to work with. We have a brilliantly complementary working relationship, in which she is in charge of evidence and research while I get to rewrite and edit our manuscripts (though she writes most of this blog). And although I never got to be a professional actress after acting in many student plays, I do “perform” on radio and tv, and when I speak or give talks, workshops and seminars. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I realised, through writing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lifestyle-Lowdown-Simpler-Life-ebook/dp/B003151JO2/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_7"><span style="color: #990000;">A Simpler Life</span></a>, that in a deep sense I had achieved all three of my youthful dreams, and that focusing on what I really love doing best has helped to give my life the sort of clarity we encourage in the audio book. For me, living a simpler life has also involved a move out of the city into a village community, working away less and spending more time with my family. It won’t be the same for everyone – there’s no blueprint for the perfectly simple life, just ways of reconnecting with the real you and pursuing the things that bring you, and those close to you, true satisfaction and happiness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifestyle-Lowdown-Simpler-Life-Unabridged/dp/B002SQ3DIA"><span style="color: #990000;">A Simpler Life audio book</span></a></span><span style="color: #990000;">, published by Creative Content Digital, is available <span style="color: #990000;">on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=A+Simpler+Life+Lucy+McCarraher&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AA+Simpler+Life+Lucy+McCarraher&ajr=0"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.com</span></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=A+Simpler+Life+Lucy"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #990000;">,</span> iTunes and </span><a href="http://www.audible.co.uk/"><span style="color: #990000;">www.audible.co.uk</span></a><span style="color: #990000;">. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Special Offer - A Simpler Life is half price on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifestyle-Lowdown-Simpler-Life-Unabridged/dp/B002SQ3DIA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1311843837&sr=8-3">Amazon and Audible</a> at the moment - and FREE if you sign up to a 30-day trial with Audible.</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posted by Lucy</span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-36767282238280038132011-06-22T04:47:00.000-07:002011-08-09T00:24:53.635-07:00Walking Back To Happiness<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="212" id="il_fi" src="http://www.cottages-peakdistrict.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Peak-District-Walking-Sign.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So much of what we say in </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><em>The Real Secret</em></strong></span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is no secret at all (we emphasise the "real", as opposed to the unreality of much advice contained in <em><a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/law-of-attraction-killed-my-friend.html"><span style="color: #7f6000;">The Secret</span></a></em>). We suggest including in your weekly timetable, half an hour’s exercise at least twice a week. We all know that regular exercise supports good mental health and can raise happiness levels. One hour a week isn't asking much. Just do it, we say in Step 5 - "Healthy Body". </span></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Older people who exercise three or more times a week have a significantly reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's and other types of dementia; healthy people who exercise regularly have a 30% - 40% lower risk of getting dementia; and even those who devote as little as 15 minutes to exercise, three days a week, cut their risk significantly. Exercising to recommended levels can reduce the risk of breast cancer recurring by 40%. For prostate cancer the risk of dying from the disease is reduced by up to 30%. Bowel cancer patients' risk of dying from the disease can be cut by around 50% by doing around six hours of moderate physical activity a week.</span><br />
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Launching a <a href="http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Livingwithandaftercancer/Physicalactivity/Physicalactivity.aspx">new report</a>, Jane Maher, chief medical officer of Macmillan Cancer Support and a leading clinical oncologist said: "The advice that I would have previously given to one of my patients would have been to 'take it easy'. This has now changed significantly because of the recognition that if physical exercise were a drug, it would be hitting the headlines." <br />
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Even a short, brisk walk every day, researchers have said, can make a difference. If you can get into natural surroundings – the countryside, coast or park – even better, as this has been shown to sooth the mind more than urban settings. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Burn calories and build muscle all you want, but remember that your brain and soul may be the pieces of your anatomy that benefit most from walking.' </span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong>Mark Fenton, <em>The Complete Book of Walking </em></strong></span></span></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now there is additional research in favour of regular walking from the Psychology Department in the University of Pittsburgh. Kirk Erikson, author of the study, puts it this way:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'As we search for a "magic intervention" to protect our brains from the effects of aging, we may find that this "magic" will come not in the form of a pill, but rather in the form of a brisk walk several days a week. So, I would recommend physicians to prescribe moderate amounts of physical activity—about 1 mile of walking per day—to improve brain function, reduce brain atrophy, and decrease the risk for cognitive impairment. Aerobic activities, such as a brisk walk, a game of tennis, or a swim are excellent activities that may improve brain function.'</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Erikson's research study (published in <em>Neurology</em>) has found that the simple act of walking may improve memory in old age. As we age, our brains shrink and the shrinkage is associated with dementia and loss of cognitive functions such as memory. To test whether physical activity could mitigate some of these degenerative effects, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh tracked the physical activity of 299 healthy men and women with an average age of 78. The participants' activity ranged anywhere from walking 0 blocks to 300 blocks (up to 30 miles) per week.</span> <br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nine years later, the walkers underwent brain scans, which revealed that those who had walked more had greater brain volume than those who walked less. Four years after that, the volunteers were tested again — this time for dementia. Among the group, 116 people showed signs of memory loss or dementia. Those who had walked the most — at least 72 city blocks (or about 7 miles.) each week — were half as likely to have cognitive problems as those who walked the least. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The findings are in line with past studies linking physical activity with brain function, but dementia experts say there's not enough data yet to prescribe exercise to prevent memory loss (though we do, for health and happiness). It's also too soon to say whether exercise may prevent dementia or simply delay it in people who would eventually develop it anyway. But when it comes to Alzheimer's, even a short delay could mean great gains in quality of life. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Even if we are delaying [Alzheimer's disease] by several months or years, that's a significant improvement in what we know already, and a change in costs for treating health care," study author Kirk Erickson said. Delaying the condition could also ease the emotional burden and problems that come along with it, for both patients and their families, he said.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can read </span><a href="http://www.aan.com/news/?event=read&article_id=9085"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">an interview with Kirk Erikson here</span></a><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Get more "Simple, Sensible, Scientifically-Supported" advice from us in </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303809159&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Real Secret</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"> (UK)</span> or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">USA here</span></a><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posted by <strong>Lucy</strong></span>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-66164489926212506682011-06-18T15:24:00.000-07:002011-08-19T00:44:59.499-07:00Motivation? Inspiration? Just Take Action!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nzHXF7SHLF4/Tf0kSGQdWVI/AAAAAAAABVI/Fp9eNoTPgEQ/s1600/inspiration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nzHXF7SHLF4/Tf0kSGQdWVI/AAAAAAAABVI/Fp9eNoTPgEQ/s1600/inspiration.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6201662977834864" style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I have a problem with motivation. Not with everything, obviously. I can very easily get myself packed and ready to go to the beach and I can do that in 5 minutes flat. I can just as easily find the energy to meet a friend for coffee - if I can get hold of one. Friend, that is (I’m having a bit of a problem with friends since my <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/">last blog</a>). On the other hand if it involves doing something more necessary like work say or the washing up then it’s very strange because I can’t seem to find the motivation and tend to hang about waiting for inspiration. Well I don’t really hang about, obviously. I sofa surf or tea drink. Washing up doesn’t need inspiration. You’ve seen through me already.