By JAMES GORMAN
Published: January 23, 2012
EXCERPTS
Disgust is having its moment in the light as researchers find that it does more than cause that sick feeling in the stomach. It protects human beings from disease and parasites, and affects almost every aspect of human relations, from romance to politics.
...scientists are exploring the evolution of disgust and its role in attitudes toward food, sexuality and other people.
“It’s in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors. It determines how close we get to people. It determines who we’re going to kiss, who we’re going to mate with, who we’re going to sit next to. It determines the people that we shun, and that is something that we do a lot of.”
“It is becoming a model emotion,” said Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia, a disgust pioneer with Dr. Rozin.
Dr. Haidt, Dr. Rozin and Clark McCauley of Bryn Mawr College claim nine different domains of disgust for North Americans. Dr. Curtis proposes seven categories. Joshua Tybur of VU University in Amsterdam proposed three domains of disgust, three separate psychological programs, for disease avoidance, mate choice and moral judgment.
Whatever the fine points of disgust, its power to affect behavior is unquestioned, and that power ought to be put to good use
Access Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/science/disgusts-evolutionary-role-is-irresistible-to-researchers.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Maybe You Can Just Visualize Becoming a Better Leader…Maybe You Can Just Visualize Becoming a Better Leader - Envisia Learning - Ken Nowack
January 15, 2012
by Ken Nowack
As a kid, I played baseball and probably made over 1,000 double plays successfully–at least in my mind. I used to visualize every moment of receiving the ball from the shortstop to avoiding the slide from the base runner to get the runner out. In games, I actually did a great job of quickly turning the pivot and getting both runners out.
I’ve always wondered if my mental practice made a difference and now it seems I might actually be “wired” in my brain to be more successful than many people (hear that Brian Saebean?).
We have known for many years that mental rehearsal is almost equivalent to physical rehearsal in terms of enhancing skills and performance.
In 1995, a Harvard neuroscientist named Alvaro Pascual-Leone conducted an incredible study1. He divided volunteers into two groups with the first practicing a five-finger piano exercise for five days for two hours. At the end of each session they measured neural activation using transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) and they noticed that even after one week of practice, a stretch of the motor cortex in the brain related to finger movements took over surrounding areas demonstrating new neural circuits being established.
Pascual-Leone also asked a second group to only imagine playing the same piano piece mentally and again his research team found that the mere mental rehearsal of doing something like playing the piano altered the physical structure and function of our brain. Performance between the two groups was almost identical when both groups were tested after the two week period demonstrating for the first time the real power of mental practice.
Additional research has also demonstrated how meditation over time actually causes a significant reduction of brain activity in an area of the brain associated with sensations of pain. In a new study, researchers took 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated and had them practice a 20 minute class just four times. The participants in the study reported a 40 percent reduction in pain intensityand 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness in response to a pain inducing heat device was placed on their legs. Mental practice in the form of meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine which typically reduces pain by 25 percent2.
In another widely reported study, eight weeks of 27 minutes per day mental rehearsal of mindfulness meditation results in measurable changes in brain regions associated wtih empathy and stress3. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.
Visualize Becoming a More Effective Leader
Each day you can mentally rehearse being more effective as a leader by:
1.Pascual-Leone, A. Nguyet, D.,Cohen, L., Brasil-Neto, J.,Cammarota, A.; & Hallett. M. (1995). Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74, 1037-1045 [↩]
2.1.F. Zeidan, K. T. Martucci, R. A. Kraft, N. S. Gordon, J. G. McHaffie, R. C. Coghill. Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; 31 (14): 5540 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5791-10.2011 [↩]
3.Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, Sara W. Lazar. Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain graymatter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2011; 191 (1): 36 DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006 [↩]
Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6561886212125248416
by Ken Nowack
“I visualize things in my mind before I have to do them. It’s like having a mental workshop”
Jack Youngblood
As a kid, I played baseball and probably made over 1,000 double plays successfully–at least in my mind. I used to visualize every moment of receiving the ball from the shortstop to avoiding the slide from the base runner to get the runner out. In games, I actually did a great job of quickly turning the pivot and getting both runners out.
I’ve always wondered if my mental practice made a difference and now it seems I might actually be “wired” in my brain to be more successful than many people (hear that Brian Saebean?).
We have known for many years that mental rehearsal is almost equivalent to physical rehearsal in terms of enhancing skills and performance.
In 1995, a Harvard neuroscientist named Alvaro Pascual-Leone conducted an incredible study1. He divided volunteers into two groups with the first practicing a five-finger piano exercise for five days for two hours. At the end of each session they measured neural activation using transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) and they noticed that even after one week of practice, a stretch of the motor cortex in the brain related to finger movements took over surrounding areas demonstrating new neural circuits being established.
Pascual-Leone also asked a second group to only imagine playing the same piano piece mentally and again his research team found that the mere mental rehearsal of doing something like playing the piano altered the physical structure and function of our brain. Performance between the two groups was almost identical when both groups were tested after the two week period demonstrating for the first time the real power of mental practice.
Additional research has also demonstrated how meditation over time actually causes a significant reduction of brain activity in an area of the brain associated with sensations of pain. In a new study, researchers took 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated and had them practice a 20 minute class just four times. The participants in the study reported a 40 percent reduction in pain intensityand 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness in response to a pain inducing heat device was placed on their legs. Mental practice in the form of meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine which typically reduces pain by 25 percent2.
In another widely reported study, eight weeks of 27 minutes per day mental rehearsal of mindfulness meditation results in measurable changes in brain regions associated wtih empathy and stress3. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.
Visualize Becoming a More Effective Leader
Each day you can mentally rehearse being more effective as a leader by:
1.See yourself allowing others to complete their thoughts and ideas before you share your recommendations, suggestions and ideas.So, maybe you can actually practice becoming a better leader just by deliberately practicing it in your mind. As Robert Collier said, “See things as you would have them be instead of as they are”….Be well….
2.Visualize yourself speaking to a group and commanding a high degree of attention, respect and agreement with your message.
3.Rehearse and visualize yourself maintaining emotional control and being poised under interpersonal pressure and conflict (being non-defensive and open minded).
4.See yourself in a positive mood that rubs off on other talent and results in enhanced engagement and commitment to their job and tasks.
5.Mentally practice soliciting and seeking feedback from others and welcoming this as a gift to continuously improve.
6.Imagine using more participative leadership styles and involving more of your talent in problem solving, decision making and planning processes.
7.Focus on your peers saying to each other about how they would like to “follow” someone like you, believe you are always candid and direct with them and work in a collaborative, rather than, competitive manner.
1.Pascual-Leone, A. Nguyet, D.,Cohen, L., Brasil-Neto, J.,Cammarota, A.; & Hallett. M. (1995). Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74, 1037-1045 [↩]
2.1.F. Zeidan, K. T. Martucci, R. A. Kraft, N. S. Gordon, J. G. McHaffie, R. C. Coghill. Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; 31 (14): 5540 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5791-10.2011 [↩]
3.Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, Sara W. Lazar. Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain graymatter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2011; 191 (1): 36 DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006 [↩]
Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6561886212125248416
Friday, November 11, 2011
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar | Video on TED.com
TED - Ideas Worth Spreading
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
Speakers Pamela Meyer: Lie detector
Pamela Meyer thinks we’re facing a pandemic of deception, but she’s arming people with tools that can help take back the truth
Video 18:51
Why you should listen to her: . Social media expert Pamela Meyer can tell when you’re lying. If it’s not your words that give you away, it’s your posture, eyes, breathing rate, fidgets, and a host of other indicators. Worse, we are all lied to up to 200 times a day, she says, from the white lies that allow society to function smoothly to the devastating duplicities that bring down corporations and break up families.
Working with a team of researchers over several years, Meyer, who is CEO of social networking company Simpatico Networks, collected and reviewed most of the research on deception that has been published, from such fields as law-enforcement, military, psychology and espionage. She then became an expert herself, receiving advanced training in deception detection, including multiple courses of advanced training in interrogation, microexpression analysis, statement analysis, behavior and body language interpretation, and emotion recognition. Her research is synthetized in her bestselling book Liespotting. "All forms of self deception make us vulnerable to the scam, the con, the false promise, the bad hire, the unwise promotion, the faulty new product."
