Which Is Your Most Important Sense - Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch, Hearing?

18. March 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Amazing new research is coming out showing the importance of your sense of touch. It is the first sense available to you as a baby. 

A variety of positive and negative emotions can be understood through one second touches to the forearm, even if you cannot see the person touching you.

It may be that touch sends more information than gestures, body language or facial expressions. Touch varies widely in its expression - a hug, a gentle touch on the shoulder, a scratch on the face, a hip check, a high five, a punch to the bicep, a desperate clutch to the forearm. All of these are expressions of touch filled with social and emotional meaning for the person whom receives the touch.

While I follow the latest research on emotion and psychology, I was surprised and delighted to see a study on touch appear in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated (The Metaphysical Significance, Staggering Ubiquity and Sheer Joy of High Fives by Chris Ballard). The study which looked at the effects of touch on performance in the NBA is entitled Tactile Communication, Cooperation and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA and comes out of the greatest university in the world - U.C. Berkeley (okay, I’m biased!). Lead researchers of the project are Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner.

The researchers observed nearly 300 NBA players (across all 30 teams) over a period of 2 months. They catalogued and recorded every touch between players during games. The touches were classified in one of 12 areas including categories such as high fives, head slaps, and jumping shoulder bumps. The results were nothing short of awe-inspiring. The more touches between teammates, the more wins the team had. 

The teams that touch the most? The Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. Both of these teams surpassed the 60 win mark last season. And both teams averaged more than 100 seconds of touching during games. The results held even when the lofty expectations are taken into account for these elite teams.

The teams that touch the least? The Sacramento Kings and the Charlotte Bobcats. They averaged a measly 16.5 seconds and earned only 52 wins last season combined. 

How about individual players? Does the power of touch hold at an individual level?

The ’touchiest’ players (i.e., most high fives, chest bumps, head slaps) are also among the NBA’s elite players including Kevin Garnett of the Celtics, Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors, Kobe Bryant of the Lakers, and Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. Garnett averages 15.7 seconds of touching per game which is over two times as much as the entire Sacramento Kings entire team.

Apparently, it’s the leaders of the team that initiate most of the touching in the form of hugs, low fives, fist bumps and more.

Why is there such a powerful effect for the sense of touch?   

We know that massages from loved ones not only reduce pain, they also reduce depressive symptoms. Students who are given a compassionate pat on the shoulder are 200% more likely to volunteer for an in class assignment. When your doctor offers a sympathetic touch, it makes you feel as if he has spent twice as much time with you during the visit.

How can one sense be related to such varied and significant events as wins in the NBA, reduction in depression, perception of time, reduction in pain, and promotion of altruistic behavior?

The primary theory is that touch activates the autonomic nervous system which has two branches - the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).  One helpful metaphor to understand these two is the idea of a car in which the accelerator is like the sympathetic nervous system and the brakes are akin to the parasympathetic nervous system. Positive touches (e.g., kind, compassionate, tender, gentle, sympathetic, etc.) seem to activate the PNS, or the body’s brakes, which helps the body to relax, to experience positive emotions. Negative touches (e.g., a punch, a pinch, scratch or a bite) seems to activate the SNS, or the body’s gas pedal, which prepares the body for the fight or flight response.

In many of us, the SNS is chronically active as if the gas pedal is being pushed continuously. Due to the fast pace of society, the financial demands, the pressure of balancing work, home and personal health, many get into a cycle of chronic low level stress. In this case, the PNS, the relaxation response, is rarely, if ever, activated.

In sports psychology, it is known that the zone, where optimal human functioning occurs, requires a balance between stress and relaxation. In other words, there needs to be a balance between the functioning of the SNS and the PNS. Touch seems to be one way to activate the PNS thereby balancing the pressure of performing in the moment with the relaxation response, allowing athletes to perform at their peak.

Hope you enjoyed this one! I sure enjoyed writing it!

All the best,

John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coach

Posted in Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, National speakers, Hope, Relationships, Resiliency, Altruism, Corporate Culture, Employee engagement, Emotion & Athletics, San Francisco Bay Area, Well-being, Optimal Human Functioning, Brain plasticity, Body posture & the mind, San Ramon CA, Executive coach, Anger Management, Managing Anxiety, Dr. John Schinnerer, Life coach, Guide to Self, Measuring emotions, Managing stress, Counseling, Positive Psychology, Business & psych, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Depression, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Psychology & soccer, Staying calm, Happiness, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

How a Psychologist Breaks Out of a Funk - Top Ways to Leave Sadness Behind in 2009

20. January 2010 by John Schinnerer.

A reprint of a useful and classic column written in 2006…

Guide To Self – Latest Methods for Dealing with Sadness
Dr. John Schinnerer
Guide To Self Life Coaching

A great day to you and welcome to Guide To Self where you learn the latest ways to deal with sadness!

As many of you know, my wife and I recently had our fourth child, a girl named Molly Marie. She is now six weeks old which means we’ve gone six weeks without much sleep. My wife and I are exhausted. The other three children are jealous to one degree or another. And my mood recently took a nosedive.

So today, I’m going to share with you steps you can take to defeat depression, sadness, a funk or whatever you want to call it.

Sadness is Different for Men than for Women

Be aware that sadness takes different shapes. Typically, sadness appears as anger and irritability in men and comes out as sorrow and melancholy in women. So it looks different when I get down from when my wife gets down. I tend to get more irritable and less patient. I feel overwhelmed more easily. I have a harder time staying in the present moment. My thoughts take me to the past or the future more quickly. My energy level is low. My body aches more. And I get less joy out of my daily routines.

So I want to share with you what exactly is going on in my life. I want to make you aware of what it takes to cause a road bump in my emotional path. I told you about not sleeping well for six weeks due to the baby. That’s a big one. Sleep disturbance is enough to mess up anyone’s mood. In my case, lack of sleep led to a cold and sore throat.

On top of that, I’m not a wealthy man. In fact, nearly the opposite, I’m in debt. I have not made money doing this radio show. So I pay for the privilege of sharing my knowledge with listeners. Roughly 2 hours per day are spent preparing for the show. I book my own guests. I write my own scripts. I respond to emails and letters.

Also, I’m currently in charge of two companies. I’m working on corporate taxes which I don’t particularly enjoy.

I see several clients daily for coaching where I deal with other people’s problems most of the day.

I’m trying to find the time to finish two books.

At night, once the children are in bed, I add radio shows to the website and do the programming.

My wife is now back to work 3 days per week as a hairdresser. This means that two mornings a week, with the help of a nanny, I juggle a newborn and a 5-year-old.

My house is partially torn up due to a contractor who left the job half-finished. So we’re now in the process of drawing up new plans and finding a new contractor.

Right now, it feels as if every relationship in my life is consuming my energy. And I’m running on empty. So I’ve been exhausted and bummed out the last couple of days.

So what do I do?

How does a psychologist break out of a funk?

I’ll tell you how. Dealing with sadness that stays with you for a few days or weeks may require a lifestyle change for you – it’s about dealing with your whole person – diet, exercise, faith, mind and relationships.

Top Ways to Deal with Sadness

First, I never stop exercising. Even when my mind is trying to find a way out of it, I will at least walk for 20 minutes. It’s critical that you exercise twenty minutes a day for mood and longer than that if you want to lose weight. This can be as simple as climbing the stairs at work twice a day, or walking for 20 minutes. When I’m working out, I will think about getting rid of all my fear and anger. Exercise is one of the best ways to work negative emotions out of your body.

Second, I remind myself of what is truly important by determining what is really important and what is not. How do I do this? I ask myself the question, “Will this matter a year from now?” Most of the time, the answer is “No, it won’t matter.” It’s one of the ways we can learn to be less emotionally reactive and more thoughtfully proactive. If you’re like me, you have to train yourself to behave in healthy ways because most people did not learn these tricks growing up. So you need to retrain your brain. As you learn to respond more effectively to minor inconveniences, it leaves you more positive energy to respond to actual crises. This is known to many as wisdom - the ability to deal well with your own suffering as well as help others with theirs.

Third, I focus on everything for which I am grateful – my wife, my children, my dog, my friends, my coworkers, my God, my health and so on. It is critical that you learn how to appreciate life. Life is a gift that has been granted to us. The more we appreciate and cherish the gift, the more we understand what a magical journey life is. Your thoughts matter tremendously in this equation of emotion.

A study done at NIMH focused on the power of thought and emotion. The brain activity of ten normal women was monitored under 3 different conditions.

The researcher recorded each person’s brain activity when they were thinking neutral thoughts, happy thoughts, and sad thoughts.

During the neutral thoughts, nothing changed in the brain.

During the happy thoughts, the limbic system, or the emotional brain, cooled down, and became less active resulting in a more relaxed and energized state.

During the sad thoughts, the limbic system, the emotional brain, became aroused and active which has negative effects on your body – tense muscles, quickened heart rate, perspiration and so on.

Think about the last time you felt happy. How did your body feel? Your muscles relax, your hands become dry, your heart rate slows, and you breathe more deeply. Your body reacts to EVERY FEELING YOU HAVE! This is proof that your emotions matter!

Fourth, welcome the feeling of sadness. It is there for a reason. There is a message or lesson involved in the emotion. Your job is to figure the message out. Once you’ve accepted the feeling, let it go, breathe it out. Emotions are meant to be temporary.

One of my main difficulties growing up was that I could sense or pick up the emotions of other people. I was intuitive even as a little child. The problem is that no one teaches you what to do with that emotional energy. And it’s very draining.

I used to think of myself as a container for negative emotions such as anger, sadness and fear. What I found is that thinking of yourself as a container for emotions is not a healthy way to picture it. It’s much more helpful to think of yourself as a net which catches positive emotions and allows negative emotions to pass through. Keep in mind that these are just emotions. Emotions are not permanent. They are not intended to remain with us. They are just passing through.

Fifth, as the human brain is easily altered, I change the music I listen to. Once I have made up my mind to change my mood, I purposefully listen to upbeat lively music. I watch only comedies. Realize that your brain is incredibly open to suggestion. Not only can music and television alter your brain, as I mentioned, your very thoughts and feelings have the ability to change the physical make-up of your brain.

You have to be cautious what you expose yourself too. Your senses take in over 4 billion bits of information per second. You are only consciously aware of 2,000 of those bits per second. This means that your mind is constantly taking in seeds and you are not even aware of it – overhearing conversations, televisions playing in the background, commercials you try to ignore, music lyrics and so on. So your emotional state, your thoughts, your judgments all have a tremendous effect on what information you are consciously aware of.

