Psychological ‘resilience’ refers to the differences between people in how they respond to and cope with difficult or stressful experiences. People who are highly resilient would be less affected, recover more quickly, and/or might actually find such events to be growth experiences. For people low in resilience, the opposite would be true.
Now here’s [...]
Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category
Can we develop psychological resilience through physical activity?
Monday, February 22nd, 2010Positive affirmations don’t work!
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010…all of the time. Forgive the title, I’m experimenting with controversial post titles. More on that another day.
Today the topic is self-help again, and if you’ve read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I take a skeptical attitude towards the self-help industry. A quick inspection of the self-help section of a bookstore [...]
Why 88% of New Years’ resolutions fail
Thursday, December 31st, 2009Jonah Lehrer wrote an excellent article for the Wall Street Journal on why New Year’s resolutions fail.
Quick overview of reasons:
The more overloaded our brain is with ’stuff’ (including resolutions we need to keep track of), the weaker its willpower is. We need to spread our resolutions across the year.
Just like a muscle, our will-power [...]
How to manage your weaknesses
Saturday, December 26th, 2009There’s a big focus on weaknesses in the world these days. It seems like people want to balance themselves out by developing their weaknesses – to become rounded. Previously, I’ve argued that it’s best not to be rounded, that we’re better off focusing on our strengths. But if we do this, we [...]
Mental time travel for happiness
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009A recent experiment has just discovered that time travel can make you happy. Great Scott! I’m not talking about actual time travel, of course, but mental time travel; using your brain to do something that, at the moment, only us humans can do – simulate and predict future events.
Mental Time Travel (MTT) can be [...]
Six Success-Enhancing Behaviours that Good Moods Bring You
Thursday, July 30th, 2009Just like Santa Clause, happiness brings gifts with it too – and you don’t have to be good all year to get them! In the last three articles, I’ve discussed a paper arguing that happiness leads to success, through a better career, better relationships and better health. This works in part through behaviour – positive [...]
Where to find good information online
Friday, May 29th, 2009Are you sick of looking for information on a topic, but only finding the standard “Four Secrets Of….”, or “The Ten Best Ways To….” articles? You know what I mean, they usually have about 3 sentences for each point, no depth, no meaningful commentary, just a few of the author’s unsubstantiated opinions puked onto a [...]
