It’s Time For A Mini Rebellion; How To Take Control Of Your Happiness

Another brilliant article written by my friend Hazel Gale

There are moments in life when it seems as if time has slowed down just to allow everything to fall into place.

The flawless presentation;

The winning sports performance;

The date when effortless conversation simply flows…

These are the times when we can feel at our most powerful. That we’re in control. That anything is possible.

But what are we most likely to attribute these occurrences to? Is it fate? Are these the lucky days when the stars align? Or are these actually the occasions when we’re able, somehow, to mindfully select our reactions and govern our behaviour with autonomy? The latter certainly sounds the most enticing, but it can be hard to believe wholeheartedly.

We live in a world that conditions us to perceive control as something that exists outside of ourselves. We are taught to do this from an early age by the family dynamic within which we must automatically begin by taking a few orders. And also by a consumerist society that profits from our fear, angst and worry.

Hundreds of billions of pounds are spent every year by people who seek the solution to their various ailments in the form of a magic pill or miracle product. When something is wrong we automatically turn to the teacher/therapist/doctor/priest/guru/
cultural leader/shopping channel… The last place we think to look for the answer is within.

But therapy is a thing that strives to enable people to reclaim some of this power. To help a person to feel comfortable with themselves, that locus of control has to shift to the inside. Only then can we feel empowered, present, autonomous and happy. Only then can we really start to enjoy those wonderful moments of flow.

To have an internal locus of control means that we can realise that we are the only ones capable of determining our reaction to our environment. It means, ultimately, that we can choose our emotions. Of course, it also means that we must forgo the tempting (but often short-lived) sense of vindication that comes from blaming The Other for our failures.

Interestingly, if you look at the evolution of therapy itself over the last few decades, you’ll see a similar trend playing out. In the midst of the 80’s capitalist boom, a culture started to emerge where a weekly trip to the couch became something of a status symbol. The old stigma fell away and suddenly power-dressing businessmen and women started discussing their sessions of psychoanalysis over their dry martinis. This type of culture fed the ego of the individual (“it’s all about me”), but simultaneously it conveyed the message that these people were dependent on their therapists in order to feel OK.

Since then therapy has begun to grow into something quite different. It’s getting briefer and more solution-focused, and the onus appears to be shifting from the therapist to the client. Popular styles like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy involve the individual doing a considerable amount of work by themselves, and “personal-development” has gone from sounding like pie in the sky thinking to a perfectly respectable endeavour. So much so that self-help books, over the last few years, have been upgraded from flimsy paperbacks to glossy, hardback bestsellers.

A few years ago I started reading about the benefits of Expressive Writing: a therapeutic form of journaling. To me this concept was like a revelation. It seems that just the act of writing about our traumatic memories — freely and without criticism — can cause us to reprocess them. It’s as if putting our thoughts into discrete sentences, with capital letters at the beginning and full stops at the end, can enable us to counter the negative messages exposed.

I wondered how much more effective Expressive Writing could be if combined with the analytical questioning and cognitive reframing that can happen in a (modern) one-to-one therapy session. I formulated some written processes that follow the pattern of powerful therapeutic interventions while encouraging this kind of free-flowing emotional writing. These have since grown into an online course.

My initial motivation was to provide help for those people who can’t (or won’t) talk to another human being about their problems. But as the feedback started to come in I quickly realised this wasn’t just a second best option for people who don’t have access to private therapy.

The changes participants are managing to make over just a few weeks of introspection are surprisingly pronounced. Some people have reduced their anxiety/depression symptoms from as high as 95% down to 14% (measured using GAD-7 and PHQ-9 forms) without any input from me at all. This is extremely exciting.

I think that it’s because self-help processes like this actively foster our sense of autonomy that people can achieve such rapid success. Communicating the information via written and recorded material rather than in person minimises the feeling of consulting an authority, and so the person making those changes is given no other option but to take the credit for themselves.