Access Video at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html
Access Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar Video on TED.com
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
Speakers Pamela Meyer: Lie detector
Pamela Meyer thinks we’re facing a pandemic of deception, but she’s arming people with tools that can help take back the truth
Video 18:51
Why you should listen to her: . Social media expert Pamela Meyer can tell when you’re lying. If it’s not your words that give you away, it’s your posture, eyes, breathing rate, fidgets, and a host of other indicators. Worse, we are all lied to up to 200 times a day, she says, from the white lies that allow society to function smoothly to the devastating duplicities that bring down corporations and break up families.
Working with a team of researchers over several years, Meyer, who is CEO of social networking company Simpatico Networks, collected and reviewed most of the research on deception that has been published, from such fields as law-enforcement, military, psychology and espionage. She then became an expert herself, receiving advanced training in deception detection, including multiple courses of advanced training in interrogation, microexpression analysis, statement analysis, behavior and body language interpretation, and emotion recognition. Her research is synthetized in her bestselling book Liespotting. "All forms of self deception make us vulnerable to the scam, the con, the false promise, the bad hire, the unwise promotion, the faulty new product."
Access Video at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html
Access Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar Video on TED.com
Monday, April 18, 2011
How Strengths Boost Engagement
How Strengths Boost Engagement
In an office building in downtown Manhattan, two companies specialize in international law. They both do excellent work and have roughly the same number of clients. At first glance, these law offices seem much the same. But actually, they have little in common.
Managers must know the strengths of each employee, then create opportunities for employees to use them.
Law Office A has state-of-the-art technology; spacious offices; and well-educated, experienced attorneys who update their résumés weekly. Law Office B has outdated computers and is using storage closets as offices, yet it has some of the most engaged employees in the city. Law Office B also has 25% fewer people on its payroll than Law Office A, though it bills the same number of hours.
How can this be? Are Law Office B's lawyers working around the clock? Does luxury somehow make lawyers lazy? No. This kind of variation isn't unusual -- it occurs from company to company and between different departments in the same company. This variance has nothing to do with ability, focus, or office space. It has everything to do with management.
The variation between the two law shops can be explained like this: Law Office A is run by 26 people who think workers are replaceable. Law Office B is run by 10 people who believe that the more employees feel engaged and the more they work from their strengths, the more work they will do -- and the better that work will be.
Both theories have their adherents in all kinds of offices all around the world. But the first theory leads to mediocrity while the second leads to sustainable productivity and success.
The benefits of engagement and strengths
In the 1990s, Gallup concluded a decades-long study into employee engagement. One of the key findings was that employees need 12 essential elements from their workplaces. These elements -- measured by the Q12, Gallup's 12-item assessment of engagement -- reflect a sense of belonging, growth, and contribution. They are also deeply emotional. Though workers do need to be paid -- and though they do like status symbols such as corner offices -- they also need emotional fulfillment. If workers' emotional needs are met, they become engaged with their companies, and their productivity, profitability, retention rate, and safety rate increase. They even get sick less often. (See sidebar "The 12 Elements of Great Managing.")
Gallup later published its groundbreaking work on strengths. In Gallup's terminology, a strength starts with an innate talent -- a tendency to think and behave a certain way -- to seek harmony among group members, for instance, or to enjoy learning for its own sake. A talent becomes a strength when it's refined by skills, knowledge, and practice then consciously applied to something that needs doing -- such as practicing international law.
If companies want to increase productivity, they must deliberately manage their employees toward engagement and help them use their strengths with knowledgeable intent. Most companies don't. Law Office A certainly doesn't.
Engagement starts with managers. To manage toward engagement, leaders must understand the 12 elements and apply them to every worker every day. Strengths, however, are a little different. Strengths develop from innate talents and look different in different people. To develop and work from their strengths, employees must know what their talents are and learn how to hone them into strengths. To make the most out of employee strengths in an organization, managers need to know the strengths of each employee. Then they must create opportunities for employees to use them.
Recently, Gallup concluded another study that looked at the effect strengths and engagement have on each other and on the workplace. As part of this study, we administered the Q12 to 896 business units. We separated the units into two groups. The first served as a control group. In the second group, managers received coaching on their strengths and on developing the strengths of others. The units with managers who received strengths feedback (typically a one-hour coaching conversation focused on understanding one's strengths) showed significantly more improvement on their Q12 scores than the units with managers who received no strengths feedback. We also administered the Q12 assessment to the employees -- 12,157 of them. The units with managers who received strengths feedback also had improved engagement scores.
Everyone wants to be part of a successful team. Success increases engagement.
We have found similar results again and again in our studies of strengths and engagement. In a study with 1,874 workers, most of them salespeople, those who received strengths coaching had productivity rates that were 7.8% higher than those who received no strengths coaching. In a study of 65,672 employees, those who received strengths feedback had turnover rates that were 14.9% lower than those for employees who received no feedback (controlling for job type and tenure). And in a study of 469 business units in companies ranging from retail stores to large manufacturing facilities, units with managers who received strengths feedback showed 8.9% greater profitability post-intervention. What's more, non-managers didn't receive any strengths coaching, yet in units with managers who did receive strengths coaching, the profitability of non-managers jumped as well.
Support, experiences, and reinforcement
So engagement improves productivity and profitability. Strengths development improves productivity and profitability. Engaged workers who know and use their strengths have improved productivity and profitability. And a strengths-based approach to management is one of the best means of improving the employee-manager relationship that Gallup has found. But how does it all work?
We found clues in a 2010 study of college students; two researchers identified three constructs they deemed necessary for students to successfully capitalize on their strengths: continual social support, experiences of success, and reinforcement of personal strengths. They also found that these three constructs "represent phenomena that are interrelated, overlapping, and circular," not sequential.
In companies like Law Office A, where leaders perhaps don't know about -- or care about -- strengths development, workers don't get continual support, experiences of success, and reinforcement of their strengths. In companies like Law Office B, they do. And that affects workers' engagement.
In onsite observations and interviews with employees and managers who used a strengths-based employee development approach, we found variability among workgroups, especially in employees' ability to apply what they learned. Some of this was no surprise -- strengths are different from person to person, as is the capacity to learn, integrate, or apply any insight.
Along with variability among workgroups, we found variability in social support for applying strengths science in business settings. Some of this variability was due to organizational impediments. Some was due to resistance to the idea of individual strengths.
It seems clear that if workers don't get continual [1] social support, [2] experiences of success, and [3] reinforcement of personal strengths -- even when their bosses have received coaching on how to provide these constructs -- those workers probably aren't getting the emotionally engaging experiences they need either. They likely don't have managers who focus on employees' strengths. And those employees probably aren't encouraged to learn the strengths of their colleagues and how to use that information in their everyday interactions.
It's also possible that disengaged workers aren't interested in their strengths or those of others. They probably have a long list of reasons for that: Strengths aren't as relevant if workers don't have opportunities to use them, if employees don't care about their company's success, or if the success of their coworkers doesn't matter to them. Strengths aren't as relevant for workers employed in companies like Law Office A, for example, where employees know they are replaceable.
A win/win combination
Strengths, engagement, and success work in a feedback loop, the research suggests. Everyone wants to be part of a successful team. Success increases engagement. It also frees up more time, resources, and goodwill to talk about and do something productive with strengths. The more a workgroup succeeds, the more it can succeed -- and it will succeed more often if the employees are engaged and working from their strengths.
Too often, engagement and strengths can be viewed as separate entities. However, the science shows that engagement and strengths are far more powerful when managed and supported in tandem. Because engagement feeds strengths development, and developed strengths boost engagement, the greatest potential to maximize both lies in simultaneous attention to both. That's where companies will find the most productivity, profitability, and retention -- simply put, the most success.