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The idea that we need to be motivated in order to get stuff done is just an excuse. It’s just pathetic really. And as for inspiration - well that’s for drama queens. No self respecting artist talks about inspiration - they talk about hard slog. Hours and hours of endless toil. Motivation and Inspiration are just amateur rubbish words. If you believe in them then you are obviously the type (see personality types <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/personality-disorders-rule-of-thumb.html">here</a> if you are in any way concerned) who wastes good money on the kinds of seminars you see advertised in second rate blog sites. You know the ones I mean - they usually have motivational speaker somewhere in the title. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Give it up and get some work done. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here's what you do: you pick a task, then set a timer for 25 minutes - no exceptions. Work. When it rings, stop for five minutes. Repeat three more times, then take a longer break. That's just about it. It works. Try it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It works because it creates an illusion that you have no choice – that there's some kind of drill sergeant keeping an eye on every move you make, stopping you from defaulting to the basic lazy that you really are... Well me anyway. It’s incredible just how easy to fool our brains are - a timer is all you need. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is the product to try if you need more advice </span><br />
<a href="http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/</span></a><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Motivation follows action and not the other way round. Or as the psychologist Albert Bandura put it : </span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s better to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Annabel who wrote this in under 25 minutes with the timer on having waited all day (<span style="font-size: x-small;">on the beach at Barcelona</span>) for some inspiration.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">More tips and ways to take control of <span style="color: #990000;">your life, set and keep goals in </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><em><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></em></a><span style="color: #990000;">, available in paperback and kindle on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310416804&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.com</span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310390222&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a></span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-9316379032704537822011-06-16T07:01:00.000-07:002011-08-18T03:06:20.096-07:00How To Be Loved<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ip6ODA9sUfA/TfoLyMswDEI/AAAAAAAABVE/YND9F7mg_bs/s1600/trying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ip6ODA9sUfA/TfoLyMswDEI/AAAAAAAABVE/YND9F7mg_bs/s1600/trying.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6991226414182018" style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to making friends and influencing others there are some basic rules you should be aware of - I say should. I mean definitely should.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Step One : Don’t Try Too Hard To Please</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You know those people that always seem to be trying so hard to please? Remember teachers' pets? Mummy's little helper? Yes, those ones. Irritating aren’t they? Instead of making the rest of us feel good about them they simply make us feel bad about ourselves - actually, no they don’t. They are just irritating. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">People who try too hard to please always respond immediately to any request for help. They reply to emails instantly, as if they were just sitting there waiting for you to send them. They already do most of the domestic chores without so much as a grumble and then when you need some extra ironing done or the kettle needs replacing or the office party arranged - there’s the person. This kind of behaviour always brings out the worst in me. I am obviously perverse. I see that you are too. Am I right? Well, if you are then good. Very good. But if you happen to be the other kind - the kind that tries too hard and doesn’t understand why people are still never happy with you, well here’s why. Sensitive types please try to be strong - I’m giving advice here that the rest of us don’t really want you to know in case it stops you making us tea.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">People who try too hard to please are irritating because they seem so </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">needy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">; they </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">want</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to be my friend. They want to be seen as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">‘nice’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> people and so they think if they do all the washing up then I’ll like them even more.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well I don’t. I never liked them in the first place. I would rather have rude than needy - at least I can shout at rude. Needy would probably just fall to bits and start crying. Do you see what I mean? And that’s why, instead of making more friends they tend to lose the ones they thought they had. Well, after they’ve made the boss a cup of tea and cleaned up the staff room. Naturally. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well that’s the short of it and now comes the long, hard bit where I tell you what to do and you do it and then afterwards you thank me. Yes, that’s right - you do the work and I get the thanks. Bear with me - it’ll all make sense in the end. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How to stop trying too hard to please</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">First, if you do do the lion's share of domestic chores then pick a couple of these chores and just stop doing them. For example, do not unstack the dish washer for a week (it’ll take a week to work). Wash only your clothes and leave the rest. Stop making the tea at work.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Second, don’t respond to emails immediately. Leave them for at least a few hours and overnight if you can bear it. It is better to be seen as someone who is reliable because they always respond within 24 hours than to be seen as someone who responds immediately, because on the rare occasion when you can’t respond immediately you’ll only be seen as under-performing. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Third, begin the process of training the people you live and work with to not always expect you to say yes to any request. Say instead that you’ll think about it - and then 2 out of 5 times say no, sorry, can’t do. You do not need to explain yourself. There is nothing in the rule book that says you have to explain yourself when asked to do a favour - although you can of course be polite and say “Sorry - busy” if you really feel you have to, but there you go again being a bit too understanding. Children might have a problem to start with but just remember that it's good for them. No-one wants a dishcloth for a parent or a colleague and certainly not as a partner. If they want a cleaner they can go hire one. You are a parent/colleague/friend not their doormat. It’s not difficult to say no - it just takes practise. Works a treat once they get the hang of it and begin to see a brand new more interesting you.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So that’s step one. Now step two is a little more tricky and you’ll just have to trust me on this one - but there is good evidence to support me so just do as I say and see how it works. Don’t even think of doing this step until step one has been well mastered - it’ll just confuse people.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Step Two : Ask for Favours</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is called the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ben Franklin Effect</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. This states that people like you more if they have done a favour for you than if you have done a favour for them.</span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“He that has once done you a kindness, will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So don’t go bending backwards to do others favours. Ask for favours of them. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Asking others to do you a favour works because it so happens that we all tend to favour people we once helped. Its called Cognitive Dissonance, if you want to look it up. We are so shallow that we just hate the idea of helping someone we don’t like - so to make it easy we tell ourselves that they are our friend. Why? Because we once helped them. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Exactly the opposite behaviour we started out with.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #990000;">Finally,</span> here's a little test to see what stage you're at. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What comes after ‘S’ in the alphabet? Correct. Thank you so much - I take two sugars. You failed - go back to step one and repeat.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I can see you are thanking me already.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Post by Annabel who's had a tough day because there was no-one to make the tea.