Marie Cheour's Blog

Living with an anxiety disorder can be overwhelming and isolating. Anxiety disorders come in many shapes and sizes. Although different techniques will work better for different types of anxiety disorders, there are a few key ways of keeping yourself grounded during an anxiety attack. You do not need to be a victim of your anxiety. You do not need to hide yourself away from the world. You can use these simple techniques to begin opening your life and challenging your anxiety.

Tip #1 – Grounding Stone

Grounding stones are typically made from rare gems which are believed to have healing and focusing properties. Traditionally, they are used as aids in meditation and prayer. Although grounding stones have their roots in spiritual and religious practices, you can make use of this idea without have to tie yourself to any spiritual or religious practice. You can use a stone or any other meaningful object which is small enough for you to carry on your person.

In spiritual ceremony, the ground stone acts as a conduit for positive energy. In your own non-spiritual practice, you can use your grounding object as a reminder. When you feel anxiety begin to build up inside of you, pull out your grounding object. Hold onto it and remember why you are carrying it. You are carrying it because you want to make a change in your life. You are carrying it because you no longer want to be a victim of your fear.

Focus on the feel of your grounding object. Focus on its colour. Focus on its weight. Do not allow yourself to drift off into thought. Focus on your object and your commitment to yourself as you stay in the present moment.

Tip#2 – Square Breathing

You may have heard of breathing techniques before. The old ‘count to ten’ trick has long been used as a way to calm people when they are feeling angry. The space of ten seconds combined with breathing helps the person think before lashing out.

Square breathing combines breathing techniques with visualizations. When we experience anxiety, our breathing rates increase. The overflow of oxygen to our brains is part of what causes many of the other distressing symptoms we experience. Getting your breathing under control is an important part of working through your anxiety.

To practice square breathing, close your eyes and imagine a square. As you breathe in, count to four as you make your way around the square. If it is easier for you, you can imagine drawing the square as you count and breathe, or you can imagine driving a car in a square. The important part is that you breathe in for four lines, and then breathe out for four lines.

Although the goal is to keep you in the present moment, it can be very difficult to actually focus your breathing. Taking a few moments to visualize square breathing can be beneficial, just remember not stay there too long. Return to the present moment as soon as your breathing rate begins to slow down.

Tip #3 – Rationalize

Cognitive therapy is often used as a treatment for anxiety disorders. This type of therapy invites you to track your thoughts and feelings. Certain situations can spark thoughts based in fear. Worries arise and anxiety begins to take over. The more you feel anxiety, the more your brain tells itself its thoughts must be correct – you must be in danger.

The trick to using cognitive therapy in dealing with anxiety is to rationalize the situation. To rationalize, you must interrupt the connection between your thoughts and feelings and take control of your thoughts. Allow yourself to feel anxious for the moment. Fighting against these feelings will only exhaust you further.

Now, take a look at your thoughts. What fears are coming through? What are you worried will happen? What are the chances that it will happen? What are the chances that nothing bad will happen? Think of examples of times when you or someone you know was placed in a similar experience. What happened? How many times did something bad happen? How many times did nothing bad happen?

The point of cognitive therapy is not to turn off all anxiety. Anxiety is actually an important instinctual response our body uses to tell us we are in danger. The point is to help you rationally decide if you actually are in danger, or if your thoughts and feelings are causing you to needlessly worry.

Tip #4 – Remember That You Are Not Your Anxiety

You are a person. You have purpose and value in this world, whether you see it or not. Give yourself time. So long as you continue to work at conquering your anxiety, you will eventually be able to break free of it. It may take months; it may take years. An important part of speeding up the healing process is treating yourself with love and care. Great things take time. Try not to get upset with yourself for not changing completely overnight.

In this article, we will explore the world of stress and communication. We will look at various sources of stress and the impact that stress can have on our ability to communicate effectively. We will also explore possible strategies for improving our communication skills during stressful times.

Sources of Stress

We have all experienced difficult and stressful times in our lives. Sometimes the stress is the result of regular day-to-day occurrences. Perhaps work is busier than usual – a client is unhappy with a job you did, or your boss is being critical of your job performance. Maybe you are running late or feel that you just cannot accomplish everything you need to accomplish in the course of a day. Perhaps you take on more than you can chew and feel as if someone is always asking you for more. Sometimes the stress is linked to interpersonal problems – people at work are being rude to you, or your sibling is sticking his or her nose where it doesn’t belong. I could spend pages and pages simply writing out a list of all of the sources of daily life stress.