******************************************************** http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Gallup Mnagement Journal
07 April 2011
How Strengths Boost Engagement
A strengths-based organization is more engaged, and engaged companies are stronger, according to Gallup studies
In an office building in downtown Manhattan, two companies specialize in international law. They both do excellent work and have roughly the same number of clients. At first glance, these law offices seem much the same. But actually, they have little in common.
Managers must know the strengths of each employee, then create opportunities for employees to use them.
Law Office A has state-of-the-art technology; spacious offices; and well-educated, experienced attorneys who update their résumés weekly. Law Office B has outdated computers and is using storage closets as offices, yet it has some of the most engaged employees in the city. Law Office B also has 25% fewer people on its payroll than Law Office A, though it bills the same number of hours.
How can this be? Are Law Office B's lawyers working around the clock? Does luxury somehow make lawyers lazy? No. This kind of variation isn't unusual -- it occurs from company to company and between different departments in the same company. This variance has nothing to do with ability, focus, or office space. It has everything to do with management.
The variation between the two law shops can be explained like this: Law Office A is run by 26 people who think workers are replaceable. Law Office B is run by 10 people who believe that the more employees feel engaged and the more they work from their strengths, the more work they will do -- and the better that work will be.
Both theories have their adherents in all kinds of offices all around the world. But the first theory leads to mediocrity while the second leads to sustainable productivity and success.
The benefits of engagement and strengths
In the 1990s, Gallup concluded a decades-long study into employee engagement. One of the key findings was that employees need 12 essential elements from their workplaces. These elements -- measured by the Q12, Gallup's 12-item assessment of engagement -- reflect a sense of belonging, growth, and contribution. They are also deeply emotional. Though workers do need to be paid -- and though they do like status symbols such as corner offices -- they also need emotional fulfillment. If workers' emotional needs are met, they become engaged with their companies, and their productivity, profitability, retention rate, and safety rate increase. They even get sick less often. (See sidebar "The 12 Elements of Great Managing.")
Gallup later published its groundbreaking work on strengths. In Gallup's terminology, a strength starts with an innate talent -- a tendency to think and behave a certain way -- to seek harmony among group members, for instance, or to enjoy learning for its own sake. A talent becomes a strength when it's refined by skills, knowledge, and practice then consciously applied to something that needs doing -- such as practicing international law.
If companies want to increase productivity, they must deliberately manage their employees toward engagement and help them use their strengths with knowledgeable intent. Most companies don't. Law Office A certainly doesn't.
Engagement starts with managers. To manage toward engagement, leaders must understand the 12 elements and apply them to every worker every day. Strengths, however, are a little different. Strengths develop from innate talents and look different in different people. To develop and work from their strengths, employees must know what their talents are and learn how to hone them into strengths. To make the most out of employee strengths in an organization, managers need to know the strengths of each employee. Then they must create opportunities for employees to use them.
Recently, Gallup concluded another study that looked at the effect strengths and engagement have on each other and on the workplace. As part of this study, we administered the Q12 to 896 business units. We separated the units into two groups. The first served as a control group. In the second group, managers received coaching on their strengths and on developing the strengths of others. The units with managers who received strengths feedback (typically a one-hour coaching conversation focused on understanding one's strengths) showed significantly more improvement on their Q12 scores than the units with managers who received no strengths feedback. We also administered the Q12 assessment to the employees -- 12,157 of them. The units with managers who received strengths feedback also had improved engagement scores.
Everyone wants to be part of a successful team. Success increases engagement.
We have found similar results again and again in our studies of strengths and engagement. In a study with 1,874 workers, most of them salespeople, those who received strengths coaching had productivity rates that were 7.8% higher than those who received no strengths coaching. In a study of 65,672 employees, those who received strengths feedback had turnover rates that were 14.9% lower than those for employees who received no feedback (controlling for job type and tenure). And in a study of 469 business units in companies ranging from retail stores to large manufacturing facilities, units with managers who received strengths feedback showed 8.9% greater profitability post-intervention. What's more, non-managers didn't receive any strengths coaching, yet in units with managers who did receive strengths coaching, the profitability of non-managers jumped as well.
Support, experiences, and reinforcement
So engagement improves productivity and profitability. Strengths development improves productivity and profitability. Engaged workers who know and use their strengths have improved productivity and profitability. And a strengths-based approach to management is one of the best means of improving the employee-manager relationship that Gallup has found. But how does it all work?
We found clues in a 2010 study of college students; two researchers identified three constructs they deemed necessary for students to successfully capitalize on their strengths: continual social support, experiences of success, and reinforcement of personal strengths. They also found that these three constructs "represent phenomena that are interrelated, overlapping, and circular," not sequential.
In companies like Law Office A, where leaders perhaps don't know about -- or care about -- strengths development, workers don't get continual support, experiences of success, and reinforcement of their strengths. In companies like Law Office B, they do. And that affects workers' engagement.
In onsite observations and interviews with employees and managers who used a strengths-based employee development approach, we found variability among workgroups, especially in employees' ability to apply what they learned. Some of this was no surprise -- strengths are different from person to person, as is the capacity to learn, integrate, or apply any insight.
Along with variability among workgroups, we found variability in social support for applying strengths science in business settings. Some of this variability was due to organizational impediments. Some was due to resistance to the idea of individual strengths.
It seems clear that if workers don't get continual [1] social support, [2] experiences of success, and [3] reinforcement of personal strengths -- even when their bosses have received coaching on how to provide these constructs -- those workers probably aren't getting the emotionally engaging experiences they need either. They likely don't have managers who focus on employees' strengths. And those employees probably aren't encouraged to learn the strengths of their colleagues and how to use that information in their everyday interactions.
It's also possible that disengaged workers aren't interested in their strengths or those of others. They probably have a long list of reasons for that: Strengths aren't as relevant if workers don't have opportunities to use them, if employees don't care about their company's success, or if the success of their coworkers doesn't matter to them. Strengths aren't as relevant for workers employed in companies like Law Office A, for example, where employees know they are replaceable.
A win/win combination
Strengths, engagement, and success work in a feedback loop, the research suggests. Everyone wants to be part of a successful team. Success increases engagement. It also frees up more time, resources, and goodwill to talk about and do something productive with strengths. The more a workgroup succeeds, the more it can succeed -- and it will succeed more often if the employees are engaged and working from their strengths.
Too often, engagement and strengths can be viewed as separate entities. However, the science shows that engagement and strengths are far more powerful when managed and supported in tandem. Because engagement feeds strengths development, and developed strengths boost engagement, the greatest potential to maximize both lies in simultaneous attention to both. That's where companies will find the most productivity, profitability, and retention -- simply put, the most success.
Additional ReadingBowers, K.M. & Lopez, S.J. (2010). Capitalizing on personal strengths in college. Journal of College and Character, 11, 1-11. |
The Q12 items are protected by copyright of Gallup, Inc., 1993-1998. All rights reserved.
Access Content Source And Other Great Stuff: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/146972/Strengths-Boost-Engagement.aspx?utm_source=email&utm_medium=042011&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=newsletter#2
******************************************************** http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.
1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.
To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.
4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.
Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.
6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.
To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.
8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.
It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Harvard Business Review
The Conversation
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently
Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.
1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.
To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.
4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.
Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.
6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.
To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.
8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.
It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at http://heidigranthalvorson.com/. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Take Back Your Attention - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review
Take Back Your Attention - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Take Back Your Attention
As I sit down to write this blog, I'm facing a blank page. I know it's going to be difficult, because it always is. Maybe I'll just check my email first, or update on Facebook or Twitter, or read the morning headlines on The New York Times, or sneak a peak at Google Analytics, or read the comments readers have left overnight on my earlier posts.
Something insidious has happened. The same device most of use to get our primary work accomplished — a computer, a smartphone, an iPad, or some combination of the above — is also now the repository of 1,000 distractions and every imaginable source of immediate gratification.
As we seek to work, just a keystroke or two away we also have access to Google and YouTube, books and blogs, TV shows and movies, music and video games, email and texting, newspapers and magazines, and countless web sites and apps. We're free to indulge our every whim, no matter how trivial, and that's exactly what we do.
The social critic Linda Stone has coined the term continuous partial attention to describe the fractured way we now focus. "With continuous partial attention," Stone explains, "we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges." Or something more alluring, reassuring, or simply less demanding.
Staying singly focused on a task in this digital era is like trying to resist eating while sitting in a bakery as cookies, pies, cakes and tarts emerge fresh and fragrant from the oven. There's a reason Cinnabon points its air vents out into the corridors at airports.
The easier it is to indulge our desires, the harder it is to exercise self-control.
Human beings weren't designed to manage the level of temptation to which we're exposed every day. That's why — irrational as it is — we take on more and more debt, grow fatter and fatter, continue to profligately spend down the earth's finite resources ,and struggle to pay attention to anything for very long.
I share this view with Daniel Akst, author of We Have Met the Enemy: Self Control in an Age of Excess. It's one of the most important books I've ever read — trenchant, compelling, elegantly written, and scary in its implications. It's also the sort of book most of us avoid because we don't want to engage with anything that makes us feel bad.
Instead, like children, we want what we want now. And in recent years, science has helped us to understand better just what we're up against when it comes to self-control.
We now know, for example, that it's more immediately exciting to flit from subject to subject than it is to stay concentrated on one thing at time. We're gluttons for novelty. That's because the thrill of the new activates dopamine, the neurotransmitter in our brains associated with pleasure.
Once we've experienced an initial rush, we're inclined to keep seeking it, even as the pleasure diminishes over time, and even when the consequences are ultimately self-defeating — as they are from overeating, or snorting cocaine, or shifting focus from one object of attention to another
Repugnant as I find Amy Chua, the so-called Tiger Mother, I share her conviction that the capacity to tolerate discomfort and delay gratification in the short term is the key to achieving any form of excellence in the long term.
Unfortunately, we each have an infinite capacity for self-deception. Even our prefrontal cortex — our reflective mind — can get co-opted by our most urgent and primitive desires. Rather than making thoughtful, reasoned choices, we often end up using the highest capacities of our brain to rationalize, justify and minimize our self-destructive behaviors.
So how do we stop kidding ourselves and take back control of our attention — and our lives? Here are six simple ways to start:
2. Slow down. The faster you're moving, the more likely you're reacting rather than reflecting. Set aside intentional times during the day — they can be as short as a minute or two — to check in with yourself. Think of them as "wake up" calls.
3. Build deliberate practices, ritualized behaviors you do at specific times until they become automatic. For example, begin by doing the most important thing first in the morning, uninterrupted, for 60 to 90 minutes. Make the start time and the stop time inviolable, so you know exactly how long you're going to have to stay the course.
4. Create "precommitments" to minimize temptation. Our capacity for self-control gets depleted every time we exercise it. Turn off your email entirely at certain times during the day. Consider working at times on a laptop that isn't hooked up to the Internet. Do this for the same reason you should remove alluring foods from your shelves (or avoid all-you-can-eat buffets) when you're on a diet.
5. Share your commitments. Tell others what it is you're intending to do, and ask them to hold you accountable. If you work in an office, get others to make the same commitment with you — and choose the most public way possible for everyone to share how they're doing.
6. Start small. Attention operates like a muscle. Subject it to stress — but not too much stress — and over time your attention will get stronger. What's your current limit for truly focused concentration? Build it up in increments. And don't go past 90 minutes without a break. That's the time to let your attention wander.
Something insidious has happened. The same device most of use to get our primary work accomplished — a computer, a smartphone, an iPad, or some combination of the above — is also now the repository of 1,000 distractions and every imaginable source of immediate gratification.
As we seek to work, just a keystroke or two away we also have access to Google and YouTube, books and blogs, TV shows and movies, music and video games, email and texting, newspapers and magazines, and countless web sites and apps. We're free to indulge our every whim, no matter how trivial, and that's exactly what we do.
The social critic Linda Stone has coined the term continuous partial attention to describe the fractured way we now focus. "With continuous partial attention," Stone explains, "we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges." Or something more alluring, reassuring, or simply less demanding.
Staying singly focused on a task in this digital era is like trying to resist eating while sitting in a bakery as cookies, pies, cakes and tarts emerge fresh and fragrant from the oven. There's a reason Cinnabon points its air vents out into the corridors at airports.
The easier it is to indulge our desires, the harder it is to exercise self-control.
Human beings weren't designed to manage the level of temptation to which we're exposed every day. That's why — irrational as it is — we take on more and more debt, grow fatter and fatter, continue to profligately spend down the earth's finite resources ,and struggle to pay attention to anything for very long.
I share this view with Daniel Akst, author of We Have Met the Enemy: Self Control in an Age of Excess. It's one of the most important books I've ever read — trenchant, compelling, elegantly written, and scary in its implications. It's also the sort of book most of us avoid because we don't want to engage with anything that makes us feel bad.
Instead, like children, we want what we want now. And in recent years, science has helped us to understand better just what we're up against when it comes to self-control.
We now know, for example, that it's more immediately exciting to flit from subject to subject than it is to stay concentrated on one thing at time. We're gluttons for novelty. That's because the thrill of the new activates dopamine, the neurotransmitter in our brains associated with pleasure.
Once we've experienced an initial rush, we're inclined to keep seeking it, even as the pleasure diminishes over time, and even when the consequences are ultimately self-defeating — as they are from overeating, or snorting cocaine, or shifting focus from one object of attention to another
Repugnant as I find Amy Chua, the so-called Tiger Mother, I share her conviction that the capacity to tolerate discomfort and delay gratification in the short term is the key to achieving any form of excellence in the long term.
Unfortunately, we each have an infinite capacity for self-deception. Even our prefrontal cortex — our reflective mind — can get co-opted by our most urgent and primitive desires. Rather than making thoughtful, reasoned choices, we often end up using the highest capacities of our brain to rationalize, justify and minimize our self-destructive behaviors.
So how do we stop kidding ourselves and take back control of our attention — and our lives? Here are six simple ways to start:
1. Let your deepest values become a more powerful guide to your behaviors. What do you truly stand for? How do you want to behave, no matter what? Keep those commitments front and center through your days, both as a source of energy and direction for your behaviors.
2. Slow down. The faster you're moving, the more likely you're reacting rather than reflecting. Set aside intentional times during the day — they can be as short as a minute or two — to check in with yourself. Think of them as "wake up" calls.
3. Build deliberate practices, ritualized behaviors you do at specific times until they become automatic. For example, begin by doing the most important thing first in the morning, uninterrupted, for 60 to 90 minutes. Make the start time and the stop time inviolable, so you know exactly how long you're going to have to stay the course.
4. Create "precommitments" to minimize temptation. Our capacity for self-control gets depleted every time we exercise it. Turn off your email entirely at certain times during the day. Consider working at times on a laptop that isn't hooked up to the Internet. Do this for the same reason you should remove alluring foods from your shelves (or avoid all-you-can-eat buffets) when you're on a diet.
5. Share your commitments. Tell others what it is you're intending to do, and ask them to hold you accountable. If you work in an office, get others to make the same commitment with you — and choose the most public way possible for everyone to share how they're doing.
6. Start small. Attention operates like a muscle. Subject it to stress — but not too much stress — and over time your attention will get stronger. What's your current limit for truly focused concentration? Build it up in increments. And don't go past 90 minutes without a break. That's the time to let your attention wander.
********************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Why Some People Choose Anxiety - Newsweek
Why Some People Choose Anxiety - Newsweek
In other people, anxiety is not about usefulness but familiarity, finds psychology researcher Brett Ford of the University of Denver. She measured the “trait emotions” (feelings people tend to have most of the time) of 139 undergraduates, using a questionnaire that lists emotions and asks “to what extent you feel this way in general.” She then grouped the students into those characterized by “trait fear” (those who tended to be anxious, worried, or nervous), “trait anger” (chronically angry, irritated, or annoyed), and “trait happy” (the cheerful, joyful gang). Six months later, the volunteers returned to Ford’s lab. This time she gave them a list of emotions and asked which they wanted to experience. Not surprisingly, the cheerful bunch wanted to be happy. But in a shock for those who think anyone who is chronically anxious can’t wait to get their hands on some Ativan, those with “trait fear” said they wanted to be worried and nervous—even though it felt subjectively unpleasant. (The “trait angry” students tended to prefer feeling the same way, too.) Wanting to feel an emotion is not the same thing as enjoying that emotion, points out neuroscientist Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan, who discovered that wanting and liking are mediated by two distinct sets of neurotransmitters.