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial;"><em><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/">The Real Secret</a></span></em> can help with issues of self esteem and positive attitude, making and keeping friends and maintaining good relationships. It is available in paperback and kindle format on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">www.amazon.com</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/">www.amazon.co.uk</a> .</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-4049424403823355292011-06-08T04:29:00.000-07:002011-08-18T03:29:42.521-07:00Personality Disorders - The Rule of Thumb<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-be_ZbKyMdnQ/Te9TXU-vvYI/AAAAAAAABVA/y0nIAvKa8Og/s1600/doctor+is+in.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-be_ZbKyMdnQ/Te9TXU-vvYI/AAAAAAAABVA/y0nIAvKa8Og/s200/doctor+is+in.jpg" width="155" /></a></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Given the huge range of personality types (see earlier post<a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/personality-wise.html"> here)</a> how useful or helpful is it to talk about personality disorders? What is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">normal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> personality against which </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">abnormal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> can be defined? Can a personality be so abnormal that it warrants being classified as a form of mental illness? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Rule of Thumb</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The answer is straightforward. A normal personality is extremely difficult to define; an abnormal personality, on the other hand, sticks out like a sore thumb. And that’s because abnormal personalities are defined by consistently odd and unpredictable behaviour which causes real problems for the person, their family, colleagues and friends. This </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">rule of thumb</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> works very well for most behaviours across a wide range of experiences. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In short, if your personality causes distress either to yourself or to others and interferes with your everyday life then it’s abnormal. The occasional episode of outrageous behaviour is not what is meant here and nor are we talking about normal eccentric behaviour. Normal eccentrics don’t usually recognise themselves as eccentric and we typically delight in their eccentric behaviour. It’s when the eccentric behaviour turns to distress that we have a form of personality disorder. According to the rule of thumb - if it sticks out but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">isn’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> sore then it’s just plain eccentric. If it sticks out and causes distress then its ‘Odd-Eccentric’ - abnormal. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Personality disorders affect around 1 to 3 % of the population. Mainstream psychiatry identifies ten personality disorders. Here they are, classified into three groups. First is the odd-eccentric, next the anxious/fearful and third the dramatic-emotional. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Odd/Eccentric</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is further broken down into three sub-types.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Paranoid personality disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You are constantly distrustful of others and imagine yourself to be threatened by others' intentions - constantly. No let up. And you don’t really exhibit much insight into this as a problem - as far as you are concerned it’s really true. This makes treatment difficult. People with paranoid personality disorder distrust everyone including doctors. The condition makes life difficult because of the effect that the paranoia has on all relationships.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Schizoid Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You are a loner whose behaviour is considered by others to be cold and unemotional. Schizoid personality disorder is a condition in which affected people avoid social activities and consistently shy away from interaction with others. If you have schizoid personality disorder, you may feel as though you have no idea how to form personal relationships. To others, you may appear dull or humourless. Because you don't tend to show emotion, you may appear as though you don't care about what's going on around you. However, although you may seem aloof, you may actually feel extremely sensitive and lonely.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Schizotypal Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have schizotypal personality disorder you will have great difficulty in establishing and maintaining close relationships with others. A person with schizotypal personality disorder may have extreme discomfort with such relationships, and therefore have less of a capacity for them. Between 30% and 50% of people with schizotypal personality disorder also have a major depressive disorder. A second personality disorder, such as paranoid personality disorder, is also common with this condition. People with this disorder may be unusually superstitious or preoccupied with paranormal phenomena that are outside the norms of their subculture and this, of course, makes relating to others even more difficult. Schizotypal personality disorder is closely linked to schizophrenia.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Anxious/Fearful Disorders</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These include three sub-types.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Avoidant Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Your self-esteem is zero. You are extremely anxious that your perceived inadequacies will be exposed and then ridiculed by others and so you avoid social situations. People with avoidant personality disorder can't stop thinking about their own shortcomings. They form relationships with other people only if they believe they will not be rejected. Loss and rejection are so painful that these people will choose to be lonely rather than risk trying to connect with others.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dependent Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Exactly as described - you don’t feel able to make decisions for yourself and rely on others to organise your life. People with this disorder feel that they cannot cope on their own and are terrified at the thought of having to do so.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Are you a perfectionist obsessively devoted to order and routine? Do you require absolute control over everyday tasks? Relationships suffer because here it’s always difficult to have absolute control and this then leads to frustration and anxiety.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dramatic-Emotional Disorders</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These include four sub-types.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Antisocial Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Are you deceitful, violent, care nothing for the safety of yourself and less than nothing for others' safety? Do you lie and steal and manipulate others to do your willing? You are angry and arrogant and show no signs of guilt or remorse. The behaviour of someone with antisocial personality disorder is thankfully rare; hard to treat, it is most often dealt with in a court of law.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Borderline Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This condition is characterised by severe emotional pain and the fear of abandonment. Relationships are chaotic and unstable. You may idealize someone one moment and then abruptly and dramatically shift to fury and hate over perceived slights or even minor misunderstandings. With borderline personality disorder your image of yourself is distorted, making you feel worthless and fundamentally flawed. Your anger and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you are so fearful of being abandoned. Your relationships are usually in turmoil. Drug abuse, self harm and suicidal thoughts are common.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Narcissistic Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have narcissistic personality disorder then you have an inflated sense of your own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism. People with this condition need constant reassurance and admiration and they will manipulate and exploit others in order to get it.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Histrionic Personality Disorder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Histrionic personality disorder is characterised by a long-standing pattern of attention-seeking behavior and extreme emotionality. Someone with histrionic personality disorder wants to be the centre of attention - all the time - and will become ‘dramatically’ upset if they lose that attention. Perceived as shallow by others they have real difficulties in maintaining relationships. The behaviour is often hysterical.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>Conclusions</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Very few of us suffer these personality disorders in their true forms and many of us share an understanding of the facets of each from time to time. There is treatment for many and no good reason to suffer in silence if you feel that your life and relationships are being unduly affected by problems that you believe may be based on personality characteristics. Your shyness, for example, may be crippling and seriously affecting your social life but this does not mean that you have avoidant personality disorder - what it does mean is that you should speak with your GP and see what help there is available. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #783f04; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Posted by Annabel</span> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial;"><em><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/">The Real Secret</a></span></em> 12 Step programme may help personality issues through raising self esteem and positive attitude, advice on relationships and friendships, as well a bringing insights on a range of emotional issues. It is available in paperback and kindle formats on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">www.amazon.com</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/">www.amazon.co.uk</a>.</span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-65294788351990186772011-06-07T06:53:00.000-07:002011-06-07T06:55:55.010-07:00Lucy McCarraher interviewed by James Rick on The Full Potential Show<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJvrjYi_aRKTPUcnt2CGC7A4oiutECK-nJthaB56xWBYY52zbbQRgLGkyKLZkQ2QH-P-EWMgqPL-2ZO83041XkpeOr4a_4jUW31H-U02yFW8KWm4YveQLE92GqZQne0-TckxY24ePvRrN/s1600/James+Rick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJvrjYi_aRKTPUcnt2CGC7A4oiutECK-nJthaB56xWBYY52zbbQRgLGkyKLZkQ2QH-P-EWMgqPL-2ZO83041XkpeOr4a_4jUW31H-U02yFW8KWm4YveQLE92GqZQne0-TckxY24ePvRrN/s320/James+Rick.jpg" t8="true" width="151" /></a></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was recently interviewed by </span><a href="http://www.fullpotential.com/lucy-mccarraher/"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">James Rick for his Full Potential show</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. <span style="color: #7f6000;">Here's James Rick's summary of what we said and his own commentary.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with the law of attraction is that it’s so attractive. We want to believe that we can sit, feel, imagine and visualize all the good things we want to come our way and believe that they are going to drop out of the sky. And if they haven’t yet – you’re just not believing hard enough.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">L</span><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">aws, according to the scientific definition, work every time – no matter who is using them, without fail. Otherwise it’s not a law, it’s a theory. Well, I’ve applied the law of attraction to get water to jump into my mouth and transform watermelon into salmon and it hasn’t worked yet. But, I have noticed that the law of gravity has never let me down once, nor has the law of cause and effect – if I lift the cup of water to my lips and drink (cause) then I get hydrated (effect).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I decided to have Lucy MaCarraher tell us <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/">The Real Secret</a> which is also the name of her new book, based on scientifically proven “Happiness Habits” for not only feeling better but laying the foundation for DOING (causing) the things you want to show up in your life (effect).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>HAPPINESS HABITS</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Smile</strong> - It’s such a simple act, but smiling literally released endorphins and makes you feel better. This means you don’t have to wait for something to happen in order to smile, you can smile to make yourself feel better. The more you do it, the better you’ll feel!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Breathe Deep</strong> – Breathing deeply sends a signal to your brain and nervous system that all is well. Typical reactions to threats – like fight or flight – make breathing shallow and reinforce stress in the body – but breathing deeply reverses those signals and puts the body at ease. I’ve conditioned myself to do this so that I’m no longer uncomfortable in most social settings.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Be Kind</strong> – The act of kindness lights up the same areas of the brain as when you eat chocolate. Some simple ideas for follow through are to look for the positive in people’s work or actions. Verbally let them know how much you appreciate them. Get in the habit of writing thank-you cards on a regular basis.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Organization</strong> - Do you have a clean work environment (me neither) or a decent filing system? At the very least, by having an organized system (even if your work environment is chaos), you’ll feel less stress and more empowered through the day.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Set Goals</strong> – Our brains are hard-wired for setting and achieving goals. We run our lives on goal-directed activities, achieving goals and closure. In a way, that’s why email can be so addicting. Lucy recommends balancing short-term, daily achievements on a to-do list and long term goals that might take a year or more to accomplish. The balance is critical though – otherwise you’ll lose interest in goal setting. Many people forget what they should be doing because they don’t have a routine that reminds them. Solution: create a routine that incorporates everything you want to accomplish on a daily basis PLUS reminds you to set it up again the next day.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Healthy Eating & Exercise</strong> – Lucy has a clever strategy for eating healthier and exercising (according to the Hawthorne effect) – by simply focusing on something and taking note of it, you improve it. So if you’re not exercising or eating healthy – but you take note of it for 30 days, odds are that you’ll automatically begin improving how you eat and how much you exercise. Skeptical? Try it for 30 days!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Friendship</strong> - 5 close friends have been correlated to a good sense of well-being. At the same time, you should avoid or disassociate from friends or family members that bring you down. And if you can’t avoid them, be mindful when aggravation happens. Have a selection of thoughts or people that bring happiness in life – use these to press the right button. If you smile, you might see the humor in what someone is doing. Have some emotional and mental tricks that give you a new option before you act…like counting to 10 before you respond.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I take a bold stance on the movie “The Secret” and call it a lie. That might upset you if you’re a fan of “The Secret” or especially, if you’ve starred in it. I do plan to have stars from “The Secret” on the Full Potential Show and from what I understand, they’ll agree activating imagination and clearly defining what you want is only the first step. And a first step is nowhere near a complete process. A half-truth is only half the truth, no matter how you slice it. Lucy’s The Real Secret promises to deliver the other half. Scientifically-proven button pushing that will create the kind of foundation that makes real, results-oriented actions a reality.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Self efficacy, you have to have it to believe it, believe it to have it. Nobody is luckier than anyone else, but people who believe they are lucky see opportunities – where an unlucky person wouldn’t see the opportunity or won’t take action that leads to more positive results. If you’ve created your vision board and you know what you want (based on The Secret).. in the words of <strong>Thoreau</strong>:</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."</strong></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial;">Do have a look at the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1818541592"><span style="color: #990000;">full interview here</span></a></span></strong><a href="http://www.fullpotential.com/lucy-mccarraher/"><span style="color: #990000;"></span></a> <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and you'll find more about Happiness Habits on this blog and in your own copy of <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><em>The Real Secret</em></strong></span></a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial;">Posted by Lucy</span></div>Lucy McCarraherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08567018075809933442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-65132470363422675362011-06-05T05:34:00.000-07:002011-07-04T02:57:44.194-07:00The Law of Attraction Killed my Friend<div id="internal-source-marker_0.7160646698557217" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><img height="225" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/3muGMh38KogO20CAdmG-EyPbKo7Ya4eopkS7cqItyx8YMtilA-c6H0Dn5KmfZ3OswEwmtqiZniO5wWQcSDGpTt2SL0AWcAqOQ2Bf-EaCqMEdjEg4iw" width="400" /></div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I worked as a radiotherapist in the cancer centre of a large city hospital and in the years that I worked there I came across at least five cases similar to the one reported below - women who came for treatment when it was too late and after they had tried to ‘cure’ themselves using the Law of Attraction techniques. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is this experience that motivates me now to warn as many people as I can of the dangers of the kinds of advice given in books like <em>The Secret</em> by Rhonda Byrne. I still feel overcome with helplessness and anger when I think of the women who I saw die needlessly because of the advice given in this book.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It became the reason Lucy and I titled our book </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303809159&sr=1-1"><em><strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Real Secret</span></strong></em></a><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - we wanted to attract attention to the dangerous ideas associated with The Secret with a book of our own based on simple, sensible, scientifically supported research. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This article has been taken from the April Edition of <a href="http://www.fairlady.com/lifestyle/health-fitness/a-deadly-secret"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><em>Fair Lady</em> Magazine</strong></span></a>.