Sometimes stress is related to an acute situation. Perhaps there has been a death in the family, or you have just learned that you or someone close to you is gravely ill. Perhaps a natural disaster has destroyed your home. Maybe you just found out that your family pet needs an expensive operation. Again, I could fill pages and pages of examples of acute stressors you may experience throughout your life.

Stress and Communication

What happens when our stress levels rise? Our ability to handle conflict is diminished. Like the burning fuse on a stick of dynamite, we grow closer and closer to explosion. How does this impact our relationships? The old saying is true, “You take it out on those closest to you.” Those closest to you may be the people you love the most or the people who are closest in physical proximity. Oftentimes, those are the same people. The people with whom you have the closest emotional bonds are usually the people with whom you find yourself spending the most time.

What happens to these people when we are stressed? We snap at them. We dump on them. We jump all over them. We over-interpret their comments and questions. We take everything we know and love them and throw it out the window. We turn them into the enemy. Angry about our current situation, we feel the need to lash out – to rid our systems of the anxiety and negative feelings. Or, we shut them out completely. In an attempt to bottle our own negative emotions and appear strong in the face of adversity, we close ourselves off from all emotion. Instead of communicating poorly, we stop communicating altogether – driving a different type of wedge between ourselves and our loved ones.

Communicating Effectively During Stressful Times

Communicating effectively at any time requires that you put in effort. It is up to you to actively engage in any conversation as both a speaker and a listener. Communicating effects during stressful times requires even more effort on your part.

Remember Who You Are Communicating With

This blog centres mostly on communication with partners, children, other relatives and friends. Assuming that these are the types of people with whom you are communicating, I will also assume that, underneath it all, you have affection for these people. Unfortunately, when we are stressed, we tend to forget who we are communicating with. We tend to forget all of the things we like or love about that person. We see them as some sort of an enemy. We may have differences with them which spur this along. However, most of the time we are simply looking for someone or something to be angry with and some way to express that anger.

It is important, when you are stressed, that you remind yourself that the person with whom you are speaking is not the cause of your stress. If this person is your partner and this stress is related to family members or finances, there is a good chance that he or she is also experiencing stress and all of its negative effects. Try to understand where he or she is coming from, and work from a place of mutual understanding.

Create a Space of Understanding

It is important to have a space which is safe for communication. This can be a physical space or an emotional space. As a physical space, you may make specific room in your home where you have agreed only calm and understanding conversations will take place. When your partner, child, or other significant person asks you to speak with them in that room (or vice versa) you know that it is time to enter a place of calm and understanding.

Maybe your safe communication space will not be a physical space at all. Perhaps it is an emotional space. To create a safe emotional space, you may want to develop certain safe words or phrases designed to gently remind yourself and your communication partner that communication works best when you are both calm and understanding.

Listen For the Sake of Understanding

When we feel stress our emotions scream for attention. We want desperately to be put at ease, but often lack the ability to immediately relax our minds. We feel like life is out to get us. ‘When will I ever get a break?’ ‘Why won’t anyone help me?’ ‘No one understands how I feel.’

A natural response is to believe that we are the ones who must be understood; we are the ones who deserve a break; we are the ones who need to do all the talking. To maintain a healthy relationship with your loved one, you will need to compromise. You can do your share of talking, but remember to listen. The person with whom you are communicating has his or her own needs, desires, and emotions. Listen to what he or she has to say with the intention of better understanding what he or she thinks or feels. Avoid the urge to listen with the intention of responding. It is not about volleying your words back and forth. It is not about winning an argument. It is not about being right or being worse off. It is about understanding.

If you set the pace by calmly listening and trying to understand your communication partner, you increase the chances that he or she will do the same. If you set the pace by attacking and struggling to be the loudest speaker, you will increase the chances that your communication partner will do the same. Which outcome would you prefer?

Manage Your Anger Triggers

Finally, it is extremely important that you know your anger triggers. An anger trigger is anything that sets off your anger. Many people become angry when they feel that their sense of self, individuality, or competency is being attacked. Some people become angry when they are compared to other people whom they do not like. These triggers are extra sensitive when we are stressed. Things which would normally slide right off our backs instead cut us deep and enrage us. They serve as an excuse for us to get out all of our stress-related frustrations.

It is important that you know what will set off your anger before you begin trying to communicate. By knowing your anger triggers you can pre-plan your coping strategies. For example, if you feel triggered, instead of responding with anger, you can ask for a moment alone. You can remove yourself from the room, take a few deep breaths, remind yourself who you are communicating with, and return to a calm and understanding state. You can then let your communication partner know that you felt triggered, but do not want to react angrily. You can then stop the anger trigger from derailing your conversation and focus your attention back to the topic-at-hand.

It was love at first sight. Mike had all the characteristics that Lindsey was looking for. He was handsome, a good provider, and had a great sense of humor. Come to think of it, he even reminded her of her dad. Even so, although Lindsey wasn’t aware of it, her unconscious mind had chosen Mike because of many negative qualities that appealed to her. He felt distant and critical just like Lindsey’s father, and irresponsible much like her mother.

Why would she choose to date someone with these types of negative qualities, you might ask? It’s simple, really; for Lindsey, these qualities represent unfinished business that began when she was a child. For years, she wanted her dad to show her love and acceptance, but the harder she tried the more her dad pulled away. Without even realizing it, Lindsey’s unconsciously wanted to fix this problem.

Consequently, she sought after a cold, distant person that she could turn into a loving, caring one. She found Mike. He rarely shows her affection and doesn’t even want to make love to her that often. This allows Lindsey to play the chasing game with Mike, giving him plenty of opportunities to prove that he isn’t so lovable after all.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Mike doesn’t show any more affection towards Lindsey than her mother did. Still, at some unconscious level, Mike still feels so familiar to Lindsey that it’s easy for her to be around him. Mike’s also irresponsible, just like Lindsey’s father. He forgets to pick their son up from the daycare center and frequently spends above what he earns.

You may think that you chose your romantic partner based on some list of requirements. Maybe you’ve even dreamed about the qualities of your ideal partner. Even so, our choice in partners is often based much more in our family of origin that we’d like to admit. We choose our romantic partners by combining both the positive and negative qualities of our childhood caretakers. It’s quite common for us to emphasize the negative qualities of our relatives even more than the positive ones.

There’s a reason for this. Our unconscious mind is trying to force us to pay attention to the things that frighten us. It wants us to fix our problems. Regardless, despite trying to be helpful, our subconscious mind is also primitive. Its main focus is self-preservation. It’s unable to see the difference between your past and the present, for example.

As a child, you were totally dependent on your parents to look after you. Thus, as an adult, when your partner tells you that they’re leaving you, you enter into panic mode. “I’m going to die without him!” you might think. In a situation like this, it’s your job to use your conscious mind to calm your subconscious down. As an adult, you know that you won’t die if someone walks out of your life. You’ve become perfectly capable of feeding yourself by now.

How does knowing this information help you in your relationship? First, you can begin identifying the wounds both you and your partner have carried since childhood. Suddenly, the way you interact starts making sense to you. You’ll begin to understand why your reactions sometimes seem out of proportion; it’s your unconscious mind panicking. You’ll also realize you don’t need your partner to save you when you know that you’re capable of taking care of yourself. This transforms your partner from a hollow representation into a real human being within you. You’ll finally be able to see that you’re both scared on some level and need love and kindness to prevent further hurt.

Are you ready to start working? Here’s what you can do:

Exercise: Describe the characteristics of your closest family members or other significant people that you spent lots of time with as a child. What kind of positive experiences did you have with them? How about negative ones? Now, describe your current or former partner(s). Do they share any of the same qualities? What do you think your subconscious mind might be trying to tell you?

One beliefabout the human brainthat keeps floating around is that we’re only capable of tapping into some small percentage of its true potential at any given time. No one knows where this idea first came from, but it began circulating at the start of the 20th century. It’s easy to see why this idea would attract us. After all, if we’re only using some small fraction of our brains’ capacity, doesn’t that imply that all of us have some reserve of cognitive potential that we haven’t unlocked? The idea of somehow tapping into these reserves gives us hope that we could reach superhuman cognitive abilities.

Reality,however, tells us otherwise. The brain isn’t cheap to operate. In fact, we know that up to 20 percent of all the energy our bodies consume can be directly attributedto the brain. It seems incredibly implausible that we would have evolved such a needlessly complex organ if we rarely even use it to its full potential. After all, wouldn’t people with smaller, more efficient brains hold a comparable advantage over people with larger brains? In this case, the process of natural selection would simply weed out the inefficient brains over time.

Scientists have also learned that the brain has sophisticated localization of function. Simply put, certain parts of the brain have evolved to take care of specific types of information processing. We may use some part of the brain during an activity more than another, but that doesn’t mean other areas are can’t be used during whatever it is that we’re taking care of. For example, the part of your brain that specializes in processing visual information isn’t very good at handling auditory information processing. It’s rare for the brain to adapt areas of the brain for purposes outside of their original intent, but it can happen.For instance, kids that became blind at a young age or were born this way have been shown to use their visual cortex to process auditory information. This probably explains why some of us who became blind early on went on to developeda keen sense of auditory perception that allows them to navigate without visual information.

Even if we somehow managed to increaseour brain’s usage of less active areas during an activity, it seems like the brain itself is terribly equipped to handle multitasking. A hallmark study conducted in the middle of the 20th century showed how selective attention makes it hard for us to process two separate sources of informationat once. The study revolved around the concept of dichotic listening. The subjects were made to listen to two different messages at once. These messages were relayed to either ear, and the participants were ten told to focus on the contents of the messages. This task was fairly easy for the participants when they needed to focus on a single message butbecame nearly impossible once they were instructed to listen to both messages.

Interestingly, while concentrating on both messages, the subjects centered their concentration on a single message at a time and then jumped to the other. They were often incapable of relaying the content of the messages or even simple things like the sex of the speaker.A study conducted in a similar fashion found that its subjects were unable to identify a word that wasrepeated 35 times during the messages. All this seems to indicate that the brain is terrible at multitasking.

Considering how poorly suited we seem to be at multitasking and gaining access to additional processing power, it makes sense for us to take advantage of our current capabilities. One of the leading minds behind this notion was the American architect, inventor, designer, and theorist Buckminster Fuller. In his book, Nine Chains to the Moon, Fuller coins the term ephemeralization. Heexplains how we could do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.” Fuller simply wanted to achieve as much as possible while using as little effort as he could.

Although Fuller originallymeant to apply this concept only to improving production means, We can take his concept to the field of neuroscience. There’s one thing we can all do to make our brains do more with less: gain expertise. Have you ever driven home from the office after a long day at work? You get home, step outside of your car, and suddenly you are overcome by the realization that you have no idea how you got there. How did you manage to drive all the way home safely without being aware of your actions?

In truth, the time you’ve spent behind the wheel has made you an expert in driving. This has resulted in you no longer needing to use lots of brain power to drive. Try to recall when you first started driving. Didn’t you struggle just maintaining a simple conversation while driving?During this time, simple things like right-hand turns probably took lots of effort and concentration from you. Examples like the ones above pop up all the time in studies that investigate differences between novices and experts.

Take chess, for example. The complexity and balance of this game havedrawn some of us to spend the between ten and twenty thousand hours playing and studying the game to reach the rank of grand master.The dedicated people are skilled at the game, making them solve problems faster and better than mediocre and newer players.

A classic study on experts asked chess players from various levels of playto reproduce the positions of chess pieces they saw briefly on a board. Not surprisingly, the expert players accomplished this task far better than other players. However, when the pieces weren’t arrangedaccording to positions that occur in actual games of chess, no group of players performed this task better than the others. It’s estimated that a master of chess recognizes roughly 50,000 separate patterns of pieces on the board. In comparison, good players can manage roughly 1,000 patters.

It’s clear that experts store vast amounts of knowledge relating to a specific topic, but they also organize it in special ways. For instance, when scientists asked both professors of engineering and their new students to group types of problems together, the students often organized them based off visual similarities. In contrast, their teachers grouped problems that dealt with the same principles of physics together. Other studies have even shown that experts approach topics differently. They spend more time trying to understandproblems than novices. These types of differences between experts and novices are common and radically alter how these two groups interpret and utilize information.

Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, have even shown that experts use their brains less than novices. During assigned tasks, activity in the frontal lobe decreases or even vanishes. This indicates that experts pay less conscious attention to whatever they’re working on.This tells us that once we become very good at something, taking care of that task becomes more automated and requires less of our conscious attention. This is why you can drive your car home without a problem while thinking about it. As we improve at a task, our brain is freed to work on other things

Becoming an expert in something has lots of interesting effects. We become better at interpreting what we see, and our decision making improves drastically. We also become better observers, causing us to catching cues that help us make informed and intuitive decisions. This heightened awareness causes us to become better equipped to make inferences and observation, note whenever something unusual happens, and increases our general awareness.

Given its benefits, shouldn’t we all seek to become experts in our fields of interest? Right now, you may be wondering how you could reach this level of specialization. The truth is that there is no magic trick. Experts don’t stop practicing after they’ve learned something. They keep on repeating the task until it becomes fully automated for them Think about the way you read and speak your native language. Chances are you already possess expertise in lots of areas. What are they?

References:



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Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973a). The mind’s eye in chess. In W.G.Chase (Ed.), Visual information processing (pp. 215–281). New York:Academic Press.

Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973b). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 55–8

Cherry, E. (1953). Some Further Experiments upon the Recognition of Speech, with One and with Two Ears. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25, 554-554.

Chi, M.T.H., Feltovich, P.J., Glaser, R. (1981) Categorization and Representation of Physics Problems by Experts and Novices. Cognitive Science. 5. 121-152

Egan, D., & Schwartz, B. (1979). Chunking in recall of symbolic drawings. Memory & Cognition, 7(2), 149-158.

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Lesgold, A. M., Rubinson, H., Feltovich, P., Glaser, R., Klopfer, D., & Wang, Y. (1988). Expertise in a complexskill: Diagnosing X-Ray Pictures. In M. T. H. Chi, R. Glaser, & M. J. Farr (Eds.), The nature of expertise(pp. 31 l-342). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Levy, R., & Goldman-Rakic, P. (2000). Segregation of working memory functions within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Executive Control and the Frontal Lobe: Current Issues, 133, 23-32.

Moray, N. (1959). Attention in dichotic listening: Affective cues and the influence of instructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11(1), 56-60.

Parent, A., & Carpenter, M. (1996). Carpenter’s human neuroanatomy (9th ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.

Reitman, J. (1976). Skilled perception in Go: Deducing memory structures from inter-response times. Cognitive Psychology, 8(3), 336-356.

1. Hug a child,

2. Hug a dog,

3. Hug ANYONE. Because hugs increase the amount of “love hormone” oxytocin in your blood.

4. Make something. Like a birdhouse,

5. Or a sweater,

6. Or a cake. Because being creative puts you in touch with your happy inner child.

7. Make someone else happy. You could visit an elderly person in a nursing home,

8. Or give a dollar to a homeless woman,

9. Or play a game with a child. Because making someone else happy, makes you ten times happier.

10. Accept yourself. Even the muffin top,

11. Or the greys in your hair,

12. Or the bad grade that you got in math. Because only after you have accepted yourself completely, can you truly change for the better.

13. Be fully present. Have you notice how good your shower gel smells?

14. Or that a new flower has started to grow right next to your front door?

15. Or that your son has a really pretty singing voice? Because when you are fully present in the moment there is no time to worry about the future or regret the past.

16. Forgive the person who broke your heart,

17. Or your boss who is always yelling at you,

18. Or the driver that cut you off this morning. Because when you forgive, it is you who gets the most benefits.

19. Stop pretending that someone or something else can make you happy. Like your child,

20. Or your significant other,

21. Or your bankaccount. Because only you hold the keys to your happiness.

Not too long ago, it was thought that only the spouses of alcoholics would show signs of co-dependency. Now, however, we know that being raised in a dysfunctional family of any kind is enough to put you at risk for co-dependency. Imagine that you grew up in a family where one of your parents was an addict or suffered from a severe mental illness. How would that affect you? Perhaps you would learn early on that you had to be the one taking care of the other members of your family. Maybe you would learn that anything you did could anger your parents. Knowing this, maybe you would try hard to learn to recognize whether your parents were sad or upset. Perhaps you would do your best to change their negative emotions. Accomplishing this can be quite difficult. Perhaps after countless failures, you would begin to think that there was something wrong with you. Maybe you would end up thinking you just weren’t good enough.

When co-dependent people grow up these symptoms do not disappear. Instead, they tend to get more severe.Listed below are some of the typical signs and symptoms of co-dependency. You do not need to have all of them to be regarded as co-dependent.

Relationships Hurt

For a co-dependent person relationships are usually filled with anxiety, fear, and anger. Although co-dependent people are typically desperate for human contact and long to be in a close, intimate relationship, these types of relations seldom bring them happiness. The reason for this is that although co-dependent people enter a relationship with high hopes, their fear of rejection and need for control soon turns their relationship into endless turmoil. Frequently, co-dependent people cause their very own nightmares to come true; by trying to control and manipulate others to stay, co-dependent people actually pushothers away from them.



Sense of Real Self is Lost

Co-dependent people try to do all they can to please other people. This is why they typically become experts in interpreting other people’s body language or small shifts in their mood. Co-dependent people like certain foods, hobbies, or politicians, because those are the preferences of their partners. They build an “ideal self” in a combination of their self-criticisms and a persona that they believe that others like. Because of this, a co-dependent individual in one relationship might be an animal activist only to go hunting with his or her next partner a few months later.

Poor Boundaries

A mentally healthy person knows when he is being mistreated and is able to walk out of such a relationship in order to protect himself. A co-dependent person typically cannot do this. He has low-self-esteem and to some extent believes that he does not deserve to be loved or respected. As a result, a co-dependent person does much more than his share in a relationship. He believes that this is the only way to make the other person stay in the relationship. Thus, accepting physical, mental, or financial abuse becomes acceptable in the mind of a co-dependent person.

Caretaking

Taking care of an addict, unemployed, or mentally ill person can become the center of a co-dependent person’s life. When she is taking care of another person, she feels valued and needed. Problems rise when the other person does not want or need such help. Oftentimes, the relationship between a co-dependent person and an addict worsens when the partners stops drinking or taking drugs. When they have no one to take care of, a co-dependent person will feel that he has no value.