When you are touched, you have a physical sensation. When you feel an emotion, you also have a physical sensation in your body. Every physical sensation, every thought, every feeling is written into your brain. The more times you have it, the more deeply it is written into your brain. So the longer you spend immersed in sad feelings and morose thoughts, the more your body becomes accustomed to that state of being. The more your body becomes accustomed to it, the more it wants to remain there. The harder it is to break out. While you want to welcome the feeling and embrace it, you also want to breathe it out as soon as possible. Don’t spend too long wallowing in self-pity.

Sixth, work in sprints – go two hours and then break for ten minutes. Give yourself a break every two hours at least. Our brain works best that way. It’s difficult and less effective to work eight hours straight.

Seventh, stay in the present moment. Train your thoughts to stay focused on the present moment. When you find Gremlin thoughts coming to take you to the past or the future, redirect yourself to the right now and right here.

Eighth, stop using toxic elements. This includes alcohol, caffeine, marijuana, cocaine, nicotine and sugars. Caffeine and nicotine have been shown in brain studies to decrease overall blood flow to the brain, making most symptoms worsen over time. They also decrease the effectiveness of many medications and increase the number and severity of side effects. Most of the substances we reach for when sad act as central nervous system depressants anyway. When you’re already depressed, you don’t want to add fuel to the fire with alcohol or marijuana.

Ninth, add Omega-3 to your daily diet. Omega-3 stabilizes mood & improves overall brain functioning. Omega-3 fatty acids are essential fatty acids crucial for growth and development. My favorite, and one of the most studied nutrients, is the Omega-3 fatty acids. About 60% of the brain is made up of fats (lipids) that make up the lining of every brain cell. Omega-3s are required by the brain to an extraordinary degree. They cannot be produced by our bodies but must be ingested via diet or pills. They are found in large, fatty, cold water fish, olive oil, and canola oil. Omega-3s help turn down the ‘volume’ of communications between brain cells (similar to the action of a mood stabilizer). Documented benefits of Omega-3 oils include improved mood, clearer thinking, more serenity, better concentration and focus, and better vision.

Tenth, add B Vitamins and folate in particular to your supplement regimen. Published studies have shown a relationship between B vitamins and depression. Increasing levels of B vitamins are highly likely to improve your mood.

Eleventh, add ginseng. Ginseng is popularly touted as a way to beat stress, improve vigor and simply feel better. The main idea with ginseng is that it helps when your body is stressed. Stress occurs anytime you are challenged above and beyond what your body is used to. An Olympic skier won’t ski faster by taking ginseng. He’s used to that stress of exercise. A working mother of two kids won’t notice a difference. She’s accustomed to her daily routine. However, throw in a new baby, or an ill parent, and you’ve just spilled over into exhaustion. That’s when ginseng does make a difference - when you have to push beyond your limits to the point of exhaustion. Ginseng helps increase your resistance and prevent exhaustion.

Twelfth, breathe – I have covered deep breathing in previous shows. This is the deep diaphragmatic breathing where you breathe into your abdomen, not your chest. Focus on pushing out all of the air in your lungs. The goal is to fill your lungs 100% with fresh air on each breath.

Just as with your thoughts and feelings, you want to be constantly aware of your breathing every second of every day. Remember, we’ve already shown it is possible to split your conscious mind in two parts. One part you can use to tend to the daily demands of your life. The other part must be used to monitor your breathing, your thoughts and your feelings. With practice, it can be done.

Thirteenth, don’t isolate yourself. As much as you can, surround yourself with family and friends.

Fourteenth, go easier on yourself. Learn self-compassion. Speak to yourself as you would a young child.

Forgive yourself for your mistakes and shortcomings. Picture yourself as a small child. Now picture yourself parenting yourself. Forgive yourself as you would like to have been forgiven as a child. Mistakes are merely learning opportunities. And learn to forgive others.

Let go of anger and disappointment by writing a letter forgiving the individual who has hurt you. Holding on to the anger only harms you. Forgiving enables you to move on and get past the hurt.

Fifteenth, return to nature. This is a great way to reconnect with your soul. Just take a few minutes, go outside, breathe in deeply, and look at the birds, the trees and the grass.

Sixteenth, get your sleep. Research has shown that adults need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep. Adolescents need 9 to 9 1/2 hours per night. No more, no less. If you are too far on either side, you are playing with fire. Sleep too little you risk exhaustion. Sleep too much, you risk lethargy and depression.

Seventeenth, do something for someone else. Altruism is perhaps the most powerful way to snap your mind out of a funk. Focus on someone besides yourself.

To sum up, there are at least fifteen things you can do immediately to pull yourself up and out of a funk. These include taking supplements such as Omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, and ginseng, getting your 8 hours of sleep, daily exercise, staying in the present moment, and more. Remember to welcome the feelings that you have. Don’t repress them. That leads to physical troubles such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Rather, be aware of them, listen to them, and let them go. Think of yourself as a net through which emotions pass and not as a container for feelings.

More information on sadness and depression and ways to overcome them may be found at the Guide To Self website at http://www.guidetoself.com.

Guide To Self(C) 2005-10.

Posted in Physician burnout, Hope, Altruism, Resiliency, Men's emotions, Relationships, Gratitude, Overcoming failure, Executive coach, Optimal Human Functioning, Sleep research, San Ramon CA, National speakers, Danville CA, Alexithymia, Managing Sadness, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Guide to Self, Life coach, Managing stress, Dr. John Schinnerer, Happiness, Depression, Anger Management, Dealing with loss, Managing Anxiety, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Positive Psychology – The Science of Optimal Human Functioning with Dr. John Schinnerer - One hour teleclass 12/8/09

9. December 2009 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Partial script for 1-hour teleclass on 12/8/09

Welcome to what I hope will be a wonderful talk on positive psychology. I will be your host tonight. My name is John Schinnerer. I hold a Ph.D. in educational psychology from U.C. Berkeley. In 2007, I wrote a positive psychology book called ‘Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion & Thought’ which was awarded Best Self-Help Book of the year. In 2006, I hosted a daily primetime radio show here in the SF Bay Area. Currently, I do keynote speaking, teach and see private clients.  I also collaborate with the University of New Zealand on the International Wellbeing Study which you can participate in at www.wellbeingstudy.com. 

Just a bit of housekeeping…If you have questions during the talk, please email me at john@guidetoself.com and I will do my best at the end to answer them. Your end of the phone has been muted as there are over 500 people on this call.

     I like to start off my talks with a joke to put you in a positive frame of mind. So here it goes…

A psychologist is holding a group therapy session in which there are four young mothers, each of whom has a small child with her. The psychologist gazes at the four women and blurts out “You’re all obsessed. And your obsessions show up in the names of your kids.”

He points to the first mother and calmly states “You are obsessed with spending money & shopping…you named your daughter Penny.”

The shrink points to the second mother and dryly adds “And you are stuck on the issue of eating. You went so far as to name your daughter Candy!”

As the remaining two mothers shift uncomfortably in their seats, the psychologist continues, pointing to the 3^rd mother, “While you have a drinking problem which shows itself in your daughter’s name – Brandy.”

     ……

At that point, the fourth mother, who can’t contain herself any longer, stands up, grabs her son by the hand and says …

“Come on Dick, we’re getting out of here!”

 

     I told this joke on the radio to thousands of listeners and got a landslide of positive feedback ….initially. One lady, who was driving when she heard it, said she had to pull over to the side of the freeway because she was laughing so hard. However, the show was rerun and then we started to get a few complaints. So the station owner called me in to tell me we couldn’t run the show anymore. I asked why not. He said because the joke was dirty. I knowingly asked what was dirty about it. He said it was the reference to sex. I told him that there was no mention in the joke as to whether or not the sex was taking place in a marriage. You see, the dirtiness of this joke is truly in the mind of the listener. If one assumes the sex is taking place within a marriage, there really is nothing dirty about the joke (unless you think sex in general is aversive).  The reason I tell this story is to point out that there are many different way of seeing the world, different ways of viewing the actions of others and even various ways of relating to your own mind, your thoughts, and your feelings.  And I’ll discuss a few of these points today.

Now that you are prepped to learn something new, let’s talk about positive psychology because it holds great promise. Just to be clear, positive psych is not a self-help movement. It is not as simple as positive thinking. It has no relation to books such as The Secret. It is not a passing trend.

Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal functioning, the applied approach to human flourishing. The lessons of positive psychology are beneficial for everyone – teenagers, executives, managers and the elderly. Even the Army is currently training thousands of sergeants in positive psychology to boost the resiliency of troops and to decrease the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder. While our Army troops have always been physically fit, we are now seeing a momentous shift in thinking which will enable them to become psychologically fit as well.

So this class and positive psychology in general definitely has something to offer you and it is as valuable in your personal life as in your professional life. At the heart of positive psychology are a number of research based findings into how and when people function at their very best.

Most of us spend a great deal of our time worrying over what might go wrong, or beating ourselves up over what we think did go wrong, or feeling disappointed over the inherent unfairness of life. Recent research shows that we are hard-wired to pay closer attention to this that go wrong than things that go right. And from an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. Being overly vigilant for threats and problems helped keep us alive from predators back when sabre-toothed tigers roamed the earth.

However, this hard wiring focused on the negative does not serve us well in modern day life.  Events such as childrens’ skinned knees, missed deadlines, speaking in public or bumper-to-bumper traffic may feel frustrating, scary or stressful but they are not matters of life and death.

So take a quick moment to ask yourself,

‘How much is my focus on what might go wrong helping me?’

‘How much are my negative emotions, such as fear and anger, assisting me in reaching my goals?’

To these questions, positive psychology provides a somewhat unusual answer:

spend more time focusing on what is going right with your life,

focus more on what may go well in the future,

and see how much that approach helps you reach your goals.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that you only have a positive perspective. I am not suggesting that you be foolishly optimistic. There is a great deal of merit to accurately foreseeing and planning for potential problems. It’s a matter of balance. How much of your mental time is spent focusing on problems as compared to looking at the positives. Positive psychology has found that there are tremendous benefits to learning to focus more on what is right with us and what may go well in the future.

One of the basic assumptions of Positive psychology is that all people are ‘Born to be Good’ to quote the title of Dacher Keltner’s book and that we can become better, happier and more productive.  Let me repeat that, we can learn to be happier. Your happiness is not written in stone. You can learn techniques to increase your satisfaction with life.

What makes the crucial difference between positive psychology and traditional self-help books is the mountain of research upon which positive psychology is built. At this point, there are over 50,000 studies having to do with happiness, realistic optimism, human strengths, life satisfaction and more. Empirical researchers across the world are looking for testable theories and explanations supported by hard data. It is, in simplest terms, a powerful movement from faith to facts. So everything I write about, everything about which I speak, is based on scientific studies and replicable data.