</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><strong></strong></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><strong>A Deadly Secret</strong></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Every time I enter a book shop, there it is – in hardback, paperback and on DVD, millions sold, its author’s success serving as personal proof of the validity of her message. I cringe with revulsion and pain, and think of the dear friend who fatally embraced Rhonda Byrnes’ self-help missive, The Secret.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2004, I moved from LA to the university town of Eugene in Oregon, a state wedged between California and Washington. I am given Selena’s* phone number by a mutual friend and when I meet her for lunch I’m greeted by a petite, vivacious woman in her late 40s, her smooth brown skin laden with turquoise Native American jewellery, her laughter quick and joyous.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We quickly discover that we share a sense of adventure, a love for travel and music, and contempt for President George W. Bush, and we bond over her disintegrating relationship and my imploding marriage.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Otherwise, we are an unlikely pair: I need my thoughts rooted in logic and my medicine grounded in scientific research; Selena is the new-age vegetarian with a deep distrust of Western medicine and convention, and a passionate embracer of all things alternative.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Selena has lived through two of America’s major wars, Vietnam and Iraq, both based on lies. Unfortunately, her well-founded distrust of the American establishment has spilled over into a vague, intellectually careless dismissal of the media, the sciences and ‘Western medicine’ in general.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She argues that natural remedies are not advocated by pharmaceutical companies because they cannot be patented, and reminds me of the abusive treatment of the mentally ill in America and the brutal post-World War II pharmacological experiments on black Americans. I point out that times have changed, and greater regulation combined with the profit motive make it highly unlikely that medical and pharmaceutical companies are paying thousands of researchers to devise new ways of killing potential customers.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She visits me one day, excitedly clutching a copy of the DVD The Secret and starts raving about how suffering is the product of one’s own negative energy, and material success and emotional fulfillment can be realised through positive thinking. I am taken aback by her fervour and appalled that the multilayered complexity of life can be simplistically reduced to positive or negative emotional energy. Was apartheid the result of black people thinking negatively? Was the holocaust some sort of mass suicide by negative energy? How does positive thinking realise a meal when there isn’t a morsel of food in sight? Where does positive thinking end and delusion begin?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Selena drops the subject, surprised and a little embarrassed by my stream of rational objections. She is happy and madly in love with a new man.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She goes travelling and meets her lover for a few idyllic weeks in Thailand before rejoining him in Eugene. He thinks it is too early in their relationship for them to live together but invites her to stay with him until she has found a new place. She slides into a depression, lying around, unable to galvanise herself into looking for her own place. Is it menopause? Is it because she doesn’t really want to move and would prefer him to ask her to stay? Both.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Beset by tears and hot flashes, Selena sticks to herbal remedies and desperately tries to be positive. As she emotionally disintegrates, so does her lover’s patience. He ends the relationship and pushes her to move in with a friend.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I urge her to visit a doctor for hormone-replacement pills or anti-depressants. She instinctively grimaces and argues that the pharmaceutical industry’s aggressive marketing has resulted in a generation of absurdly over-medicated Americans.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A few weeks later she gives me the shocking news. About eight months prior, she had noticed a lesion on her vulva. Her gynaecologist had said it was pre-cancerous and needed to be removed and biopsied. Selena had been reluctant to ‘have that done to my body’, and ignored the lesion until it morphed into a sore.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now her stunned and angry gynaecologist, who had assumed she had gone elsewhere for a second opinion and treatment, has informed her she has stage-two cancer of the vulva. Radiation is not an option; she is referred to a surgeon for removal of her clitoris and a chunk of her vulva.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vulnerable after two intense love affairs and two rejections in a row, Selena says she cannot live with being ‘genitally disfigured’. She insists cancer is a product of ‘negative energy’ and wants to rely on alternative therapy and ‘positive energy’ to cure herself.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I suggest the possibility of reconstructive surgery and point out that we probably spend less than 1% of our lives having sex and there are so many joys in life beyond sex and romantic relationships. After all, it seems contradictory to emphasise spirituality and an alternative lifestyle and yet risk her life to stay conventionally intact.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She is unmoved, and suddenly becomes a repository of passionate tales from the Internet about people who avoided invasive surgical and pharmaceutical interventions and cured their cancer with alternative therapy.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She calls a mutual friend and itinerant psychic in Hawaii. The cards are thrown, the energies in Oregon are analysed in Hawaii courtesy of satellite technology, and Selena’s decision to stake her life on alternative treatment is further validated. I offer my support and tell her that I really hope I am wrong.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She retreats to Ashland, Oregon, to receive ‘light therapy’, and dutifully limits her diet to puréed organic greens and herbs recommended by her alternative practitioners.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Physically, Selena looks wonderful and her skin glows, but she quietly volunteers that the lesion is not getting smaller. Yet her chosen course of treatment places her under acute pressure to be positive no matter what. She cannot vent any understandable anxiety and fear because it is only positive energy that will cure her, so she determinedly remains upbeat and spiritual, about to follow up the Ashland experiment with another alternative treatment in Hawaii. At least she will spend time in a beautiful place. She pensively admits, however, that she cannot swim in the ocean because the salt will irritate her sore. And she cannot have sex.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I am returning to South Africa and feel desperate and helpless as we hug goodbye. I deliver some upbeat, encouraging platitudes before getting into my car and weeping uncontrollably. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My emails and calls from South Africa go unanswered. On June 22, I am bursting with thoughts of Selena.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I call and leave another message on her cellphone and get no response. I call again shortly after, and a man answers. I ask for her and he bluntly announces that he is her father and that she passed away on June 22.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Selena died just nine months after receiving the cancer diagnosis. My beautiful friend with the simple dreams so many of us share – to laugh and love and be loved – spent the last nine months of her life not living it up, but frenetically disciplining herself, avoiding decadence, limiting her culinary choices to raw green mush, unable to swim, and unable to have the sex for which she was throwing her life away. In a dreadful irony, she spent the last two weeks of her life in a Eugene hospital, wracked with agony as the cancer charged through her body.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Since alternative-medicine practitioners reject pharmaceuticals and practice optimistic denial, they have little to offer those in acute pain. By the time Selena’s suffering forced her into the clutches of ‘Western medicine’, it was too late for anything but morphine and palliative care from medical doctors and nurses who couldn’t understand how she could have been so naive and irrational, while alternative-medicine acolytes quietly blamed her for not being sufficiently positive, thereby ‘surrendering’ to the ‘negative energy’ that ‘causes’ cancer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I relay Selena’s story to a relative who is a Rhonda Byrne fan, and she, too, defensively responds that ‘deep down, she must have been negative’. Therein lies the exquisite paradox: The Secret is always ‘proven’ right, whether it works or not.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How ironic, when so many doctors and therapists have pointed out that it is the repression of one’s true feelings that generates stress. Oprah Winfrey has done many positive things for the world but helping turn The Secret into an international bestseller was not one of them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*Name has been changed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Photo: amandaism/stock.xchng</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This article was originally printed in the South African </span><a href="http://www.fairlady.com/lifestyle/health-fitness/a-deadly-secret"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Fair Lady Magazine</span></a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #990000;">Posted by Annabel</span></span><br />
