14. December 2009 by John Schinnerer.

‘ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — A new study may explain why the England soccer team keeps losing in penalty shootouts — and could help the team address the problem in time for the World Cup 2010. Research by the University of Exeter shows for the first time the effect of anxiety on a footballer’s eye movements while taking a penalty.

The study shows that when penalty takers are anxious they are more likely to look at and focus on the centrally positioned goalkeeper. Due to the tight coordination between gaze control and motor control, shots also tend to centralize, making them easier to save. The research is now published in the December 2009 edition of the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

The researchers attribute this change in eye movements and focus to anxiety. Author Greg Wood of the University of Exeter’s School of Sport and Health Sciences said: ‘During a highly stressful situation, we are more likely to be distracted by any threatening stimuli and focus on them, rather than the task in hand. Therefore, in a stressful penalty shootout, a footballer’s attention is likely to be directed towards the goalkeeper as opposed to the optimal scoring zones (just inside the post). This disrupts the aiming of the shot and increases the likelihood of subsequently hitting the shot towards the goalkeeper, making it easier to save.’

Remind your players to breathe deeply in order to relax and dial down the pressure after the referee has blown the whistle to proceed with their shot from the mark.

Have an enjoyable Saturday night!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coaching

www.GuideToSelf.com

Author of ‘Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought’<–>

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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.  

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10. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Science Daily - “Based on a study of 84 students divided into four separate experiments, University of Oregon researchers found that students with high memory storage capacity were clearly better able to ignore distractions and stay focused on their assigned tasks.

Principal investigator Edward K. Vogel, a UO professor of psychology, compares working memory to a computer’s random-access memory (RAM) rather than the hard drive’s size — the higher the RAM, the better processing abilities. With more RAM, he said, students were better able to ignore distractions. This notion surfaced in a 2005 paper in Nature by Vogel and colleagues in the Oregon Visual Working Memory & Attention Lab.

Vogel is quick to say that the findings don’t necessarily signify problems for an easily distracted person, although people who hold their focus more intensely tend to have higher fluid intelligence; they score higher on achievement tests, do better in math and learn second languages easier than peers who are captured by interruptions. Vogel currently is working with other UO researchers to explore if the easily distracted indeed have a positive side, such as in artistic creativity and imagination.

The IPS, Vogel said, acts as a pointer system that seeks out goal-related cues, and it possibly is the gateway for memory circuitry in the brain.

“Our attention is the continual interplay between what our goals are and what the environment is trying to dictate to us,” Vogel said. “Often, to be able to complete complex and important goal-directed behavior, we need to be able to ignore salient but irrelevant things, such as advertisements flashing around an article you are trying to read on a computer screen. We found that some people are really good at overriding attention capture, and other people have a difficult time unhooking from it and are really susceptible to irrelevant stimuli.”

Vogel theorizes that people who are good at staying on focus have a good gatekeeper, much like a bouncer or ticket-taker hired to allow only approved people into a nightclub or concert. Understanding how to improve the gatekeeper component, he said, could lead to therapies that help easily distracted people better process what information is allowed in initially, rather than attempting to teach people how to force more information into their memory banks.”

Original story here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090806141712.htm

 Always something to think about!

 Wonderfully yours,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in ADHD, Danville CA, Managing Anxiety, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Creativity, Nervousness, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

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.  

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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.

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