The biggest shift towards a positive psychology took place in the late 1990s when Martin Seligman, as president of the American Psychological Association, began asking the question “what is right with people?” For over 100 years, medicine and psychology had both focused on what was wrong with people and how problems could be fixed. Seligman used his influence to create a new branch of science termed positive psychology focusing on what is right with us, how we can lead more thriving, fulfilling, and meaningful lives.

Seligman and Mike Csikszentmihalyi brought together some of the top young researchers in psychology to study topics such as hope, happiness, gratitude, wisdom, creativity and optimal human functioning. From there it spread to include researchers in humanistic psychology, philosophy, executive coaches, sports psychology, developmental psychologists and many more areas. It continues to spread to business, education and counseling.

The best part is that positive psychology works and works well. Positive psychology exercises have been shown in numerous studies to promote strengths, improve optimal functioning, to increase realistic optimism and to increase the frequency of positive emotions.

Some of you may be skeptical. I completely understand this. I was skeptical at first too.  I was brought up to focus on the negative.  Most of us were. And most clients that I see focus first and foremost on problems, such as how to help under-performing workers, or how to shore up the weaknesses of people they manage.

One of the greatest contributions of Positive psychology is the finding that by focusing energy and attention on strengths and by tapping into positive emotions, all of us will enjoy more success than if we focus on weaknesses and problems.

In terms of using positive psychology in the workplace, the Gallup Organization has shown that disengaged workers cost firms billions of dollars per year in accidents, sabotage, turnover costs, lost customers and healthcare. Engaged or happy workers have a higher probability of making more money, innovating, being on time to work, being healthier physically, receive higher ratings from supervisors and customers, and help out coworkers more frequently. Happiness doesn’t just feel good, it is good for the bottom line and good for employees.

To give you an example, last year, I did some consulting with the executive board of a large insurance company. They were having trouble with several vice presidents who were holding grudges over an incident that happened over many years ago. Two of the vice presidents were actively sabotaging one another’s projects resulting in increased costs to the company. As part of my time there, I gave a two hour talk to the executive board on positive psychology, and I specifically focused on what the research has to say about forgiveness  based on research from Stanford University – what it is, what it is NOT, how to do it and why you want to do it. To me, forgiveness is the best single way to wash out all that stale anger you’ve been hiding for years. At the end of my talk, I suggested to the 11 executives that they try forgiving each other for past transgressions. After a long pause, I watched as all of the executives stood up, and began forgiving every other person in the room.  They hugged; they apologized to each other; and they forgave one another. It was powerful. And it changed the way in which they interacted from that day forward. The vice presidents were more supportive of one another, more cooperative, and they stopped their internal sabotage.

 Positive psychology is filtering into education as well. I do a monthly speaking series at a continuation high school where the students are sent if they are behind on credits, if they have behavior problems, emotional difficulties, or are coming out of juvenile hall. So it’s a pretty hard crowd.  One of the more difficult cases was an African-American female student who challenged me during a presentation “You aren’t black. You aren’t female. And you don’t live in a group home. Why should I listen to anything you say?!” It was a valid question. My response? “You’re absolutely right. I’m a totally bald, white, 42 year old man who lives with his wife and four children. And on a physical level you are correct. We share little in common. Here is what I can tell you…that on an emotional level, everything you have ever felt in your life – fear, anger, despair, happiness, pride, love – everything you have felt, I have felt also. So, on an emotional level we are nearly identical. I have been studying emotions for the past 12 years and I’ve found some tools that really work to help manage negative emotions and cultivate more positive emotions. So it’s your choice – you can listen and try some of the tools for yourself, see if they work, or you can ignore me. Either way, it’s up to you.” From that moment on, she was a fan - engaged, interested and willing to learn. She went on to work at a hospital this summer and now is looking at attending community college when she graduates at the end of this school year.

The Power of Positive Emotions

One of the areas I have researched over the past dozen years with great curiosity and passion is emotions. I have found that there is tremendous power in our emotions. Emotions are the social glue that binds our relationships.  The effective use of emotions, or leveraging emotions to your benefit, is what draws people to leaders. Emotional leverage is what separates truly great leaders from average executives. Emotions may initially be a bit frightening. Many people spend a great deal of energy trying to suppress or contain emotion. Yet, emotions have been with the human race for millions of years. Each emotion serves a purpose. Anger, for instance, helps move past obstacles or challenges. It helps us stand up to social injustices. Sadness keeps us close to home after suffering a loss. Fear keeps us safe from perceived danger.

Take a moment to think back to the last time you experienced an intense emotion. It may have been surprise, fear, rage, disappointment, sorrow, joy, awe or pride. It may have been pride due to your child’s outstanding grades, or joy watching your team win a close game, or frustration at yourself for making a mistake at work, or the feeling of contentment while working in your yard. What we’re finding is that emotions transcend our physical bodies. They are contagious. You can catch feelings from others around you. Studies have shown that happiness is contagious just like anger. Emotions are also closely and powerfully linked to what and how you remember the past. Look through an old photo album and you will clearly see the sway emotions have over your memories. What’s more, emotions play a large role in learning, communication, and even in our morality.

So it is critical to understand and learn to leverage emotions. In particular, you must understand the purpose and strength of positive emotions, because you can put them to great use in your daily life. Expertly leveraging emotions will help you be more successful.  As Robert Biswas-Diener puts it, ‘positive emotion is one of the greatest resources you and your clients, colleagues or students are currently overlooking.’

Emotions may be best thought of as a guidance system for your life. When you experience guilt, for example, it’s a sign that your actions are not in keeping with your values. And the unpleasant feeling motivates you to bring your actions back in line with your values. When things are going smoothly, your guidance system lets you know with an all clear signal – positive emotions such as peacefulness or contentment.  Of course, this guidance system is not perfect. We occasionally misinterpret our emotions, and sometimes our emotions are just plain wrong like when we feel highly fearful before speaking in public. However, our emotions give us important and valuable feedback the majority of the time. And there is power in learning how to be aware of emotions, in learning how to correctly read emotions, and greater success lies in the ability to cultivate more positive emotions.

 

 

So what can positive emotions do for you?

One of the biggest breakthroughs for positive psychology comes from Barbara Fredrickson at UNC Chapel Hill who came up with an evolutionary explanation for the existence of positive emotions. Barbara’s hypothesis is that the primary function of positive emotion is to broaden and build.  That is, they broaden our thought processes and they build lasting internal resources. Positive emotions, such as awe, peacefulness and love, allow your mind to blossom, creating more options, more possibilities, in terms of thoughts and actions.  Positive emotions help us be more creative, imaginative, and innovative. If you need to brainstorm for a new marketing slogan, you’ll do a better job if you are happy when you do it.

In addition, positive emotions have long-term beneficial effects because they build internal resources which may be used to help assist others in need or to manage future threats. In other words, positive emotions fill up your gas tank.  This means that positive emotions fill your emotional reservoir with positive emotional energy to increase your sense of well-being and physical health and which you can share with others when they need support and love.

What’s more, positive emotions have been shown to undo the lingering physiological effects of negative emotions. Positive emotions act as the hidden RESET button to the bodily changes caused by negative emotions, changes such as elevated blood pressure and increased cortisol levels in the blood stream.

      In the workplace, positive emotions are related to higher salaries, less sick days, better relationships with coworkers, better supervisor ratings, better customer ratings, and reduced employee turnover.

      In terms of physical health, positive folks are less likely to get ill, live longer, experience less pain, have fewer hospital visits, and when in a good mood, have faster cardiovascular recovery times. On the other hand, those with depression are more likely to engage in smoking, drug abuse, suicidal attempts, and have more emergency room visits.

In psychology, it is generally understood that bad is stronger than good, or the negative is stronger than the positive.  Bad events have a greater power over us, our emotions, thoughts and behaviors, than do good ones. You are more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. You are quicker to form bad judgments of other people than good ones. It takes approximately 5 compliments to undo the negative effects from one insult. Your brain processes negative information more thoroughly than it does positive information. So it’s great news that the harmful effects of negative feelings can be undone by positive emotions.

While we could come up with a list of hundreds of emotion words, there are ten positive emotions that have been verified in studies. From the most frequently occurring to the least frequent, they are… love, joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration and awe. And we know from research that positive emotions are fleeting and fragile. They are easily done away with and they are generally less powerful than negative emotions. So you have to increase your awareness of and be on the lookout for positive emotions throughout your day.

A Few Positive psychology Exercises:

Okay, let’s turn to some of the interventions that have been proven to boost your happiness.

The Blessings Exercise

One study done by Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania sought to help 50 severely depressed people. These were folks that stayed in bed most of the day, crawled out occasionally to check their email, and then returned to bed. They were asked to do one thing every day for two weeks.

            Write down three things that went well today and why they went well.

This daily gratitude journal is a powerful yet simple way to redirect the mind to the positive instead of dwelling on the negative. After two weeks of doing this exercise, the majority saw a significant improvement in their depressive symptoms.  People frequently report feeling happier and more positive after this assignment.

Mental Scrapbook of Positive Memories

Another exercise that has been shown to increase positive emotions is reliving positive memories. This exercise is as simple as focusing your attention on a positive event in your past. It might be a big athletic event, a wedding, the birth of a child, finishing school or a promotion. This activity may be combined with actual physical reminders of the past, such as photos, ticket stubs, trophies, college degrees, and printed testimonials.  You can also create your own positive scrapbook using most cell phones these days. Simply create a folder in which you keep photos of positive events. Start your own collection today. The main idea here is to savor the experience, to pay close attention to sensory details, to squeeze every last ounce of positive emotion out of the experience.

The extent to which you experience positive emotions is largely based on your thinking. Overthinking kills positive emotions. Worry, doubt, and stress drown out positive emotions. Emotions are highly individualized. They vary from person to person and what evokes one emotion in one person may not do the same in another. What makes one person recoil in disgust may make another person laugh. Emotions depend on how you interpret events. You have to take a moment (in the moment) and look for the good in the situation. Once you find the good, you must intentionally magnify it, and let it grow.  You have the power to turn positive emotions off and on.

Look at the room you’re in right now.

Ask yourself:

What’s going right for me right now?

How am I fortunate/blessed to be here?

How does being here benefit me?

What meaning can I take away from this situation?

When you take time to think this way, it builds gratitude in you.

By the way, it is normal if positivity feels unusual or weird at first.

Capitalizing on Love

One of the foremost researchers in the area of love and marriage is Shelly Gable, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA. Most researchers looking at marriage work on conflict management, how to create more harmony between partners, and how individuals in a couple cope with traumatic events.  Gable is one of a handful of researcher who looks at what makes a thriving marriage. Her work provides some valuable insights if you are interested in transforming your good relationship (e.g., friendship, marriage, parent or child) into a great one.