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</span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Excerpts.html"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><em>The Real Secret - what to do when the universe hasn't delivered everything you ever wanted</em></strong></span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> is available in paperback and kindle on </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>Amazon.com</strong></span></a><span style="color: #990000;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303809159&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>Amazon.co.uk</strong></span></a></span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-10150613606109750982011-05-27T14:41:00.000-07:002011-07-14T14:37:52.081-07:00THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gg1uVidNVIw/Td_ZV8yUScI/AAAAAAAABU8/1IATu5XIQFk/s1600/attraction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gg1uVidNVIw/Td_ZV8yUScI/AAAAAAAABU8/1IATu5XIQFk/s1600/attraction.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6539016783032577" style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For those of you who have stumbled across this blog thinking that you’ll get some insight into The Law of Attraction as understood by Rhonda Byrne in her book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Secret</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - please look away now. I have no wish to offend although I’m happy to do so in this case.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Secret</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> by Rhonda Bryne is filled with pseudo-scientific nonsense; there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">no secret. The book was presumably written to make money but it ended up being a sinister hoax that millions fell for.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For those who haven’t been taken in by this pernicious hoax, my intention here is not to waste your time in discussing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Secret </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">or Rhonda Byrne any further (although you may be interested in why so many people fell for and are still falling for the deceit that underpins that book - in which case please see my earlier post which looks at the Social Psychology behind such acceptance, which you can read <a href="http://realsecretblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/secret-and-lies.html"><span style="color: #990000;">here</span></a>. It’ll make you feel good about yourself so worth a read if only for that).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This post is about The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">real </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">laws of attraction - the laws of attraction that underpin our most important relationships. How do we make friends? How do we find a lover? How do we decide whether that lover/friend has the makings of a partner for life? How come some of us are more successful than others at finding and making friends/lovers/partners? What do they know that you don’t? Please let's not believe there is some kind of secret to this. Millions do it very successfully.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What I want to do here is examine what we actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">do</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> when we are successful at finding friends/lovers/partners. So, if lasting relationships are what you are looking for then this is for you. It’s based on good honest research conducted with ordinary people, just like you and me: no deceit, no pretence - just straightforward, open-to-criticism research.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There are four<span style="color: #cc0000;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Laws of Attraction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> identified by research - but before we get onto them I need to cover a little background first. If you are desperate you can always skip to the laws - but just to warn you that if you do so it’ll only reinforce one of the points I make later about neediness, so best stay with me for the moment. It’s good practice. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Background to Research on Relationships</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Happiness is the new buzz. There are books and blogs and new research projects springing up everywhere you look. In the research world - at least in that tiny portion of it devoted to the understanding of happiness - the talk is all about how to define happiness so that we can all be sure we are talking about the same thing; because then we can measure it and test for it and look at how it develops or doesn’t develop and so on and so on. Very exciting. If you like that kind of thing. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately researchers are still far from an agreed definition of happiness and some even snigger at the quest. I don’t snigger - I want to know everything I can about the state of happiness, if only because I don’t much like the state of being unhappy. For those who are taking anti-depressive medication the question is even more important. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But there is one aspect in the research on happiness about which all are agreed - the stronger our relationships the happier we will be. The quality of our close relationships are understood to be key - influencing our physical as well as our mental well-being. So If you want to be a little happier then you need to foster good relationships. However, finding friends/lovers/partners with whom we can begin to be happy/happier is easier said than done. Luckily there are a few rules that could help - lets call them The Laws of Attraction.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Four Laws of Attraction</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Proximity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - the single most important factor that determines who we will come to know, befriend, and possibly love is proximity. Accidental proximity is called </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">propinquity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, literally "the coincidence of being near."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The two most famous studies documenting the relationship between proximity and attraction were conducted in college dormitories. Because most students who live in dormitories have not known each other previously, a dormitory provides a good setting to study how close relationships develop. In one study the dormitories were built in a U-shape around a central court covered with grass. The exterior sides of the building faced the street; the central section faced the inner courtyard.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Two factors appeared to exercise the greatest influence on personal relationships: the location of the apartments and the distances between them. The most important factor in determining who would be emotionally close to whom was the distance between their apartments. The closer people lived to each other, the more likely they were to become friends. Next door neighbours were far more likely to become friends with each other than with people who lived in adjacent buildings. </span><br />
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</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In fact, it was difficult to find close friendship between people who lived more than five apartments away from each other. In more than two thirds of the cases, close friendships were between next door neighbours.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In addition, the location of some of the apartments created more opportunities for their residents. Those residents who lived near the staircase or mailboxes met more of their fellow residents and met them more often. The frequent encounters increased the chances that these well located people would talk to others and get to know them, form friendships and increase their own popularity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On the other hand, people who lived in apartments that faced the street had no next door </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">neighbours. As a result these residents made half the number of friends made by those who lived facing the inner court.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Further studies demonstrated that as the geographic distance separating potential couples decreases, the probability of their marrying each other increases. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In one of these studies, 431 couples who applied for marriage licences were interviewed. It turned out that 54% of the couples were separated by a distance of 16 blocks or fewer when they first went out together, and 37% were separated by a distance of five blocks or fewer. The number of marriages decreased as the distance increased between the couples’ places of residence. </span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What we see with the law of proximity is of course the familiarity effect or the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">mere exposure effect; </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">this is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likeable that person appears to be. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Seeing a lot of someone gives you the chance to get to know them a little more and to build a relationship. Just think of your postman - after a while you feel as if you’ve known him for years even though you never really had more than a few words to exchange at each meeting, so that when you bump into him at the local pub you feel comfortable enough to start a conversation and get to know him a little better. You find out he’s happily married. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So what can we conclude from this? A fair amount really. It means that if you want to make more friends then it really does matter where you position yourself in relation to other people. So you might want to move where you live if your current abode is isolating you from your neighbours. Forget "detached"; you want crowded. And choose the flat by the stairs/lifts/postboxes. And you need to be seen often - so moving from one part of town to another is perhaps not so wise; best to stay in one area and get your face known. Go to the same pub. Take coffee in the same coffee shop. Buy your food from local shops. Make sure you get to know your neighbours - that means knocking on their door and asking to borrow some sugar. Hang about and become familiar. Your next best friend/lover/soul mate is probably just living down the corridor or across the road from you. So no need to travel the world looking for your ideal mate - they aren’t there, they’re right here under your nose.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Similarity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - is also a very powerful factor in accounting for friendships. In the studies mentioned above, room mates selected as being similar were much more likely to end up being friends. Another piece of research showed the same thing in paper-and-pencil fashion. Here subjects were given a description of another person and asked how much they thought they would like the person described on the paper. The more closely the "other person" resembled the subject, the more the subject expected to like the other person.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As a general rule the same factors that apply to the law of proximity affect the law of similarity - that is, we tend to gravitate to the familiar. We are more often attracted to people who are similar to us in intelligence, background, beliefs, looks and social class.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Difference is exciting but it can also be a little scary. Finding someone who shares similar experiences and understandings to you, on the other hand, can be exciting in a different way because it is self-affirming; you like the person even more because they are a bit like you! How good is that? </span><br />
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</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Personally I go for maximum difference - I want someone bigger, older, brighter, wealthier and kinder than I consider myself to be. But the truth of research is that in actual fact opposites don’t really attract. Happy relationships are typically built on what people have in common and not on their differences. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So what should we take from this? That when looking for a friend/lover/partner it’s best to stick to people who you estimate will share similar attributes. There is absolutely no point wasting your time on developing a relationship with someone whose outlook on life is fundamentally at odds with your own. You’re only asking for trouble ahead. Don’t even <em>t</em></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">hink</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> about changing them. It’s been tried and it doesn’t work - people aren’t play-dough.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now the chances are that you will be able to make that judgement quite soon after bumping into that person in the corridor. You can tell a lot about another person from the way they look apparently - which is the third law of attraction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Physical Appearance</span></i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i> </i>-</span> this is going to be awkward, but someone has to let you know, so it might just as well be me: you are fairly average looking. You know how you dream about living ever after with a Pamela Anderson/James Dean lookalike? Well it’s not going to happen. Sorry about that. Best to know.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not personal; it’s just a fact that, as a rule, we tend to fair best with partners who are no more or no less attractive than we are. There are, of course, the odd exceptions - much older, ugly man marries beautiful starlet. Yes, exactly. You noticed the stress on odd.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Physical appearance is a huge attractant and there are some rules you should know about.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Men don’t actually want stick thin, model type figures - they don’t like overweight either. They like comfortable, apparently. That’s good. Neither are men attracted to women who are on a constant diet - makes them suspicious. Suspicious in case one day you stop the diet and go from a size 8 to 18 overnight. So get rid of the diet and celebrate your comfortable figure - it’s more attractive than you think.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Women like men to be taller than they are and if they do have to be overweight then let them make it up with personality and wit. Remember Robbie Coltrane from the TV series <em>Cracker</em>? Like him - otherwise overweight is frowned upon by women. Oh, and women want men to be solvent (the more the better) and have good employment prospects - so quite picky I’d say. The stereotypical view of men being attracted to looks and women to money is confirmed then.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to choosing a long term partner, men as well as women look for someone who is intelligent (but not too obviously so, so get rid of those studious looking spectacles and put away that book on Neitzsche); dependable is a big attractant (so always do what you say you will do - get rid of the unpredictable behaviour you aren’t a pop star); healthy (especially important if children are planned); kind and loving (to them, obviously). And finally, no-one but no-one likes people who are "needy". You know who you are. It's so unattractive.That’s about it really. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In conclusion, it seems that women are less taken by physical attractiveness if everything else is in place, and men are quite capable of seeing beyond outward appearances - up to a point, you are still average looking remember. <span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So when out strolling the corridors/streets/local precincts, best to keep your eyes off the seriously good-looking neighbours and concentrate rather on the plainer features. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking for a same sex partner? The same rules apply. Sorry. Just when you thought things might be different. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Reciprocity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">liking someone who likes you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Reciprocity was manipulated in a study where subjects "accidentally overheard" another subject, actually a confederate of the researcher, expressing liking or disliking of the subject. Then the subject was asked to fill out a questionnaire that expressed liking or disliking for the confederate. The questionnaire mirrored the overheard comments. A confederate who had made positive comments about the subject was liked; one who made bad comments was disliked. A third group heard the confederate start by making bad comments and end by making good comments. These subjects, who thought they had "won him over" gave the confederate the highest ratings of all.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It seems that we give back what we get, so if you want to make a friend quickly and easily then pretend you like them enormously. In return they will just love you to bits. Alternatively, behave as if the person likes you (even if you have no idea at all what they really think) and soon they will. Works a treat. How shallow are we - really. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But there is more to reciprocity. If we spend time with people who we know like us and in return we like them, then we bolster one another’s self-esteem. We gain and give personal validation and that is protective. And it makes us happier. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><strong>And finally</strong></span>, there is the<span style="color: #cc0000;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ben Franklin Effect</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">.</span> My all time favourite. This states that people like you more if they have done a favour for you than if you have done a favour for them. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“He that has once done you a kindness, will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged” </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.92537624632239" style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So don’t go bending backwards to do others favours. Ask for favours of them. And that's the real secret to making friends. Just like your mother always told you - go ask next door if we can borrow a cup of sugar.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So all in all it’s quite simple really. If you want to find friends/lovers/partners for life then you only need to hang about your street corner. What kids have always known. If you want a better class of friend/lover/partner then go hang out on their street corners. If you really want to meet rich older men fly first-class and ask for their help. Trust me. I have it on good authority.