In some cases, the need to experience anxiety can lead to a state that looks very much like addiction to anxiety. “There are people who have extreme agitation, but they can’t understand why,” says psychiatrist Harris Stratyner of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. They therefore latch on to any cause to explain what they’re feeling. That rationalization doubles back and exacerbates the anxiety. “Some people,” he adds, “get addicted to feeling anxious because that’s the state that they’ve always known. If they feel a sense of calm, they get bored; they feel empty inside. They want to feel anxious.” Notice he didn’t say “like.”
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Newsweek
High On Anxiety
by Casey Schwartz
February 06, 2011
February 06, 2011
Excepts:
In other people, anxiety is not about usefulness but familiarity, finds psychology researcher Brett Ford of the University of Denver. She measured the “trait emotions” (feelings people tend to have most of the time) of 139 undergraduates, using a questionnaire that lists emotions and asks “to what extent you feel this way in general.” She then grouped the students into those characterized by “trait fear” (those who tended to be anxious, worried, or nervous), “trait anger” (chronically angry, irritated, or annoyed), and “trait happy” (the cheerful, joyful gang). Six months later, the volunteers returned to Ford’s lab. This time she gave them a list of emotions and asked which they wanted to experience. Not surprisingly, the cheerful bunch wanted to be happy. But in a shock for those who think anyone who is chronically anxious can’t wait to get their hands on some Ativan, those with “trait fear” said they wanted to be worried and nervous—even though it felt subjectively unpleasant. (The “trait angry” students tended to prefer feeling the same way, too.) Wanting to feel an emotion is not the same thing as enjoying that emotion, points out neuroscientist Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan, who discovered that wanting and liking are mediated by two distinct sets of neurotransmitters.
In some cases, the need to experience anxiety can lead to a state that looks very much like addiction to anxiety. “There are people who have extreme agitation, but they can’t understand why,” says psychiatrist Harris Stratyner of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. They therefore latch on to any cause to explain what they’re feeling. That rationalization doubles back and exacerbates the anxiety. “Some people,” he adds, “get addicted to feeling anxious because that’s the state that they’ve always known. If they feel a sense of calm, they get bored; they feel empty inside. They want to feel anxious.” Notice he didn’t say “like.”
Read full article: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/06/high-on-anxiety.html
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
SUCCEED:Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them
SUCCEED: How We Can Reach Our Goals » Blog Archive » Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them
Think back to the last time your boss assigned you a new project or task at work, or the last time you tried to tackle something really difficult in your personal life. How did it feel? I’m guessing scary, right?
While some people seem eager to tackle new challenges, many of us are really just trying to survive without committing any major screw-ups. Taking on something totally new and unfamiliar is understandably frightening, since the odds of making a mistake are good when you are inexperienced. Small wonder that we greet new challenges with so little enthusiasm.
How can we learn to see things differently? How can we shift our thinking, and approach new responsibilities and challenges with more confidence and energy?
The answer is simple, though perhaps a little surprising: Give yourself permission to screw-up. Start any new project by saying “I’m not going to be good at this right away, I’m going to make mistakes, and that’s okay.”
So now you’re probably thinking, “If I take your advice and actually let myself screw up, there will be consequences. I’m going to pay for it.” Fair enough. But you really needn’t worry about that, because studies show that when people are allowed to make mistakes, they are significantly less likely to actually make them! Let me explain.
We approach most of what we do with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning a new skill. It’s the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter.
The problem with be-good goals is that they tend to backfire when things get hard. We quickly start to doubt our ability (“Oh no, maybe I’m not good at this!”), and this creates a lot of anxiety. Ironically, worrying about your ability makes you much more likely to ultimately fail. Countless studies have shown that nothing interferes with your performance quite like anxiety does – it is the goal-killer.
Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically bullet-proof. When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.
Just to give you an example, in one study I conducted a few years ago with my graduate student, Laura Gelety, we found that people who were trying to be good (i.e., trying to show how smart they were) performed very poorly on a test of problem-solving when I made the test more difficult (either by interrupting them frequently while they were working, or by throwing in a few additional unsolvable problems).
The amazing thing was, the people who were trying to get better (i.e., who saw the test as an opportunity to learn a new problem-solving skill) were completely unaffected by any of my dirty tricks. No matter how hard I made it for them, students focused on getting better stayed motivated and did well.
Too often, when the boss gives us an assignment, we expect to be able to do the work flawlessly, no matter how challenging it might be. The focus is all about being good, and the prospect becomes terrifying. Even when we are assigning ourselves a new task, we take the same approach – expecting way too much too soon.
The irony is that all this pressure to be good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on getting better.
How can you reframe your goals in terms of getting better? Here are the three steps:
Step 1: Start by embracing the fact that when something is difficult and unfamiliar, you will need some time to really get a handle on it. You may make some mistakes, and that’s ok.
Step 2: Remember to ask for help when you run into trouble. Needing help doesn’t mean you aren’t capable – in fact, the opposite is true. Only the very foolish believe they can do everything on their own.
Heidi Grant Halvorson is a rising star in the field of social psychology. In addition to her work as author and co-editor of the highly-regarded academic book The Psychology of Goals (Guilford, 2009), she has authored papers in her field’s most prestigious journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, European Journal of Social Psychology, and Judgment and Decision Making. She has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation for her research on goals and achievement. Her work has been praised by Carol Dweck and Matthew Kelly, among many others.
Dr. Grant Halvorson is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and was recently elected to the highly selective Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She gives frequent invited addresses and speaks regularly at national conferences, and has begun pursuing professional speaking and consulting engagements, primarily in education and management. She received her PhD from Columbia University.
Her new book Succeed: How We Can All Reach Our Goals will be AVAILABLE IN JANUARY 2011. Its publisher is Hudson Street Press, an imprint of Penguin.
You can contact Heidi at heidi.grant.halvorson@gmail.com
For speaking, contact Tom Nielssen, BrightSight Group, 609-924-3060
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
SUCCEED: How We Can Reach Our Goals
A Blog (And A Book) by Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD
Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them
Think back to the last time your boss assigned you a new project or task at work, or the last time you tried to tackle something really difficult in your personal life. How did it feel? I’m guessing scary, right?
While some people seem eager to tackle new challenges, many of us are really just trying to survive without committing any major screw-ups. Taking on something totally new and unfamiliar is understandably frightening, since the odds of making a mistake are good when you are inexperienced. Small wonder that we greet new challenges with so little enthusiasm.
How can we learn to see things differently? How can we shift our thinking, and approach new responsibilities and challenges with more confidence and energy?
The answer is simple, though perhaps a little surprising: Give yourself permission to screw-up. Start any new project by saying “I’m not going to be good at this right away, I’m going to make mistakes, and that’s okay.”
So now you’re probably thinking, “If I take your advice and actually let myself screw up, there will be consequences. I’m going to pay for it.” Fair enough. But you really needn’t worry about that, because studies show that when people are allowed to make mistakes, they are significantly less likely to actually make them! Let me explain.
We approach most of what we do with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning a new skill. It’s the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter.
The problem with be-good goals is that they tend to backfire when things get hard. We quickly start to doubt our ability (“Oh no, maybe I’m not good at this!”), and this creates a lot of anxiety. Ironically, worrying about your ability makes you much more likely to ultimately fail. Countless studies have shown that nothing interferes with your performance quite like anxiety does – it is the goal-killer.
Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically bullet-proof. When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.
Just to give you an example, in one study I conducted a few years ago with my graduate student, Laura Gelety, we found that people who were trying to be good (i.e., trying to show how smart they were) performed very poorly on a test of problem-solving when I made the test more difficult (either by interrupting them frequently while they were working, or by throwing in a few additional unsolvable problems).
The amazing thing was, the people who were trying to get better (i.e., who saw the test as an opportunity to learn a new problem-solving skill) were completely unaffected by any of my dirty tricks. No matter how hard I made it for them, students focused on getting better stayed motivated and did well.
Too often, when the boss gives us an assignment, we expect to be able to do the work flawlessly, no matter how challenging it might be. The focus is all about being good, and the prospect becomes terrifying. Even when we are assigning ourselves a new task, we take the same approach – expecting way too much too soon.
The irony is that all this pressure to be good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on getting better.
How can you reframe your goals in terms of getting better? Here are the three steps:
Step 1: Start by embracing the fact that when something is difficult and unfamiliar, you will need some time to really get a handle on it. You may make some mistakes, and that’s ok.
Step 2: Remember to ask for help when you run into trouble. Needing help doesn’t mean you aren’t capable – in fact, the opposite is true. Only the very foolish believe they can do everything on their own.
Step 3: Try not to compare yourself to other people – instead, compare your performance today to your performance yesterday. Focusing on getting better means always thinking in terms of progress, not perfection.
Heidi Grant Halvorson is a rising star in the field of social psychology. In addition to her work as author and co-editor of the highly-regarded academic book The Psychology of Goals (Guilford, 2009), she has authored papers in her field’s most prestigious journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, European Journal of Social Psychology, and Judgment and Decision Making. She has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation for her research on goals and achievement. Her work has been praised by Carol Dweck and Matthew Kelly, among many others.
Dr. Grant Halvorson is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and was recently elected to the highly selective Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She gives frequent invited addresses and speaks regularly at national conferences, and has begun pursuing professional speaking and consulting engagements, primarily in education and management. She received her PhD from Columbia University.
Her new book Succeed: How We Can All Reach Our Goals will be AVAILABLE IN JANUARY 2011. Its publisher is Hudson Street Press, an imprint of Penguin.
You can contact Heidi at heidi.grant.halvorson@gmail.com
For speaking, contact Tom Nielssen, BrightSight Group, 609-924-3060
Access Content Source: http://heidigranthalvorson.com/?p=292
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Get Your Goals Back on Track - Heidi Grant Halvorson - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Get Your Goals Back on Track - Heidi Grant Halvorson - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
We're a month into the new year. How are those 2011 goals coming along? Probably not as well as you hoped. If so, you far from alone — in fact, studies suggest that more than half of the people who made New Year's resolutions this year will have broken them by now.
Real change can be hard to come by, and it's tempting to want to start lowering expectations, or throw in the towel on your goal completely. But don't despair, because it's not too late to push the Reset button, and try tackling those goals again. This time around, you'll be better armed.
Most of us place blame for our failures in the wrong places. We believe that we lack the talent, or the willpower, or some other innate ability, to get the job done. But one of the first things you learn when you study achievement for a living is that innate ability (to the extent there is such a thing) tells you nothing about your chances of reaching a goal. My own research, along with decades of other scientific studies of motivation, paint a very different picture — that in fact, like so much in life, it's really all about strategy.
Here are two scientifically-tested strategies that can spell the difference between another year of disappointment, and the significant, lasting changes you have been looking for.
1. Get specific. No, really. Very specific.
Whenever people tell me about their goals, I hear them say that they want to "get ahead at work" or "eat healthier" or "spend less and save more." To which I respond, "OK, but what will success look like? How will you know when you have reached your goal?" Usually, that's followed by a long pause, a look of confusion, and a reply something along the lines of "I hadn't really thought about that."
Taking the time to get specific and spell out exactly what you want to achieve removes the possibility of settling for less — of telling yourself that what you've done is "good enough." Thousands of studies have shown that getting more specific is one of the single most effective steps you can take to reach any goal.
Instead of "getting ahead at work," include a concrete long-term goal, like "a pay raise of at least $_____" or "a promotion to at least the ____ level." Also detail the specific medium-term steps it will take to get there. Has your manager asked you to improve in a certain technical area? Do you know that there are interpersonal issues holding you back? If you know you need to communicate better, make your specific goal something like, "listen attentively without interrupting."
When what you are striving for is vague, it's too tempting to take the easy way out when you've gotten tired, discouraged, or bored. But there's just no fooling yourself if you've set a specific goal — you know when you've reached it and when you haven't. If you haven't, you have little choice but to keep working toward it if you want to succeed.
2. Think about what you want and what stands in the way. Mentally go back and forth.
This strategy is called mental contrasting, and in a nutshell, it involves thinking optimistically about all the wonderful aspects of achieving your goal, while thinking realistically about what it will take to get there.
First, imagine how you will feel attaining your goal. Picture it as vividly as possible in your mind. Next, reflect on the obstacles that stand in your way. For instance, if you wanted to get a better, higher paying job, you would start by imagining the sense of pride and excitement you would feel accepting a lucrative offer at a top firm. Then, you would think about what stands between you and that offer — namely, all the other really outstanding candidates that will be applying for the same job. Kind of makes you want to polish up your resume a bit, doesn't it?
That's called experiencing the necessity to act — it's a psychological state that is crucial for achieving any goal. Daydreaming about how great it will be to land that job can be a lot of fun, but it won't get you anywhere. Mental contrasting turns wishes and daydreams into reality, by bringing into focus what you will need to do to make them happen.
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
The Conversation
Get Your Goals Back on Track
We're a month into the new year. How are those 2011 goals coming along? Probably not as well as you hoped. If so, you far from alone — in fact, studies suggest that more than half of the people who made New Year's resolutions this year will have broken them by now.
Real change can be hard to come by, and it's tempting to want to start lowering expectations, or throw in the towel on your goal completely. But don't despair, because it's not too late to push the Reset button, and try tackling those goals again. This time around, you'll be better armed.
Most of us place blame for our failures in the wrong places. We believe that we lack the talent, or the willpower, or some other innate ability, to get the job done. But one of the first things you learn when you study achievement for a living is that innate ability (to the extent there is such a thing) tells you nothing about your chances of reaching a goal. My own research, along with decades of other scientific studies of motivation, paint a very different picture — that in fact, like so much in life, it's really all about strategy.
Here are two scientifically-tested strategies that can spell the difference between another year of disappointment, and the significant, lasting changes you have been looking for.
1. Get specific. No, really. Very specific.
Whenever people tell me about their goals, I hear them say that they want to "get ahead at work" or "eat healthier" or "spend less and save more." To which I respond, "OK, but what will success look like? How will you know when you have reached your goal?" Usually, that's followed by a long pause, a look of confusion, and a reply something along the lines of "I hadn't really thought about that."
Taking the time to get specific and spell out exactly what you want to achieve removes the possibility of settling for less — of telling yourself that what you've done is "good enough." Thousands of studies have shown that getting more specific is one of the single most effective steps you can take to reach any goal.
Instead of "getting ahead at work," include a concrete long-term goal, like "a pay raise of at least $_____" or "a promotion to at least the ____ level." Also detail the specific medium-term steps it will take to get there. Has your manager asked you to improve in a certain technical area? Do you know that there are interpersonal issues holding you back? If you know you need to communicate better, make your specific goal something like, "listen attentively without interrupting."
When what you are striving for is vague, it's too tempting to take the easy way out when you've gotten tired, discouraged, or bored. But there's just no fooling yourself if you've set a specific goal — you know when you've reached it and when you haven't. If you haven't, you have little choice but to keep working toward it if you want to succeed.
2. Think about what you want and what stands in the way. Mentally go back and forth.
This strategy is called mental contrasting, and in a nutshell, it involves thinking optimistically about all the wonderful aspects of achieving your goal, while thinking realistically about what it will take to get there.
First, imagine how you will feel attaining your goal. Picture it as vividly as possible in your mind. Next, reflect on the obstacles that stand in your way. For instance, if you wanted to get a better, higher paying job, you would start by imagining the sense of pride and excitement you would feel accepting a lucrative offer at a top firm. Then, you would think about what stands between you and that offer — namely, all the other really outstanding candidates that will be applying for the same job. Kind of makes you want to polish up your resume a bit, doesn't it?
