Alter Ego

2021-01-10 01:25:53 We’ve been there too many times. You are reading on the bus, and before you know it, it’s your stop. You quickly put the bookmark in, throw the book in your bag and rush to get through the crowded space and out to the street. You get home only to find that the book has fallen next to the half-eaten sandwich wrapped in a paper bag. Yet another book has fallen to the dangers of our rapid lifestyles. Your library will have to carry this stain. mimimo.ca has decided to put a stop to such misfortunes.

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2020-05-18 21:01:01 Stress and Food. Eating Under Pressure

#StressPsychology #FoodPsychology
Reading time ~ 4min

Few of us feel good about ourselves if we eat unhealthy and gain weight. Under pressure, controlling our diet can be even more difficult, which can worsen the stress. How do we build a more positive relationship with food?

In cultures that associate beauty with being thin, food can become inherently stressful. A better understanding of our own impulses can help us to develop a more positive relationship with food, even when we’re under stress.

There are sound biological reasons why, under stress, many of us are prone to overeating. Stress prompts the body to release the hormone cortisol, which stimulates appetite. The body has evolved to deal with physical threats such as avoiding predatory animals: cortisol prompts us to build up the body’s food stores in preparation for fight or flight. This explains why we comfort eat: it’s not greed, but the body’s inherent response to stress.

Cortisol is also associated with wanting junk food. A 2001 American study found that “high cortisol reactors” – volunteers who released higher amounts of cortisol in response to a perceived threat – ate similar amounts to “low cortisol reactors” in calm circumstances, but ate significantly more sugar and fat when subjected to stress.

American exercise scientist Christine Maglione-Garves has also observed that cortisol increases the storage of belly fat: calorie for calorie, stressed people gain more weight. A 2005 American study found that weight gain may be a way of turning off our stress response: lab rats kept in stressful conditions showed a drop in cortisol once they’d accumulated a certain amount of belly fat. What’s more, a 2009 American study found that when monkeys were fed a high-calorie diet, monkeys living under greater stress gained more weight than the less-stressed monkeys.

In short, if you’re prone to feeling guilty or insecure because of your diet or body image, try to be kinder to yourself. Stress is likely a major contributor, and self-loathing only makes you feel worse. Your first step should be to reduce your stress by ceasing to blame yourself.

Should you diet?

Healthy eating is good for both our physical and psychological well-being, so if you’d like to shift to a more balanced diet, that’s probably a good idea: ask a doctor or a dietician to give you some pointers on how to get started.

However, it’s wise to be skeptical of extreme diets that promise you rapid weight loss in a matter of weeks: multiple studies confirm that these are neither nutritious nor a stress-busting solution. Crash diets of this kind don’t address the underlying causes of the weight gain, so their effects don’t last. Open / Comment

2020-05-18 21:00:11 Open / Comment

2020-01-18 00:14:15 Do you know where you're going?

#motivation #succeed #SuccessPsychology
Reading time ~ 4min

It's already January 17th, which means that 60% of us have by now abandoned our New Years' resolutions. Why is that we get motivated and determined to finally turn out lives around, give up bad habits, start practicing good ones, but we unavoidably fail? Understanding how motivation works and what makes us fail can create more opportunities to stick to your goals. There's no shame in failing at resolutions. For example, it takes an average smoker 10 years to quit for good. Some never manage to do it in 20. The point is, anyone can train their self-control; we just haven't been taught how.

"Success is more likely when you focus on the right details in the right way."

When setting goals, we often fail to state them in a way that best helps us achieve them. Let me explain. Saying "I'm going to start exercising this year" is a good goal in and on itself. However, it clearly lacks specificity for our purposes. Thus, rule number one is "Create clear, specific goals." Phrasing it as "I will go to the gym twice a week and exercise once a week at home this year" will make it much easier to follow. Another example of a clearly defined goal would be saying, "I will avoid processed foods and foods high in added sugar" as opposed to "I will eat healthy."

"More difficult goals cause you to, often unconsciously, increase your effort, focus, and commitment to the goal; persist longer; make better use of the most effective strategies."

Let's face it, going to the gym once a week this year might be a secure commitment to follow. Still, it will not bring the observable and, most importantly, satisfying results. Numerous researchers have proven that difficult tasks bring us more satisfaction and higher sense of achievement. Difficult but possible is the key. So, the second rule would be "Set difficult but achievable goals. "don't go too easy on yourself, and you'll enjoy it more.

"The abstract 'Why' and concrete 'What' ways of thinking about your behavior have motivational pros and cons. Each mode of thinking, under different circumstances, can lead to greater achievement. The trick is to adjust your thinking according to your circumstances, and the good news is that it's not at all hard to do. You need to learn when to think why and when to think what."

Simply put, the abstract way of thinking (why) is better for motivation in the global, long-term sense. It allows you to see a bigger purpose in the task you're performing at the moment. You're better off thinking that you're "keeping the house clean" instead of "sucking up bread crumps" to be more motivated to vacuum. However, you must use caution when applying this to novel tasks. The tasks that you're not so familiar with are better thought of in a concrete sense (what). For example, if you never vacuumed before, your performance would be better if you focus on more concrete, functional "sucking up read crumps" than a bigger purpose.