The irony is that this is what should be going on whenever success is made via any therapy style. The power of the expert is just an illusion, change can only come from the subject. I believe that it’s the mentality inspired by our hierarchical society that tempts people to hand their rightful sense of accomplishment over to someone else. And I’d argue that many people’s need to seek therapy in the first place is probably a result of that same disempowered state of mind.

And so, whether they do so by committing to a self-development program, or through meditation, or just by genuinely congratulating themselves for making changes in private therapy, maybe those who choose to take these affirmative steps towards self-empowerment are really making a kind of rebellious statement. Perhaps the recent ascension of self-healing approaches like mindfulness meditation, and the explosion of the self-help industry speaks of more than just a wounded populous. Perhaps it’s the makings of a psychological revolution.

Hazel is a Cognitive hypnotherapist, mental coach and world champion athlete. http://www.hazelgale.co.uk

Source:  Hazel Gale
https://medium.com/personal-growth/reclaiming-the-self-bb68e20dcbb0#.tex1k04s4

Can Personality Be Changed?

Psychologists have long debated how flexible someone’s “true” self is.

Almost everyone has something they want to change about their personality. In 2014, a study that traced people’s goals for personality change found that the vast majority of its subjects wanted to be more extraverted, agreeable, emotionally stable, and open to new experiences. A whopping 97 percent said they wished they were more conscientious.

These desires appeared to be rooted in dissatisfaction. People wanted to become more extraverted if they weren’t happy with their sex lives, hobbies, or friendships. They wanted to become more conscientious if they were displeased with their finances or schoolwork. The findings reflect the social psychologist Roy Baumeister’s notion of “crystallization of discontent”: Once people begin to recognize larger patterns of shortcomings in their lives, he contends, they may reshuffle their core values and priorities to justify improving things.

Each year, Americans spend billions of dollars on self-improvement books, CDs, seminars, coaching, and stress-management programs to become better, more sociable, effective, compassionate, and charismatic versions of themselves. But beneath theories on what drives people to change, there’s a more fundamental question debated by psychologists: Can personality even be changed in the first place?

There are so many common misconceptions of what having a personality actually entails. In his controversial 1968 book, Personality and Assessment, Walter Mischel, the social psychologist best known for leading the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment, argued that any notion of consistency among personalities is largely a myth. A person’s actions in a given moment depend more on their situation, he contended, than on some enduring essence of who that person is. His research suggested a correlation about .30 (out of 1.0) between one behavior and the next.

In 1979, the psychologist Seymour Epstein conducted a series of studies in which he observed people’s behaviors on several occasions—from impulsivity to happiness, to nurturance, to problem solving. He found that Mischel was right that understanding someone’s behavior at any given moment requires accounting for the situation they’re in more than anything else. But what Mischel didn’t consider, Epstein contended, was that beyond individual moments, a person’s general character still could be gleaned from the average of their many behaviors over time. In four studies, Epstein showed that when comparing behaviors over the course of two weeks, the stability of personality shattered the .30 barrier—sometimes reaching .90.

People who came up with concrete plans ... showed much greater changes in extraversion.

More recent research has confirmed Epstein’s findings. The best way to think about personality traits, it seems, is as various “density distributions”: Throughout the course of the day, everyone fluctuates in their “true” selves quite a bit. Acting out of character is more the rule than the exception. Yet at the same time, it still makes sense to talk about differences in personality between people, because when whole distributions of behavior are considered, there are very consistent individual differences. For instance, almost everyone craves at least some solitude throughout the day, but some need a lot more than others.

What this new understanding of personality means is that people are only introverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and open to new experiences to the extent that their repeated patterns say they are. Genes certainly influence patterns of behavior (we have what Brian Little refers to as a “biogenic” nature), but there is nothing sacrosanct about being a certain way. With enough adjustments to these patterns over time, it seems that people can change who they are.