That's called experiencing the necessity to act — it's a psychological state that is crucial for achieving any goal. Daydreaming about how great it will be to land that job can be a lot of fun, but it won't get you anywhere. Mental contrasting turns wishes and daydreams into reality, by bringing into focus what you will need to do to make them happen.
In studies my colleagues and I have conducted — looking at situations ranging from 15-year olds doing summer prep for the PSAT, to HR personnel trying to manage their time better, to singles trying to find a romantic partner, to pediatric nurses trying to improve communication with parents — the results are always the same. Mental contrasting reliably leads to greater effort, energy, planning, and overall higher rates of achieving goals. Taking a few moments to mentally go back and forth between the future you want, and the hurdles you'll have to overcome to get there, will help you find both the clarity and motivation you need to succeed.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011) and co-editor of The Psychology of Goals (Guilford, 2009). She is an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011) and co-editor of The Psychology of Goals (Guilford, 2009). She is an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today.
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Social networking leads to sex faster? | Reuters
Social networking leads to sex faster? Reuters
****Reuters - Oddly Enough
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Nearly four out of five women and three of five men say they believe texting, Facebook and other social networking tools cause new couples to jump into bed faster, a survey released on Monday showed.
But only 38 percent of women say they have actually slept with a date any sooner because of digital intimacy, according to the 1,200 women and men who participated in the third annual sex survey by Shape and Men's Fitness magazines.
Smart phones and laptops are the new toys that lead to the bedroom, it said, with nearly 80 percent of women and 58 percent of men saying social media tools leads to sex faster.
Texting is the No. 1 way lovers stay in touch, the survey found, with men texting 39 percent more often than phoning and women 150 percent more.
Even before the magic begins, 70 percent of women and 63 percent of men use Google and other online tools to screen potential dates.
Sixty-five percent of those polled said they had been asked out by text and 49 percent through a Facebook message.
Once the relationship clicks, 72 percent of women report scouring a current partner's ex-girlfriends' Facebook pages.
Even in the heat of passion, some people just can't get enough of their digital devices, the survey found. When a call or text comes in during sex, 5 percent of respondents said they glance to see who is calling and 1 percent say they stop to answer the phone.
And when the spark is extinguished, digital dumping is the new way to break up, with 43 percent of women and 27 percent of men reporting getting a text along the lines of "It's not you, it's me."
For the heartbroken, the Internet keeps hope alive, with 81 percent of all respondents saying they won't de-friend an ex on Facebook and 75 percent admitting to constantly checking a former sweetheart's page.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Jerry Norton)
****Reuters - Oddly Enough
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
NEW YORK
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Nearly four out of five women and three of five men say they believe texting, Facebook and other social networking tools cause new couples to jump into bed faster, a survey released on Monday showed.
But only 38 percent of women say they have actually slept with a date any sooner because of digital intimacy, according to the 1,200 women and men who participated in the third annual sex survey by Shape and Men's Fitness magazines.
Smart phones and laptops are the new toys that lead to the bedroom, it said, with nearly 80 percent of women and 58 percent of men saying social media tools leads to sex faster.
Texting is the No. 1 way lovers stay in touch, the survey found, with men texting 39 percent more often than phoning and women 150 percent more.
Even before the magic begins, 70 percent of women and 63 percent of men use Google and other online tools to screen potential dates.
Sixty-five percent of those polled said they had been asked out by text and 49 percent through a Facebook message.
Once the relationship clicks, 72 percent of women report scouring a current partner's ex-girlfriends' Facebook pages.
Even in the heat of passion, some people just can't get enough of their digital devices, the survey found. When a call or text comes in during sex, 5 percent of respondents said they glance to see who is calling and 1 percent say they stop to answer the phone.
And when the spark is extinguished, digital dumping is the new way to break up, with 43 percent of women and 27 percent of men reporting getting a text along the lines of "It's not you, it's me."
For the heartbroken, the Internet keeps hope alive, with 81 percent of all respondents saying they won't de-friend an ex on Facebook and 75 percent admitting to constantly checking a former sweetheart's page.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Monday, August 9, 2010
Beautiful women face discrimination in certain jobs, study finds
Beautiful women face discrimination in certain jobs, study finds
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Science Daily
Science News
Beautiful Women Face Discrimination in Certain Jobs, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2010) — While many see no downside to being beautiful, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver Business School says attractive women face discrimination when it comes to landing certain kinds of jobs.
Journal of Social Psychology, Stefanie Johnson, assistant professor of management at UC Denver Business School, found that beauty has an ugly side, at least for women.
Attractive women were discriminated against when applying for jobs considered "masculine" and for which appearance was not seen as important to the job. Such positions included job titles like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor.
"In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women," said Johnson. "In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn't the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender."
The study, co-authored by Robert Dipboye, professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida, Kenneth Podratz, an organizational development manager at UPS and Ellie Gibbons, research assistant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, found that attractive men suffered no similar discrimination and were always at an advantage.
According to Johnson, beautiful people still enjoy a significant edge. They tend to get higher salaries, better performance evaluations, higher levels of admission to college, better voter ratings when running for public office and more favorable judgments in trials.
A recent Newsweek survey of 202 hiring managers and 964 members of the public concluded that looks matter in every aspect of the workplace and they mattered more for women. When asked to rate nine character attributes on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most important, looks ranked third, above education and sense of humor, the magazine reported.
But in one narrow aspect of life, beauty can be a hindrance, something researchers have called the "beauty is beastly" effect.
"In two studies, we found that attractiveness is beneficial for men and women applying for most jobs, in terms of ratings of employment suitability," according to the study. "However, attractiveness was more beneficial for women applying for feminine sex-typed jobs than masculine sex-typed jobs."
In one experiment, participants were given a list of jobs and photos of applicants and told to sort them according to their suitability for the job. They had a stack of 55 male and 55 female photos.
In job categories like director of security, hardware salesperson, prison guard and tow truck driver, attractive women were overlooked. In each of these jobs appearance was perceived to be unimportant. Attractive women tended to be sorted into positions like receptionist or secretary.
"One could argue that, under certain conditions, physical appearance may be a legitimate basis for hiring," Johnson said. "In jobs involving face-to-face client contact, such as sales, more physically attractive applicants could conceivably perform better than those who are less attractive. However it is important that if physical attractiveness is weighed equally for men and women to avoid discrimination against women."
The study chided those who let stereotypes influence hiring decisions. Given the importance of hiring and the consequences of making a wrong choice, the authors said, managers need to rely more on information from the individual rather than on stereotypes about physical appearance.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Colorado Denver, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Access Content Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100806132218.htm
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Eat, Greet, and Be Happy
Eat, Greet, and Be Happy
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Gallop Management Journal
01 July 2010
Eat, Greet, and Be Happy
The connections between health, community, and wellbeing
The information on the FDA's nutrition labels is lacking. Sure, it will tell you about the calories and sodium in a package of microwave cheeseburgers. But it won't mention how a cheeseburger will make you feel in two hours, or if it will bankrupt your imagination this afternoon, or if it will make you too tired to go on a walk this evening -- and it might do all of those things.
What we eat plays a big part in our wellbeing, even our extremely near-term wellbeing, say Tom Rath, author of the bestsellers StrengthsFinder 2.0, Strengths Based Leadership, and How Full Is Your Bucket? and leader of Gallup's workplace research and leadership consulting worldwide, and Jim Harter, Ph.D., Gallup's chief scientist for workplace management and wellbeing and coauthor of the bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing.
Manage around yourself. Make it easier to do things that increase your wellbeing before you have to make a choice.
"Much of what we think will improve our wellbeing is either misguided or just plain wrong" write Rath and Harter in their new book Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. Most of us think wellbeing equals health and wealth. But, after a thorough review of hundreds of studies of wellbeing and a comprehensive global study of wellbeing in more than 150 countries, Rath and Harter realized that view is inaccurate. It also completely neglects the impact of lunch.
