New Year's Resolutions, An Interesting Article

The latest Saga Magazine has hit on some great points and is worth reading on Page 85, 86 & 87. 

A little presumptuously, I will add my own pennyworth.

Merely making a New Year’s Resolution, just for the sake of it, is not enough. Extraordinarly perhaps, a good number of people seem to make an annual resolution just to make some resolutions. The way we work in mind body and spirit cannot cope with the vagueness of that! And indulging in such a practice is not good for the soul anyhow. 

Whatever our resolution is, for it to work effectively and be achieved we need to really, really want that. A Resolution constituting a mere wish is not enough!

And making too many resolutions at once doesn’t work either, certainly until we get skilled at it.

We need to see one resolution in our minds – done, executed, completed – in vivid and emotional form. It should be like a picture we have willingly emblazoned on our psyche, just as one of the contributors to the article describes. 

We need to talk ourselves up and speak of our mission in positive and not negative or even doubtful terms – again as the article recommends.

And I endorse the suggested need to set an end date, and breaking the intended achievement down into bite-size chunks,  

But I would say, however, one odd but vital feature missed too often is this. It’s a question we should ask to test ourselves at the very start!

 “While on our own with our vivid visualisation of our resolution realised, do we feel more comfortable and happy in every respect with that picture; or in truth and on balance, do we actually still feel more comfortable with where we are at this moment?”

This is the significant point so often missed!

Unless our imagined image of our resolution achieved means enough to us – and certainly much more to us than where we are in life right now, then the vital engine of motivation is not fired within us to achieve it. Or if it is, then that engine, as mechanics say, ‘misses’ badly until it soon falters and dies.

My best advice is only make a resolution if you really mean it, want it, see it and feel it as though it was done, ­AND if you know life for you would be so much better with your success. That desire is what will drive you to achieve it. It should be a mission, no less.

Making a defective resolution bound to fail is bad for one’s self-worth and self-esteem anyway. It leaves the feeling of failure. Worse it convinces one there is no way to obtain change and improve when, done properly, there is. The process does work!

Happy New Year and great success with your well-made resolutions!

Gerry Neale

www.squaringcircles.co.uk
http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com

Squaring Circles Author Gerry Neale Interview

Read the interview with Gerry Neale about his Self-Discovery Novel called "Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light". ISBN 9780956868824 http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk/interview.htm

Anger Management Some Good Advice And Tips

This illuminating and helpful article on anger management has been lurking on the Health pages of the great BBC Website. Try this link straight to the piece. http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/mental_health/coping_angermanagement.shtml

Best wishes
Gerry Neale

Hey! Click On This Link For Some Simple Psychology On Life

This is a marvellously simple take on simple philosophy¬

http://www.oakville.com/articles/5-lessons-my-father-taught-me/

Hope you enjoy it!

Gerry Neale

Author of a self-discovery novel called "Squaring Circles."

Self-Confidence Is A Very Fickle Trait

Self-Confidence can seem to thrive within us one moment and be gone the next. It can attach itself happily to one or even a few of our activities and bolster the way we feel about ourselves. Yet it can literally vanish regarding the rest, leaving us with a low or non-existent sense of self-worth or self-esteem in those areas of our life. Then all too easily, we can allow this negativity to grow in us like an infection. We can let this negativity get to us in the way we most often think about ourselves, and worse, in the way we talk to ourselves. This in turn merely reinforces a vicious circle of thought in our mind. It raises fundamental doubts about our whole being and validity. This causes overall self-confidence to ebb away quickly and completely. So how can we best confront this?

First, I believe there are some helpful principles well to keep in mind.

It is very easy to generalise, but I am certain as much of our problem relating to creating and sustaining self-confidence lies in our past as it does in our present. We can have had a childhood where much or little was done to build our self-confidence. Our schooling can have helped or hindered across the board at the hand of good or bad teachers. We can have fed our opinion of ourselves on either these positive or negative messages.

Lack of self-confidence is a very common affliction. And, it can have had an even deeper and more surprising origin. Would you believe, we can have infected ourselves! Why? And how? There are any number of reasons, but let me give one. We can have been left alone a lot as a child. Or as siblings we can have been left alone together. Rightly or wrongly, we could have been hurt by this. If so, we could have tried to position this hurt in our mind - and heart. We will have done this so that we could somehow better explain it to ourselves and live with the hurt better. How? Here comes the hammer blow! We told ourselves we were not good enough to love, and were not worth the attention.

Do all children – even siblings, react in the same way? Seemingly not. The degree of reaction may vary widely. And of course it can be countered by positive messages coming from parents or teachers when we were with them.

However, once this notion of not being worth love or attention
is formed, its hidden effect through our life can be insidious. When any marginally related example of it occurs later in life, the emotional  reminder of this sub-conscious notion can kick in with a vengeance, almost as though to say, “There you are! Told you that you are no good!”

Worse, give the notion disproportionate room in one’s mind and it can then actually seem to go on relentlessly looking for examples to prove its point! Each time it finds it, it crushes your sense of self-esteem and self-confidence!

So, all the more reason is there in my view, to revisit one’s childhood. Don’t do it to apportion blame but to find cause. Find it and strange to tell, this can provide a great source of peace and reconciliation within oneself. It can at least identify the way one did think and pattern and flag up that one should not now keep doing it.

So what about our lack of confidence we feel today, at this moment?

This needs some simple personal re-assessment and then some simple and honest admissions.

Ask the question, “Given the age and the stage of my life I am at, what have I done and do I do well, despite my negative feelings about myself?”

