Tag Archives: build self confidence

Adversity’s Silver Lining

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A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

Mark D. Seery of the University at Buffalo published a paper on the psychological effects of adversity vs resilience. He concludes that a little adversity is actually good for you. But, how much is “too much” adversity depends on each person’s resilience. Many studies have shown that traumatic events can cause long-lasting psychological damage.

The common wisdom is “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – which is not supported by scientific evidence. Quite the contrary, most evidence points to the opposite – that which doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, at least psychologically.

However, Seery contends that a little trauma actually strengthens your resilience – a bit like exercise traumatizes yet strengthens muscles. Just like in the case of strengthening muscles by traumatizing them (to build muscle, one must damage muscle cells a little), a few traumatizing events in one’s lifetime can strengthen their resilience after future traumas.

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Smile for Health

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When I smile approvingly at myself in the mirror, I signal to my body a social approval closer to me than any other society.

When I smile approvingly at myself in the mirror, I signal to my body a social approval closer to me than any other society.

A study by Carolien Martijn and Marlies Vanderlinden from Maastricht University investigated whether body satisfaction can increase when women learn to associate their appearance with social approval. “The positive effect we witnessed for women with a high level of body concern supports the idea that body satisfaction may be linked to the idea of social approval. Simply showing these women photographs of themselves followed by a smiling face – signalling social approval – increased their body satisfaction and self esteem significantly,” Carolien Martijn said.

It occurs to me that the first “society” we face every day is our own – me, myself, and I. When I smile at myself in the mirror, I signal to my body a social approval closer to me than any other society.

Here’s a quick and easy imagery you can do to improve your self-esteem and perhaps your physical health.

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Gesturing May Improve Learning

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Hand GesturesWant to solve a particularly vexing problem? Try using your hands when formulating solutions.

3rd and 4th grade children told to move their hands when explaining how they’d solve a problem were four times as likely as kids given no instructions to manually express correct new ways to solve problems. Even though they didn’t, in the end, give the right answer, their gestures revealed an implicit knowledge of mathematical ideas. For example, to indicate the need for the sides to be equal, children might sweep the palm first under a problem’s left side and then under its right side. Although those children weren’t ready to turn that implicit knowledge into action (at that point they solved problems incorrectly), a second study showed that gesturing set them up to benefit from subsequent instruction.

In that study, the researchers assessed how gesture vs. no-gesture students performed after subsequent instruction in how to solve the math problems. At post-test, children who’d been told to gesture about math problems and then had a lesson solved 1.5 times more problems correctly as did the children who’d been told not to gesture – a significant advantage.

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Raising Self-Esteem

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High self-esteem is a critical factor that can positively affect many areas of your life. On the other hand, if you have low self-esteem, it will act as a constant challenge – a hurdle you have to jump over each time you want to try something new – a constant force dragging you down.

While self-esteem can be difficult to change, it’s not impossible. Here are a few time-tested tips for improving your self-esteem, and feeling better and more positive about yourself on a daily basis.

* Make a list of things you like about yourself – and refer back to it often. This list should include your successes and achievements, and your positive traits and qualities. The more you practice liking and accepting yourself, the more things you’ll be able to add to the list.

* Surround yourself with people who are loving and accepting. Don’t let yourself get dragged down by the negative attitudes of others. Your true friends will like you the way you are.

* Take care of yourself. Give yourself the care and attention you deserve, whether that means breaking a few bad habits, paying more attention to your physical health and appearance, or taking a break with some relaxing time alone.

* Do what you love. Find a way that you can shine, using your strengths and talents to the best of your abilities. Pursuing activities that you’re good at is one of the best ways to build self-confidence!

High self-esteem is a powerful motivator and an important predictor of future success. You can get started improving your self-esteem today.

Core Inner Strength, a hypnosis program developed by Dr. Shirley McNeal, is a fun and easy way to improve your self-esteem. In just four hypnotic sessions, you will discover the life-changing secrets behind experiencing comfort and safety in yourself, raising your self-esteem and self-confidence, and finding your inner strength.

Click here to learn more about Dr. McNeal’s program.

© 2007 The Hypnosis Network. All rights reserved.

Nadine’s Regrets

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nadine_stair.jpgMy thanks to John Phillips for this little jewel.

“If I had my life to live over again, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I’d limber up. I’d be sillier than I’ve been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would, perhaps, have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones. You see, I’m one of those people who was sensible and sane, hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments. If I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else- just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I could do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances, I would ride more merry-go-rounds, I would pick daisies.” –Nadine Stair at age 89

Success Shortcut

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While it's important to be very precise about your goals, it's far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

Maybe you’ve read piles and piles of books and taken course upon course on how to set and achieve goals. While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

The WHY is your motivation. Motivation is the gas to drive you to your goal. Without motivation, there is insufficient fuel to achieve. EVERYTHING you have ever achieved, you achieved for a REASON – a WHY.

You see, objects do not motivate – emotion about an object can. A new car may seem like a great goal, but if you have no place to go, nobody to see, and nothing to do IN the car, you may not have sufficient motivation to achieve it.

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Get an Attitude

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Look into the mirror and say, "Oh, wow! You are so amazing!"

Look into the mirror and say, “Oh, wow! You are so amazing!”

Everybody deserves to have at least one person in their life who is totally, completely, wonderfully in love with them. Someone who realizes how magnificently awesome they are…. Someone who understands their unique beauty and one-of-a-kind personality….Yes, someone whose heart thrills at the sight of them and whose eyes light up and say “OH. WOW! YOU ARE SO AMAZING!”

I call it, understandably, the “OH WOW attitude.” Babies need to have this attitude expressed to them many, many times in order for them to pick up the message that they are wonderful, worthwhile human beings. With repetition, they will begin to make it a part of themselves.

How does this apply to me as an adult?

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Personal Power

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How the actor behaved influenced the behavior of the other participants in the game.

How the actor behaved influenced the behavior of the other participants in the game.

A rather interesting experiment was conducted some years ago in which an actor played the part of a contestant in a betting game with unwitting participants. Participants knew they were involved with an experiment but had no idea what the experiment was.

Each participant was introduced to the actor as though the actor was another participant. The participant and actor were to compete in a betting card game in which all winnings would be given to the winner.

Bets would be placed up to a maximum level for each “hand” played – the game was played one card at a time – face down – the larger card wins each hand. Neither participant could see the other’s card until after all bets were made.

The interesting part was in how each participant reacted to the actor.

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Learn from Success

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We learn from success better than we do from failure.

We learn from success better than we do from failure.

It comes as no surprise to me that a MIT study has concluded that we learn from success better than we do from failure.

“We have shown that brain cells keep track of whether recent behaviors were successful or not,” Earl K. Miller, Professor of Neuroscience at MIT’s Institute for Learning and Memory said. Furthermore, when a behavior was successful, cells became more finely tuned to what the animal was learning. After a failure, there was little or no change in the brain – nor was there any improvement in behavior. (Neuron, July 30, 2009)

If you want to learn something, consider chunking down your “lessons” into steps in which you succeed more easily – increasing the difficulty of success only slightly as you go along.

Nothing builds success like more success!

Consider your goals – certainly you’ll feel accomplished if you succeed. But what if you fail? What then? Do you have an “intermediate” goal you’ll achieve if you fall short of your “big” goal? In this case, you’ll have succeeded – and learned from the experience more than if you had simply failed.

Or, what if you do “fail” – what then? What have you succeeded at in the process of “failing”? What positive outcome did you achieve? Maybe you made a mess of one thing but scored at another in the process. What is it you did achieve? You may need to look hard – and in the finding, maybe you’ll discover the learning, too.

Study authors include Earl K. Miller, the MIT Picower Professor of Neuroscience, former MIT graduate student Mark H. Histed, now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, and former postdoctoral fellow Anitha Pasupathy, now an assistant professor at the University of Washington. This work is supported by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Tourette’s Syndrome Association.

Social and Monetary Rewards the Same?

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To make your body healthier, smile at it now and then.

Norihiro Sadato of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), Aichi, Japan, and colleagues found that making money and making a reputation engage much of the same reward circuitry in the brain – a finding that they say yields insight into what drives complex social behaviors.

“By directly contrasting the brain activities of the same subjects in relation to the delivery of social and monetary rewards, our results clearly show that social approval shares the same neural basis as monetary rewards, thus providing strong support for the idea of a ‘common neural currency’ of reward,” concluded the researchers.

They wrote that their findings “indicate that the social reward of a good reputation should be incorporated into the neural model of human decision making in a similar manner to monetary rewards.” Thus, they wrote, experiments on decision making that use money-related games need to take into account that the subjects are exchanging more than money; they are also dealing in approval and reputation. Continue reading →