Gable looks to see how you respond when your spouse tells you that he’s just been promoted, or your child tells you that she won Class President, or when your mother tells you she won a tennis tournament, or when your friend tells you she just won a huge lawsuit. Gable puts your responses into four different categories which break down as follows:

1.      An enthusiastic reaction such as “Wow! That’s tremendous. That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week. I’m sure there are more great things to come for you. You’ve definitely earned it. Congratulations!” This reaction is called the active-constructive response by Gable.

2.      A more subdued reaction where you share your happiness but say little. For example, “That’s nice dear.” This is the passive-constructive response.

3.      Or perhaps you point out some of the potential pitfalls or negatives within the good event. For instance, “Wow, I sure hope you can handle all that extra responsibility. Does this mean you will have to work extra hours?” Gable refers to this as the active-destructive response.

4.      Or, you might respond with disinterest and not respond to the good news at all. Most folks do this by merely changing the subject, “Yes, but what do you think about the weather outside?” This is known as the passive-destructive response.

The first type of response, the active-constructive one, is called “capitalizing” by Gable and here’s the fascinating part…capitalizing amplifies the pleasure of the good event and creates an upward spiral of good feelings.

Gable has shown that capitalizing is one of the keys to strong, supportive, thriving relationships. 

So how do you respond to good news from other people?

Are you a “capitalizer” who creates upward spirals of positive emotions?

Or do you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the good news of others?

The consequences of learning how to be more of a “capitalizer” are impressive and robust. Couples who describe themselves as having a spouse who is active and constructive in response to their good news are more committed to the relationship, more in love, and happier in their marriage.  Think about that the next time your mate comes in the door with exciting news.

Closing Remarks

            I’ve found a large number of people are passionate and excited about positive psychology. It offers an energizing approach to your personal and professional life. Hopefully, by sharing some information about positive psychology, you’ve become excited about the possibilities also.

Again my name is John Schinnerer. I’m happy to speak to those interested in future keynote presentations or seeing clients privately. My book is entitled ‘Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion & Thought’ and may be purchased at Amazon.com, or Target.com. My email address is John@GuideToSelf.com.  My website is www.GuideToSelf.com. Please feel free to go and sign up for my newsletter by clicking on Email Sign Up on the left of the screen.

Now to your questions…

 

Hope you enjoyed it!

Have a wonderful evening,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

913 San Ramon Valley Blvd.

Danville, CA 94526

 http://www.guidetoself.com

---

 

Posted in Gratitude, Energy psychology, Curiosity, Science of love, National speakers, Overcoming failure, Awareness, Hope, Organizational psychology, The human brain, Relationships, Resiliency, Altruism, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Memory and recall, Executive coach, Meaning-making, Therapist, Optimal Human Functioning, Brain plasticity, Positive emotions and job search, San Ramon CA, Emotion & productivity, Positive expectations, International Wellbeing Study, Corporate Culture, Employee engagement, Men's emotions, Subconscious mind, Emotional IQ, Guide to Self, Anxiety, Social anxiety disorder, School psychology, Customer Engagement, Life coach, Creativity, Forgiveness, Positive Psychology, Business & psych, Realistic optimism, Dr. John Schinnerer, Happiness, Ethics, Managing Anxiety, Emotional management, Anger Management, Managing Sadness, Consciousness, Emotional mind, Rational mind, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Morals and values, Depression, Nature vs. nurture, Parenting, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Positive Psychology - The Science of Optimal Human Functioning

17. November 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Free teleclass
Positive Psychology – The Science of Optimal Human Functioning
11/18/09 (Wednesday)
6 pm PST/9 pm EST
with John Schinnerer, Ph.D.,
Author, positive psychology coach, speaker, amusing guy
Simply call 212-461-5903 and enter Pin 3474#

 

Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal functioning, the applied approach to human flourishing. The lessons of positive psych are appropriate for everyone – teenagers, executives, managers and the elderly. Even the Army is currently training thousands of sergeants in positive psychology to boost the resiliency of troops and to decrease the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder. While our Army troops have always been physically fit, we are now seeing a momentous shift in thinking to enable them to become psychologically fit as well.

So this class and PP in general definitely has something to offer you and it is as valuable in your personal life as in your professional life. At the heart of positive psychology are a number of research based findings into how and when people function at their very best.

 

 

Posted in Awareness, Psychology humor, Gratitude, Hope, Mindfulness, Organizational psychology, Resiliency, Altruism, Curiosity, National speakers, Employee engagement, Executive coach, Meaning-making, International Wellbeing Study, Emotion & productivity, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Positive expectations, The human brain, Men's emotions, Creativity, Life coach, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Positive Psychology, Business & psych, Realistic optimism, Emotional IQ, Customer Engagement, Emotional management, Managing Anxiety, Managing Sadness, Emotional mind, Morals and values, Happiness, Positive mood music, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

The Four Best Predictors of Positive Emotions and Why You Should Care

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive emotions, such as awe, curiosity, love, contentment and pride, act as a hidden reset button for the physiological effects of destructive emotions (e.g., chronic stress, long-term anger, or enduring sadness). Positive emotion undoes the harmful physical effects of negative emotions.

Positive emotions…

·         lower blood pressure

·         increase immune system functioning

·         improve clarity of thought and creativity and

·         decrease cortisol levels (i.e., the stress hormone).

Research has recently uncovered the four best predictors of future positive emotions. They are…

• The feeling that you can count on others
• The perception that you have autonomy and are in control of your own life
• Whether you learned something new yesterday
• Whether you did what you do best yesterday

(E. Diener, University of Illinois, author of Happiness)

If you have loved ones and friends you can count on, if you feel autonomous, if you learn something new daily, and if you use your strengths on a daily basis, you will create more moments of happiness in your life. As you learn to string together fleeting moments of happiness, you will create a contented mood.

According to Barbara Fredrickson (UNC Chapel Hill), author of Positivity, as we learn to unpack happiness, we discover that it is positive emotions that lay at the heart of a number of things such as resiliency, happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being.

In other words, when you increase the frequency with which you experience positive emotions, you improve your psychological resources (e.g., resiliency) and subsequently, you become more satisfied with life and physically healthier.

 

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Hope, Gratitude, Curiosity, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Negotiation and emotion, Altruism, Science of love, National speakers, Employee engagement, Positive emotions and job search, Executive coach, Corporate Culture, Positive expectations, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Resiliency, Organizational psychology, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Life coach, Creativity, Managing stress, Dr. John Schinnerer, Nervousness, Tips to help anxiety, Anger Management, Managing Sadness, Men's emotions, Managing Anxiety, Emotional mind, Customer Engagement, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE AND MINDFUL AWARENESS

4. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Here is a heart-warming piece written by Saskia Davis:

 

SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE

A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences

An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment

A loss of interest in judging other people

A loss of interest in judging self

A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others

A loss of interest in conflict

A loss of ability to worry

Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation

Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature

Frequent attacks of smiling

An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than to make them happen.

An increased susceptibility to love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it

WARNING: Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many already have been exposed; and it is possible that people, everywhere, could come down with it in epidemic proportions.

This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be too far advanced to be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk.

Source: http://symptomsofinnerpeace.net/Authors_Website/Wall_Poster.html

Be sure to find your own  inner peace!

Blessings,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

P.S. If you are over 16, be sure to take 25-30 minutes to take the survey at www.wellbeingstudy.com to help us with the first International Wellbeing Study! You might win $100 gift certificate and help humanity at the same time! Please use the code ‘JSWEB’ so I can track respondents. Thank you!

Posted in Gratitude, Awareness, Hope, Mindfulness, Curiosity, Science of love, Positive expectations, Danville CA, Emotion & learning, Altruism, Resiliency, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Realistic optimism, Forgiveness, Emotional IQ, Staying calm, Consciousness, Emotional mind, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

The Top 12 Warning Signs of Good Health and Happiness

6. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

If several of these symptoms appear, you may be happy and healthy, visits to the doctor may be greatly reduced.

1. Regular flare-ups of a supportive network of friends and family.
2. Chronic positive expectations.
3. Repeated episodes of gratitude & generosity.
4. Increased appetite for physical activity.
5. Marked tendency to identify and express feelings.
6. Compulsion to contribute to society.
7. Lingering sensitivity to the feelings of others.
8. Habitual behavior related to seeking new challenges.
9. Craving for peak experiences.
10. Tendency to adapt to changing conditions.
11. Feelings of spiritual involvement.
12. Persistent sense of humor.

Whole Earth Review magazine

Have a wonderful Thursday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Mindfulness, Altruism, Resiliency, Managing Sadness, Hope, Gratitude, Danville CA, National speakers, Science of love, Curiosity, Managing Anxiety, Emotional mind, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Realistic optimism, Forgiveness, Creativity, Guide to Self, Morals and values, Happiness, Staying calm, Emotional IQ, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Quantum Theory of Consciousness May Explain Wishful Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance

6. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

What if ‘cognitive dissonance’ is actually related to subconscious emotional processes? Emotions may be behind the wishful thinking that the researchers relate to cognitive dissonance. Are we getting closer to a quantum theory of consciousness (emotion & cognition)?

 

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

 

April 14th, 2009 By Lisa Zyga

 

‘ (PhysOrg.com) — Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply “wishful thinking.” This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making - and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.

If you were asked to gamble in a game in which you had a 50/50 chance to win $200 or lose $100, would you play? In one study, participants were told that they had just played this game, and then were asked to choose whether to try the same gamble again. One-third of the participants were told that they had won the first game, one-third were told they had lost the first game, and the remaining one-third did not know the outcome of their first game. Most of the participants in the first two scenarios chose to play again (69% and 59%, respectively), while most of the participants in the third scenario chose not to (only 36% played again). These results violate the “sure thing principle,” which says that if you prefer choice A in two complementary known states (e.g., known winning and known losing), then you should also prefer choice A when the state is unknown. So why do people choose differently when confronted with an unknown state?

In a recent study, psychologists Emmanuel M. Pothos of Swansea University in the UK and Jerome R. Busemeyer of Indiana University in the US have presented an alternative framework for modeling decision-making of this kind, based on quantum probability. As they note, the original motivation for developing quantum mechanics in physics was to explain findings that seemed paradoxical from a classical point of view. Possibly, quantum theory can better explain paradoxical findings in psychology, as well. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have investigated using quantum formalism in cognitive situations, such as in modeling human judgment and perception. Pothos and Busemeyer’s results are published in a recent issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“A few decades ago, Tversky and Kahneman (1974) challenged ubiquitous assumptions regarding what is the most suitable framework for modeling human cognition,” Busemeyer told PhysOrg.com. “Until then, most psychologists sought to understand cognition using classic probability theory. In our paper we raise the question, which mathematical framework is most appropriate for cognitive modeling? In this article, for the first time, we present a fundamentally different, and more powerful, approach to probabilistic models of cognition, based on quantum principles. Employing minimal assumptions, we derive a Hamiltonian directly from the parameters of the problem (e.g., the payoffs associated with different actions) and known general principles of cognition (e.g., a well known phenomenon of cognitive dissonance); every step in our model is psychologically interpreted and rigorously justified.”