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #b45f06; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want cutting edge advice on how to get rid of junk friends and more on how to make and keep friends and be a good friend then you’ll need our section on "Social Work" in </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><strong><em><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Real Secret</span></em></strong></a> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- available in paperback and kindle on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Secret-Universe-Hasnt-Delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon</span></a><span style="color: #990000;">.com</span> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Secret-universe-hasnt-delivered/dp/1907498397/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310679339&sr=1-1"><span style="color: #990000;">Amazon.co.uk</span></a></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted by Annabel</span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9074825804538735452.post-75402594373046437782011-05-26T10:03:00.000-07:002011-05-26T10:38:22.380-07:00Ways to beat stress-related insomnia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-aYUtblv9Zfg/TY4eAPdJJ3I/AAAAAAAABSo/Dab4HcVkWAU/s1600/190194_10150173345498974_751338973_8379340_7814498_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-aYUtblv9Zfg/TY4eAPdJJ3I/AAAAAAAABSo/Dab4HcVkWAU/s320/190194_10150173345498974_751338973_8379340_7814498_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We all know we need sleep; when we don't get enough sleep we have unpleasant mental, physical and emotional symptoms to the point that we will seek medical help to cure both the insomnia and its results. Sleep keeps us healthy, mentally sharp and able to cope with stress more effectively, among other things. Unfortunately, the more stressed we are, the less sleep we often get, which can cause a vicious downward cycle. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of the reasons that stress and sleep deprivation go together include:</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">Overthinking</span></strong> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many people take their work home with them, either physically or metaphorically. With today’s demanding workloads it’s often difficult to come home from a day of problem-solving and issue-managing and simply stop thinking about them. Parents at home with children, people who work from home and students can all experience this as well, even if they are not physically changing environments when work ends. If you find yourself still trouble-shooting at the end of the day, and the thoughts won’t seem to leave your mind, this can make sleep become much more difficult. It can also wake you in the middle of the night, as you transition between sleep stages. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over Activity</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A hectic, busy life can not only keep your thoughts racing, but also rob you of time you can actually spend sleeping. If you find yourself pushing your bedtime back further and further to get things done, or getting up earlier and earlier in the name of productivity, you may feel tired a lot of the time but not realise the toll lack of sleep is taking. Less than six hours sleep on a reegular basis can damage your physical and mental health.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Cortisol</span> </span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This stress hormone cortisol, released when you are in "Flight or Flight" mode, enables you to respond quickly to crisis situations, but needs to be "switched off" to enable relaxation and sleep. Chronic stress can lead to excessive levels of cortisol, and this can disrupt healthy sleep patterns through physical discomfort such as indigestion, stomach and muscle pain, as well as... </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anxiety</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like overthinking, anxiety can make sleep difficult and wake you up at night. Anxiety keeps your mind busy imagining threatening scenarios and worrying about how you could deal with them. You may become preoccupied with finding solutions, or simply repeating the same pattern of anxious thoughts over and over again. That racing of your mind can rob you of sleep by keeping your cortisol levels high, making sleep harder to achieve. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Caffeine and Alcohol</span></strong> <br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People under stress tend to consume significant amounts of caffeine to get a boost that gets them going in the morning, helps them make it through the day. Caffeine can actually exacerbate stress levels and significantly affect the amount and quality of sleep you get. Stressed people often try to relax with alcohol in the evening, not realising that it can inhibit sleep, increase anxiety and exacerbate the physical symptoms of excess cortisol.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Try these techniques if you are permanently stressed and/or find yourself regularly short on sleep:</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breathe</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use this exercise as a transition time between work and home - concentrating on the physical aspects will divert you from work-related thoughts and change your mental tempo. You can also do it lying in bed to help you go to sleep and if you wake in the night.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breathe in a long, slow breath, right down into your diaphragm (you should be able to feel your belly, not your chest, going in and out) until your lungs are expanded fully (but stop before you feel you're going to burst). Breathe out slowly until your lungs are completely empty (but not so you're gasping). Breathe in and out five times like this, in your head counting up to five as you breathe in and back down from five to one as you breathe out. Keep the in and out breaths regular and flowing; don't hold the breath at any point. After five deep breaths, breathe more gently and normally and find your natural rhythm as you breathe in and out. If you can make the out breath longer, that's good.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still…. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath."</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika (15th century)</span></em></div><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By changing your breathing, you are changing your physical response to a situation. The message your body is giving your brain is: “I am breathing in a calm, relaxed manner therefore I am in control.” As your brain registers this message, it assumes any danger has passed and deactivates the Fight or Flight response, reducing the flow of cortisol and thus your feelings of anxiety.</span><br />
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<strong><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Physical relaxation</span></a></strong><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We hold stress in our bodies, often on a long term basis, so conscious physical and mental relaxation is beneficial to reducing your stress levels and very conducive to sleep. Once you've learned the technique it can be done at almost any time, but making a habit of doing this before you go to sleep ensures a much more restful night.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, scientist, doctor, educator, mother (1926-2004)</span></em></div><em><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lying in bed, on the floor, or sitting comfortably, close your eyes and settle your breath as in Breathe. Now take your consciousness down to your feet and imagine them surrounded by a warm golden glow – like in the Redibrek ad, if you're old enough to remember it. Say to yourself internally, “My toes and feet are warm and relaxed; soft and heavy”. As you do so, try to release all tension from the muscles in your feet (sometimes it can help to tense, then release them). </span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Continue this process up your legs, abdomen, back, shoulders, arms and hands, neck, over your head and down your face until you have relaxed every muscle and visualised a golden glow enfolding your entire body. Feel each limb in turn loosen and soften like those of a rag doll. The more you practise, the better you will get at relaxing each muscle group, right down to detailed parts of your face. Check how much tension you release by relaxing your mouth and jaw, for instance.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a great technique to send you back to sleep when you wake up in the night, and if you do it just before nodding off, chances are you won't actually get to finish the exercise. </span><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Concentrating on the repetitive instructions to your body, and your conscious efforts to relax, divert your thoughts from anxieties and give your mind a chance to switch off.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chief nourisher in life's feast…”</span></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><em>William Shakespeare,</em> Macbeth</span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you feel it would help to have an </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">audio of this relaxation exercise</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, which we call "The Golden Glow", you can </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">listen or download</span></a><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> it FREE as an MP3 file from </span><a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/Video-audio.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">our website</span></a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will find more ways to de-stress, cope with anxiety and take control of your life in <a href="http://www.therealsecret.net/"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">The Real Secret</span></strong></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Posted by Lucy</span>Annabel Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02828054153762604353noreply@blogger.com0