Get Help

It is now recognized that the symptoms of co-dependency tend to worsen if left untreated. It can be very challenging for a co-dependent person to accept that she has problems. Even after an admission, it may take a while for a co-dependent person to recognize all of her behaviors. Changing co-dependent patterns can be very difficult as well. Luckily, with professional help, co-dependent peoplecan recover and form meaningful and happy relationships.

Join a Co-dependency support group that meets at260 Palermo Ave,Coral Gables every Monday between 7.30 and 9:00 pm.

Does money fail to bring us true happiness like we’ve been told all our lives? What should we spend our money on? What does science claim?

What does Science Say?

If I were to ask you if you thought money could truly buy happiness, I’m quite sure you’d deny it. That’s something we’ve heard over and over again throughout our lives, is it not? Meanwhile,we’re constantly hearing how people living in developing countries are happier than us despite of living in poverty. This is what conventional wisdom has taught us our entire lives.

Then again, when we earn a raise at work or buy something nice for ourselves, it’s hard to deny that we haven’t been made happier as a result of these events. That shows us that money can buy happiness to an extent. Given how split our anecdotal evidence on the topic is, let’s see what science has to say about the topic.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Unfortunately, research doesn’t seem to support the idea that doesn’t bring us happiness. Kahneman and Deaton (2010) from Princeton University investigated the life-satisfaction and happiness of approximately 1,000 Americansand found out that a minimum level of income exists for people to feel satisfied with their lives. These authors said that that where this number lies is entirely dependent on where that person lives. In fact, in areas with a high cost of living, such as Hawaii, the income of a family needed to exceed $120,000 before the participants said that they were satisfied with their lives.

In addition, those who earned significantly less also reported that they experienced more sadness and other negative emotions. Even so, families that earned beyond the minimum number needed to attain happiness weren’t happier than those who earned just enough to meet the minimum line. With this in mind, it can be concluded that an adequate amount of money does buy, if not happiness, at least some kind of life-satisfaction.

Happiest Nations: What do they have in common?

According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Europe is once more the world’s happiest continent in 2015. The order of the happiest nations has not changed much either. Switzerland still tops the charts, followed closely by Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden. The writers of the report,John Helliwell, Lord Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs (2015), say that things like social support, incomes, and life expectancy were among the top reasons that explained why people are happy to live in countries like Switzerland. Many of the highest-scoring countries are also well-known for their excellent education- and healthcare systems.

Without question, the countries at the top of the list are rather well-off. Regardless, the United States,one of the wealthiest countries in the world, can only be found at 15th place. It seems we can safely say that money alone does not bring happiness to an entire nation. What could explain this? Could it be that wealth is divided in a more equal fashion in Scandinavian countries than in the US, for example?

Kahneman and Deaton (2010) would likelystate that there are more people that meet the minimum amount necessary to attain happiness in Scandinavian countries than in the US. On the other hand, all the extra money being held by the chosen few in the United States doesn’t seem to be making them any happier than reasonably well-off families.

At Least Make More Than Your Neighbors!

Firebaugh and Schroeder (2009) disagree withKahneman and Deaton. Their study indicates that the wealthiest of us also tend to be the happiest. They also found that most of us prefer to live in a wealthy neighborhood over a poor one. This makes perfect sense since wealthy neighborhoods typically have better schools, lower crime rates, and other factors that have been shown to contribute to our levels of happiness.

Astonishingly, Firebaugh and Schroeder (2009) also showed that the happiest people among us were those who lived in wealthy neighborhoods within poor regions! This seems to indicate that it isn’t enough for us to simply have decent amounts of money at our disposal; we also want to have more of it than others around us. The authors explained that people need to feel that they’re doing better than others. Still, in feeling this way, people don’t want to interact with poorer, less fortunate people. Instead, they prefer to spend their time with others who earn similar amounts of money as they do.

While these findings seem to reveal a rather ugly side of ourselves, they fail to explain why people in countries with relatively even distributions of wealth continuously score higher than those nations who have greater gaps between the rich and the poor.

Rich People Lose the Ability to Enjoy Small Things

Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides and Mikolajczak (2010) showed that money comes with some seemingly inherent disadvantages. For instance, these authors say that the more money someone has, the less able to enjoy the small experiences and emotions in life they become. The study showed that wealthy people take less time to enjoy a piece of chocolate and describe a beautiful waterfall. They also seem to enjoy these simple pleasures less than poorer individuals.

Although money may bring us more opportunities to experience pleasurable things, it also causes us to become less appreciative of them. On the bright side, if you’re a wealthy woman, it seems you have less to worry about as the study found that women spent more time savoring chocolate than men regardless of their income.

What do Dying People Regret?

Bronnie Ware, an Australian, nurse wrote a book about her experiences working with dying patients titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She claims one of the most common regrets of her patients was spending too much time working and away from their family. Ware claims that every single one of her male patients mentioned this regret. She also says that people frequently wishthat they had kept in touch with friends instead of solely focusing on their family.

It was also common for dying people to feel as though they had lived according to the wants and desires of someone else. This person could be a parent, spouse, or even a boss. Many patients also believed that they had spent their lives trying to avoid arguments and being too meek. It was common for these types of individuals to wish to go back and reveal their true feelings to others.

Miserably, some people felt that they had been too busy during their entire lives to devote time to simply being content. These people failed to ask themselves what the small things that made them happy were. None of the people Ware talked to said they regretted not traveling more or having more money. Things like jewelry and designer clothing meant nothing to those nearing the end of their lives.

So What Can We Buy to Become Happier?

A vast number of studies have shown that buying material things doesn’t bring us lasting happiness. Where should we put our money, if not in material goods? Is there anything we could put our money towards that would secure us greater happiness? Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol (2014) think that they’ve got the answer. These authors suggest that instead of spending money on tangible object, people ought to invest in life experiences, such as a trips to foreign countries.

Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol explain that experiences of this kind are likely to make us feel happy for far longer than material things since they tend to enhance social relations. We also tend to evaluate life experiences, such as attending a foreign language class, without framing them in a comparison with other things. In contrast, buying a new car often causes us to compare what we’ve just invested in with whatever our friends, neighbors, and relatives have. Is what we just purchased the biggest, fastest and shiniest? If not, our new car might seem less valuable to us and cause us to feel less happy about what we have.

Can you think of a time you compared your trip to an art museum with one taken by a colleague of yours? Probably not. And even if you have, did your trip suddenly lose value because your colleague went to a larger museum? Of course not. Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol also explain that experiences like these are significant to us because they form a large part of our identity.

Even so, writing this piece made me wonder if any money necessarily needs to exchange hands to experience happiness. It’s currently nine in the morning. I’m sitting in my garden with a cup of excellent coffee in the shade of a dismal mango tree that barely has the strength to bear fruit. I realize that happiness is here with me and I haven’t spent a cent to earn it. In many ways, happiness and how we go about acquiring it is relative.

 

References

Gilovich, T., Kumar, A, &Jampol, L. (2014) A wonderful life: experiential consumption and the pursuit of happiness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 1 (2015) 152–165.

Daniel Kahneman, and Angus Deaton (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, PNAS, vol. 107 no. 38, 16489–16493, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011492107

Glenn Firebaugh and Matthew B. Schroeder (2009). Does Your Neighbor’s Income Affect Your Happiness?, AJS. 115(3): 805–831.

Helliwell, J., Layard, R., &Sachs, J.(Eds.) (2015) World Happiness Report 2015. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.W., & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away: The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness, Psychological Science 21(6) 759–763.

You’ve trained hard and optimized your diet. Still, you just aren’t seeing the results. Maybe it’s time you turn your attention to your mind instead of your muscles.It’s hardly a surprise to anyone that having a razor sharp focus can help you achieve astounding things, but did you know that scientific studies now show that focusing your mind correctly while working out helps you develop your muscles?What’s interesting is that even if you have the skillset to maintain perfect focus while at work, you might be failing at it at the gym since the two require entirely different kinds of attention and focus.

Where Should I Focus? Let the Sport you are Practicing Decide.

Dr. Vance and his colleagues (2004) noticed that when people performing biceps curls focused their attention on the biceps muscles themselves (internal attentional focus), they exhibited more muscle activity than those who focused on the movement of the bar (external attentional focus). These scientist recommend that you should focus on the muscles your training while doing the actual lifting. Interestingly, the results seems to be almost opposite for endurance sports like running. Dr. Schücker and her colleagues (2013) showed that an external focus of attention leads to improved running economy when compared to an internal focus. What this means is that if a runners concentrates on internal factors, like breathing, their muscles will consume more oxygen than if they were focusing on some external thing, like the music they’re listening to. The results were even more pronounced during high intensity training.In another study, the same authors concluded that concentrating on automatic internal functions,likebreathing, is even worse than concentrating on how your muscles feel (2014). These studies show us that the type of sports you’re practicing should determine the things you center your mind around.

Training and Competing Requires Different Kind of Focus

Above, we discussed internal versus external attentional focus during exercise. This is not the only way that we can concentrate. For example, we can also focus on the act of exercising or trying to use dissociation strategies, such as music, to try to ignore the pain and weariness we’re experiencing while we exercise. Scientists studying this kind of focus often say that it would be too simplistic to say that we should dedicate our brains to every little act we perform. On some occasions, it’s actually better for us to get our attentions away from the things we’re doing. For example, Drs. Neumann and Heng from the Griffith University in Australia (2011) study the effect of focus strategies on muscle activities and heart rate during weight training. Based on their findings, they conclude that if the focus of your weight training is to build strength and muscle mass, you should use some form of distraction. Ignoring our pain and muscle fatigue leads to greater muscle growth. On the other hand, if your goal is to lift weights competitively, you should focus on the movements you’re performing as this refines the process. We can take this a step further and say that while you’re learning a new exercise, your focus should be on the muscles since you haven’t yet mastered the movements of the exercise. In the same vein, just like Dr. Vance and his colleagues (2004) demonstrated, focusing on your muscles while you’re beginning the exercise can be beneficial. However, when you begin to feel the burn, let your mind drift and fall into autopilot. You might be able to add a few more reps this way and it’s those last ones that truly count.

But how do I Focus?

So now you have learned where to focus your mind, but you still find your attention slipping while you’re exercising. One of the best ways to learn to focus is by practicing meditation. In addition to giving you greater focus, meditation also helps yourelax, and de-stress. The best news is that you don’t need any expensive tools or classes to practice meditation. All you need is a quiet, peaceful environment and at least ten minutes. You should find one special place in your home that you designate for meditation. Over time, simply seeing this place will make you more relaxed. Some people chose to look at a candle or some other point of interest while they mediate. Others prefer to keep their eyes closed. You don’t need to sit in some special yoga position. Just make sure that you feel relaxed. Do not lay down since this could make you feel sleepy. There are many ways to meditate but one easy way to begin is by focusing on your breathing. Whenever you mind wonders somewhere else, gently bring it back to your breathing. This process doesn’t happen over-night, but meditation will teach you how to focus despite your surroundings with some practice. Once you’ve mastered centering yourself on your breathing, transitioning to you muscles will come naturally to you. Below, I’ve listed some sources that you can use to learn the basics of mediation.

You don’t Always Have to Hit the Gym to Train!

Many athletes use imagery to rehearse the physical skillsthat they need in their sports. Studies have shown that imagining the ideal performance in your head before attempting it can make it easier for you to learn motor skills, reduce your anxiety during competitions, and improve your motivation. I’ve used this method to go over my posing routine.So how do you use this tool effectively? Research tells us that it does not make much of a difference if you prefer to watch yourself from the outside performing an activity or if you see yourself from first-person point of view. The important thing is to make the image as vivid as possible. Use all your senses. Imagine what you hear and see. Feel your heart beating faster. Taste your sweat. Make the whole affair as realistic as possible. This isn’t easy, but keep on practicing and you’ll start to improve upon it. Remember that your task is to imagine an ideal performance for your skill level. Don’t picture a professional completing the routine unless you’re actually at that skill level. The idea is to replicate what you envision for yourself. Just like any other skill in real life, using your mental skills takes practice. Improvements should come gradually to you.

What if you make mistakes during your mental imagery sessions? This is typically a sign of poor self-esteem. You have not gathered confidence yet. If you see yourself making a mistake, stop the image and start again. This time, focus oncarrying out movements correctly. Remember, that you can always slow down and speed up your mental images and see yourself from different angles. Think of yourself as the director of the movie playing within your head.

 

References

Crescentini C, &Capurso V. (2015). Mindfulness meditation and explicit and implicit indicators of personality and self-concept changes. Front Psychol. 29;6:44. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00044.

McAvinue, L. P., & Robertson, I. H. (2008). Measuring motor imagery ability: a review. EuropeanJournal of Cognitive Psychology, 20, 232–251.

Schücker, L., Anheier, W., Hagemann, N., Strauss, B., &Völker, K. (2013). On the optimal focus of attention for efficient running at high intensity. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 2(3):207. DOI: 10.1037/a0031959

Schücker, L., Knopf, C., Strauss, B., &Hagemann, N. (2014). An Internal Focus of Attention Is Not Always as Bad as Its Reputation: How Specific Aspects of Internally Focused Attention Do Not Hinder Running Efficiency. Journal of sport & exercise psychology. 06/2014; 36(3):233-243. DOI: 10.1123/jsep.2013-0200

Vance, J., Wulf, G., Tollner, T., McNevin, N., & Mercer, J. (2004). EMG activity as a function of the performer’s focus of attention. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36, 450–459.