Defecting Dilemma

In their study, the scientists compared two models, one based on Markovian classical probability theory and the other based on quantum probability theory. They modeled a game based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is similar to the gambling game. Here, participants were asked if they wanted to cooperate with or defect from an imaginary partner. Overall, each partner would receive larger pay-outs if they defected, making defecting the rational choice. However, if both partners cooperated, they would each receive a higher pay-out than if both defected. Similar to the results from the gambling games, studies have shown that participants who were told that their partner had defected or cooperated on the first round usually chose to defect on the second round (84% and 66%, respectively). But participants who did not know their partner’s previous decision were more likely to cooperate than the others (only 55% defected). It seems as if these individuals were trying to give their partners the benefit of the doubt, at the expense of making the rational choice.

As the scientists showed, both classical and quantum probability models accurately predict an individual’s decisions when the opponent’s choice is known. However, when the opponent’s action is unknown, both models predict that the probability of defection is the average of the two known cases, which fails to explain empirical human behavior. The problem is that the models are purely rational, meaning they try to maximize utility.

To address this problem, the scientists added another component to both models, which they call cognitive dissonance, and can also be thought of as wishful thinking. The idea is that people tend to believe that their opponent will make the same choice that they do; if an individual chooses to cooperate, they tend to think that their opponent will cooperate, as well. If both partners cooperate, both will receive a higher pay-out than if both defected. (And if an individual thought that his opponent would cooperate and so decided to defect to maximize his own pay-out, he would then be compelled to assume that the opponent would also defect, according to cognitive dissonance.) In other words, an individual views his opponent as a mirror of himself.

The difference between the classical and quantum models lies in how the rational component and the cognitive dissonance component are combined. Even after adding the second component, the classical model predicts that the probability in the unknown scenario must equal the average of the probability for the two known cases. As such, the classical model continues to obey the law of total probability, and fails to explain the violations of the sure thing principle.

In the quantum model, on the other hand, the addition of the cognitive dissonance component produces interference effects that cause the unknown probability to deviate from the average of the known probabilities. While in the classical model an individual is committed to exactly one preference at any given time, in the quantum model an individual experiences a superposition of these preferences. Mathematically, the probability (or amplitude) of defecting in the unknown scenario is obtained from the superposition of probabilities (amplitudes) for the two known cases. These interference effects enable the probability of unknown events to be lower than the probability of either event individually, which is observed in the empirical studies.

“Cognitive dissonance can arise in other decision making situations and is not limited to games with an intelligent opponent,” Busemeyer said. “In the gambling game, you play against nature. In this case, however, your belief that you will win the game becomes coordinated with your intentions to play the game. Cognitive dissonance effects are not even limited to adult humans but have also been found with young children and even with nonhuman primates.” (See Egan, L. C., Santos, L. R. & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, 978- 983.)’

Full article here

http://www.physorg.com/news158928941.html

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

 

Posted in Altruism, Awareness, Emotion & learning, Negotiation and emotion, Consciousness, Guide to Self, Rational mind, Emotional mind, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

Was St. Francis of Assisi the first positive psychologist?

18. May 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Positive psychology has been defined in a number of ways, as the science of happiness, the empirical pursuit of subjective well-being, ways to reliably increase life satisfaction, and so on.

I recently came across a quote from St. Francis of Assisi that was written hundreds of years ago yet contains many tenets which I would include in any discussion of positive psychology. Here it is…

“Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace,

That where there is hatred I may bring love;

That where there is wron I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;

That where there is discord I may bring truth;

That where there is doubt I may bring faith;

That where there is despair I may bring hope;

And where there are shadows I bring Thy light;

That where there is  sadness I may bring joy;

Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than be comforted,

To understand than be understood,

To love than be loved;

For it is by giving that one receives,

Is it by self-forgetting that one finds,

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”

So here we have a number of topics that might fall under the heading of positive psychology:

Peace (Character Strengths and Virtues)

Love  (Barbara Fredrickson - UNC Chapel Hill; also love is most highly associated with life satisfaction and happiness per Chris Peterson)

Forgiveness (Fred Luskin - Stanford)

Truth (character strengths and values a la Chris Peterson & Nansook Park)

Faith (spirituality seems to be a central component of a meaningful live &  a key part of resiliency - Dennis Charney)

Hope  (another positive trait which is associated 2nd most highly with life satisfaction and happiness; research in progress by Rick Snyder at KU)

Joy (self-explanatory)

Altruism (studies have shown that helping others is one of the best ways to increase happiness)

Curiosity (openness to new ideas, cognitive flexibility, approaching novel situations; Todd Kashdan)

Nonattachment to self (Buddhist concept, yet nonattachment is fundamental to contentment, relaxation and high performance)

This seemingly simple prayer by  St. Francis predates positive psychology by hundreds of years. Fortunately, we are now finding empirical evidence to back it up.

Have a wonderful week!

All the best,
John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/johnschin

Posted in Altruism, Resiliency, The human brain, Men's emotions, Mindfulness, Assertiveness, Science of love, Curiosity, Gratitude, Hope, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Life coach, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Forgiveness, Emotional IQ, Staying calm, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Morals and values, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

The Official Positive Psychology Music Compilation is now available free of charge!

3. February 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Research has shown that music strongly affects our mood and our emotions, our thoughts and even our perceptions. Barb Fredrickson’s work demonstrates the positivity ratio is 3:1, that is we need three times as much positive emotions as negative emotions in our lives. 

Positive, constructive emotions are fleeting, ephemeral and quick. They can be easily outmuscled by negative or destructive emotions.

 We need to plant the seeds of positivity in the mind frequently and constantly. To that end. I have compiled a list of positive, upbeat, elevating songs so you can create your own playlist of positive psych songs.

 I would love to do a research study where only positive music is piped in to one team in an organization (as background music) compared to a no music condition as well as a popular radio station and track productivity, work engagement, creativity (innovation), sales, teamwork and so on.

I’ve had this positive playlist on for a couple weeks now and it works wonders for myself, my clients and my family. Try it for yourself.

The Official Positive Psychology Music Compilation is available free of charge at http://tinyurl.com/avafyy. Please send your suggestions for more positive songs to me at Info AT GuideToSelf.com! If I add your song to the list, I will email you a free pdf version of my award-winning book, Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought.

Thanks and enjoy!

Dr. John Schinnerer

Posted in Altruism, Resiliency, Men's emotions, Emotional management, Mindfulness, Hope, Music psychology, Energy psychology, Awareness, Emotional mind, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Guide to Self, Life coach, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional IQ, Staying calm, Morals and values, Positive mood music, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Why Should You Care About Emotions?

22. January 2009 by John Schinnerer.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D. 

 Why should you care about emotions? What’s the big deal about emotional mastery?  

Emotions influence everything you do, think, and perceive. Emotional mastery is the ability to be instantly aware of which emotion you are feeling and then to manage the emotion (or emotions) once you are aware of it. Once you can recognize your emotions, the next step is to learn to deal with them in an appropriate way. One of the most critical skills we learn as youngsters is the ability to soothe ourselves when we are upset. This means calming ourselves when we are irritated, angry, scared, anxious, sad, or depressed. People who fail to learn this skill are constantly fighting off ongoing anxiety, sadness or irritability. Those who learn to manage their emotions persevere to overcome life’s setbacks. Emotionally wise people are resilient and rebound from disappointments more quickly. They have a positive, optimistic outlook on life. 

Make Room for Both the Rational and the Emotional Minds 

The next step is to realize that each one of us has a thinking, or rational, mind and a feeling, or emotional, mind. At one point in time, scientists and researchers thought we only had a rational mind. How’s that for irony? The thinking mind only discovered itself.  

The Rational Mind 

The rational mind is the means that we usually use to understand the world – it is the thoughtstream that runs constantly behind the back of your forehead. It is the narrator that comments on your daily experience. It is the rational, analytical thinking part of your mind. For example, I can use this logical part of my mind to solve math problems, be logical and analyze data. Using Jon Haidt’s metaphor, the rational mind is the rider on the elephant where the rider is the thinking mind and the elephant is the emotional mind. Recently, Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s leading researchers in neuroscience, said, “Consciousness may get all the focus but consciousness is a small part of what the brain does, and it’s a SLAVE to everything that works beneath it.” LeDoux is saying that the rider is a slave to the elephant, our rational mind is a slave to our emotional mind. LeDoux believes that our identities are formed from the unique set of learned fears, desires, associations and expectations that are most deeply engrained in our unconscious. For instance, teaching children catch phrases such as ‘Just say ‘no’’ is not going to do the trick because in emotionally-charged situations, the emotional mind will almost always win out. The emotional mind is stronger, faster and can last longer than the rational mind.  Simplistic solutions such as ‘just say ‘no” will not work.  What will work is finding ways to train the emotional mind.  

The Emotional Mind 

Alongside the rational mind is the emotional mind. The emotional mind is irrational, impulsive, creative and intense. It’s the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain pulling the strings of much of your behavior. It’s why you KNOW it’s wrong to steal but go home with office supplies taken from work. It’s why many people have a knee jerk reaction to words like sex, rape and torture. These are emotionally loaded words.   There are many times when the rider (the rational mind) is adequately steering the elephant (the emotional mind), that is, your thinking mind is working in cooperation with your emotional mind. These times take place when you are calm and thinking clearly. However, when you are struck by an emotion, such as fear, the elephant takes over and the rider loses control. The elephant may run from a mouse. He may go off the beaten path to look for grass to eat. Whatever he does, the rider has little input into the actual behavior. And you mind is like the rider and the elephant. When you are consumed by an intense feeling, your emotional mind takes over and your thinking mind is dead in the water.  It becomes nearly impossible to think clearly while in the grasp of a strong emotion such as rage. 

 

Feeling More Than One Emotion At A Time 

What’s more, science has now shown that we can experience more than one emotion at the same time about any given event, or person or memory. For instance, take your favorite song. You may feel happy when you hear the tune, melancholy when you focus on the lyrics and excited when you remember back to the time your first heard it. All of us have the ability to feel multiple emotions - constructive and destructive - simultaneously. Once you understand this point, emotions become quite complex, layered and interesting. 

 

The Human Brain is Hard-Wired for Emotions 

The brain is wired to make us emotional beings. We experience the emotional response to an event before it even reaches the thinking mind. There is a shortcut from the thalamus to the amygdala which bypasses conscious awareness to allow your body to be put on instant alert. A secondary, but slower circuit, in the brain runs from the thalamus (the brain’s receiving room for most information taken in by your senses) to the brain’s ‘thinking’ area, in the prefrontal cortex. That is why sometimes you are overcome by your emotions. When the emotion is strong enough, your emotional mind (the elephant) temporarily takes over control of your mind and body in order to keep you safe. The emotional mind errs on the side of caution. The emotional mind is always on the lookout for danger and possible threats. It picks up 2 or 3 key elements in a situation, and decides in less than .33 seconds whether or not there is a threat present. If a threat is determined to exist, or if there is a good probability that it exists, then the emotional mind takes over and prepares your body to fight or run away. When your emotional mind takes over in such an emergency, real or perceived, it’s known as an emotional hijacking. An emotional hijacking is impulsive, quick, strong, and raw.Your rational mind can help to stop such emotional takeovers. Ideally, you would have time to think about your emotions and your ensuing actions before acting. This enables us to respond to our emotions more appropriately.  This typically takes slightly more time than an emotional hijacking, but it allows us to consider a number of different responses and usually results in a more thoughtful course of action. These responses include whether to attack or run, and also whether to persuade, cajole, beg, plead, charm, seek sympathy, instill guilt, act brave, to be thoughtful, or to do nothing at all.  

The Need for Emotion in Rational Thought 

The fascinating piece of the puzzle is that we all need a balance between our rational and emotional minds in order to lead successful and happy lives.  Amazingly, the rational and the emotional mind, the elephant and the rider, need each other to function at their highest levels. This means that you need your emotions to think straight!I’ll tell you a story to show you what I mean. I know a man who is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. He could recite word for word anything he had read in his life. He read books by the boxful. Yet, he was unable to control his emotions. He had high IQ and low EQ.  He was impulsive which means that he acted before he thought about the possible consequences of his actions. So here is this incredibly smart person with terribly flawed decision-making skills and poor emotional control. As he grew older, he made awful choices in his life. He wound up alone and unsuccessful. Some would argue that he could not access his emotional learning.Your emotional learning is where you store your general likes and dislikes. Without a storehouse of prior emotional experiences to compare to present events, everything appears neutral — neither appealing nor unappealing. This means that feelings are essential to thought.Emotions steer us in the best general direction where logic can be put to its best (and more specific) use. Without emotions, we’d be overwhelmed by the dazzling array of choices we need to make every minute of every day. Our emotional learning helps us sift through these options and pulls out the best ones to be analyzed by our rational mind.  In this way, emotions work as an equal partner with logical thought. The better these two partners work together, the higher your intelligence and your emotional intelligence. The goal is to create the most powerful mind possible – one which balances strengths in rational thought with emotional wisdom. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll share with you scientifically proven ways to train your elephant and develop your most powerful mind. 

About the AuthorDr. John Schinnerer

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping people learn anger management, stress management and the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions. He also helps clients learn ways to create happy, meaningful lives. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  He sits on the Advisory Board of Positive Music Imperative (PMI) and The Wellness Community.   

Posted in Alexithymia, Men's emotions, Subconscious mind, Consciousness, Anger Management, The human brain, Resiliency, Hope, Awareness, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Altruism, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Life coach, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Forgiveness, Positive Psychology, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Rational mind, Depression, Happiness, Staying calm, Counseling | Print | No Comments »

Go Beyond Self-Interest - Revisit Your Values

16. January 2009 by John Schinnerer.

It seems that values have been rediscovered with the downturn in the economy. Many people are asking themselves “If it’s not money that make me happy, what does make me happy?” 

A happy and satisfying life involves behaving according to a set of ethics, standards, or values.  Values are the core beliefs upon which you operate your life. You may be aware of your core beliefs. You may not. In my counseling and coaching work, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of people do not have any idea what their top five values are. Our values are the stars by which we navigate ourselves through life. Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”   Ours is much too busy and noisy a world. Our lives take on a frenetic pace and people lose track of the values that give life meaning and purpose. Everyone says they are for values. The problem is their actions are not in keeping with their words. Thus, we have Christian schools that talk about treating children with loving compassion while verbally flagellating them in the classrooms. People with few values are more likely to be uncaring, conforming, inconsistent, and self-conflicted. The less we know what our values are, the more ambiguous our lives are. The more we understand our values, the better able we are to make the right choices which lead to right action. This leads to decisive acts of courage which are primarily the ability to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done.  

Ethical Energy Defined 

According to the authors of The Power of Full Engagement, “Ethical energy is the connection to a deeply held set of values and to a purpose that is beyond our self-interest. Anything that ignites the human spirit serves to drive full engagement and to maximize performance in whatever mission we are on. The key muscle that fuels ethical energy is character – the courage and conviction to live by our values, even when doing so requires personal sacrifice and hardship. Ethical energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to others with adequate self-care….the capacity to live by our deepest values depends on regularly renewing our spirit – seeking ways to rest and rejuvenate and to reconnect with the values that we find most inspiring and meaningful.” The alternative to living according to your values is to operate in survival mode, fueled by fear, mistrust and anxiety. Survival mode is marked by a sense of desperation where you are focused on filling your immediate needs for food, clothing, warmth and shelter. Survival mode is also characterized by the mentality of a victim. Life happens to you, not because of you. If you are passively accepting everything that comes your way as inevitable, you are not living according to your values. You are living in survival mode.  

Strengths Defined 

Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, has put a slightly different twist on values. Seligman states, “To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. There are several distinct routes to each of these six. One can display a virtue, such as justice by acts of fairness and loyalty.” Seligman calls these routes strengths and each is measurable and acquirable. They are ubiquitous across cultures (i.e. they occur everywhere). According to Seligman, there are seven criteria by which we know that a characteristic is a strength. First, a strength is a trait, a psychological characteristic that can be seen across different situations and over time.  

Second, a strength is valued in its own right. We value a strength for its own sake, even in the absence of clear beneficial outcomes. While a strength can produce good consequences, it doesn’t have to.  

Third, a strength can be seen in what parents wish for in their newborn children. Strengths are states we desire that require no further justification.  

Fourth, onlookers are usually elevated and inspired by observing strengths. Strengths typically produce authentic positive emotion in the doer – pride, satisfaction, joy, fulfillment – and the observer – inspired and uplifted.  

Fifth, strengths are supported by the dominant culture in the form of institutions, rituals, parables, maxims and children’s stories.

Sixth, role models and paragons in the culture compellingly illustrate a strength or virtue.  

Seventh, they are ubiquitous. Strengths are valued in almost every culture. They are not quite universal, as some exceptions to every rule can be found. But, they are ubiquitous. They take place everywhere.

“Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.”                  - Albert Einstein

Values Defined 

Each individual has a set of beliefs and ideas about abstract concepts called values. They describe how much worth a person places on various ideas, objects, or beliefs. Societies have values that are shared between many of the participants in that culture.   These values may be put into four categories:    

• Ethics (good, bad, moral, immoral, amoral, right, wrong, permissible, impermissible)  
• Aesthetics (beautiful, ugly, unbalanced, pleasing)      
• Group Norms (political, ideological, religious or social beliefs and values)  
• Inborn (inborn values such as reproduction and survival, a controversial issue)   

Values are our core beliefs regarding those principles that we believe are most important and desirable. On occasion, we encounter ethical problems which pit two of our most cherished values against one another. In such a situation, we cannot act in a way that is in keeping with both these values. We solve such problems by prioritizing our top values that are relevant to the situation. Each of us has a set of prized values. Many of us simply are not aware of them.  We must have an awareness of our values as well as the intention to act upon them for values to be useful to us.

Stephen Covey and colleagues call these prized values our personal principles. He cautions against self-centered values such as “self respect” or “a sense of accomplishment” because they can lead us to develop pragmatic, utilitarian relationships with other individuals.  Covey suggests that we adopt prized values that are more holistic and anchored in the fundamental realities of nature, spirit and healthy interpersonal relationships.  Prizing your family higher than your career is a good example of adopting holistic and healthy values. 

Why Values Are Essential   Let’s look at how living according to one’s values can lead to a more fulfilling and purposeful life. Imagine that you could do whatever it is that brings you the most joy in your life. Picture anything you like that is deeply fulfilling to you. What you have then is a picture of a person living in accordance to his or her most cherished values. There is a close link between values and living a fulfilling life. Once your values are clarified, you will have a map that guides you through key decisions. Through this process we learn what is most important to the client and what is not. Clients discover what is truly necessary in their lives.

Clarifying values helps you to take a stand, to take calculated risks, and to make choices based on what is personally fulfilling to you. By its very nature, honoring your values is fulfilling, even when times get tough. You can suffer through discomfort if you know it will pass and you are living in accordance with your values. Making decisions based on your top values will always lead to a more fulfilling decision. This leads to right behavior and a fulfilling life.  Some examples of values are creativity, helping others, independence, fun, intimacy, power, friendship, peace of mind, nature, learning, adventure, spirituality. They cannot be touched, but they can be seen. You see them being acted out in how people behave. Someone living perfectly in accordance with values will feel the pain of a disturbing situation, and perhaps some psychological disturbance, but will remain tranquil at the center.  

Equanimity is the ideal. Equanimity means evenness of mind, or in this case, evenness of emotion. When possible, excessive negative emotion is to be deflected or rerouted. No one lives perfectly in accordance with their values. The goal is to remain constantly aware of your values and to strive to behave in accordance with them. Values remind us of our authentic self and our unique role in the universe. All of us benefit from a series of ethical guideposts which we can use to steer our actions towards the greater good.

The problem is that many situations in our lives fall into a gray area where values conflict and the right behavior is not readily apparent. It is helpful in these situations to have your values rank ordered in terms of their importance to you.  

When that doesn’t work, there is a framework to help guide your decision making process. With that in mind, here is a framework that has been helpful for millions of people. This framework is based on five steps:  

• Define the situation  
• Gather data from different sources 
• Be aware of your prioritized list of values 
• Identify your options or actions  
• Weigh the options in terms of how congruent each one is with your values 
• Make a decision 

Always remember that the best courses of action rely on intuition, emotion (your “gut” feeling), data from your senses, data from trusted sources, and what you know is right in the larger scheme of things. It is also helpful to write down your top 5 values (e.g., family, work, money, happiness, etc.) and to prioritize them. Trouble arises when your values come into conflict with one another. If you know what your values are and how they compare to one another, there is less chance of compromising your values. The more you think and act with integrity, the more you become an ethical person.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping folks learn anger management, stress management and the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions. He also helps clients find what makes life meaningful and fulfilling. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.   

Posted in Consciousness, Anger Management, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Resiliency, Altruism, Awareness, Hope, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Morals and values, Dr. John Schinnerer, Realistic optimism, Business & psych, Positive Psychology, Life coach, Guide to Self, Ethics, Happiness, Staying calm, Emotional IQ, Counseling | Print | No Comments »

The Mysterious Subway Violinist and Human Perception

15. January 2009 by John Schinnerer.

A man sat on a chair, his back against the tiled wall at the L’Enfant Plaza Station of the subway line in Washington D.C. He pulled out a violin and began playing classical music. On a brisk January morning, the man played beautifully for close to an hour. As it was rush hour, nearly 1100 people passed by him during his performance.

A few minutes into the “concert”, a middle aged man noticed the man playing the violin. He slowed down a step, stopped to listen for a few seconds, then continued on his way.Another couple of minutes passed before the violinist was given his first tip – a dollar bill – from a pleasant-looking woman who kindly tossed the bill into the man’s hat but did not stop to listen. After awhile, a gentleman in his early twenties stopped to listen to the violin player. Fifteen seconds passed before the young man looked at his beeping iPhone and hurried off to work.

The one who got most caught up in the live music was a toddler who clearly enjoyed the beautiful notes emanating from the instrument. The young boy’s mother, however, had to get an appointment and tugged at his sleeve. The 3-year-old took two steps towards his mother to appease her then stopped again. He was moved by the music. Seconds passed, his mother grabbed him underneath the armpit and yanked him along. His feet moved with his mothers’ but his eyes remained fixed on the violinist. This scenario played out repeatedly with other children who were mesmerized by the man’s beautiful playing. Their parents, without exception, had no time to indulge the whims of the children, hurrying them along to their various destinations.

Note: This is a true story of a social experiment.

Over the course of a 45-minute performance, 27 individuals combined to contribute $32.17 for the man’s efforts. A mere 7 out of 1,097 people (or 0.6 percent) paused to enjoy the man’s music.  When his performance was done, he quietly put away his violin, folded up his chair and left without ceremony. The music was replaced with silence. No one applauded. No one even noticed his absence. Three days prior to the subway concert, the violinist, Joshua Bell, had played to a packed house at Boston’s Symphony Hall. The average ticket price to the concert was $100. Bell is widely regarded as one of the best musicians in the world. In 2007, Bell won the Avery Fisher Prize for outstanding achievement in classical music and annually plays over 200 concerts worldwide. He was enlisted by Washington Post writer, Gene Weingarten to spend 45 minutes playing Bach. Bell used his own violin during the concert, a Stradivarius violin made in 1713, for which he reportedly purchased for $3.5 million.

The real story is the social experiment concocted by Weingarten and carried out by Bell. The experiment speaks to the power that context has over our attention, perceptions, tastes and priorities. Simply because it took place in front of a subway station, less than 1% of 1,100 people stopped to listen to a free concert given by a world-class musician, playing some of the most beautiful music ever written, on an instrument that is a work of art in its own right.

Some Rather Important Questions:

If we are unable to recognize beauty when it is right in front of us, what other beautiful things are we missing?

What opportunities are we missing to savor the enjoyment of everyday brilliance?
 

What underlying expectations do we have that keep us from recognizing talent in unusual places?

To what are you paying attention?  

And finally, what are you NOT seeing or hearing (or perceiving) that might bring you joy?

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and positive psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Emotional management, Emotional mind, Consciousness, Altruism, Awareness, Mindfulness, Positive mood music, Happiness, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Life coach, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Hope –Antidote for Human Suffering or Pipe Dream?

6. January 2009 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

To what extent is hope necessary or relevant for these difficult times? The world is besieged by economic, military, educational, and healthcare problems which seem to be insurmountable. In such a world, of what possible use is hope?

It feels as if Pandora opened her box only recently, allowing a wave of good and evil to descend upon humankind. And yet, in the Greek myth, Pandora closed the box while one thing remained inside – hope.  

Is hope a powerful psychological asset, an antidote to human shortcomings? Or is hope simply a pipe dream for Pollyanna-ish optimists who can’t see the brutal, harsh nature of reality?

Hope Is Helpful In A Variety of Areas

Hope has been studied in psychology labs throughout the world for dozens of years. Research studies have shown that greater hope is associated with:

·        Freedom from anxiety

·        Less depression

·        More positive mood

·        Increased popularity among peers

·        Higher achievement in a number of areas (academic, athletic, military, political and professional)

·        Greater quality of social relationships

·        Improved physical health

·        Increased accomplishment of goals

·        Increased tolerance of pain

·        Reduced cardiovascular risk

If hope is a pipe dream for those who do not see reality accurately, then the rose-colored pipe dream comes with a slew of physical, emotional, social and vocational benefits. Given the broad range of positive advantages that hope confers upon its users, it might be more simply stated that hope helps. Hope is, in fact, a powerful psychological asset.

Hope Defined

Hope is a belief or wish that in the future good events and positive feelings will come more frequently than bad events and negative feelings.  Rick Snyder, a researcher at Kansas University, sees hope as having three distinct parts:

1.      Goals – Goals can be large or small, short- or long-term, formal or informal. Goals can be set in any area of life. However, without goals, there is no future-oriented thinking, and thus no hope.

2.      Pathways – A workable plan to get around potential challenges to enable one to get to the goal.

3.      Agency - The energy, motivation, or will to act. Agency is the degree of determination one has to achieve a goal.

Hope Is More About The Future Than The Present

To the extent that one has these three elements, one has hope. Hope comes from the excitement one feels about the future possibility of accomplishing goals. Hope is not as much about the present moment as it is about realizing future potential. Hope is a perception whereby one sees the future as filled with possibilities. Hope helps to create the future as it motivates people to strive towards creating new constructive realities.

Hopeful People Don’t Play The Blame Game

One of the appealing aspects of hope is that hopeful people do not get into blaming themselves or the world for falling short of a goal. Instead, when they fail, hopeful people ask ‘What now?’ They come up with alternative ways to achieve their goal. They excel at discovering multiple pathways to attain goals.

Hope has been shown to enhance problem-solving abilities and thus makes people better at brainstorming potential solutions to challenges.

Learning To Be More Hopeful

Instead of creating New Year’s resolutions that will be broken by nightfall, you may want to resolve to become more hopeful. If that’s the case, here are some suggestions to help strengthen your hope.

Dare to Hope – Most are taught growing up ‘Don’t get your hopes up!’ Hope is a human strength which makes the accomplishment of goals more likely. Be brave enough to have hope.

Set Goals That Are Personally Meaningful – There is little point to attempting to fulfill goals that someone else has for you. Goals are effective when they have meaning to you.

State Your Goals in the Positive – Rather than ‘I’m going to lose 10 pounds’ tell yourself ‘I will get healthy’. The human mind does not respond well to negative statements and goals are no exception. State your goals using positive language.

Be Mindful of Where Hope Falls Apart – Does your hope break down at the pathways stage? Perhaps you need better planning, or help in creating your plan. If your hope falters at the motivation or determination stage, share your goal with loved ones to give you extra accountability.

Check In With Your Self – Whenever you are distracted from the task you are working on, ask yourself ‘What am I doing?’ and ‘What are my goals for this task?’ These simple questions will help you to stay focused on the task at hand, remind you of your goals and perform well in the moment.

Listen to Uplifting Music – Recent research has shown that listening to music (as well as playing and composing) involves nearly every neural network in the human brain. Music lights up the brain. The power of music is the power to evoke emotions. If you want to feel hope, listen to hopeful music. Some of my favorite songs that evoke hope are…

·        Imagine by John Lennon

·        Lovely, Love My Family by The Roots (off the Yo, Gabba Gabba album)

·        Uwritten by Natasha Bedingfield

·        You’ll Be Blessed by Elton John

·        Three Little Birds by Bob Marley

·        I Don’t Ever Give Up by Patty Griffin

·        Joy by Mick Jagger

·        The Middle by Jimmy Eats World

·        Fall Back Down by Rancid

Watch an Elevating Clip On YouTube  

Studies have shown that the brain is a very literal organ and doesn’t differentiate much between what is real, what is imagined and what we watch on a screen. In some meaningful way, hope can be injected into the mind by watching clips or movies that inspire you.

·        One uplifting clip on YouTube is actually an ad from MBF, a health care company in Australia, featuring the song ‘Accentuate the Positive’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDRQbrBhoWg).

·        Or check out the short film ‘Validated’ with Hugh Newman in which a parking garage attendant ‘validates’ the existence of others by offering words of kindness and encouragement (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao ).

·        One of my favorites on YouTube is ‘Free Hugs’ with music by the Sick Puppies (‘All the same’) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4.  This clip has been viewed over 40 million times and won YouTube’s video of the year for 2007. This social experiment, giving away free hugs, has been replicated in dozens of countries with similar hopeful results.

When Pandora did close her infamous box, it’s fortunate that hope was left inside. Hope is a powerful internal asset which can be used to offset many of the hardships life brings. Bolster your own sense of hope using the suggestions above. Please share with me songs or videos that inspire your sense of hope.  Everyone can use a shot of hope now and then.

About the Author
Dr. John Schinnerer (DrJohn AT GuideToSelf.com)

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping people learn anger management, stress management and the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Emotional management, Managing Anxiety, Emotional mind, Depression, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Anger Management, Managing Sadness, Altruism, Hope, Resiliency, The human brain, Men's emotions, Positive mood music, Happiness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Life coach, Managing stress, Realistic optimism, Positive Psychology, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Tips to help anxiety, Nervousness, Staying calm, Anxiety, Counseling | Print | No Comments »

The Key to Surviving the Holidays – Self-Compassion

12. December 2008 by John Schinnerer.

The Key to Surviving the Holidays – Self-Compassion

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

As we enter the holiday season, it makes good sense to talk about survival tools. How do we survive the coming onslaught of family and friends and the accompanying mistakes, failings, and misunderstandings that will inevitably follow in the next three weeks?

Self-Esteem Isn’t the Answer

Ten years ago, the answer might have been to boost everyone’s self-esteem before they come together. For decades, we have been obsessed with self-esteem.  For so long, we thought if we could just make people feel good about themselves, it would solve family problems, societal problems and psychological problems.  We’ve created programs to instill high self-esteem in our children, our students and our families.

Self-Esteem Alone Can Be Dangerous

Self-esteem involves how one feels about him- or herself. There are two types of self-esteem – state and trait. State self-esteem is how positively one evaluates himself in the moment. Trait self-esteem has to do with how positively one sees himself overall. Recent research has shown that increasing self-esteem is not as effective as once thought. Many people with high self-esteem feel so good about themselves that they feel comfortable abusing and taking advantage of other people (e.g., higher degrees of narcissism). At some point, individuals with high self-esteem seem to be able to rationalize destructive behaviors towards others using the idea that they are superior.

Obviously, this was not an intended outcome of self-esteem programs. So how do we get people to feel good about themselves without adding to their sense of superiority?

Self-Compassion – An Inner Critic with LovingKindness

While self-esteem had to do with how one feels about himself, self-compassion involves how one treats himself when things go badly. The goal is to treat oneself with the same type of kindness and compassion that most people extend to loved ones when they fail. When other people fall short of a goal or err, most people will react with kindness and compassion. On the other hand, studies show that most people are harsh with themselves when they screw up. Most people are self-punitive, disparaging and hypercritical of their own shortcomings and mistakes. Unfortunately, this degrades the quality of our emotional lives. It upsets the emotional apple cart, as it were. Even people with high self-esteem are prone to this sort of self-punishing internal beat down. We are truly our own worst critics.

Self-Compassion Leads to Greater Resiliency

People with self-compassion are more resilient. They roll with the punches. Self-compassionate people bounce back more quickly from setbacks because they treat themselves more kindly when they fail or make a mistake.

Can We Have Too Much Self-Compassion?

This all sounds good so far. What’s the catch? Is it possible to be overly self-compassionate to the point where one is self-indulgent? Is it possible, or even probable, that a compassionate person might take no responsibility for their mistakes?

Research at Duke University suggests that is not the case. Self-compassionate people take responsibility for failures and own up to mistakes. They do feel badly when things go awry. According to Mark Leary at Duke, self-compassionate people simply lack that extra layer of self-flagellation and internal criticism. In other words, their internal critic has learned to speak less often and more kindly.   

How To Build More Self-Compassion

Kristin Neff, a researcher at University of Texas (and fellow Berkeley grad), has the following suggestions for ways to foster more self-compassion…

“Self-Kindness – ‘What would a caring friend say to you in this situation?’  ‘What is a kind and constructive way to think about how I can rectify this mistake or do better next time?’  Try putting your hand over your heart or gently stroking your arm when feeling a lot of pain as a gesture of kindness and compassion.

Self-judgment – ‘Who ever said human beings are supposed to be perfect?’  ‘Would a caring mother say this to her child if she wanted the child to grow and develop?’  ‘How will I learn if it’s not okay to make mistakes?’

Common Humanity - Think about all the other people who have made similar mistakes, gone through similar situations, and so on.  ‘This is the human condition - all humans are vulnerable, flawed, make mistakes, have things happen that are difficult and painful’  ‘How does this situation give me more insight into and compassion for the human experience?’

Isolation – ‘I am not the only one going through such difficult times, all people experience things like this at some point in their lives.’  ‘Although I take full responsibilities for my mistakes and failings, I also recognize and understand that my actions and behaviors are connected to other people’s actions and behaviors - nothing happens in a vacuum.’

Mindfulness - Take several deep slow breaths and try to be with your pain exactly as it is. Let yourself feel the pain without suppressing, resisting, or avoiding it.  Take a moment to stop and say to yourself, this is really hard right now.  Let yourself be moved and touched by your own pain.  Try to see the situation clearly with calm, clarity and a balanced perspective.  ‘I fully accept this moment and these emotions as they are.’”

So as you enter the holidays and family tensions rise, remember to be more self-compassionate. If you make a mistake, fall short of a goal, or fail to act a certain way, respond with loving kindness towards yourself, just as you would to a small child. You’ll be glad you did.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

You can follow Dr. John Schinnerer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnschin.

Posted in Managing Sadness, Alexithymia, Anger Management, Managing Anxiety, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Men's emotions, The human brain, Mindfulness, Assertiveness, Altruism, Resiliency, Relationships, Parenting, Depression, Life coach, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Forgiveness, Realistic optimism, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Happiness, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Tips to help anxiety, Nervousness, Staying calm, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

Harvard Study Shows Happiness is Transmittable As In A Wireless Network

6. December 2008 by John Schinnerer.

Happiness is catching. Happiness spreads through friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors. There is a ripple effect whereby happiness extends widely through social networks, even between people who may not know one another. One’s happiness depends on the degree of happiness of those surrounding her.

A study performed at Harvard University, by Nicholas Christakis, is the first of its kind to demonstrate the existence of clusters of happy and sad individuals. Happiness depends upon the happiness of those around them. What’s more, individuals who surround themselves with happy people are more likely to be happy in the future. One’s future happiness can actually be predicted by the number of happy people surrounding them and the degree to which the social network as a whole experiences constructive emotions, such as happiness.  These findings come from an analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network, a longitudinal study that has followed nearly 5,000 people for over 20 years.

Study findings suggest that happiness results from the spread of happiness throughout social networks and not merely from individuals choosing to surround themselves with like-minded individuals. For example, if your next door neighbor becomes happier due to a job promotion, your likelihood of becoming happier increases by 34%. And this happiness effect can linger for up to one year.

This relationship between individual’s happiness holds true for the first three degrees of separation. For example, when John becomes happier, it buoys the happiness of John’s friends as well as the friends of John’s friends. So there is a ripple effect of happiness within social circles where happiness is contagious and spreads similar to the waves of a wireless network. And we are consciously aware of little, if any, of it.

In the past five to ten years, more and more studies have looked at happiness and what determines it (e.g., genetics, money, elections, marital status and emotional management). However, no study has looked at human happiness as it relates to the happiness of others. While the study is the first of its kind and needs to be replicated to ensure the accuracy of these findings, the findings are remarkable and exhilarating.

Emotional contagion, the process by which one person picks up the feelings of another, has been scientifically documented since 1994. Emotions may be ‘caught’ from others for a length of time ranging from seconds to weeks.  This is particularly true of destructive emotions - anger, fear and sadness. In fact, the hard part is not ‘catching’ the emotions but in protecting oneself from them, keeping them at bay. Until this study, emotional contagion had not been documented for any of the positive, constructive emotions such as joy, contentment, peacefulness or happiness.  

The difficulty is that most people primarily feel destructive emotions. Most people experience more destructive emotions than constructive emotions.  

On the other hand, roughly 10% of adults in the United States feel three times as much positive emotion as negative. This 3:1 ratio is the measuring stick for a thriving happy life as set by Barbara Fredrickson at UNC Chapel Hill. It appears that this top 10% is raising the level of happiness of many others. Imagine if it were possible to raise this thriving, happy portion of the population to 15% or 20%.

Assuming the percentage of the populace experiencing happiness could be improved, here are just a few of the possible societal benefits:

·        The economy would improve (e.g., higher ratios of positive, open-ended inquiries are present in executive teams in highly successful firms)

·        Creativity would increase (e.g., happiness is linked to greater innovation)

·        Productivity would soar (e.g., a happy employee is a productive employee; optimistic salespeople outsell pessimistic ones by approximately 38%)

·        The burden on the health care system would be eased (e.g., happiness improves immune system functioning).

·        People would live longer (e.g., happy, optimistic people live 7 – 10 years longer than those who are pessimistic and unhappy)

·        The educational system would show significant academic gains (e.g., students taught to be more happy and optimistic showed significant gains on achievement testing and received better grades)

The exciting part is that happiness can be taught. It can be learned. People can learn to feel positive emotions more frequently and more intensely. Emotional management is a learnable skill. Just as one practices a sport and improves over time so it is with emotions.   As individuals learn to string together more and more happy moments, the ripple effect spills over and one person’s happiness positively influences others.  It even influences the happiness of other people they don’t know.

The goal is emotional management. The goal is happiness. The goal is to learn to mitigate destructive emotions and encourage positive emotions. Happiness is social phenomena. The more individuals experience positive emotions, the more society as a whole is happier, healthier, and more productive and that is no small feat.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Subconscious mind, Alexithymia, Consciousness, Managing Sadness, Managing Anxiety, Anger Management, Men's emotions, The human brain, Mindfulness, Assertiveness, Altruism, Resiliency, Relationships, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Dr. John Schinnerer, Life coach, Realistic optimism, Positive Psychology, Counseling, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Depression, Happiness, Anxiety, Organizational change initiatives, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

If You Want To Get Some Lovin’, Give Some Lovin’

16. October 2008 by John Schinnerer.

Another intriguing study. This one found that altruistic behavior may be considered sexually attractive by both sexes in potential mates…

Being Altruistic May Make You Attractive

Oct. 15, 2008

Displays of altruism or selflessness towards others can be sexually attractive in a mate. This is one of the findings of a study carried out by biologists and a psychologist at The University of Nottingham. 

In three studies of more than 1,000 people, Dr Tim Phillips and his fellow researchers discovered that women place significantly greater importance on altruistic traits than anything else. Their findings have been published in the British Journal of Psychology. 

Dr Phillips said:  “Evolutionary theory predicts competition between individuals and yet we see many examples in nature of individuals disadvantaging themselves to help others. In humans, particularly, we see individuals prepared to put themselves at considerable risk to help individuals they do not know for no obvious reward.” 

Participants in the studies were questioned about a range of qualities they look for in a mate, including examples of altruistic behaviour such as ‘donates blood regularly’ and ‘volunteered to help out in a local hospital’. Women placed significantly greater importance on altruistic traits in all three studies.

 Yet both sexes may consider altruistic traits when choosing a partner. One hundred and seventy couples were asked to rate how much they preferred altruistic traits in a mate and report their own level of altruistic behaviour. The strength of preference in one partner was found to correlate with the extent of altruistic behaviour typically displayed in the other, suggesting that altruistic traits may well be a factor both men and women take into account when choosing a partner. 

Dr Phillips said: “For many years the standard explanation for altruistic behaviour towards non-relatives has been based on reciprocity and reputation — a version of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. I believe we need to look elsewhere to understand the roots of human altruism. The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents. Displays of altruism could well have provided accurate clues to this and genes linked to altruism would have been favoured as a result.” 

Dr Phillips concluded: “Sexual selection could well come to be seen as exerting a major influence on what made humans human.” 

Dr Tom Reader in the School of Biology said: “Sexual preferences have enormous potential to shape the evolution of animal behaviour. Humans are clearly not an exception: sex may have a crucial role in explaining what are our most biologically interesting and unusual habits.” 

From Science Daily. University of Nottingham (2008, October 15). Being Altruistic May Make You Attractive. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 16, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/10/081014134027.htm

 

 Cheers,

Dr. John Schinnerer

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Subconscious mind, Emotional management, Men's emotions, The human brain, Altruism, Emotional mind, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Life coach, Dr. John Schinnerer, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »