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