What does create a life well-lived is wellbeing in five interconnected areas: [1] Career Wellbeing, [2] Social Wellbeing, [3] Financial Wellbeing, [4] Physical Wellbeing, and [5] Community Wellbeing. Those are pretty broad topics, but as Rath and Harter discuss in the book, each of them is created by small decisions.
The decisions we make each day -- large and small -- affect our day-to-day Physical Wellbeing and our integration into our community. And they make a significant -- and largely unrecognized -- difference in our lives.
In this interview, the third in a three-part series, Rath and Harter discuss their research into lifelong wellbeing, particularly Physical Wellbeing and Community Wellbeing. They explain how little things can change your day and alter your perceptions. They discuss why community matters so much and how we can boost our wellbeing. But first, they mention how to avoid that cheeseburger.
GMJ: What's the best way to improve our levels of wellbeing, especially Physical Wellbeing, which obesity rates would indicate isn't as good as it could be?
Tom Rath: I'd say manage around yourself. Make it easier to do things that increase your wellbeing before you have to make a choice because a lot of our choices, though they seem small in the moment, have a big effect.
Jim Harter, Ph.D.: I think technology can help with this. You can sign yourself up to have money automatically withdrawn from your checking account and put into savings. That's good for your Financial Wellbeing, and you don't feel the pain of writing a check.
That's one of the central points about wellbeing -- what you set up in advance will affect your behavior in the future. In behavioral economics, it's called a "positive default." From a health standpoint, the positive default might be what you put in your refrigerator. If you've only got healthy stuff in there, you are much more likely to eat healthier food. There also are great studies of organ donation -- they show that if people have to opt out of the program versus opting in, many more people would donate their organs.
Rath: Positive defaults align our short-term decisions with our long-term interests. And we don't always do that. When we ask people how often they buy candy, only 10% say they regularly do. But then if you ask them if there was a bowl of candy sitting in front of them if they would eat some, 70% say they would. What we've learned is that if you can make the right decision in the supermarket aisle, it's a heck of a lot easier to make a good decision when you reach in your cupboard when you're craving a snack at eight o'clock at night. Positive defaults protect you from yourself -- and that helps you to make decisions in the moment that are better for your long-term interests.
GMJ: You mention food quite a bit in this book. Why is that?
Rath: What's interesting to me, as we started to dig into the research about Physical Wellbeing, is that food has more of an impact on our energy and mood on a daily basis than I would have guessed. So if I order a cheeseburger and fries for lunch today, and especially if I add a milkshake, I won't get much done at work this afternoon. I'll be a little sleepier, I won't have as many good ideas, and I'm much less likely to go out and exercise or socialize after work. A bad meal can have a detrimental impact on the rest of the day, not just my health or weight a decade later.
Community Wellbeing starts with something very basic: safety. You need to feel safe where you live.
The same principle applies to exercise. We cite some research in the book that found if you work out for at least 20 minutes in the morning, you can boost your mood for three to twelve hours. So you should work out in the morning because it's a way to have a better day, not just because it'll decrease your blood pressure a few years later. And you're more likely to have a good time after work -- socializing with friends and family and playing around with the kids -- if you exercise. You'll have more energy, which is such a big component of each day. Your mood will be better, and that will increase your likelihood of doing other things that are good for you as well.
Dr. Harter: That's an important point about wellbeing. We don't align our near-term decisions with our long-term best interests because it's hard to think ten, twenty, or thirty years out. But much of what's good for you decades from now is good for you this afternoon. The more you know about that, the easier it is to improve your day-to-day wellbeing and your future wellbeing. For instance, you might join a community group to make your kids' local park better, which is a short-term improvement. But there are many long-term benefits associated with community involvement.
GMJ: Let's talk about that. How do you define Community Wellbeing?
Dr. Harter: What "community" means depends on how each person defines it, where they live, the people around them, the people and places they interact with on a regular basis. There are several parts to Community Wellbeing.[A] It starts with something very basic: safety. You need to feel safe where you live. [B] Then, there's pride in your community -- in its aesthetics and amenities, which includes how things look as well as its parks, trails, and playgrounds. [C] Social offerings are important, which also supports the Social Wellbeing element. And [D]housing comes into it -- whether people feel they have ideal housing for their family. But the highest level of Community Wellbeing is [E] involvement. We found the highest levels of Community Wellbeing where people are actively involved in making a difference and getting recognition for making a difference.
The most interesting thing about Community Wellbeing to me was that it is the differentiator between a good life and a great life. Your wellbeing will be higher if you place higher importance on your involvement in your community. And this is the least recognized dimension -- many people don't even know their neighbors.
GMJ: How do you recommend involving yourself in the community to improve your wellbeing?
Rath: I interviewed some people who had real thriving Community Wellbeing, and I asked them just that. They said they used their own personal passion, the topics they cared about most in life, to connect to their community. Whether it was poverty or autism or Alzheimer's, they used their passion as a way to get involved. That involvement can start small by signing up for one event, and that eventually gets you more and more involved.
Dr. Harter: Many times, it feels like a nuisance to have to get involved in community enterprises. But when you do get involved, it pays off in many ways. You get to know people you otherwise wouldn't have, and you feel better afterward; there are a lot of intangible benefits.
Signing up creates expectations, and you will feel like you have to live up to them later whether you want to that day or not. So think about the things you're passionate about, the areas where you feel you could make a difference, which varies considerably from person to person. People with high Community Wellbeing will sign up for things they are passionate about, and it pays off.
Regardless of your race, age, or whatever it might be, you don't want to feel discriminated against; you want to feel accepted.
Rath: The encouraging thing is that when you look across different activities people get involved in, we essentially do get when we give, whether it's right at that moment or over time. That was one of our big learnings as we looked at the high end of Community Wellbeing. If you're doing well in other areas of wellbeing, a high level of Community Wellbeing might be what differentiates a good life from one that's excellent. One of the questions we asked in our research is "Have you been recognized for your contributions to the community in the last 12 months?" That's a pretty high bar to set, but it differentiates people who have the very highest levels of wellbeing.
GMJ: So what makes a good community?
Rath: Another question we asked in our research was "Is the community or place where you live the perfect place for you?" We ask it this way because community is about what fits you and your personality and your needs. We interviewed people with thriving Community Wellbeing who lived on an acreage up in the mountains. Others gained just as much satisfaction from living in the thick of an urban environment. The place where you live geographically isn't as big of an issue in terms of your overall Community Wellbeing as it is in terms of how it fits who you are and your involvement.
Dr. Harter: Regardless of who you are, your community needs to be a place that fits you. Regardless of your race, age, or whatever it might be, your community needs to offer things that you want to do. You don't want to feel discriminated against; you want to feel accepted. And it is important for people to have the opportunity to connect with others. Research is showing that change happens, in part, through social networks and social expectations.
Rath: I'm intrigued by Jim's point about social change because I think that's the way much of the improvement in wellbeing will be driven -- through organizations and community groups. Big social changes occur virally, from one group and one network to the next, and they start to spread.
That's been one of the most positive aspects for me about the research for this book -- learning how changes in wellbeing occur and how lives improve from it. We hope the book causes that kind of positive change in wellbeing for readers.
Dr. Harter: That's why we wrote it. All the research, all the science doesn't do any good unless it does some good.
GMJ: Well, I'm definitely ordering a salad for lunch.
Rath: That's a good start.
-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison
The Five Essential Elements of WellbeingFor For more than 50 years, Gallup scientists have been exploring the demands of a life well-lived. More recently, in partnership with leading economists, psychologists, and other acclaimed scientists, Gallup has uncovered the common elements of wellbeing that transcend countries and cultures. This research revealed the universal elements of wellbeing that differentiate a thriving life from one spent suffering. They represent five broad categories that are essential to most people:
- Community Wellbeing: the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live |
Access Content Source: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/139616/Eat-Greet-Happy.aspx?utm_source=email&utm_medium=10JUL-B&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=newsletter#1
pinEdit Evaluation 5.0.0701
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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