I am sorry, but I refuse to accept that you are unable to think of anything! Even if you are not masterminding a business, then running a home well, cooking to ensure a balanced diet are among a whole raft of vital skills to ensure an effective and enjoyable life. There will be hobbies and creative skills too, whether it be flower arranging, garden management, painting or drawing, or serious amateur fishing.

Now I can hear the comment, “Yes but I can do those already so that I don’t count those!”
Exactly so! We take existing skills for granted merely because we can do them. Yet most of us ignore one feature: there are key ingredients common to them all as achievements!

Let me explain.

Each of all these skills I have mentioned appear at first sight to be unique in every respect. They are not! Not by a long chalk! They are unique only to about 20% at most of what we do in each case. Whether one is intent on creating a new flower bed or painting a picture, one brings a whole raft of common skills to each one. Powers of visualisation, motivation, planning, organisation, perspective, colour, commitment and persistence - are all vital ingredients every time. Only then comes the awareness and grasp of the actual skills unique to the particular activity. And an infinite amount of help material is available on each!

Conduct that simple but necessary analysis of the common ingredients you have already adopted and see the result in terms of self-confidence. Now facing the new challenge, listen to your self talk! One bit will still be struggling vainly to re-establish the old truth by telling you that you are useless, incapable and wasting your time. But now, I guarantee that there will be a new voice saying this: “Surely with all the other things I now admit I do rather well, haven’t I demonstrated that I am already 80% of the way towards realising any new challenge? And I didn’t let myself stand in my own way to achieve what I have already done, so why stand in my own way now? (Or, if I am honest, with some of them I did stand in my own way initially, but, hey, I can do them well now!)
Always, praise, encourage and be a positive influence to others in the acquisition of additional skills.

Oddly, by so doing, sub-consciously we actually encourage and influence ourselves.

Don’t boast, but never, never, never talk yourself down – to yourself or others! Don’t spend much time with people who talk themselves down – and never agree with them when they do! 

I wish you success. You are worthy of it.

Gerry Neale
Book website www.squaringcircles.co.uk
Book Blog   http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com
Buy Book www.amazon.co.uk
Book Publishers www.pearlpress.co.uk

How to Increase Intelligence Emotionally As Well As Intellectually

What about the claim from Daniel Goleman, the world guru on Emotional Intelligence that it is worth only one-fifth of IQ? I have long been an admirer of his work since reading "Emotional Intelligence" just after it was published in the mid 1990's, having previously read Howard Gardner's work (The Unschooled Mind & Multiple Intelligences). But my continuing fascination for the subject stems from the paradox of knowing intellectually on the one hand, as Daniel Goleman describes, that EQ in reality has only 20% of the effect compared with IQ. Yet on the other hand, it is experiencing the frequent feeling that it has ten times the power of IQ and that can delude us into thinking we should give it far more time.

However it has always seemed to me that the 20% of real value of EQ can still be priceless, provided one has been able to manage one's feelings effectively. Nevertheless this is where the seeds of fascination can soon become obsessive zeal to make EQ seem disproportionately more important. When I wonder what has driven this range and intensity of interest in EQ, rightly or wrongly, I have assumed that an ever increasing number of us want to feel able to "come out" over emotions. The burgeoning Emotional intelligence Group on Linked In has to be evidence of that. Literally thousands have joined it.

Yet it does not mean that we have learned how best to channel and direct our feelings. In fact many of us not only find that impossible, we find the emotional triggers it throws up from our past extraordinarily painful.

I wonder too whether, with much of youth behavioural issues stemming from difficult parental issues and poor environments, the inability of some young people to manage frustration, anger and emotional pain has nevertheless to be treated as if it is more important than 20% of IQ.

But my great plea to anyone reading this article, would be to show more of what you feel. Our emotional response is an amazingly powerful communicator. It is also an accurate reflection of the passion and commitment we have and in my view should never be a cause of shame or embarrassment. Books abound on how we can feel and better manage our emotions and I would urge taking every opportunity to learn how better to incorporate this feature of ourselves in our daily lives.

It will do much for our apparent intelligence and lead to a much happier life.

Gerry Neale is the Author of a novel called Squaring Circles which focusses on emotional self-discovery in an intriguing story.www.squaringcircles.co.uk and blog: http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com:

Psychology Simplified on How Showing Embarrassment Can Pay!

It seems we are likely to trust someone who blushes with embarrassment. We can attribute a generous streak to them too.

A study by the University of California suggests that the demonstration of embarrassment is a bonding feature among humans. It focused on the personality traits most likely to be displayed by easily embarrassed people.

For those wanting to check it out then Google the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Matthew Feinberg a co-author of the study said that the data “suggests embarrassment is a good thing and not something one should fight”.

Gerry Neale
Author of novel:"Squaring Circles".
www.amazon.co.uk
www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Psychology Simplified on Happiness Achieved by Good Memories

Good memories stem first, of course, from our use of our natural powers of visualisation, you might say associated at the same time with the emotional feelings they evoke and other senses we trigger. But isn’t this fantasising? Isn’t this indulging in delusion of the worst kind? Isn’t this a flagrant misuse of our imagination?  I would say, ‘No! No! and ten times No!’ Also I would maintain that it is a vital activity for people of a certain age, no longer able to travel freely and now living alone having lost a partner. How can this mental activity help us achieve happiness?

Our powers of imagination are extraordinary in replicating any real event in our mind. Our natural talent to recall it all visually is no less than our power to remember the sounds of that memory, the texture, and even the scents associated with it.

If, for example, a widow or widower having had a very happy relationship with a partner who he or she has now lost, can draw laughter and happiness from recalling in the mind, or in an album or on film those happy times, there is burgeoning scientific evidence to show that our minds body and spirit will respond just as if we were experiencing the real thing.

Take the issue of fitness which for various reasons tails off as one grows older, taking with it much needed muscle tone. Research has shown that merely by watching replays of physical activities one has been involved in previously can cause the muscle tone to improve! Our minds are greatly underestimated as remarkable conditioning and rehabilitating tools. 

There is however one serious downside to this which warrants a great caution. Recalling sad memories, trawling over them morbidly, re- playing them, and reinforcing them have exactly the same degrading effect on our health and happiness as did the original sad events. That should be avoided like the plague.

Personally I believe none of this will surprise people. What is surprising to some, however, is the extent of reticence about actually doing anything about it when the benefits of good memories can be profound. By indulging happily in this, without embarrassment or self-consciousness, all the beneficial chemical and hormonal flows are triggered, just as they were when the original events took place.

So how can one better guarantee recreating and sustaining the beneficial aspects of good memories?

I would advocate that one looks for a moral in in one’s own happy recollections, finds a relevant story, and looks for similar experiences posted on the internet. With that information, one shares it with others, and writes about it and finds opportunities to talk about it. When doing so, one replicates the same passion and happy feelings one felt originally. Exhorting others can be just as effective.

Yes, of course, happiness can be and should be achieved from new events and experiences enjoyed today. But we can still all achieve it in good measure by reliving good memories in a whole series of forms and by encouraging others to do the same.

Gerry Neale

Author of Squaring Circles ISBN 9780956868824 Published in Paperback

Available from www.amazon.co.uk or via www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Psychology Simplified on Eating Here To Eat Less

Ever conjured with the thought of "mindless eating" and where it is most likely to occur? The Website www.realage.com may be worth a visit for those trying to lose weight. It refers to nutritionists studies which point to food being more liable to be fattening when we eat on the sofa watching television rather than at the table in the Kitchen or Dining Room. Other mind games we can gain from are described such as the plate sizes we chose.

Here is the linkhttp://www.realage.com/health-tips/eat-in-kitchen-to-eat-less. It is a free site with many useful health tips.

Gerry Neale

Get Up Early And Not Only Get Much Done But Feel Better

Early Risers feel happier, are slimmer and healthier than those who lie in, which leaves the stay-in-beds feeling depressed, stressed and statistically more likely to become overweight. Check out this link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8763618/Early-risers-get-ahead-of-the-game.html and get hold of the detail of Dr Joerg Huber's research. conducted by Roehampton University UK  

Gerry Neale is in Ezine Top Five Authors on Psychology

Sir Gerry Neale, the author of the novel "Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light" is now ranked in the Top Five Authors of articles on Psychology on Ezine Articles, the largest internet article directory..

For his Ezine Profile and Article List. Click here. It is possible to register there for free mailing of his subsequent articles. He has written over sixty articles on a range of subjects. Copies of these articles can be downloaded, provided the resource box at the end containing his name and website/blog details accompanies the download and any subsequent posting.

The website for the book is www.squaringcircles.co.uk. The paperback can be ordered there or on Amazon.co.uk

His watercolour and mixed media art prints can be viewed at www.sirgerrynealeartprints.com

Psychology Simplified and Caffeine Intake

A morning coffee loaded with Caffeine may not work as well as the mind!

Who says?  

Researchers at the University of East London fooled, some might say lied, to a proportion of the subjects of their research. They told them the coffee they handed contained caffeine when it did not!

And what happened? You have probably guessed it. There was a measurable improvement in performance and mood of those deceived!

For the caffeine supporters, there was worse to come. In a series of tests devised to assess reaction times, performance and mood, some of the deceived even performed better than those given caffeine!

The researchers included 88 people in their project, ranging in age from 18 to 47. All these volunteers confessed that they drank at least two cups of coffee a day.

It has been fully reported in the magazine Appetite.

However, now with the results, comes the suggestion that maybe the urge for caffeinated morning coffee merely appears to supply the added zest. Instead, psychologically the energy ‘shot’ may come from the mere anticipation of caffeine to buoy up the coffee drinker and not the caffeine itself!

There have been many other startling medical tests where placebos have been found to have as inexplicable and marked beneficial effect on patients, than was enjoyed by those given the actual designed tablets themselves. One suspects that medical researchers will before long discover a facility in the brain which could think ourselves well.

The rather depressing downside to that prospect is the possibility that it will prove too that we can definitely think ourselves ill!

Gerry Neale

Psychology Simplified on Achieving Happiness & Health By Laughter

Happiness is achieved by treating Life as good for a laugh. More than that, research says it is actually good for our health. So say American scientists based at the University of Maryland. Laughter not only achieves a lift in our mood, it has an amazing impact on our blood pressure. How? And Why?

These researchers monitored people who volunteered to watch edited highlights alternatively of a war film or a comedy film.

Here’s what they discovered! The war film clips caused the blood vessels of those watching to react just as they do when we have mental stress in our lives. Sustained by watching such films endlessly and it follows that it will have an adverse effect on the heart, leading to heart disease and strokes.

Conversely, the blood vessels of those watching highlights of a comedy expanded, improving circulation and reducing blood pressure.

Laughter, they conclude , is medically great for your heart. They even claim that it is as powerful as aerobic exercise and statins.

Yet what should we take from this? Laughter makes you heathier and happier. Clearly yes! But does that finding surprise you, really? In truth, don’t we all feel so much better after a good laugh? Self-evidently Yes!

So what is the simple lesson to achieving a greater happiness level and better health?

It is simply this: knowing this truth on its own is not enough. We do actually have to provide ourselves with the opportunity to laugh. We do need to listen to or watch someone who will help us do that. And for some of us that is difficult. It is as though we have to accept it is OK for us to laugh.

We do not need permission, for Goodness Sake! We can do it without breaking laws!

Playing dvds or media devices in our car, on trains and planes is common place yet we do that mostly for musical enjoyment. That’s better than nothing, but not the same!

Lightening up our lives, being able to see the funny side of things, better still, being able to laugh at ourselves – they are all vital if we are going to realise the full benefits of laughter. So please for your sake, and for those in your family or business, make provision in your day and your week to laugh. To achieve all or any of the benefits, please deem it important enough and of significance..

So let me end this sincere but serious exhortation and allow you to go and book, buy, rent some digital, audio or video material to make you laugh. Then resolve to play a download or DVD of a comedian or funny film. Actually letting oneself laugh is now proven to be worth the commitment.

Best wishes

Gerry Neale

Author of paperback "Squaring Circles - From the Dark Into The Light"

Psychology Simplified On the Four Steps To Achieving A Behavioural Skill

The following words or analysis in terms of the mechanics of behavioural patterning are not mine, but the description of the four stages to learning a new skill are, in my view, spot on:

1. Unconsciously Incompetent (don't know what we don't know)
2. Consciously Incompetent (find out what we don't know)
3. Consciously Competent (find out how to do it better or for the first time)
4. Unconsciously Competent (do it automatically as a habit)

But let’s just look at the ways, good and bad, that we can pattern these as behaviours.

Take a beneficial outcome, first. Let’s say we cannot drive a car, but we know a good teacher and we believe we can learn.

Stage One: we cannot drive a car because we have no idea about the rudimentary requirements of driving or what is involved. We are totally unconscious of them and therefore in that sense unconsciously incompetent.

Stage Two: Our teacher tells us what we don’t know and what we will need to be able to do. This makes us feel consciously incompetent, knowing now what we hadn’t been aware of and standing face to face with our incompetence. We can even suffer so much during our first lesson believing there is no chance we will ever learn how to drive!

Stage Three: With a car and our teacher, we can now work consciously at all the elements of steering, reversing, turning, emergency breaking and all other aspects of driving. The whole of this part of the learning process is a conscious struggle to apply the teaching and embed the lessons in our mind on how to drive. We finish each lesson less and less exhausted, as gradually our concentration begins to give way to our actions of driving beginning to become habitual. So we are now becoming consciously competent.

Stage Four: Becoming unconsciously competent is normally achieved in a real sense the more we drive after we have passed our test. If someone foolishly steps out into the road in front of us, our foot flies unconsciously from the accelerator to the brake. We drive the car more and more instinctively, and without being consciously aware of every action  

Now, lets look at a bad example. Let’s modify it to a degree, while still keeping to the four stages. Suppose our teacher is a friend has a shortcoming. Suppose this teacher has never turned a car round in the street. Worse, imagine he or she has never actually reversed a car and therefore cannot teach it! Finally visualize that we have such faith in this friend and teacher nevertheless, we are unaware of the need to question them.

All the other driving competences are embedded, but as and when our need during our driving test arose to turn the car round, we did as we were taught and without thinking more about it! We drove on in the wrong direction waiting to come upon a helpful roundabout so we could use it to first retrace our steps and then carry on in the other direction!

The test itself of course would be failed!

.

Now please consider this a worse emotional case still. Imagine we had pretty competent Life Skill teachers in our parents. And they loved us. They taught us actually or by example how to behave in response to various situations. Just suppose, like our friend the driving instructor and reversing, our parents never argued. So not only did they ever seemingly resolve disputes or issues between them, they never taught us either. Only when the sulk or avoidance technique they used had dimmed, did the remaining normal family life resume.

Is it any wonder that soon we ourselves would have gone through all four stages and adopted a habitual avoidance technique in the face of disputes? Would we see it as unusual or self-evident when it became subsumed into all the other elements of our behaviour? Most likely not.

Could it be a crippling defect in our behaviour in the face of confrontation and dispute? Absolutely!

Often it can only be by revisiting our past that we can bring this to light for ourselves, begin to see it for what it is, work to correct it until we defend our corner when needs must.

Gerry Neale is an artist, mentor and writer. His first novel, Squaring Circles, has recently been published in Paperback and is already available on leading online sites such as Amazon (co.uk). The theme of the novel is how our spirituality, awareness of Nature and our emotions can dictate our cognitive behaviour. There is information on the book’s website at www.squaringcircles.co.uk. Examples of his mixed media watercolours can be viewed onwww.sirgerrynealeartprints.com

Psychology Simplified: Look where is it going!

As awareness grows on how we function psychologically speaking, so will that awareness lead to new methods of accountability and procedures as citizens.

See yesterday’s UK Daily Telegraph (18 08 11) headline “Chat-down follows The Pat-down at US Airports:”.

A potential two minute conversation has been carefully crafted, psychologically speaking, to allow security officers to judge better whether a traveller has suspicious motives for their journey. The many existing checks will not be replaced and this format will be a two month trial.

With honesty, clearly there is nothing to fear; but for evil-doers let us hope there is. Simple psychology can aid our lives enormously as well as make us safer

Gerry Neale

Psychology Simplified On Bringing The Best Or Worst Out In People

Would you accept that it is just as easy to do either! Which you achieve is pretty well entirely down to you! You can control your approach to get the Best or the Worst out of people. Now will come the shouts from readers that this is rubbish because some people are always intent in bringing out the worst in others! True, but aren’t they still proving the point? Aren’t they proving it is easy to do. Just because they decide not to try to bring the best out in people, why should you give up on it!

Take complaining, (which we all have to do from time to time)! This offers a great chance to vindicate our behaviour. Suppose you have an issue with an energy supplier. You ring their call centre angry about the problem. Be honest, is the person taking the call likely to be the first or last person to have been briefed on the cause of your problem. Is he or she likely to be all set to give you the information you need? Answer: No. Is he or she paid to try to help you? Yes!

Now the crucial question – again be honest and fair – do you think he or she vowed privately while on the way to work at the call centre that day, “I am going to screw up as many peoples problems as I can today?” Realistic answer: “No!”

Believe it not, even the people working in these front line complaint roles want to do a good job. They want to achieve a result for you. They can be just as frustrated that they themselves have yet to be given an explanation

So does blasting and bad-mouthing them help or hinder them when resolving your complaint? Of course, tell them you are very angry and desperately inconvenienced – assuming it is true – but don’t be angry with them and watch what happens!

Isn’t the reaction: ‘Oh Dear! Tell me more about it and and let me see if I can sort it out’.

Now you have a small team working on your problem.

If instead you blast them down the phone, surely all you get is a self-protective, defensive, classic job manual response for difficult callers.

Doctors, hospitals, police, airlines, telephone companies, holiday companies and many more, all employ people like you. Like you they too are busy, trying to simplify things. They have children with chicken pox or mumps, a parent ill, financial worries, or may not be feeling too great themselves.

Really! Is any of this, you ask, an issue for you and your complaint? You may say, after all the bother you have had, that there is absolutely no justification for accommodating any of this. Yelling at them is the only way, given the scale of the trouble..

So what would I say to that? OK! You choose! Adopt an approach asking for help and apologising for your aggravated state and watch how the helper’s own sense of justice kicks in. But multiply the problem by verbally assaulting the person in the call centre and who gains?.

This same simple psychology can be used with employees too. All managers work related surely have problems, disappointments and annoying issues. They too can deal with those in the part of the business that caused. There they can bring the worst out of the staff involved. It is so easy but solves nothing either.

Even more true is that some people who have caused us grief can be innocently unaware of the problem they have caused us. When told in civil manner they can be more horrified than we are as the sufferer. Yet when blasted out they can in ignorance deny it and exascerbate the whole affair.

What’s the simple ploy then? With the Psychology Simplified, just adopt a frame of mind to bring the best out in people. You won’t ever achieve 100% success but you will be astonished how it simplifies your life. More to the point still – watch your blood pressure drop! 

Gerry Neale is a mentor, an artist and a writer of many articles on Psychology published on Ezine and copied elsewhere. He is the author of a recently published cognitive novel called “Squaring Circles” ISBN 9780956868824. The book is a paperback available on line and soon to be available in UK book shops. More details are available at www.squaringcircles.co.uk  or via the publishers at www.pearlpress.co.uk

With Our Psychology To Life Simplified, Should We Live Longer?

It seems we may not! But what if we use our psychological powers to alter our habits and eat and drink responsibly, surely we would live longer then? Would you believe again the answer may be no? The disappointing news is that it seems the key to all this lies solely in our genes. But need this be taken as proof? I wonder!

If you are endowed with long life genes, then as like as not it seems, you can smoke more than you should, drink and eat more than you should. And, despite that, you will live as long as another with long life genes who has taken care of themselves physically.

Who says so? The Journal of The American Geriatric Society. They report on a study of some 500 people between 95 and 109 which they compared with 3000 others born in the same period. (One 109 year old had even smoked 40 cigarettes a day for 90 years!)

The researchers deduced we were either born to live longer or we weren’t. Worse, they seem to suggest that if you have not got long-life genes, then not only would you live a shorter life, but you could shorten it still further by over indulging in food and drink, and by taking no exercise!

Now if this is true, why are British people being warned that they will all live longer and instead of having 5000 people of over 100 now, by the middle of this century we will have half a million!

So I ask what is happening? Are we doing more than evolve steadily? Are we possibly mutating to achieve such a stunning change? Or are statistics playing tricks with us?

I recall a British MP in the !980’s with a wicked sense of humour and a great disregard for statistics. He asked two parliamentary questions. He asked first how many one legged men there were in the UK and second, how many one legged women!

It seemed that employment risks and the liability to men of serving in the Armed Forces meant there were more one legged men in the UK than one-legged women. He then extrapolated that as a proportion of the total UK population that there were 0.00999 one legged men, but only 0.00997 one legged women.

He then felt entitled to draw the conclusion - and proposed its acceptance by Parliament, that it proved that on average British Women had more legs than British Men!

So I feel I can still stay loyal to my belief that a good attitude to life leads to a longer and happier one! And I prefer that any temptation by the reader to point out any illogicality is resisted! 

Gerry Neale is the author of a novel with a cognitive behavioural theme called "Squaring Circles"

More information can be found at www.squaringcircles.co.uk

It can be ordered from any address from www.amazon.co.uk

or from the publishers website where you can scroll down to the 'Squaring Circles book cover and click on 'Add to Cart' www.pearlpress.co.uk

Squaring Circles, Psychologically Speaking

 

How does one square a circle at the best of times? Psychology, spirituality, emotions can so easily conspire to make us go round in circles when trying to analyse ourselves, let alone help us break an inhibiting and constraining emotional pattern. When mathematicians have argued from their standpoint on how it might be done and fallen out over it, it can be no surprise that to square a vicious circle of emotional behaviour can challenge a psychologist or counsellor even more. Yet I believe in large measure it can be achieved.

We are each a bearer of our own behavioural patterning, much of it established unwittingly or ignorantly in our childhood and if uncorrected, it is then borne by us into and onwards through our adult lives. Evidence of it, when it resurfaces, can even puzzle or shock the bearer when he or she experiences it.

Any ten things can leave any one of us unmoved, untroubled, undisturbed. Yet an eleventh can trigger in us unaccountable hurt, anger, fear, depression or a multitude of other emotional responses. Try this exercise in a group and in the unlikely event that two participants apparently will experience a similar response to a stimulus, analysis will soon show that the detail of each person’s response is actually fundamentally different.

Questioning any person experiencing the unusual response can often seem to set in train an increasing circle of a stimulus leading to an unaccountably disturbed reaction to it, then to more emotional contemplation of the stimulus, which in turn heightens the disturbed reaction still more, which further accentuates the effect of the stimulus and so on, round and round.

Sometimes if you try to break the circle and ask the person experiencing the response if they can recall any link back to its origin, they can. But very often they cannot. It can reside in the dimmest part of our childhood only to be identified after detailed personal reflection or professional help.  Without that, such emotional patterns remain circular and unresolved, perpetually crippling our self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of self-worth. More weird, is that we are often ignorant of their presence within us.

If we are to try to square any of these emotionally driven circles, to make them less wearing, draining, inhibiting for ourselves – and certainly less disorientating for our partners and friends caught up in this process, then first we really need to want to address the issue or issues. Without that declared choice being made, no amount of self-reflection and will power will change anything permanently.

However with that desire present in us, we will be motivated to find the cause, analyse it, understand it, and then begin to modify its impact on our behaviour.

In conclusion, I have to say three things though.

First, just as the notion of squaring circles emotionally is difficult to grasp, so is it difficult in most cases to achieve more than a substantial moderation of the adverse effect of a behavioural pattern we have borne for years. Yet I am convinced that much can be done, even if it cannot be entirely eradicated.

Second, the more I have studied in terms of the psychology involved, the more of a mistake I believe we make about what each of us actually is as a person. Most will see our obvious and maybe exaggerated response to certain things as evidence of what inherently we are as a person. I now don’t! I have joined the school of thought that says these reactions are not what we really are and they cloud the picture of what we truly are. These apparent personality traits are no more, nor less than patterned responses adopted to try to handle emotional challenges which were beyond us at the time.

And to those who say, ‘Ah! But it runs in his or her family! The father or the mother was the same!’ I would ask this: ’Yes, so the parent may have been, but couldn’t the child have copied the behaviour rather than inherited it?

Third and last, I suspect that until further cognitive research is completed, squaring circles will be as difficult for the psychologists to master as it is for mathematicians to crack completely!

Notes From The Author:

Sir Gerry Neale recommends those needing help with constructive introspection read a book by  Tim Laurence called ‘You Can Change Your Life: A future Different from Your Past With the Hoffman Process.’

Sir Gerry is a mentor, an artist and an author of a cognitive based novel called “Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light.’ More information can be obtained from www.squaringcircles.co.uk or by scrolling down the publishers page at www.pearlpress.co.uk to find the book cover.

Psychology Simplified With Ten Tips On Acquiring New Skills.

Why do some people succeed at this and some not? What is the trick which makes some people good at learning pretty well anything and everything? Particularly when we find we can try and fail so easily! Isn’t that an annoying feature of Life for the rest of us? Aren’t there some tricks or rules which can help solve this human predicament? Would you believe it if I told you that I think there are?!

Perhaps I should make a confession first. For love nor money, once I couldn’t have drawn or painted you a decent picture. Now I can. Most definitely I couldn’t do respectable portraits. Now I can.

I couldn’t possibly have written a book and got it published. Annoyingly – purely in the context of this article – I have proved myself wrong again! My first novel was published this summer in my 71^st year!

I can’t read music or play any instrument, l certainly couldn’t write a song, for Goodness Sake. Yet now I have written lyrics to existing music and had vocalists record them.

Do I tell you this to annoy you? Definitely not! I do so for three reasons; partly because I have mentored people to achieve what they believed they could not accomplish as a challenge. Partly because I told myself some while ago that if I was teaching and vindicating this approach, then perhaps I should prove it would work for me also.

The third reason was the challenge to try to establish why some people succeeded and some didn’t. In other words, learn the way myself.

I have concluded there are at least ten key tips to acquiring a new skill. Given the constraints of time and space in an article like this, let me headline the tricks involved. I believe them to apply no matter what skill you want to acquire.

Tip 1: Ask yourself this simple question: Do I really, really want to have the skill I have in mind? Because one thing is for sure, if you don’t really, then accept you will never be much good at it and you might as well quit before you start.

Tip 2: Is never forget how much you want to have the skill, because that enthusiasm and commitment will drive you through the set backs – and there will be some!

Tip 3: You need to develop the love of learning new tricks, rather than just relying on the ones you have. So! Discard the “I can’t” mentality and adopt the mantra, “I Can. It’s Just Right Now I Do Not Know How, But I will!”

Tip 4: Visualise yourself vividly as having the new skill already, feeling great about that and in no way surprised you have accomplished it.

Tip 5: Remind yourself that you already do some things well. You do them seemingly naturally and don’t even have to think about them! I have in mind such basic functions as, walking, running, jumping, riding a bicycle, talking, and singing, driving . Never forget you did not get any of them right first time!

Tip 6: Is to keep in mind any skill you have previously acquired and tick off the Tricks you applied regarding them to evidence for you how it works!

Tip 7: Remember this: most new skills improve the longer you do them. Enjoy the journey as you improve and keep a record of how far you have come since you started. You will only ever be the best at it you can!

Tip 8: Be Patient with yourself. Drop the attitude if you have it of “God Give Me Patience, But Give It To Me Now!” Certainly don’t give yourself a hard time.

Tip 9: Which you may find the most disappointing! Accept that if the skill is worth having, there is no easy way or short cut. Get good instructional dvds and  books, attend a good tutorials (always taking the first 8 tricks with you in your mind) Develop a thirst for hints and tips. And most of all, be persistent and never stop practising!

Tip 10: Always – and only – listen to that part of you that wants to do it and believes you can, and never to that part which says you can’t.

I have no doubt that the very first person likely to stand in the way of accomplishment is oneself.

I wish you well in every thing you take on. I firmly believe that each and every one of us has the capacity to excel at things we really want to do. 

Gerry Neale is the Author of new novel 

published in paperback by Pearl Press.

More information can be obtained about the novel and the author from 

www.squaringcircles.co.uk

The paperback itself is available from www.amazon.co.uk
The

Are Your Goals On The Rocks?

Life presents us with a never ending stream of challenges and opportunities. Some of us see them as that. Some of us would see them as diversions. Others would see them as things we want to do and things we don’t. Yet even if we know exactly what we have set our minds on as being our life’s key objectives, these day to day challenges can unwittingly divert us. They can make adhering to these objectives more or less attractive to us. Why? Because some of our self-defined aims are much more appealing than others in our list!

I want to make a simple point here about the vital importance of respecting the key aspects of our life from today and reminding ourselves about the way we want to live it.

Let us assume we know actually or intuitively what our core priorities in life are. Now in our minds, let us equate these key features of our life, say, our partner, our family, our health, our recreation, our career, to fist size pebbles.

And now let us also picture the fun things, the frivolous but enjoyable things, the temptations, our preferred activities as represented by small stones and grains of sand, and some even water.

Now listen and reflect on the significance of this old illustration once offered to lucky students on how to respect those priorities in life.

A tutor standing before his large group of students, takes a dust sheet off the long table separating them. It reveals a substantial and tall glass vase, along with small piles of small stones, shingle and dry fine sand, and finally a jug of water.

Without explanation, he begins placing the large pebbles inside the glass vase one by one until he can only catch them as they roll off the top of the full vase.

He then asks if the vase is full. Some say it is. Others say it is not and ask him to put shingle in. All watch as it tumbles down between the pebbles.

He asks again and again some say it is, while others urge him to put the sand in. Dry and fine, it too can be seen soon filtering down between the pebbles.

The question comes again and finally the tutor is pressed to add the water in the jug. He pours it in.

At last, the consensus is that the Vase is full.

So the students are asked what it proves. Again there is a consensus: it proves, they agree, that no matter how busy you are, you can get more into Life.

The tutor shakes his head and says, “Oh! No! It doesn’t prove that! What it proves is that if you don’t put the pebbles in first, then you can’t get all of them to go in afterwards.”   

Gerry Neale

Author of Cognitive Novel: Squaring Circles
More information at www.squaringcircles.co.uk 
Available in paperback from www.amazon.co.uk

Psychology Simplified on the Five Levels of Happiness

The achievement of true and total happiness emanates from a number of sources. There are many authors who have tried to capture the essence of it. The closest I have heard to the key ingredients named four vital sources of happiness.Having described them, I shall share with you a fifth of my own.
Those five sources are, I believe, essentially interlinked and inter-dependent. They could be said to relate to five levels of our life and activity as humans.
The first level amounts to the simple pleasure and happiness of the spontaneous enjoyment of a particular food or one-off activity. It could be a particular favourite flavour of ice-cream, of pizza, a particular fun-ride in a pleasure park. It is experienced, enjoyed greatly, and then it is gone.
The second level, just as important as the first, has been described as the experience of the joy and happiness of competing successfully. Success by winning or by doing well feeds our sense of self-worth. It is not so much the feeling of somehow being able to lord it over your fellow competitors for having done well. It comes more from the feeling of pleasure and happiness that the work, the training and the preparation done to enable us to compete well, has all been worth while.
The third level or source of happiness stems from our community involvement. Here, it is said, we gain happiness from contributing to our community for the good of that community. Community can be described in any number of ways and yet still be applicable. It could be our village or town. It could be the community of an interest group involving our education, our health, our local environment. But it is our sense of connection, of giving and taking, of communing with like minded people or by using our skills for the betterment of others in the community which is significant. More, it is the third vital integrated source to achieving happiness.
The fourth and highest level of activity in terms of our perception of Life, could be said to be the pursuit of our ultimate purpose in life. The commitment to a purpose which we can only contribute to in our lifetime, which will out-live us and which has some true spiritual context for us, bringing to us the ultimate level of happiness. It could be a religious commitment. It could be a commitment to banish disease or protect the environment. Importantly it is of spiritual dimension, bringing to us that sense of happiness derived from a commitment to a cause far greater than ourselves..
My own fifth source could conceivably be two sources, but I would say it is the combination of unconditional love and gratitude for and from another. This, with the four sources described makes for a happy life.

However there are dangers lurking in all this and I have written a sequel to this article, describing them. Should you wish to establish the name of the author of the happiness research, you can obtain if from my blog.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4385108
Author Gerry Neale
See also www.squaringcircles.co.uk
and blog http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com

Book available in Paperback direct from www.amazon.co.uk

Psychology Simplified On The Wisdom Of Re-Discoverying Our Child Within

For many of us, our true emotional selves can lay trapped within us like a time-warp.

  

Certain emotions can seem highly available to us but totally unmanageable. In many cases, they represent the embodiment of our child within. Yet when that childhood becomes eclipsed by our adulthood, they seem completely inappropriate as feelings. So what do we do? One way or the other, we simply screen them out.

And the emotional price we pay for this as grown-ups is extortionate. We remain disconsolate when we should be happy. We are unfeeling when we should tender and loving. We over-intellectualise rather than temper it with emotion. In fact we perform rather than feel. Worse we behave like human doings rather than human beings.

The greatest tragedy is that we can become ever-ready to eschew fun. Youthful exuberance and joy is banished. Gone with it too is any sense of grace and peace, as we wrestle with ourselves to justify our having fun. We seem all too often stressed, tense, and unable to break free of work.

What exactly has happened and more particularly, when did it happen to us? How does it still have such a profound effect on us? What can we do about it?

Being willing to re-visit our childhood years is a pre-requisite. Being prepared to relate back to the fun and joy we had as well as the traumas and even horrors we endured is vital to see how we patterned ourselves to live with the contrasting feelings we had. And I don’t just mean Ha! Ha! Fun. I mean spiritual enjoyment as well.

We can with patience and care, go back and rediscover how these patterns were spawned in us. By re-playing in our minds the ways those who looked after us often triggered these situations, we can see how they then sought to feed us with instructions on how to behave and how to react, is fundamentally important.

Our development as people will have been conditioned heavily by these parental or teachers’ instructions. Philosophically, psychologically, spiritually as well as of course emotionally - and physically, we will have been stunted by the way we were encouraged to behave.

If we are ever to free ourselves now of any of the emotional patterns of behaviour which undermine our peace and happiness as adults, we need to have the courage to probe our young years.

We need to identify the way those, who acted almost always as well-meaning parents and teachers, effectively indoctrinated us with their own opinions, attitudes and habits. We need to see through what we experienced, to see how we came to pattern or protect ourselves. We need also to remind ourselves how we reacted and responded to others as children and admit that we carried those patterns into adulthood when need for them no longer existed.

The truth is, that until many of us adopt this approach and learn how to divorce ourselves from our childhood behaviours, then we will not allow ourselves to form attitudes and behaviours more happily and aptly fitted to our life as adults.

Mercifully there are effective processes available to us to achieve this. Good books exist now. Counsellors are much more aware of these features within us and how they can guide us to change the ways we come at things.

However in the final analysis, it comes down to one simple but fundamental fact if beneficial change is to occur. Do we really want to overcome and change some particular behaviour? If we do, then it is a racing certainty that we will. If we don’t, then surely we won’t.

Gerry Neale is also the Author of
'Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light.'

More information: www.squaringcircles.co.uk

The Novel is available in Paperback from www.amazon.co.uk

Great News For Women Over 50: They Enjoy Their Lives!

The "Yours" Magazine Concludes That Far From Disappearing From Life After The Age of 46, Older Women Are Having Incredible Adventures And Enjoy Their Lives!

The best news is that this was not said by a mere measurable minority. No! An amazing 92% of those older women surveyed said they were happier than they had ever been in their lives.

Many, in fact over 50%, said they no longer worried about what the younger generation thought of them. Not worrying about that any more seems to be one of the joys of passing 50.

No wonder people are happily living longer and in good health. And of the 2000 older women that took part in the survey 80% said they felt as sexy as they did in their twenties and 86% of those with a partner said sex was better than it was in their twenties.

70% would turn down plastic surgery too!

Perhaps one of the great bonuses of the new Millennium is that woman, in particular, are willing to shed some of the emotional constraints which have shackled them since childhood. More cognitive behavioural material is available. Maybe there is a greater willingness to reflect more on how one has lived one's life less happily than one could have done.

Let us hope that this apparent willingness to really "live" our lives is not a flash in the pan. In terms of enjoying greater happiness, isn't it best to adopt the belief that if it is going to be then it is up to me!

Gerry Neale is the author of a recently published cognitive novel called "Squaring Circles"
More information from www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Available in Paperback from Amazon on www.amazon.co.uk

"Buck" The Horse Whisperer Documentary Sounds Like A Must See

Check Out The Report in Yahoo Under 
' "Buck" Brings The Real Horse Whisperer To Movie Screens!'

As so often happens, the extraordinary truth about the life and background of the real horse whisperer is a far cry from the movie with Robert Redford, good though that was.

The remarkable skill he had, according to Buck Brannaman, (the cowboy on which the movie was based), stemmed from his abused childhood. It was that which enabled him to break horses in so effectively and caringly.

Buck was abused horrifically by a drunken Father. Yet significantly he is quoted as saying now:  "When you go through something like that, the abuser steals your childhood, and you never get that back. But they can't steal your innate knowing that there is a right and wrong. They can't steal your will to make decisions. And eventually at some point every body has to decide which way they are going to allow their life to go."

Mercifully he was fostered later by a wonderful couple and his Foster Mother is still alive.

But do read the full report and look out for the showing of the documentary near you. It could help so much for our self-understanding and for understanding others.

Gerry Neale
Author of the novel "Squaring Circles" published this month
www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Novel available direct in paperback from Amazon on www.amazon.co.uk

The Great Pay Back of Rural Life

It is now claimed that the brains of Rural dwellers are wired up differently to those of Urban dwellers. The result? Rural dwellers suffer less stress and anxiety.

The fact that there are more suffering anxiety and mood disorders in cities - pro rata of the population, has long since been acknowledged. But that their brains should be wired up differently is new. This research by The Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal, Canada is worth checking out by those operating in this field. It could throw a very different light on the way we need to review and restructure urban living and treat sufferers. Schizophrenia is almost twice as often found in in individuals born and raised in cities. It is thought now that different regions of the brain are employed to cope with urban living.

Gerry Neale Author of 'Squaring Circles'
Squaring Circles Website

Gerry Neale's Blog on Squaring Circles

Book available direct in Paperback from www.amazon.co.uk