"When people think about what they are doing in why terms, they are guided by the big picture—their smaller, everyday actions become a part of something larger and more important. They are more connected to long-term goals. As a result, when people think why rather than what, they are less impulsive, less vulnerable to temptation, and more likely to plan their actions in advance."

"When what you need to do is particularly difficult to get done, it pays to forget about the bigger picture and focus on the task at hand."

The third rule then would go as follows "Be aware of the way you think about the task at hand." Choosing the right approach might be the key to success in many of our commitments.

If we were to put this post in one sentence, it would look something like this: Set clear, specific, difficult but achievable goals and be aware of how you think about each task that brings you closer to those goals.

- Credit for this post: "Succeed. How we can reach our goals" by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph. D. Open / Comment

2020-01-18 00:14:07 Open / Comment

2019-11-01 06:08:00 Open / Comment

2019-11-01 06:07:52 Finding Meaning
#StressPsychology #Meaning #HappinessPsychology

Do we need to be stress-free in order to be happy? Far from it: a healthy level of stress helps us to develop emotionally and attain our goals. The challenge is to identify what makes that stress feel worthwhile.

Stress can make us unhappy – but happiness isn’t the only measure of well-being. It’s also important to have a sense of meaning in our lives.

American psychologist Martin Seligman is a pioneer of the positive psychology movement, which focuses on studying how and why people thrive. He argues that it is a mistake to assume we should measure our lives purely on whether they’re pleasant. Instead, Seligman describes three routes to happiness:

The Pleasant Life (also known as “hedonic” life): having many pleasure and the skills to make the best use of them.

The Good Life: knowing your strengths and building your work, family life, leisure, and friendships around being able to use those strengths to be more fully engaged.

The Meaningful Life: using your strengths in the service of something bigger than yourself – a cause you truly believe in.

A 2008 Australian study surveyed more than 12,000 adults and found that all three types of happiness predicted well-being, but that engagement (or “Good Life” experiences) and meaning were more powerful predictors than hedonism. Pleasurable experiences aren’t antithetical to our well-being, but meaning is more fundamental to it – and while stress certainly isn’t pleasurable, it is compatible with living a meaningful life.

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. He spent his career studying the psychology of meaning – and suggested that we can discern meaning through three separate paths;

1. Meaning through creative values. Making or accomplishing something we feel is worthwhile.

2. Meaning through experiential values. Frankl gives the example of a mountain climber who is uplifted at the sight of an alpine sunset.

3. Meaning through attitudinal values. We can find meaning even in sad or stressful situations – by considering, for instance, that we are doing something valuable.

Some other practical suggestions for finding meaning:

Create a coherent narrative about your life. American psychologist Robert Biswas-Diener suggests simple writing exercises in which you can describe the best possible self you aspire to be – morally as well as in terms of achievements – and consider concrete strategies for working toward your goals.

Support others: be generous. A 2013 American study found that people pursuing happy lives tended to be “takers,” while people with meaningful lives tended to be “givers.”

Don’t wait for a leader. A 2016 British study found that, while having bad bosses could make a job feel meaningless, inspirational bosses were barely mentioned: people’s sense of meaning came from feeling that their own work contributed to society.

Living with a certain amount of stress can be tolerable, and even desirable, provided you feel it has meaning. Open / Comment

2019-10-09 08:01:58 Too Much on Your Plate

#StressPsychology #TimeManagement

For many of us, managing competing demands is one of the constant pressures of modern life. With so many expectations to worry about, how can we use our best judgement when making decisions?

Stress can fluster us – and when we’re flustered, we don’t always make the best decisions. This can affect how we organize and manage all the tasks we’re facing. The first step to prioritizing is to attempt to look at our tasks less emotionally and more objectively.

We can better handle competing goals by the way we interpret the tasks involved. A 2016 British-Australian study gave participants two projects to complete: one that was already in “good” shape and one that was in “bad” shape, or less likely to be completed successfully. The experimenters offered a small reward of 10 cents for finishing both tasks and half that amount for finishing just one. Because the “bad” project was designed to have only a 20% chance of success - as opposed to 80% for the “good” one - prioritizing the “bad” project meant that the participants would probably be unable to finish either and get no money at all.

However, the researchers also presented the situation in one of two ways: some of the participants were told they would make money by completing the projects, and others were told they’d lose money by failing to complete them.

The results? Subjects who were told they would make money if successful played it safe and earned more. Subjects who’d been given the “avoid a loss” scenario tended to prioritize the low-chance-of-success goal, and often ended up failing both tasks.

Getting some distance

Here are some strategies that according to an Israeli-American study helped people clarify their thinking under pressure:

Imagine temporal distance. What would someone 10 years from now think was the priority?
Imagine physical distance. What would be the priority if this was happening on the other side of the world?
Imagine social distance. What would you consider the priority if this was happening to a stranger?
Imagine as a hypothetical. What would be the priority if this wasn’t a real situation, but an imaginary one? Open / Comment

2019-10-09 08:01:21 Open / Comment

2019-09-20 03:16:15 If you want to learn more about Grit and its effects on your life, I highly suggest a book by Angela Duckworth called "Grit." It explores this topic way more in depth. It changed my approach to the way I study quite significantly.

You can get it here: https://amzn.to/2OaHcyT Open / Comment