This is all good in theory, but what does it mean in practice? It’s worth noting that, even without any conscious effort, personality does appear to evolve quite a bit throughout a person’s life. Research shows that people tend to become more mature and well-adjusted as they age: The typical 65-year-old is more self-disciplined than about 85 percent of early adolescents, and more agreeable than about 75 percent of them. Social roles matter, too. As someone becomes more invested in a job, they often become more conscientious; likewise, when someone becomes more invested in a long-term relationship, they tend to become more emotionally stable and have higher self-esteem. In fact, the more the commitment is part of a person’s identity in any context, the more it appears to cause personality change.

But these aren’t the kind of changes that most people who buy self-development books are most interested in. They want to know whether they can change their personalities because they want to. Instead of changing jobs, entering a long-term relationship, or adopting a new identity, can people change their personalities intentionally?

Some studies hint at this possibility. One 2006 study found that college students who were concerned that they were becoming boring people increased their binge-drinking behavior in the hopes that they would become a more interesting person (I wouldn’t recommend this method!). Another study, from 2011, found that students strategically chose extracurricular activities that they thought would boost certain desirable characteristics, such as leadership.

More recently, Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley, researchers at Michigan State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively, looked at a sample of undergraduates who declared their goals to change their personality across a variety of dimensions (e.g., “I want to be more talkative”) at the beginning of a 16-week semester. Then, each week, they took personality tests to measure personality growth over time.

More recently, Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley, researchers at Michigan State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively, looked at a sample of undergraduates who declared their goals to change their personality across a variety of dimensions (e.g., “I want to be more talkative”) at the beginning of a 16-week semester. Then, each week, they took personality tests to measure personality growth over time.

This finding points toward a commonly misunderstood truth about personal growth.

To help certain participants with their goals, the researchers randomly assigned half of the students to engage in a “goal-setting” intervention. In this condition, the researchers reminded the students of the traits they most wanted to change and asked them to come up with specific and concrete steps (e.g., “Call Andrew and ask him to lunch on Tuesday) and to generate “if … then” implementation plans (e.g., “If I feel stressed, then I will call my mom to talk about it”). The participants were also warned that very broad goals, such as “I want to be more self-disciplined and self-controlled,” were too vague to cause any lasting change.

Over the course of the semester, the student’s goals to change their extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability appeared to inspire actual growth in the desired direction. For example, people who said they wanted to be emotionally stable “more than they currently are” actually increased their emotional stability each month. What’s more, people who came up with concrete plans for reaching their goals showed much greater changes in extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability than those in the control group. However, the intervention did not boost growth in agreeableness beyond merely wanting to be more agreeable.As promising as these results sound, it’s important to point out that the effects were moderate in size. The changes happened slowly over the course of the semester, and resulted in some, but not radical, change. Rather than a knock against Hudson and Fraley’s methods, this finding points toward a commonly misunderstood truth about personal growth. According to Janet Polivy and Peter Herman, at University of Toronto, many people fail in reaching their personal-development goals because they have unrealistic expectations about the speed, amount, ease, and consequences of attempts at self-change—a phenomenon they call “false hope syndrome.”According to their theory, first, people are motivated to adopt a difficult, or even impossible, personal growth goal (e.g., “I want to be thin”). After some initial progress, they ultimately don’t reach it. But after failing, they interpret their failure in a way that makes it seem like it wasn’t inevitable; for instance, the failure was a result of just not working hard enough. So they convince themselves that with a few minor adjustments, they can still achieve success. Finally, with renewed determination, but with only minor changes to their plan or their expectations about the rate of change, they set out again, propelled by their hope for the future, only to once again be disappointed. This cycle can continue forever.

The first step to making real, lasting personality adjustments, then, it seems, is to be critical of any self-development program that touts instant, or even radical, change. Just as it takes many years to develop patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, it will take some time—perhaps many years—to alter them. But the good news is that change is possible.

Source:  Scott Barry Kaufman 

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/can-personality-be-changed/492956/

Escapism... Is it Good or Bad?

As someone who lives in a world of entrepreneurship, I often hear discussion about "wasting time" and how people don't watch TV, or go to movies, or do anything that could be considered "counter productive," unless it's something that is teaching you how to run your business (i.e. the umbrella of "personal development").  I feel like those who do spend time doing those things are looked down upon as though all they are doing is wasting their time.  You know what I think, though?  I think that this "personal development" that people talk about can come in many media and art forms.  A big part of personal development is simply about improving ourselves.  Sometimes this involves improving ourselves through our habits and skills (which is truly necessary, and I highly recommend), but other times it simply means learning to work through some of the shit that life is throwing at us... and THAT is where I think "escapism" is a completely valid form of personal development.

Not all people can "snap out of it" simply with a good pep talk and pat on the back (or ass... whatever floats your boat).  There are many, many different personality types out there, and a lot of times we have trouble understanding each other (*side note* this is why I love the My Little Pony cartoon, because it's teaching kids [and some adults] early on how to deal with people of different personality styles, in different circumstances, from different walks of life, and how to all get along and work through things together *end side note*).  Some people truly need to dive into some form of escapism in order to clear their head and truly find themselves again.  They are not being "lazy" when they do this... they are working through some shit.  And, you know what?  Even if they aren't at any given moment, I think it's totally ok to sit down and just enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it every once and a while (or, in my case... 1 to 3 hours per night... yes, I watch TV *gasp* OH NO HOW COULD SHE!?).

Look, I'm not saying that you should re-prioritize your life and put your escapism first before all other things (because that wouldn't be the healthiest way to go about it either), I'm just saying that I understand that there can be a valid place in life for it to happen.  Sure, you never want to escape to the point of it being running away from life completely, but sometimes people need to deal with shit and HOW they deal with shit is going to be different person by person.  The important thing is truly learning to understand ourselves and become vividly aware of how we deal with things and what we need to do in order to find ourselves again.

Why am I ranting on this?  Well, I just got out of a Supernatural panel at San Diego Comic Con (stay with me here, kids).  For those who don't know, that show just wrapped up season 11.  Yes, that's a lot of television! Yes, I watched EVERY EPISODE just this year (starting in January when I came down with the flu really badly).  So, needless to say, I binge watched a bit.  What I didn't realize, at the time, is how watching that show was helping me through things that were beginning to unfold in my own life (well, look, ok... my life has been a bit shaky this year.  If you want to see reasons, just read my last blog).  I was going through hard times for longer than a lot of people may have realized, because I was hiding it all away.  So, I still did my job during the day, but at night I joined the Winchester brothers on their hunts and it helped me get the bottled emotions out.  I'd laugh, I'd cry, and I'd find relatable circumstances in the show that helped me guide my own life (yes, this IS possible even in a show where the main characters are running around shooting ghosts in the face with rock salt loaded into shotguns).  I'm just saying, before you judge someone, learn how they heal.   Just because you don't understand, doesn't mean that the other person is wrong.  So, before you think someone is silly for being into something (a tv show, a movie, a band, etc.), realize that the deep rooted reason for them being so into that thing may have nothing to do with the actual thing itself, but could perhaps have to do with the time in their life in which they decided to latch onto that thing, and what that thing helped them work through personally.

Survey says...

Overall, I think escapism is GOOD (to a point).  Just remain self aware and know when you may be diving in too deep.  Stop feeling guilty if you need to use escapism as a method to cope, or simply just to unwind.  If you are someone who copes this way, look at what characters you are drawn to and ask yourself what about them speaks to you.  Learn about yourself more by taking a deeper look at the characters you relate to.  Even fiction can help you learn a little bit about yourself in the long run.  Take the lessons you can get in life from wherever they are provided, because you never really know how life is going to speak to you.

Source:  By Melanie Bolen
http://www.chicagonow.com/shiny-side/2016/07/escapism-is-it-good-or-bad/