12. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

The antidote for fear, anxiety and nervousness is the cultivation of courage. There are a variety of ways to do this. The most useful for my clients has been to write out your own Courage Story.

Bravery and valor are arguably among the most important of the 24 character strengths. And they fall within the virtue cluster of courage. I’ve always found a truckload of truth in this quotation:

“The secret of life is this: When you hear the sound of the cannons, walk toward them.”

So let me ask you to think back over your life:

“What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?”

Sample answers I’ve heard: Moving across country to a new city without a job…. Going back to school as a single parent with an infant….Staying with my dearest friend as she died of cancer…..Learning to dance at 60…Applying to a graduate program at UC Berkeley….

Mine was facing down my own social anxiety to do a daily primetime radio show.
What’s yours?

Writing Your Courage Story.

Write a succinct one page story about the most courageous thing you’ve ever done. The time period could range from minutes to days or months to years. Be sure to give your story a clear, crisp ending.

Elements to include might be:

• The situation,
• What you feared,
• Why it required your courage,
• What your experience felt and looked like (details are good, sensory details are better!)
• How you acted despite the fear,
• And be sure to give your story a solid, richly detailted ending.

Cheer,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Meaning-making, Executive coach, Emotion & productivity, Danville CA, Optimal Human Functioning, Well-being, Courage and Anxiety, keys to happiness, Pursuing Purpose, Men's feelings, Emotion & learning, Curiosity, Anxiety, Emotional IQ, Guide to Self, Managing stress, Staying calm, Tips to help anxiety, Assertiveness, Resiliency, Managing Anxiety, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

8. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip.

You don’t have to actually answer the questions. Just ponder on them.
Just read this straight through, and you’ll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series Winners.

How did you do?
The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday.
These are no second-rate achievers.
They are the best in their fields.
But the applause dies..
Awards tarnish..
Achievements are forgotten.
Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz.. See how you do on this one: 
1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special!!
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson:
The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials..

the most money…

or the most awards.

They simply are the ones who care the most

If you like, share this with those people who have either made a difference in your life, or whom you keep close in your heart. Be extra kind to strangers. You don’t know how the world has treated them and everyone has their own story.

”Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!”

Courtesy of David Banner (not Bruce Banner a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk!)

Posted in Positive expectations, Danville CA, Overcoming failure, Meaning-making, Self-compassion, keys to happiness, Well-being, Curiosity, Gratitude, Happiness, Managing stress, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Emotional mind, Hope, Managing Sadness, Forgiveness | Print | No Comments »

5. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

A beautifully done reminder that love trumps anger. Remind yourself of what and who you love. Think of a person whom you find easy to love. Use that feeling to ‘paint’ another with whom you struggle or are having issues. Transfer the love across people!

Enjoy the longing gazes of your wife or husband!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide to Self Inc.

Posted in San Francisco Bay Area, Emotion & productivity, Danville CA, Well-being, De-escalating anger, Apologies, Men and Women, Anger management therapy, Science of love, Curiosity, Tips to help anxiety, Emotional IQ, Creativity, Happiness, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Anger Management, Emotional management, Depression, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

3. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

July 30, 2010

Imagine technology that allows you to get inside the mind of a terrorist to know how, when and where the next attack will occur.

That’s not nearly as far-fetched as it seems, according to a new Northwestern University study.
Say, for purposes of illustration, that the chatter about an imminent terrorist attack is mounting, and specifics about the plan emerge, about weapons that will be used, the date of such a dreaded event and its location.

If the new test used by the Northwestern researchers had been used in such a real-world situation with the same type of outcome that occurred in the lab, the study suggests, culpability extracted from the chatter could be confirmed.

In other words, if the test conducted in the Northwestern lab ultimately is employed for such real-world scenarios, the research suggests, law enforcement officials ultimately may be able to confirm details about an attack - date, location, weapon — that emerges from terrorist chatter.

In the Northwestern study, when researchers knew in advance specifics of the planned attacks by the make-believe “terrorists,” they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab, said J. Peter Rosenfeld, professor of psychology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

For the first time, the Northwestern researchers used the P300 testing in a mock terrorism scenario in which the subjects are planning, rather than perpetrating, a crime. The P300 brain waves were measured by electrodes attached to the scalp of the make-believe “persons of interest” in the lab.

The most intriguing part of the study in terms of real-word implications, Rosenfeld said, is that even when the researchers had no advance details about mock terrorism plans, the technology was still accurate in identifying critical concealed information.
 

“Without any prior knowledge of the planned crime in our mock terrorism scenarios, we were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime- related details,” Rosenfeld said. “The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity.”

Rosenfeld is a leading scholar in the study of P300 testing to reveal concealed information. Basically, electrodes are attached to the scalp to record P300 brain activity — or brief electrical patterns in the cortex — that occur, according to the research, when meaningful information is presented to a person with “guilty knowledge.”

Research on the P300 testing emerged in the 1980s as a handful of scientists looked for an alternative to polygraph tests for lie detection. Since it was invented in the 1920s, polygraphy has been under fire, especially by academics, with critics insisting that such testing measures emotion rather than knowledge.

Rosenfeld and Northwestern graduate student John B. Meixner are co-investigators of the study, outlined in a paper titled “A Mock Terrorism Application of the P300-based Concealed Information Test,” published recently in the journal Psychophysiology.

Study participants (29 Northwestern students) planned a mock attack based on information they were given about bombs and other deadly weapons. They then had to write a letter detailing the rationale of their plan to encode the information in memory.

Then, with electrodes attached to their scalps, they looked at a computer display monitor that presented names of stimuli. The names of Boston, Houston, New York, Chicago and Phoenix, for example, were shuffled and presented at random. The city that study participants chose for the major terrorist attack evoked the largest P300 brainwave responses.

The test includes four classes of stimuli known as targets, non-targets, probes and irrelevants. Targets are sights, sounds or other stimuli the person being questioned already knows or is taught to recognize before the test. Probes are stimuli only a guilty suspect would be likely to know. And irrelevants are stimuli unlikely to be recognized.

“Since 9/11 preventing terrorism is a priority,” Rosenfeld said. “Sometimes you catch suspicious people entering a building. You suspect that they’re terrorists, and you have some leads from the chatter. You’ve heard they’re going to attack one city or another in one fashion or another on one date or another. Our hope is that our new complex protocol - different from the first P300 technology developed in the 1980s - will one day confirm such chatter in the real world.”

In the laboratory setting, study participants only had about 30 minutes to learn about the attack and to detail their plans. Thus, Rosenfeld said, encoding of guilty knowledge was relatively shallow. It is assumed that real terrorists rehearse details central to a planned attack repeatedly, leading to deeper encoding of related memories, he said. “We suspect if our test was employed in the real world the deeper encoding of planned crime-related knowledge could further boost detection of terrorist intentions.”

Provided by Northwestern University

The implications of this are far-reaching, disturbing and reassuring simultaneously.

Disturbing since this same procedure, when perfected, can be used with any of us (which is fine along as you’re staying away from involvement in destructive activities, OR activities which arouse guilt in you!).

Reassuring as it will provide a better means of discovering solid leads on imminent attacks by domestic threats. 

Far-reaching because this technology can and likely will be extended far beyond the scope of hunting terrorists. Easy rationalizations can be made to use it to fight drug trafficking and other major clear cut illegal operations. But where does the line get drawn once we get into lesser, gray areas?

Obviously, it will be many years before the technology is accessible and affordable enough to use ubiquitously. However, what about if the IRS uses it around issues of tax evasion? Or the courts use it in child custody evaluations? At what point do our civil liberties get breached?

This will be an ongoing issue as we head into the next decade because, like it or not, it’s coming!

Best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Positive Psychology Coach

Author of the award-winning Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion & Thought

Guide To Self, Inc.

913 San Ramon Valley Blvd. #280

Danville CA 94526

GuideToSelf.com - Web site

DrJohnBlog.GuideToSelf.com -  Awarded Top3 Blog in Positive Psychology by PostRank, Top 100 Blog by Daily Reviewer

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/@johnschin  

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Posted in Emotion recognition software, Danville CA, Neuropsychology, Psychology and technology, Values and ethics, Reading terrorists minds, Guilt, Emotion and technology, Curiosity, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Subconscious mind, Consciousness, Measuring emotions | Print | No Comments »

2. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

This is a comment I posted after a lovely young woman asked about anger management therapy for her husband. She was close to her wit’s end; sick of his constant annoyance, criticisms and irritability. She was asking if anyone knew of any possible way to get her husband to learn new ways of relating or if her only option was divorce.

Dear Kristin:

I’ve been working on designing free online anger management classes to teach men the latest scientifically proven tools for anger management therapy. My background is as a Ph.D. in ed psychology from U.C. Berkeley. I wrote an award-winning book in 2007 on proven tools to turn down the volume on negative emotions, such as anger and irritability, and techniques to turn up the volume on positive emotions, like love, happiness and curiosity.

From my years of research on the mind, I’ve found that merely targeting the anger is necessary but insufficient. As the brain is always looking to maintain a balance or homeostasis, we must teach these two paths simultaneously (turn up the positive and turn down the negative feelings).

I’ve had such success with this process and my clients that I’ve been asked to share the message with a wider audience. Typically, my clients ask “Shouldn’t everyone learn these tools?” To which my answer is “absolutely.” So I’m offering these tools for free at http://www.guidetoself.com. There you can receive a free copy of the eBook, free video lessons and free articles.

The entire process sidesteps the whole issue of shame, embarrassment and fear that men often feel when they seek outside “help”. Using these videos, men can learn useful, proven, concrete tools in the privacy of their own home. This makes it possible to help men who might not otherwise find a way to learn these invaluable tools. 

I hope and pray this is of use to you and your husband!

Best,
John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Founder Guide to Self
http://www.GuideToSelf.com

Posted in Executive coach, San Francisco Bay Area, Well-being, Violence and abuse, Emotion & productivity, National speakers, Danville CA, Gender differences, De-escalating anger, Men and Women, Relationship problems, Managing anger, Anger management therapy, Self-help book, Men's feelings, Real Men Real Emotion, Curiosity, Assertiveness, Victims of bullying, Happiness, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Tips to help anxiety, Staying calm, Managing stress, Dr. John Schinnerer, Depression, Parenting, The human brain, Relationships, Resiliency, Men's emotions, Anger Management, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »