Damon Ashworth Psychology

Category: Psychology

  • Debunking Common Misconceptions About Sleep

    Debunking Common Misconceptions About Sleep

    Struggling with sleep? You’re not alone. But what if some of your thoughts about sleep were actually making things worse? The DBAS-16 (Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep) questionnaire identifies common, yet misguided, assumptions that can fuel hyper-arousal and insomnia.

    I’ll use my expertise in sleep and psychology to help challenge these beliefs. Let’s see if we can replace these unhelpful sleep beliefs with a healthier, science-backed mindset.

    1. “I need 8 hours of sleep to feel refreshed and function well during the day.”

    Challenge: While 7-9 hours of sleep per night is the general recommendation for adults, individual needs vary. A longitudinal study followed people’s sleep and health for several years. It found that people who slept 7 hours per night were healthier on average than those who slept 8-9 hours. Some people do need less sleep than the average, while others need more.

    Focusing too much on getting a fixed amount of sleep each night can create stress. This stress then makes achieving that sleep harder. It’s better to understand your individual sleep needs over time. Then aim to be in bed for not much more than that each night. By improving your sleep quality, regularity, and timing, you can also feel better the next day. You can achieve this even if you aren’t sleeping longer each night.

    2. “When I don’t get the proper amount of sleep on a given night, I need to catch up the next day by napping or the next night by sleeping longer.”

    Challenge: While occasional naps can be refreshing, try not to focus on getting extra sleep during the day. Long naps will reduce your sleep pressure for the next night. If you really have to nap, have one before 4 pm and for less than 30 minutes. This way, it won’t disrupt your sleep as much for the next night.

    Fixating on sleep during the day can keep insomnia going. This habit can also disrupt your natural sleep cycle. Try to engage in fulfilling activities instead. Consistently maintaining a sleep schedule is better than constantly trying to compensate for lost sleep. Your brain and body will then help you to feel more alert during the day and more sleepy at nighttime.

    3. “I am concerned that chronic insomnia may have serious consequences on my
    physical health.    “

    Challenge: While long-term sleep issues can have health effects, excessive worry about them can make sleep problems worse. Insufficient sleep can increase the risk of accidents and reduce productivity during the day. However, performance on tasks in people with insomnia is often better than we expect.

    Small improvements in sleep habits can mitigate risks and help restore healthier sleep patterns over time. Worrying less about the negative impacts of not sleeping can reduce arousal levels and lead to better sleep too.

    4. “I am worried that I may lose control over my abilities to sleep.”

    Challenge: Sleep is not something you control – it’s something you allow. As an involuntary process, the more you try to force sleep, the more elusive it can become.

    Instead, focus on doing things to wind down and relax at the end of the day. Focus on consistency and going to bed at similar times each night and waking up at similar times each morning. Try to only be in bed if you are sleepy and for not much longer than you need for sleep. If you do this at times that are ideal for your inner body clock, even better. Accept that you may have an occasional bad night of sleep. By following this approach, it is likely to lead to better and not worse sleep over time.

    5. “After a poor night’s sleep, I know it will interfere with my activities the next day.“

    Challenge: Feeling tired is natural. However, studies show that people with insomnia often perform better than they expect, even after a poor sleep.

    Worrying about fatigue can make it worse. Trust yourself to manage getting through the day. You can hopefully do what you need to do the next day. This is true even after imperfect sleep, and even if you feel tired or fatigued.

    6. “To be alert and function well during the day, I believe I would be better off taking a sleeping pill rather than having a poor night’s sleep.“

    Challenge: Sleeping pills can provide you short-term relief. Especially if you are going through a really hard time that is likely to last for less than two weeks.

    However, sleeping pills do not address the root causes of chronic insomnia. Additionally, they can lead to dependence over time. Therefore, they are not recommended to be taken regularly for more than 2-4 weeks.

    Behavioral strategies, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), are more effective than sleeping pills. They don’t result in rebound insomnia once the treatment finishes, and they improve sleep in the long term. Prioritizing good sleep habits over medication can lead to more sustainable, restorative sleep.

    7. “When I feel irritable, depressed, or anxious during the day, it is mostly because I did not sleep well the night before.“

    Challenge: While poor sleep can affect mood, emotions are influenced by multiple factors, including stress, lifestyle, and thought patterns. Blaming all negative emotions on sleep can lead to much more anxiety about sleep.

    Instead, if you aren’t feeling great, try engaging in mood-boosting activities. Spend time with people that you like. Exercise and get out into nature. Do something creative or fun. Seek excitement, awe, or joy. Write down things that you feel grateful for. Learn stress management and mindfulness skills. All of these strategies can help improve emotional well-being, even after a rough night of sleep.

    8. “When I sleep poorly one night, I know it will disturb my sleep schedule for the
    whole week.    “

    Challenge: One bad night does not define your entire sleep pattern. If you sleep poorly on one night, your sleep pressure will be a lot higher for the next night. Your brain will then try to make it easier for you to sleep deeply and well. This is to help compensate for the poor night of sleep the night before. If you can keep your stress and worry in check, you are likely to sleep better after a poor night.

    9. “Without an adequate night’s sleep, I can hardly function the next day.“

    Challenge: While sleep is important, the body is resilient. Many people still function well after a poor night of sleep. Things will feel like they require more effort, and you probably won’t feel as motivated to do things. You might even crave more junk food. However, performance studies show that people with insomnia’s functioning is better than they think it will be.

    Energy levels fluctuate naturally throughout the day, and movement, hydration, and good nutrition can help maintain alertness. Try to focus on what you can do during the day to help you to function well. Even when you feel unmotivated.

    10. “I can’t ever predict whether I’ll have a good or poor night’s sleep.“

    Challenge: Some variation in sleep is normal. But this doesn’t mean that sleep is completely unpredictable.

    You can improve the predictability of your sleep by maintaining a consistent bedtime routine. Sleep at the right times for you. Wind down and relax before bedtime, and wait until you feel sleepy before going to bed.

    11. “I have little ability to manage the negative consequences of disturbed sleep.“

    Challenge: You have more resilience than you think. Focus on what feels achievable during the day after a poor night of sleep. If your capacity feels like a 5/10, get through as many of the easier tasks on your to-do-list as possible.

    By doing what you can, looking after yourself and managing your stress well, it is possible to navigate occasional poor sleep. It also increases your chances of getting things back on track with your sleep going forward.

    12. “When I feel tired, have no energy, or just seem not to function well during the
    day, it is generally because I did not sleep well the night before.    “

    Challenge: Our daytime performance and energy levels naturally fluctuate during the day. For most people, it is very common to have a post-lunch dip. Some countries even take siestas during this time rather than trying to push through or ignore how they are feeling. Try not to attribute everything to how you slept the night before.

    Instead, focus on what you can do in the moment. Take a break. Get some fresh air. Have a drink of water or a healthy snack. Engage in an enjoyable or creative activity. Try to shift the focus away from your sleep and see if it reduces insomnia’s control on your life.

    13. “I believe insomnia is essentially the result of a chemical imbalance.“

    Challenge: Brain chemistry plays a role in sleep. However, insomnia is often driven by behavioral, cognitive, and emotional factors. It is not merely caused by a simple chemical imbalance. By saying it is an imbalance, you imply it is out of your control. You indicate there is nothing you can do.

    The science does not support this. CBT-I and other non-medication approaches can be highly effective in addressing the underlying causes of insomnia and improving your sleep. Focus on what you can do.

    14. “I feel insomnia is ruining my ability to enjoy life and prevents me from doing
    what I want.    “

    Challenge: Insomnia can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to define your life. Many people with sleep issues still find joy in their days. Shifting focus away from sleep struggles can improve overall well-being and even sleep itself.

    15. “Medication is probably the only solution to sleeplessness.“

    Challenge: While medication can help in certain cases, non-medication approaches—especially CBT-I — are often more effective for long-term sleep improvement. Stimulus control, sleep restriction, progressive muscle relaxation and paradoxical intention can also make a significant difference. They are all empirically supported interventions for insomnia.

    16. “I avoid or cancel obligations (social, family) after a poor night’s sleep.“

    Challenge: Avoiding activities due to poor sleep can reinforce sleep-related fears. If you say that you can’t function without perfect sleep, it will fuel your anxiety. By engaging in your normal activities, even when you are tired, it can help you to re-frame your sleep-related fears.

    So the next time you don’t sleep well, try not to cancel your plans the next day. Go out and do it anyway, and see how it goes. Then afterwards, ask yourself: 1. how did it go? 2. was it as bad as I thought it would be? and 3. what does this mean for a similar situation next time?

    Final Thoughts

    Many of our beliefs about sleep are shaped by misinformation, anxiety, and unrealistic expectations. By challenging these unhelpful attitudes, you can reduce stress around sleep and improve your overall sleep quality.

    If you struggle with persistent sleep issues, consider seeking out a psychologist for CBT-I. It is considered the gold standard or first line treatment for breaking the cycle of insomnia.

    What do you think?

    Do you strongly agree with any of these common unhelpful beliefs about sleep? Let me know in the comments!

  • Rewire Your Brain for Effort-Based Rewards

    Rewire Your Brain for Effort-Based Rewards

    We live in a world that often glorifies end results. We care about winning the trophy, getting the promotion, achieving the perfect score. By doing this, many of us unknowingly sabotage our ability to truly enjoy effort and sustain it. But what if we could rewire our brains to find pleasure in the process itself? The science of dopamine and our reward system suggests that we can.

    The Neural Mechanisms of a Growth Mindset

    At the core of developing an authentic growth mindset is the ability to access rewards from effort and action. It is important not to rely solely on the outcome. It requires engaging the prefrontal part of the mesolimbic circuit—a pathway in the brain responsible for motivation and reward. By training ourselves to perceive effort itself as rewarding, we can enhance our ability to persist in challenging tasks.

    This process isn’t easy. When exerting effort—whether in physical exercise, studying, or creative work—you are likely to experience discomfort. Your brain naturally wants to avoid that discomfort, leading to a desire to quit. However, over time, you can train yourself to associate effort with dopamine release. This process effectively rewires your brain to enjoy the challenge itself.

    The Downside of Only Focusing on the End Goal

    Your journey may be unnecessarily painful if your only source of motivation is the reward at the finish line. You deplete your mental energy when you constantly push toward a distant goal. You also strain your physical energy. Learn to enjoy the process to avoid this depletion. Your body becomes dependent on external stimulants—coffee, loud music, social encouragement—just to muster the motivation to keep going.

    Additionally, dopamine plays a key role in marking time. If you’re focused solely on the reward, your brain sees effort as a means to an end. It does not recognise effort as something valuable on its own. This can make each challenge feel increasingly difficult over time, reducing your overall efficiency and resilience.

    How to Rewire Your Brain for Effort-Based Rewards

    The key to long-term motivation is learning to derive satisfaction from the act of effort itself. Here’s how you can start:

    1. Avoid External Dopamine Triggers Before and After Effort
      • Don’t rely on an energy drink before a workout or a promise of a post-work reward to push through. Instead, let the challenge itself be the source of satisfaction.
    2. Mentally Re-frame Friction as a Positive Experience
      • In moments of intense difficulty, tell yourself, “This is good. This is what growth feels like.”
      • Recognize that the pain you feel now will lead to an increase in dopamine release later, making future efforts easier.
    3. Make Effort the Reward
      • Rather than chasing external validation, shift your mindset to enjoying the process. This is a skill that can be cultivated over time.
    4. Repeat and Reinforce
      • The more you practice this, the more automatic it becomes. Over time, your brain will naturally release dopamine during effort, reinforcing the cycle of intrinsic motivation.

    Real-World Examples of This Mindset

    We admire those who master this process. Take David Goggins, for example—a former Navy SEAL who has built a career on mental toughness and embracing discomfort. He and others like him have trained their brains to associate effort with internal reward. This allows them to push past limits that most people never reach.

    Even from an evolutionary standpoint, humans have always revered those who pushed beyond comfort. Hunters, gatherers, and caretakers who endure hardships for the group’s gain. Their ability to find satisfaction in effort itself was a key factor in their survival.

    The Takeaway: Accessing Dopamine Through Effort

    The ability to access dopamine from effort is one of the most powerful tools in our brain and body. It’s not reserved for elite athletes or high achievers—it’s available to all of us. But to tap into this mechanism, we must be mindful of how we structure our motivation.

    • Don’t chase dopamine before effort.
    • Don’t rely on rewards after effort.
    • Learn to spike dopamine from the act of effort itself.

    Embrace this mindset. You can build a more resilient, self-sustaining motivation system. This system makes effort feel rewarding rather than exhausting. In doing so, you’ll unlock a level of potential that many never reach.

    Thanks to Andrew Huberman for introducing me to this concept on one of his episodes of the Huberman Lab. I have been trying to apply it to my life ever since. I think it has made a real difference. I’d be curious to hear if other people have tried this too, and if they think it helps.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • Breaking Free from Fate: Fresh Approaches to Lasting Behavioural Change

    Breaking Free from Fate: Fresh Approaches to Lasting Behavioural Change

    I read an interesting book recently called ‘Determined: Life Without Free Will’ by Robert Sapolsky.

    In it, he takes the firm stance of hard incompatibilism. Sapolsky says that the world is deterministic, which means that there is no free will. He even goes so far as to say that we are not morally responsible for our actions. Therefore, we should not be punished for them legally.

    Sapolsky says that all of our behaviours are directly generated by our biological past. Even if it feels like we have some choice in what we do, we actually do not. Our neurons fire in a certain way before we become aware of wanting to respond in a certain way. It might feel like you have decided to act in a certain way. You might feel like you choose one action over another. However, your biology and past experiences have already determined how you are going to respond in whatever situation you are in.

    So, even if you feel like you have decided to have that second piece of chocolate cake for dessert. You might think it is a choice as opposed to that piece of watermelon. However, it was never really a choice at all. Due to your past and your preferences, your mind will make that same choice in that same situation no matter what you do.

    To me, living in a world without any free will doesn’t sound that great. It also goes against what it feels like to live my life. I don’t want to just resign myself to act however I might be most tempted. I want to try to improve myself. I want to become a better person over time.

    If there really is no free will, is there even a point to self-help, self-improvement and psychological therapy? I still think there is. However, we need to focus more on things that can make a real difference in our lives. We cannot just hope to have more willpower to make the right decisions for ourselves at the right times.

    ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, focuses on accepting things as they are. This approach helps prevent people from getting caught up in the struggle of trying to change something. Without free will, maybe acceptance and self-compassion are better than trying to change things you don’t like about yourself.

    Does this mean change isn’t possible?

    Not the way I see it. Even ACT sees the importance of clarifying what is most important to you and taking action towards these things.

    Even if we have less free will than we imagine, I still think that change is possible in several ways. We can control to some degree what information we choose to take in. We can spend more time with people who are living their lives in ways that we would like to. We can spend less time with people that are draining to us. We can change the environment that we live in. Finally, we can focus on establishing healthy habits and sustainable systems. Let’s explore each of these in more detail:

    1. The information that you take in

    I try to focus on three main areas of information:

    • The news I consume. I try to minimise how much news I watch on TV, online and in the newspapers. If I do read the news, I really like the weekly newsletters from HumanProgress.org and Fix the News.
    • Social media. I still use WhatsApp and Messenger to chat with friends. However, I have deactivated and no longer have access to Instagram or Facebook. I don’t know my passwords either, so can not log back in even if I wanted to. I still have access to X and LinkedIn on my computer, but rarely check them and don’t engage with others through them.
    • My phone. I have switched my iPhone to greyscale. I turn this off if I video chat with someone. When it is on, I am much less likely to use the phone more than I want to. I do not have any games on there except for Duolingo or Elevate. I enjoy listening to audiobooks, podcasts or music while walking or at the gym. I try to minimise all other uses apart from directly communicating with friends.

    Are you happy with the information that you are taking in each day or week? Does it positively or negatively impact how you feel about yourself, others, the world or the future? Is there any type of information that you would like to see more of or less of?

    2. The people that you spend the most time with, and how you spend time with them

    A quote most often attributed to motivational speaker Jim Rohn says

    “you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with”

    Who are the five people that you are closest with in your life? What influence do you think that they have on you?

    Now, I am not suggesting that you should stop speaking to your family members or partner. They might sometimes be more critical or negative than you would like them to be. However, is there any way that some of these relationships can be improved? Through better communication? More quality time? A fun holiday? Getting back into some interesting activities or rituals that you used to enjoy? Or trying some things that you have always wanted to do together?

    If not, are there some people in your life that you don’t see as often as you would like to? Could any of these people have a positive influence on you?

    3. Better environmental design

    At the end of May 2024, I moved into my new apartment. It is a 10-minute walk from work, which brings with it lots of potential benefits. I can spend less time commuting, which frees up more time for doing more enjoyable things that I would like to do in my life.

    Additionally, it also has a great gym in the apartment complex, an indoor swimming pool, and some reformer Pilates beds. I have been working out more, and feeling healthier, fitter and stronger as a result. Since moving, I have also joined two sports teams for the first time since 2020. In general, I feel like my environment is helping me to live more of the life I want to live.

    I no longer have alcohol or any drinks with added sugar in them at my apartment. It means that if I am thirsty, I can have soda water or water. I have also cut out having deep-fried foods, chips, cakes or chocolate at home. By removing these things from my home, I am less prone to turn to them when I am bored or hungry. If I really want these things, I can still have them when out socialising, and at least get the benefits of social connection.

    Thinking about your own environment, are there certain things at the moment that you are spending more time doing than you would like to be? Are there things that you would like to replace it with instead?

    4. Healthy habits or sustainable systems

    The things that I know are positive or good for me include:

    • Being socially connected and catching up with friends in person at least once a week. This also means staying in touch with my family and those who are important to me. Ideally, this would also include spending some time with people with whom we share similar interests or hobbies and can do these things together.
    • Seeing clients face to face. By working so close to home, I hope to be able to keep my working time to when I am in my office and give all of my clients the option to come in and see me face-to-face if they would like to do this. Online sessions can be really convenient for people who live too far away or want therapy without it taking as much time out of their day. However, some studies suggest that we don’t get as many of the positive social benefits by talking to people online or over the phone as we do with connecting in person.
    • I now have a good morning routine since the start of 2024 of doing Duolingo, Elevate, meditation on Waking Up, and journalling on Stoic.
    • I try to maintain some healthy habits of going to the gym, swimming at the pool and doing Pilates regularly, and walking 7,500 steps every day. As I live in a city environment, if I can do some of this walking in nature, such as at the Royal Botanical Gardens or around Albert Park Lake, that is even better.
    • Having enough novelty and adventure in my life, including some healthy competition through sport again. I also want to try to see if I can plan some holidays again for the future, and book these enough in advance so that I get the benefits of planning for them, looking forward to them, and being able to enjoy going on them.
    • Not working too much, and making sure that I am being as efficient as possible with my administrative tasks and processes at work so that I can enjoy my time when I am at home and with others. Hopefully, this can also leave enough time for downtime and relaxation, reading books I enjoy, watching movies or TV shows or documentaries I like, and learning or being creative in the ways I would like to be.

    What healthy habits or systems would you most like to incorporate in your life if possible? Are there any pain points now where you put off doing certain tasks that you know that you have to do? Could there be a better way to think about it less and get it done more easily?

    Conclusion

    According to Robert Sapolsky, because we don’t have any free will, we are not to blame for the things that happen in our lives. We are not to blame for our genetics, or what has happened in our past. Everything that we have done makes sense given our genetics, experiences and environment. Therefore, the more that we can accept ourselves, and the more self-compassion we can have towards ourselves, the better.

    However, we can nudge our behaviours in the right way moving forward through healthy nutrition, positive social support, healthy sleep, regular exercise, positive information, necessary medication and setting up our environment, habits and systems in healthy ways.

    If we really don’t have as much free will (and willpower), as it sometimes seems, the other levers that we can pull to change our behaviours become even more important. Try to not beat yourself up for what has happened in your past. Instead, focus on changing the external things in your life going forward that can help contribute to your positive long-term success.

  • Why 18 is the New 15: The Negative Consequences of Always Wanting Our Children to Feel Special and Safe

    Why 18 is the New 15: The Negative Consequences of Always Wanting Our Children to Feel Special and Safe

    In 1970, children were “ready” to enter Grade One at Primary or Elementary School if they travelled independently around their neighbourhood (four to eight blocks from their house).

    Six-year-olds could go to the shops and buy things by themselves or walk or ride to school if close enough. Children also knew how to explain to a police officer where they lived if asked.

    These days, the police officer would probably arrest the parents for neglect if a six-year-old child was found four blocks from home by themselves.

    Times have changed, but is this always a good thing for our children?

    I remember having a lot of freedom growing up. My mother would let me and my siblings play down at the park by ourselves two blocks away from our house. My brother was 7 or 8, I was 5, and my sister was 2 or 3. We weren’t entirely alone. According to my mother, we had a pet Rottweiler watch over us too, and “she would never have let anyone hurt you kids!”.

    We rode or walked ourselves to and from school when my brother was in grade 5, I was in grade 3, and my sister was in grade 1. It wasn’t just a bike path either. We had to ride on roads, cross over a river and railway tracks, and not even at a designated crossing. My parents had to work, so we travelled by ourselves.

    After school, we’d come home, open the door, make a snack, and play some games or watch TV until our parents came back from work. We were “latch key kids”, and I don’t think we minded too much at all.

    Growing up, we played outside unsupervised by adults all the time. We were running around with the other kids on the street, playing a sport or making up games, having water bomb fights during the day or playing spotlight at night. We’d ride to the milkbar whenever we felt like ice cream or a snack and even did a paper round in the neighbourhood with my brother a few times well before we were old enough to work legally.

    There were a few scraped knees, and maybe some storm drains that we shouldn’t have gone down. But I knew how to bike ride all over town to my friend’s places by my 10th birthday. Exploring places with my friends and without any parents were some of the best memories of my childhood.

    Fast forward to 2024, and most children will have to wait until they leave their family home to get the same amount of unsupervised time outside that I had before I was a teenager. They spend less time hanging out with their friends in person, and any time they spend is likely to be supervised by their parents or done alongside them, even when they go to the local shopping mall.

    In her excellent book, ‘iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood’, the author Jean Twenge says that as a result of the reduced freedom for our youth, the typical 18-year-old in 2022 is similar in maturity levels to what a 15-year-old was back in 1970.

    These days, children and adolescents are less capable of living, socialising, or working independently than the previous generations and are suffering more psychologically.

    Depression, anxiety, narcissism and deliberate self-harm have all been increasing, and dramatically so since 2012. Unfortunately, this also coincides with the widespread proliferation of smartphones into our society.

    Parents should give their children more freedom in the real world while also being more concerned about the safety of their children online. Adolescent girls appear to be particularly impacted by the introduction of the smartphone and the increased usage of social media that comes with this. As a result, suicide rates among teenage girls have risen to the point where they are now similar to suicide rates in boys of the same age.

    What would you prefer to build in a child?

    A. A conviction that they are amazing, just the way they are?

    or

    B. A belief that they can face and overcome most of the challenges they face in life if they learn from setbacks and feedback and apply themselves?

    You may answer both, but what would it be if you had to choose one?

    Self-esteem (A), defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:

    “a confidence and satisfaction in oneself”

    or

    Self-efficacy (B), which Psychologist Albert Bandura defined as:

    “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations.”

    After decades of research, we now know that focusing on building a child’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem (A) at the expense of improving their capacity and self-efficacy (B) in learning and doing things by themselves can have some adverse side effects.

    Research on Self-Esteem:

    LOW SELF-ESTEEM IS NOT GREAT

    • Low self-esteem correlates with increased violence, teenage pregnancy, suicide, low academic achievement and increased rates of school dropout (Misetich & Delis-Abrams, 2003)
    • Living alone, being unemployed, having low socioeconomic status or having a disability is linked to lower self-esteem (von Soest, Wagner, Hansen & Gerstorf, 2018)
    • 70% of girls believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up in some way (Dove Self-Esteem Fund, 2008)
    • Teenagers with low self-esteem have less resilience and a greater sense of hopelessness (Karatas, 2011)

    HEALTHY LEVELS OF SELF-ESTEEM IS BENEFICIAL

    • People with healthy self-esteem are more resilient and able to respond helpfully and adaptively to disappointment, failure and obstacles (Allegiance Health, 2015)
    • In China, self-esteem significantly predicted life satisfaction (Chen, Cheung, Bond & Leung, 2006)
    • School programs that build self-esteem in primary school children also reduce problem behaviours and strengthen connections between the students (Park & Park, 2014)

    HIGH SELF-ESTEEM ISN’T ALWAYS A POSITIVE

    • Abraham Maslow put self-esteem as a need in his hierarchy of needs pyramid. However, he later noted that individuals with high self-esteem are more apt to come late to appointments, be less respectful, more casual, more condescending, and much more willing to make themselves comfortable without bidding or invitation.
    • Carl Rogers, another Humanistic Psychologist, got so sick of new staff coming into his Western Behavioural Sciences Institute with no desire or ability to work that he once sent out a letter that said, “less self-esteem please; more self-discipline!”
    • People with fragile or shallow high self-esteem are no better off than individuals with low self-esteem. They engage in exaggerated tendencies to protect, defend and enhance their feelings of self-worth (Kernis, 2008)
    • Academic performance is weakly related to self-esteem, with some students doing worse academically after their self-esteem increased (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger & Vohs, 2005)

    Baumeister has looked extensively into the issues with some types of high self-esteem. He found that:

    • Students with high self-esteem tend to overestimate their abilities. They also like to boast to others about what they can do.
    • High self-esteem doesn’t make people more attractive to others; it just makes the individual think they are more attractive
    • Bullies at school and work tend to have higher reported levels of self-esteem
    • People with high self-esteem are more likely to take risks and engage in unprotected sex. They tend to be impulsive and not think through the consequences of a decision before acting
    • People with high self-esteem are more likely to be prejudiced against others. They tend to be smug and superior when interacting with others
    • People with high self-esteem are less likely to work through and overcome relationship conflicts. They can be abusive in relationships and assume their needs come first no matter what situation they are in
    • People with high self-esteem seem blind to their faults and are less likely to learn from experience, change or improve themselves

    Research on Self-Efficacy:

    SELF-EFFICACY HELPS PEOPLE AT WORK

    • A meta-analysis of over 100 studies found a moderately strong correlation (.38) between self-efficacy and job performance (Stakjovic & Luthans, 1998)
    • Another meta-analysis found that high self-efficacy is related to better emotional stability and greater job satisfaction (Judge & Bono, 2001)
    • Greater self-efficacy leads to less burnout for teachers (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007)
    • Increased self-efficacy in nurses can improve their work performance, reduce turnover rates and protect them from exhaustion (Fida, Laschinger & Leiter, 2018)

    SELF-EFFICACY HELPS STUDENTS AT SCHOOL

    • High optimism and self-efficacy in students lead to better academic performance, greater coping with stress, better health, and more satisfaction with school (Chemers, Ju & Garcia, 2001)
    • Increased self-efficacy leads to more enthusiasm and commitment to learning in students who had previously been struggling to read (Margolis & McCabe, 2006)

    SELF-EFFICACY CAN IMPROVE HEALTH OUTCOMES

    • Patients with cancer with high self-efficacy adjust to their diagnosis better and are more likely to adhere to their recommended treatment (Lev, 1997)
    • Patients with high self-efficacy who have joint replacement surgery exercise more frequently and improve their performance more after the surgery (Moon & Backer, 2000)
    • Improving self-efficacy can increase how much previously sedentary adults exercise, which then enhances their overall health (McAuley, 1992)
    • Parental self-efficacy can reduce the risk of postpartum depression in new mothers (Cutrona & Troutman, 1986)
    • Low self-efficacy is related to anxiety (including social anxiety and panic attacks) and depressive symptoms (Muris, 2002)

    What Can We Do?

    I’d rather have my children go to a school where teachers are more like Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Here’s an excerpt from his excellent commencement address to his son’s year nine graduating class in 2017:

    “From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”

    Chief Justice John Roberts

    I want our kids to learn life lessons that help them gain the skills and knowledge required to function as independent adults in the world.

    I want children to be physically and mentally healthy and suffer less from emotional and psychological disorders.

    I want them to develop high self-efficacy and a belief that they can do something by trial-and-error and effort rather than assuming that they are great no matter what they can do.

    How Do We Build Self-Efficacy?

    According to Bandura and Akhtar (2008), there are four main ways to build self-efficacy in our children’s lives:

    1. Mastery experiences: Ensure that your child has regular opportunities to take on and tackle new and challenging tasks that are just outside their current level of comfort and competence. By pushing themselves with these tasks, they will gain more self-efficacy than repeating something they already know how to do.
    2. Vicarious experiences: Ensure that your children have positive role models or mentors that they can observe doing the things you want them to know how to do. It could be you, another family member, a friend of yours or a coach. Because you are likely to spend more time with them than other people, it is essential to model the behaviours, mindset and skills you want them to learn. If you do this, they can learn from you, emulate what you do, and then get feedback on how they are going and keep improving these skills.
    3. Verbal persuasion: The type of words used in self-talk and with others can significantly affect how much self-efficacy one feels. Like Dr Carol Dweck says, in promoting a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset, we need to praise effort and what children do (their actions and intentions) rather than who they are as a person or what the outcome was. It builds up a greater desire to take on more challenging tasks in the future instead of the fear of being wrong, not succeeding, or not being “smart enough”.
    4. Emotional and physiological states: We need to focus on children’s overall mental and physical health and well-being. If they are sick, tired, sleepy, hungry, stressed, depressed or anxious, it will be more challenging for them to maintain a high level of self-efficacy, and belief in their ability to successfully tackle a challenge will decrease. By helping children look after the other areas of their health, they are more likely to have the energy and confidence to take on whatever is in front of them, overcome setbacks, and persist until they have achieved their goals.

    For more information and ideas on how to help kids to build resilience and self-efficacy, please visit the Let Grow website or learn more about the Free Range Kids’ Movement.

    Crime rates are now at their lowest point since 1963. Thanks to many societal changes, your children are physically safer growing up, yet they have way less freedom. Would you be willing to supervise your children a bit less and let them do more in the real world by themselves or with their friends if it helped them grow into independent, resilient and capable adults?

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • To Trust or Not to Trust?

    To Trust or Not to Trust?

    Recently, some things have come to light that I find disappointing. A person has behaved in a self-centred way, and it puts me in an awkward situation.

    I always try to be kind, open, honest, respectful, and cooperative if given a choice. However, sometimes some people don’t play by these same rules, and the more direct you are, the more they can use this information against you.

    These experiences have led to me doubting myself. Some friends tell me that I am too trusting. Other friends tell me that the only way to respond is by playing the game and putting my own needs first.

    What should we do if someone is being unkind and only considering their needs irrespective of the consequences these actions have on us?

    Game Theory

    Game theory looks for the best rational approach in a strategic interaction between two people or groups of people. There are many different games, including cooperative games, where an official can enforce the rules and consequences, and zero-sum games, where one person’s gain is another person’s loss.

    One of the most famous examples of a game is the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’:

    Imagine that you are a criminal gang member and arrested alongside one of your gang associates. You are in separate rooms at the police station, and you have no way of communicating with your associate. Finally, after some time, the Police tell you that they have insufficient evidence to get either of you on a hefty charge, but enough to get both of you on a minor offence. So the Police give you and the other prisoner one of two options:

    1. You can betray your associate by testifying that they were the one who committed the crime, or
    2. You can cooperate with your associate by remaining silent and refusing to testify.

    The possible outcomes are:

    A. If you both remain silent and cooperate with each other against the Police, you both only get one year in prison.

    B. If you both try to betray each other by agreeing to testify, you both get two years in prison.

    C. If they betray you, but you’ve tried to cooperate, they get to walk free, and you get three years in prison.

    D. If they try to cooperate by remaining silent, but you betray them and agree to testify, you get to walk free while they have to go to prison for three years.

    The best rational approach is not to cooperate with your associate, because at worst, you will get two years in prison (B), and at best, you will serve no time (D). Compare this to the worst outcome of three years in jail (C) if you remain silent, and the best result is one year in prison (A). Therefore, not betraying your associate and cooperating will only lead to a worse outcome, even if you know that your associate will cooperate with 100% certainty.

    Consequently, it is not always rational to try to cooperate with someone who could potentially take advantage of you. Furthermore, it is not sound to try to cooperate with someone trying to take advantage of you.

    What About Long-term Strategies?

    Suppose two people play multiple games of Prisoner’s Dilemma and remember what the other player did previously. Does it make it more desirable to cooperate rather than betray the other person? Similar to how most relationships are in real life, crossing your associates may not be wise if you have to keep dealing with them or the rest of the gang.

    We may win more in one situation, but at what cost? This iterated version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is sometimes known as the ‘Peace-War game’.

    In 1984, Robert Axelrod organised a tournament where participants chose their strategies in an extended version of the Peace-War game, with 2000 trials. He found that greedy approaches to the game didn’t fare too well and resulted in more years spent in prison by the end of the game.

    One of the most straightforward strategies was also the most effective — tit-for-tat. The tit-for-tat strategy aims to always cooperate in the first trial and then do what your opponent did on the previous trial for your next move. This way, you punish a betrayal with a quick betrayal back and reward cooperation with ongoing cooperation. Sometimes (in 1–5% of the trials), it is good to cooperate once even after your opponent betrays you, but generally, the most effective method is still tit-for-tat, which is interesting to know.

    After the tournament ended, Axelrod studied the data and identified four main conditions for a successful strategy when negotiating with other people:

    1. We must be nice. We should never defect or cheat before the other person does, even if we only want the best for ourselves.
    2. We must retaliate quickly and at least 95% of the time if people try to defect against or cheat us. It’s not good to be a blind optimist or always cooperate no matter what the other person does. It only leads to us being taken advantage of by greedy people.
    3. We must be forgiving and get back to trying to cooperate once we see that the other person is trying to cooperate again.
    4. We must not be envious and try to beat our opponent or score more than them. Creating a win-win scenario is ideal if possible, even if it means giving up some points by cooperating when you could defect.

    What Relevance Does This Have For Real Life?

    It may be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that screwing others over is the best way to get ahead in life. Or to not put ourselves out there so that others don’t take advantage of us. In reality, this would only be the best approach in a world where every other person tries to take advantage of everyone else every chance they can. It is not the case in any society on our planet, as far as I know. So never trusting people and always assuming the worst from others is not the way to go.

    By looking at the table above, the best outcome is to try and trust reliable individuals (and co-operate with them) and not rely on or co-operate with individuals who are not. The worst results are being hurt by putting our trust in those we shouldn’t or not letting in or co-operating with others that we really could have.

    Maybe I am a little too trusting. I assume that other people are kind and good people who have good intentions unless I am proven otherwise. It is the position that I will continue to take, even if it means that sometimes I get hurt once I realise that someone is a bit more self-centred or dishonest than I had hoped.

    Looking at the four elements of a successful negotiating strategy, I know that I am nice, forgiving and non-envious. However, the lesson that I need to learn is that of swift and appropriate retaliation or enforcing a particular consequence shortly after someone is nasty towards me. It would help deter the other person from trying any more selfish tactics in the future and could put them back on the path towards co-operating and trying to achieve a win-win situation for both of us.

    I have previously thought that if I always co-operate, I can be happy with the person I am. However, sometimes being firm and assertive and standing up for myself in the face of unkind and selfish behaviour is the far better and more self-respecting approach to take.

    I hope this article has encouraged you to not give up on trying to trust or cooperate with others. I also hope it will enable you to stand up for yourself if someone tries to take advantage of you.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • Is it Better to be Completely Honest, a Strategic Truth-Teller or an Occasional Liar?

    Is it Better to be Completely Honest, a Strategic Truth-Teller or an Occasional Liar?

    I used to lie a lot growing up. Not quite as bad as Holden Caulfield in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’:

    “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”
    ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

    I remember lying to my mum about cleaning my room to go outside to play. So instead, I would push all the mess under the bed or throw it in the wardrobe.

    I remember lying about doing my homework so that I didn’t have to do it and could play video games. I would then lie about being sick the next day to finish the assignment I needed to do the night before.

    I remember lying about how many points I scored in basketball to friends or how many alcoholic drinks I had to my parents whenever they picked me up from a high school party.

    I even remember lying to my brother’s friend about my surfing skills (I didn’t have any) and to a classmate about how many languages I spoke (I can say maybe 30 words in Indonesian, Spanish, and Italian, but not much more).

    I think back to these moments, and I’m not proud of saying these things, but I can also understand why I did it.

    I wish I could have been a less lazy, more confident and self-assured kid who was always honest with his friends and strangers and did the right thing by his parents and teachers. But how realistic is that scenario, and is it even ideal?

    “The truth is always an insult or a joke. Lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort.”
    ― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

    Why Do People Lie?

    We lie to:

    • fit in and pretend we are like others
    • stand out and pretend we are different to or better than others
    • seek approval from others
    • be seen as more loveable/desirable/acceptable
    • feel better about ourselves
    • avoid getting into trouble
    • protect other people’s feelings or avoid hurting them
    • be polite
    • avoid feeling hurt, sad, disappointed, guilty or ashamed
    • keep a secret
    • maintain confidentiality
    • be consistent with societal norms

    “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
    ― Friedrich Nietzsche

    What Happens if We Are 100% Honest?

    Jim Carrey plays the main character in the 1997 comedy ‘Liar Liar’. He’s a high flying lawyer who keeps disappointing his son Max by making promises to him that he doesn’t keep by putting work first. Finally, after his dad doesn’t turn up to his birthday celebration, Max wishes for his dad not to be able to tell a lie, and the magic of movies makes this wish come true.

    What results is some hilarious situations in which Jim Carrey’s character gets himself into trouble for telling the whole truth when it would be more polite to lie. It includes telling his secretary why he didn’t give her a pay rise, telling his boss that he has had better than her, and confessing to everyone in a crowded elevator that he was the one who did the smelly fart.

    The moral of the story was two-fold:

    1. Sometimes it is necessary to lie, or at least not always be brutally honest and say everything that comes to your mind, and
    2. By being tactful and as honest as possible, you may become a better person who upsets people less and has more authentic relationships.

    “One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.“
    ― Al David

    Radical Honesty

    In 2007, A.J. Jacobs wrote an article for Esquire magazine about a month-long experiment on a movement called Radical Honesty. It was titled ‘I Think You’re Fat’ and is worth reading. Much more than the 1995 book called ‘Radical Honesty’ by Brad Blanton that initially inspired the article:

    Blanton had worked as a psychotherapist for 35 years in Washington D.C. and ran 8-day workshops on Radical Honesty that retailed for $2,800 back in 2007. Blanton says his method works, although he may distort some of the positive benefits for personal and financial gain. He’s been married five times and claims to have slept with more than 500 women and six men, including a “whole bunch of threesomes.” He also admits to lying sometimes.

    “She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.“
    ― Holly Black, Black Heart

    I Think You’re Fat

    In Jacobs article, he wasn’t overly optimistic about Blanton’s version of Radical Honesty either. If we didn’t have a filter between what we say and what we notice in the world, in our body and our thoughts like Blanton advocates, the results would probably be less funny and more consequential than what happened to Jim Carrey in ‘Liar Liar’. He declares:

    “Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.” — A.J. Jacobs

    Jacobs found it impossible not to tell a lie during his month-long experiment but did cut down his lying by at least 40%. But unfortunately, he also scared a five-year-old girl, offended numerous people, and spoke about sex and attraction to the point where he felt creepy.

    On the positive, being radically honest did save Jacobs time, resulting in him having to talk less to the people he didn’t want to talk to and do less of the things he didn’t want to do. In addition, it saved him mental energy by not having to choose how much he would lie or massage the truth. It also meant that people were usually more honest with him in return, and he found out that his relationships could withstand more truth-telling than he expected. So, similar to the ‘Liar Liar’ take-away message, Jacobs concluded:

    1. Being radically honest all the time and never having a filter is likely to be inappropriate in many settings and lead to more confrontations with others, and
    2. We could probably benefit by being more authentic, honest and truthful with others, especially in intimate relationships, as secrets tend to weigh us down.

    “There is beauty in truth, even if it’s painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don’t teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one’s character, one’s mind, one’s heart or one’s soul.”
    ― José N. Harris

    What is a Lie?

    In his interesting small book ‘Lying’, Sam Harris defines a lie as:

    “Anything that is done to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” — Sam Harris

    Omission vs Commission

    In ‘Lying’, Sam Harris distinguishes between lies of commission, where the person is active in their intent to deceive, and the more passive act of omission, where the person fails to do something or say something they probably should. Both are deceptive and misleading to the audience who is the target of the action or lack of action.

    Harris believes that lies of commission are a more serious violation of ethics and likely to be more harmful. It is similar to how pushing someone in front of a train is a more serious ethical violation than not saving someone who was hit by a train when you had a chance to do so.

    Harris argues for people to stop all forms of commission and says that we can enhance our world, build trust and improve relationships by always being honest in our communication. While he believes that omission is also lying, he does not think that we can or should eliminate all forms of omission. Instead, he says that “skilful truth-telling” is sometimes required to be both honest and tactful in our words and avoid causing unnecessary harm.

    Let’s look at the following three examples to see the difference between radical honesty, lying and skilful truth-telling.

    SCENARIO ONE: Your husband asks if he looks fat in an outfit that you honestly believe isn’t flattering for him. You could say:

    A) “Yeah. You do look fat. I’d say about 10 pounds overweight. Maybe you should skip dessert for a while.”

    B) “Not at all, sweety. You look amazing!”

    C) “You look nice, but I think I prefer the black jumper and blue jeans I bought you a few weeks ago. Want to try that one and see which one you feel better in?“

    SCENARIO TWO: Your sister and her family are in town for the week and have decided to stay at your place for the whole time because they want to save money. You don’t dislike them, but you’d prefer to be catching up on your work that you are behind on. On night four, she notices you are a little tense and asks if you mind them staying there. You could say:

    A) “I do. I wish you weren’t so tight and could have paid for a hotel if you planned to stay more than three nights. A week is pushing it, and I’d prefer you left.”

    B) “Mind? Are you kidding? I love it. The more, the merrier, I always say! Stay for as long as you’d like.”

    C) “It’s a busy week for me in terms of work, so it wasn’t ideal timing for me. If I seem a bit tense, I’m sorry. I do want to be able to help you guys out because family means a lot to me.“

    SCENARIO THREE: You’ve been unemployed for six months and get a job interview to wait tables at a restaurant in town. You’d ideally prefer an acting job. The restaurant boss asks what your career plans are, as they want to hire someone who will stick around. You could say:

    A) “Well, acting has always been my passion, so this is just a stop-gap job to pay the bills and put food on the table. I couldn’t care less about the job or your restaurant. I want a regular paycheck so that I can pay my rent and bills until I get a real job.”

    B) “I’d love to become a professional waiter. I’ve always thought that providing great service to people is my calling in life, and I plan to stick around for at least five years and show everyone just how amazing your restaurant is. So I’m in it for the long haul.”

    C) “I’m not too sure about what will happen with my career, but at this stage, I’d like to be able to work here. I am available seven days a week and will put in 100% effort whenever I am on shift. I am also willing to learn whatever skills are required, and I can promise that I will give you as much notice as possible if my plans ever do change in the future.“

    In each scenario, A is the radically honest response, B is the active lying or commission response, and C is the skilful truth-telling response. Some truths are unsaid in the C responses, which is technically a lie of omission.

    Many people still believe that omissions are a big no-no:

    “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”
    ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

    “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”
    ― Alfred Tennyson

    “At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right.”
    ― Miguel de Unamuno

    “People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
    ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

    Is it Ever Helpful to Lie to Ourselves?

    The short answer is yes. It is psychologically healthier to be slightly optimistic rather than entirely realistic. Research indicates that people with depression are often more realistic in their appraisals of situations and other people’s judgments than people without depression. Most “healthy people” believe that they are better drivers, more intelligent, better workers, better parents, and better lovers compared to the average person.

    People lie to themselves because they like to feel that they are important and maybe more unique or special than they are. To prove this point, how would you feel if someone told you that you were just “average”? People also like to see themselves as good people who behave in particular ways for sound reasons. Even people that consistently cause harm to themselves or others.

    Anyone with an unhealthy addiction becomes an expert at lying to themselves and others. This secrecy and dishonesty only further fuel the sense of depression, shame and guilt that people with addiction feel. As long as they are in touch with the truth of the situation and the consequences of their actions. Most addicts are not, however, thanks to in-built defence mechanisms.

    Defence mechanisms are mostly subconscious or unconscious methods that we engage in to protect our ego or positive sense of self. Some of the more famous ones are denial, humour, repression, suppression, rationalisation, intellectualisation, projection, displacement and regression. My personal favourite is reaction formation (click here for a full description of these defence mechanisms and how to identify yours). Most people will deny engaging in defence mechanisms if you ask them directly about it, but they’ll tell you that others do. The reality is we all lie to ourselves at times, and maybe we need to lie to maintain a “healthy” outlook on ourselves, others, the world and our future.

    “The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
    ― Friedrich Nietzsche

    “I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
    ― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

    “The best lies about me are the ones I told.”
    ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

    “Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they’re honest about everything.”
    ― Chuck Klosterman

    So What Can We Do?

    The most accurate recommendations that I could find on lying were also some of the simplest:

    “If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”

    ― Bruce Lee

    “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.“

    Mark Twain

    I agree with Sam Harris that it is a worthwhile aim to never be actively dishonest. Furthermore, this approach is consistent with one of Jordan Peterson’s better rules from his ’12 Rules for Life’ book — Rule #8: “Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie“

    The philosopher Robin Devenport wouldn’t agree with either Harris or Peterson. He states:

    “it is impossible for anyone to be truly honest about many things, as long as he (or she) carries biased perspectives, hidden resentments, unresolved longings, unacknowledged insecurities, or a skewed view of self, to name just some inner human conditions… if absolute honesty is impossible, then we are all liars by nature, at least to a degree.”

    Dan Ariely concludes in his excellent book ‘The Honest Truth about Dishonesty’ that we all tend to lie to everyone, especially ourselves. We lie only as much as we know we can get away with, but not so much that it becomes hard to keep seeing ourselves as good people.

    Devenport continues:

    “Perhaps the best we can do, then, is only to lie in ways that are intended to promote another’s well-being or spare her unnecessary pain, and so further our integrity. The ‘noble liar’ is someone who tries to live by good intentions, even if that means intentionally lying to another person, if doing so is the lesser of two evils…Before we cast too harsh a judgment on the liar, let’s first understand what his motives are.”

    Robin Devenport

    We all need to be as honest as we can, especially with those we love and make sure that it is for a good reason when we lie. We also need to realise that it will never be possible to be 100% honest about everything to anyone, including ourselves, and that is okay. Other people won’t be 100% honest with you or themselves either, which doesn’t make them bad people. It’s what we lie about and why that matters.

  • Positive Psychology – The Secret to Optimal Well-being

    Positive Psychology – The Secret to Optimal Well-being

    For many years, Psychologists focused exclusively on alleviating suffering. A worthy objective, but the treatments tried to reduce depression or anxiety, not increase happiness or life satisfaction. If someone is no longer feeling sad, will they suddenly feel happy? Perhaps, but not necessarily.

    The field of Positive Psychology tries to address these concerns.

    Martin Seligman has written three major Positive Psychology self-help books titled ‘Learned Optimism’, ‘Authentic Happiness’ and ‘Flourish’.

    Seligman was interested in studying depression and ran some experiments at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s to develop his theory of learned helplessness. Initially, the dogs were given electric shocks at random intervals and were not allowed to stop the shocks or escape the situation. After a while, even when Seligman provided the dogs with a chance to stop or exit the shocks, he found that they would not do anything about it. The relevance to people with depression is that an individual in an aversive environment who learns that they cannot change their outcome will continue to hold this belief even in situations where this isn’t the case. They won’t improve their position because they think it won’t make a difference anyway. But what if it does?

    ‘Learned Optimism’ was seen as the antidote to learned helplessness and focused on changing people’s outlooks and teaching them resiliency to better distinguish between things you can change and things that you can’t. By putting their energy into what they can do instead of blaming themselves for something out of their control, they became more motivated to develop knowledge and learn skills to make changes they desired in their lives. Regardless of what has happened in the past, having a slightly optimistic outlook on life leads to better emotional and physical health. It helps people persevere through the bad times, look after their health and put their best long-term interests first. Research has even shown that it can lead to a better survival rate following a heart attack.

    In ‘Authentic Happiness’, Martin Seligman extended these ideas and said that happiness was not just a matter of genes or good luck but could be sought out and created. You can do this by discovering your character strengths and virtues and putting these into action as much as possible.

    If you are interested in discovering what your natural character strengths are:

    1. Please go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and fill out the VIA Survey of Character Strengths.

    2. The survey results will rank your Strengths from first to last. First, determine if your top 5 strengths are your key character strengths or virtues — you will know if the responses “feel right” to you. Then, if a lower-ranked item seems to better fit you than any of your top 5, write down your new top 5.

    3. Ask yourself, how much do you currently put these strengths into practice? In what ways do you apply them or live by them? For example, if love of learning or creativity is your highest ranked strength, do any changes need to be made in your life so that you can experience these more (e.g. study a new course or take on another creative pursuit)?

    4. If changes need to be made, set yourself some SMART (S — specific, M — measurable, A — attainable, R — realistic, T — timely) goals for how you can put these virtues into action. If these are your key character strengths and virtues, it is likely to lead to a higher overall sense of emotional well-being.

    In ‘Flourish’, Seligman proposed only five elements crucial for optimal psychological well-being or for someone to flourish. He called this his PERMA model of well-being:

    P — positive emotions — We all need love, joy, hope, compassion, gratitude, awe and excitement in our lives. What activities frequently bring about these emotions for you? Can they be sought out, or can you engage in these activities more regularly?

    E — engagement — Sometimes referred to as ‘flow’, engagement is the state when we are no longer in our heads or consumed with worries but completely immersed in whatever we are doing. By reading the book, ‘Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I realised that we could create the conditions for these engagement experiences. Typically, you can achieve this with activities requiring some skill and challenge but not too much. So it is when I am playing a sport, in session with a client, or engaging in a creative pursuit. However, it is different for everyone and doesn’t always happen each time you do an activity. It is what athletes refer to when they are “in the zone” or what M. Scott Peck referred to when he spoke about how his best-selling book ‘The Road Less Traveled’ seemed to write itself. Mindfulness training, apart from its other benefits on stress, pain and prevention of depression relapse, can also lead to a higher likelihood of full engagement with a situation.

    R — positive relationships — Whether we are extroverted or introverted, humans are still social creatures who seek to be understood and accepted for who we are and have a sense of belonging with others. We also like to share experiences, as you will notice with any child who waits for their parents to look and see what they are doing before engaging in an action. It was the moral of the story in “Into the Wild”, the 2007 movie starring Emile Hirsch, where the main character wrote, “Happiness only real when shared”. But negative relationships also cause a lot of pain, so the secret may be in how to seek out and foster the right connections (e.g. friends, partners), as well as how to improve the ones that we already have or may not be able to choose (e.g. family, bosses). If you are having problems with this area of your life, the book ‘The Relationship Cure’ by John Gottman is an excellent place to start, as is seeking out a trained relationship therapist.

    M — meaning — Friedrich Nietzsche first said: “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Viktor Frankl also determined in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ that purpose was required to withstand the daily atrocities he faced as a Jewish prisoner of a German concentration camp during World War II. Frankl, a Psychiatrist, believed so much about the importance of meaning that he developed a treatment called Logotherapy, which focused on helping others find meaning. He dedicated the second half of his book towards this goal and his subsequent psychotherapy. Depending on your beliefs, there may or may not be a universal meaning of life, but each individual must determine its importance. Where possible, it is then essential to try to live your life in that way, as long as it doesn’t break the laws of your society or cause harm to others. Values clarification exercises can assist with this.

    A — achievement — People like to achieve things, succeed, and win for their own sake. It is why there are so many cheats for video games and corruption in the corporate world, and drug cheats in athletic competition. So many people will do what they can to win. Achievement can be winning something, gaining knowledge, building skills, or completing a task. Having three achievable goals each day would go a long way towards improved well-being.

    Psychology is about more than the alleviation of suffering. It is about helping people understand, grow, develop mastery and self-efficacy, and live the best life they can!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • How Can We Effectively Manage Guilt and Shame?

    How Can We Effectively Manage Guilt and Shame?

    What are shame and guilt?

    Neuropsychologist Dr Harvey Jones and I discuss shame and guilt and how to manage these tough emotions in our latest podcast.

    The fascinating and comprehensive book ‘Shame and Guilt’ by June Tangney and Ronda Dearing describe shame and guilt as universal human emotions that are functionally important at both an individual and a relationship level.

    Features shared by shame and guilt (Tangney & Dearing, 2002):

    Shame and guilt are both very private and personal emotions. They are predominantly internal experiences that are more difficult to observe or measure than other universal emotions, such as anger, sadness or joy.

    Yet, they are also social emotions, in that these emotions develop during interpersonal interactions with our family and those closest to us.

    Both shame and guilt can be classed as “moral” emotions in that our experience of them can hopefully propel us to act more morally.

    They are both closely linked with how we see ourselves about others. They continue to profoundly influence our behaviour in interpersonal situations throughout our lives, especially in contexts involving perceived transgressions, mistakes or moral failures.

    Shame and guilt both involve becoming self-conscious following a personal transgression and evaluating our behaviour about our perceived self, familial and societal norms. Based on this evaluation and what we internally attribute the violation to, we judge our behaviour and potentially internal sanctions towards ourselves if we deem the behaviour morally or socially unacceptable.

    Although Philosophers and Psychoanalysts have been theorising about shame and guilt for over a century, it is only really since the late 1980s that Psychologists have begun to systematically research and examine the nature of shame and guilt and the implications that these emotions and experiences have. Unfortunately, as well as being difficult to observe directly, many people tend not to have a clear understanding of the differences between shame and guilt.

    Features where shame and guilt differ (Tangney & Dearing, 2002):

    Focus of evaluation

    • With shame, the focus of the evaluation is on the global self (e.g., “I am horrible!”)
    • With guilt, the focus of the evaluation is on the specific behaviour (e.g., “What I did was horrible!”)

    Degree of distress

    • With shame, the degree of distress is generally much higher than with guilt, with more significant pain.
    • With guilt, the degree of distress is generally much lower than with shame, with less pain.

    Phenomenological experience

    • With shame, people tend to shrink and feel worthless, powerless and small
    • With guilt, people tend to feel tense, remorseful, and regretful

    Operation of “self.”

    • With shame, the self becomes split into an “observing self” and an “observer self.”
    • With guilt, a unified self remains intact

    Impact on “self.”

    • With shame, the self becomes impaired by a global devaluation (because of the focus of evaluation on the self)
    • With guilt, the self is unimpaired by a global devaluation (because the focus of the evaluation is on the specific behaviour)

    Concern vis-a-vis the “other.”

    • With shame, one becomes concerned with an internalised others’ evaluation of the self.
    • With guilt, one becomes concerned with the effect that their specific behaviour has had on others.

    Counterfactual processes

    • With shame, one tries to mentally undo the undesirable aspects of the self that have become apparent through denial, defensiveness, blaming others or aggression.
    • With guilt, one tries to mentally undo the undesirable aspects of their behaviour through being moral, caring, socially responsible and constructive.

    Motivational features

    • With shame, the desire is to hide, escape, or strike back
    • With guilt, the desire is to confess, apologise, or repair

    How to measure Shame and Guilt

    I challenge you to take the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA Version 3) to determine if you are more prone to shame, guilt or blaming others across work and social situations.

    When I took it, my results were:

    “I seldom blame others.”

    “I use guilt self-talk an average amount.”

    and

    “I use shame self-talk an average amount.”

    It was nice to see that I do not blame others when I realise that I have made a mistake and am often accountable and responsible for my actions. However, it does seem that I tend to punish myself too much following a transgression. But what do these findings mean for real life?

    The TOSCA has been used widely in studies on shame and guilt since 1989. It defines guilt as a more adaptive response to a situation where the focus is on the desire to repair or right the specific wrong caused. Conversely, shame is a less adaptive response where the attention is on a global negative self-evaluation without any reparation generally being taken.

    Research Findings on Shame and Guilt

    Research findings using the TOSCA have found that “Shame and guilt have important and quite different implications for interpersonal relationships.” For example, based on 12 years of research, Tangney and Dearing (2002) have found that:

    Individuals who are prone to shame:

    • They are more likely to blame others for adverse events through humiliating others, bullying, and violence.
    • They are more likely to experience bitterness, resentment and a seething kind of anger and hostility towards others and the world. They are also inclined to express their anger in aggressive and non-constructive ways, particularly in close interpersonal relationships. The shame-anger dynamic may help explain what occurs in many domestic violence incidents.
    • They are less likely to be empathetic, as the global self-focus of shame impedes sensitivity and impairs connection.
    • They are more likely to be vulnerable to a range of psychological difficulties through internalising the shame, including depression, low self-worth, self-loathing, eating disorders, and addiction.
    • They are more likely to be suspended from high school, use illicit drugs, engage in unsafe sex practices, abuse their spouses and attempt suicide (when individuals were first assessed in fifth grade and then followed up on years later).

    Individuals who are prone to guilt:

    • They are more likely to understand, empathise and connect with others.
    • They are more likely to accept responsibility for their transgressions.
    • They are less likely to be angry, hostile and aggressive. Conversely, people who feel guilty and angry are more likely to express what they feel assertively and constructively.
    • They are less likely to experience psychopathology as long as the guilt is “shame-free.”
    • They are more likely to apply to college, engage in community service, begin drinking alcohol at a later age, and use birth control (when individuals were first assessed in fifth grade and then followed up on years later). They were also less likely to try heroin, drive while intoxicated, and be arrested or convicted of a crime.

    Is guilt always a helpful emotion?

    No. Two maladaptive forms of guilt (Kim, Thibodeau & Jorgensen, 2011) have been correlated with depressive symptoms to a similar degree to what shame is. These are contextual-maladaptive guilt, which involves an “exaggerated responsibility for uncontrollable events,” and generalised guilt, which involves “free-floating guilt that is unrelated to any specific context” (Kim, Thibodeau & Jorgensen, 2011). This excessive or inappropriate guilt would not be helpful to experience regularly.

    What Can We Do?

    A. Manage guilt effectively

    With guilt, the steps for dealing with the emotion are pretty straightforward:

    1. Has a transgression occurred where you have not lived up to your own (or an internalised other’s) moral standards?
    2. Can you make up for this transgression in any way?
    • By taking responsibility for your action?
    • By fixing the mistake and cleaning up the mess?
    • By genuinely apologising and showing remorse for your actions?
    • By understanding and empathising with the person if you hurt them?

    3. How can you learn from the mistake so that you are less likely to repeat the same transgression in the future?

    4. What plan can you put in place so that you are less likely to repeat the same transgression in the future?

    If you feel guilty for having a particular thought, please understand that we cannot control what ideas pop into our consciousness. What we can control is how we interpret or respond to the ideas that do arise. Considering that we have at least 10,000 thoughts a day, it is implausible that all of these thoughts will be positive, happy, kind, pro-social thoughts.

    No transgression has occurred if it is just a thought, and there is no need to feel guilty, no matter how antisocial, nasty, sinful or taboo these thoughts may seem. A court of law can never charge you for impure thoughts. You do not need to put yourselves on trial either. Even psychologically healthy people have weird or unsettling ideas, as evidenced by this list of common intrusive thoughts (Purdon & Clark, 1992). Our actions define our character and how others see us, not our internal monologue. The above steps only need to be worked through when your efforts do not live up to the person you would like to be.

    Once you have worked through these steps, there are no additional benefits that you can achieve by continuing to feel guilty, punishing yourself for your transgression, or not forgiving yourself for your actions. Everyone makes mistakes. We must utilise guilt as an indicator that we have not been living consistently with our most important values and then practice these steps to get back on track.

    If you continue to feel guilty after this, try to accept your feelings and make room for the emotional experience. Then try to change your focus to whatever is most important to you in the present moment. For example, it could be the sport or computer game you are playing or connecting with others if you are out socialising. By asking yourself, “What’s Most Important Right Now?” it becomes a lot easier to get out of a cycle of ruminating about what you have done and feeling guilty for it.

    B. Encourage parents, teachers, bosses, managers, coaches, and mentors to help others to learn from their behavioural mistakes so that they can improve and maintain a positive sense of self, rather than criticising who they are or shaming them for doing something wrong

    We must educate people in these roles about the differences between shame and guilt and let them know that even if using shame seems to be effective in changing behaviour in the short term, it can have devastating long-term consequences. It can damage your relationship with the person and their mental health and behaviour.

    Shaming children is especially dangerous and shows them that their love, worth and approval is conditional. As a result of being shamed, children will eventually give up, become rebellious, try to be perfect, or subjugate their own needs and please others to maintain their fragile sense of being loveable, good enough or worthy.

    Once people become knowledgeable about focusing on the specific behaviour rather than the person as a whole, it can enhance their sensitivity and effectiveness in all relationships.

    C. Develop a Growth Mindset

    I have previously spoken about mindsets, as researched by Carol Dweck. When examining the difference between shame and guilt, I noticed the similarities between shame and a fixed mindset and guilt and a growth mindset.

    Both guilt and a growth mindset are focused on improving following setbacks, rather than remaining stuck, giving up or blaming someone else for your shortcomings. In addition, research indicates that you can cultivate a growth mindset over time.

    The similarities between guilt and a growth mindset suggest that it is also possible to change from being more shame-prone to being more guilt-prone. As you become more guilt-prone, you will begin to learn from your experiences and continue to grow without being held back by the transgressions that you have made in the past.

    D. Embrace your imperfections, allow yourself to be vulnerable, and share your feelings of shame with those that have earned the right to hear your story

    In “The Gifts of Imperfection’, Brene Brown defines shame as the following:

    “shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

    Brene Brown

    Brene has found that shame needs the three ingredients of secrecy, silence, and judgment for it to grow and spiral out of control in our lives. She also believes that we all experience shame to some degree and that even though we are afraid to talk about what we are ashamed of, it is actually by talking about our shame that we are least likely to be controlled by it.

    “If we want to live and love with our whole hearts, and if we want to engage with the world from a place of worthiness, we have to talk about the things that get in the way — especially shame, fear and vulnerability”

    Brene Brown

    How to become more shame Resilient (Brown, 2010):

    1. Understand shame.
    2. Recognise what triggers shame for you, both externally (e.g., other people’s critical messages) and internally (e.g., your unrealistic expectations).
    3. Check to see if these criticisms or expectations are realistic or accurate.
    4. Realise that being imperfect does not mean the same as being inadequate or unworthy of love.
    5. Reach out to people who have earned the right to hear your shame experiences.
    6. Talk about what makes you feel ashamed and whatever else you may be feeling about the experience.
    7. Ask for the type of support that you need from them. It could be some kind words or reassurance. It could be something they can do for you (even if it is turn up and listen). It could be some hand-holding, back rubbing, or a hug. Or it could be some quality time, something to cheer you up, or a fun outing to help you change focus and move on.

    Once our previously shameful experiences are out in the open, we begin to own our story and realise that we are loveable and worthy, just the way we are. Although it is easier to experience this if our closest relationships provide us with unconditional acceptance, love, and belonging, we only need one person we can open to for shame to reduce and improve. If there is no one in your life that you would feel comfortable talking to about your shame, then a psychologist you feel safe with can help.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • How High is Your Physical Intelligence?

    How High is Your Physical Intelligence?

    Physical intelligence is concerned with how different environmental elements interact with our senses to influence or distort our perceptions, judgments, and emotions. These influences then affect our subsequent behaviours.

    In her excellent book ‘Sensation’, Thalma Lobel has neatly summarised all of the critical findings accumulated so far in the emerging field of physical intelligence, or ‘embodied cognition’.

    Like emotional intelligence, physical intelligence appears to be something that can be developed and improved over time. It firstly requires understanding the biases inherent in the interaction between our sensory-motor experiences and the physical environment. Second, it needs an excellent present moment awareness of these biases so that our judgment and actions are adaptive rather than reactive.

    Let’s have a look at how high your physical intelligence is and quick ways that you could improve it:

    1. Temperature

    Q: Should you offer someone a warm or a cold drink when you first meet them if you are trying to make a good first impression?

    In 2008, Williams and Bargh recruited 41 students at Yale and had the experimenter ask half of them to hold a hot cup of coffee for them on the way to the laboratory to ask them a few questions and write down the responses on a clipboard. The other participants held an iced coffee for comparison. They then went to the lab, were given the exact description of a fictitious person, and asked to rate this person on a list of additional traits. Participants who held the hot cup of coffee rated the fictional person as significantly more generous and caring than those who held the iced coffee, even though the participants were not even aware that the cup holding was part of the experiment.

    Subsequent studies have supported this finding in showing that giving someone a physically warm drink contributes to perceiving you or others to be emotionally warmer, which would usually lead to a better first impression.

    Q: Can being treated ‘coldly’ by others lead to a room feeling colder?

    Interestingly, our perception of temperature can change depending on how others treat us or what we think. For example, when we are treated kindly by others, room temperature is typically reported to be higher than it is. Conversely, even thinking of an incident of social exclusion led to the same room feeling 2.6 degrees cooler than in a group that experimenters asked to consider an occurrence of social inclusion (21.4 degrees vs 24 degrees). The way to mitigate this and the feeling of pain that someone experiences following social exclusion? A warm object or drink.

    2. Weight

    Q: Do secrets physically weigh us down?

    In 2003, Profitt and colleagues discovered that when we are carrying a heavy weight, we perceive a hill to be steeper or the distance of something to be further than if we are unencumbered. Seems pretty straightforward, seeing that carrying a heavy backpack would require more effort, and our brain wouldn’t want us to take it as far so that it could conserve energy.

    Interestingly, Slepian and colleagues took this a step further in 2012 and found that having or thinking about a big secret can lead to similar findings as carrying something heavy. By instructing participants to think about a meaningful personal secret, they also perceived a steeper hill. They overshot a target with a beanbag (because they perceived it to be further away) than a control group instructed to think about something trivial. So yes, secrets can weigh us down and make us feel like everything requires more energy and effort, especially physical tasks like climbing the stairs with groceries or helping someone move house.

    If we want to reduce the physical burden secrets have on us, we need to express them and get them “off our shoulders”. Research shows that writing about traumatic experiences or sharing things that we are ashamed of with others that we trust (or a professional such as a psychologist) unburden us and make us feel lighter and better going forward.

    3. Texture

    Q: Do you get trendy but hard chairs or traditional soft chairs if you’re opening a new office or business?

    The texture of materials matters. Soft or fluffy texture often helps people to relax more, be more flexible and feel more comfortable. In contrast, hard, rough or uncomfortable surfaces make people feel more tense, rigid or uptight.

    Wooden, plastic or metal chairs may look great in a new restaurant but may not be so good if it leads to customers thinking the waiting staff are less friendly. However, even if the soft and comfy chairs are more expensive, the long-term benefits could be worth it, especially with internet reviews these days. It may just be the difference between a 4-star and a 5-star review.

    There are situations where you may want to be ‘hard’, such as a lawyer who needs to be assertive and firm to negotiate a tough deal. If that’s the case, bring out the impressively looking but uncomfortable chairs. Also, turn up the air-conditioning, and offer them a glass of icy cold water (see #1).

    4. Colour

    Q: Can a team’s uniform colour impact how many fouls referees call in a sports game?

    Unfortunately, yes. In a 1988 study, Frank and Gilovich presented two identical football game videos to college football fans and professional referees. In one video, the primary team wore a white uniform, and in the other video, the primary team wore a black uniform. The videos were otherwise identical. The fans and the refs commented on how aggressively the teams played and how many penalties they would award. The results were staggering, with the black team receiving significantly more fouls and being perceived as more aggressive by refs and fans alike, even though the only difference was the colour of the uniform.

    Q: What colour is best to wear to a job interview then?

    The colour that probably makes the most significant statement, particularly in power and dominance, is red. It’s why Tiger Woods always used to wear red shirts on the final day of competition back when he was on top of the world and winning all of his majors. The colour red significantly diminishes performance and motivation in others when they see it.

    Red is also the colour that politicians wear when they want to appear powerful. Research findings have linked red with a perception of higher status and success in males and higher attractiveness in females. So keep an eye out for the tie colour the next time you see a male politician in the media. When they want to seem kind and caring, they tend to wear baby blue, and on Election Day or when they want to display conviction or strength, it will be red.

    So if it’s a business or leadership or management interview, red or black is likely to be the best colour to wear. However, if it’s a role in a helping profession where a softer side is more desired, light blue or white may be better for an interview.

    5. Cleanliness

    Q: Who is more likely to lie — someone about to shower or someone who has just finished?

    If you want to find out the truth from someone, don’t ask them straight after a shower. The questioned person will find it much easier to stretch the truth when they feel clean, as they have a “clean conscience”. Just after a workout and before a shower, they may feel sweaty, dirty or unclean, and therefore will find it less easy to tell a fib. Instead, go for a run or to the gym or play sport together, and then ask away.

    Q: What about willingness to help others — someone who has just washed their hands or someone who hasn’t?

    In 2006, Zhong and Liljenquist instructed student participants to recall an unethical deed in writing. The experimenters told half of the group to use an antiseptic wipe to clean their hands after typing their act on a computer, whereas the other group did not wash their hands. Both groups could then volunteer by participating in another student’s research project without receiving any compensation. More participants in the no washing group agreed to volunteer for the additional study than those who had cleaned their hands(74% compared to 41%).

    Follow-up studies also found a higher tolerance of other dubious acts, including cheating, following any actions that led to people feeling cleaner. The more that an individual feels that their physical slate is clean, the more space they have to accommodate for things that feel morally dirty.

    6. Posture and Confidence

    Q: How can our physical space be utilised to feel more confident or powerful?

    If you want to feel more confident, try power posing. For example, stand over a table with both of your hands pressed down for one minute. Or lean back in a chair with your legs up and hands back behind your head. Both poses can increase testosterone, leading to greater feelings of power, confidence and assertiveness.

    Be careful of how you hold yourself in your space too. For example, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, or head lowered indicate less confidence or friendliness, whereas standing up straight with an open posture and appropriate eye contact often represents someone who is welcoming and comfortable in their own space.

    7. Physical Space and Creativity

    Q: What are some easy ways to become more creative?

    • Get a box, and put it next to you while you are brainstorming ideas. It will help you think more abstractly by “thinking outside the box” on a physical level.
    • Do everything with your opposite hand. You will pay more attention, and it will make you think about things differently.
    • Engage in your morning routine backwards.
    • Get out into nature, or look at a picture of nature.
    • Keep a cluttered or semi-cluttered desk. An environment that is too clean stifles creativity.
    • Work in an environment of approximately 70 decibels. A local coffee shop is generally about this volume, so some writers prefer to do their work there (I previously thought they just wanted to look trendy).
    • If you want to come up with opposing ideas, or reasons why you shouldn’t do something, place the left hand up high in the air, and say “on the one hand…”, then raise the right hand and lower the left hand and say “then on the other.” It may seem silly, but doing this helps us to think of more opposing points.

    How does it work?

    Physical intelligence, or embodied cognition, is about how metaphors and abstract concepts are grounded in and related to our physical experiences. We first learn how to interact with our world on a non-verbal, physical and sensory level before we understand the verbal level of language and metaphor. Language skills, therefore, build upon and utilise our previous sensory and physical experiences. It is why the same brain areas light up in neuroimaging studies when we see the sentence “I had a rough day” as when we are touching a rough object. However, a different and unrelated area will light up when we see the sentence “I had a bad day”, even though bad and rough have similar meanings.

    Although some metaphors might now seem outdated, if they are things that most people had learned at some point when they were younger, they can be used to our advantage, depending on what we want to achieve.

    Whether you want to be warmer, more trustworthy, flexible, powerful, confident or creative, you can utilise your physical intelligence to change your feelings, perceptions, and behaviours. You can also influence how others perceive and react to you.

  • What’s a Better Life Goal than Happiness?

    What’s a Better Life Goal than Happiness?

    When I type ‘Happiness books’ into Amazon.com, over 60,000 results appear.

    Happiness is clearly a popular topic. However, when I hear people say to me in therapy that they “just want to be happy”, I find it hard to write this down as a goal for them to achieve in therapy.

    The problem with striving for happiness is that it is simply one of many emotions. Sometimes we can feel happiness or joy, and other times we can feel sad, angry, jealous, disgusted, guilty, surprised, anxious, or many other things. Not only is it okay if we feel these things at times, but it is normal and healthy.

    To say that we only want to feel happy is unrealistic and unhealthy. The movie ‘Inside Out’ taught this message that it is essential to allow ourselves to feel whatever we do at the moment, whether it is sadness, fear, disgust or anger. To live our lives to the fullest, we need to make room for our emotions instead of changing them or pushing them away.

    So if feeling happy all the time is not the healthiest goal to aim at, what is?

    Life satisfaction?

    Life satisfaction (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffen, 1985) has been widely measured worldwide. People from different cities and countries have even had their life satisfaction scores compared to each other.

    To determine your life satisfaction, simply ask yourself how satisfied you are with your life currently from 0 to 10, where 10 is the best life you could imagine, and 0 is the worst.

    Finland has the highest life satisfaction in the latest World Happiness Report findings. But how do we know if one person’s 8 out of 10 is the same as someone’s from another city or country? For example, both Uzbekistan and Somalia have cities that are the two most hopeful in the world regarding their expected life satisfaction in the future. However, neither country has any cities in the top 20 for their current life satisfaction.

    Is it better to be satisfied now but expect that things will worsen in the future, or not be fully satisfied now, but hope that things will continue to improve?

    High positive affect and low negative affect?

    The positive and negative affect scale (PANAS; Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988) has also been widely used to assess how strongly people tend to experience positive and negative emotions. Including ten positive and ten negative emotions represents what people feel more than just focusing on happiness, but it can still be hard to determine the ideal.

    Asuncion in Paraguay has the highest levels of positive emotion, and Taipei in Taiwan has the lowest negative emotions. Still, neither country has a city in the top ten globally for both.

    ‘Inside Out’ and I believe it is better to fully experience all emotions rather than not experience feelings at all. But it may be different depending on the culture that you live in. Should negative emotions even be considered “negative” if all feelings have a purpose or function?

    Psychological well-being?

    Ryff’s (1989) model of psychological well-being proposed additional aspects of life as crucial to well-being rather than just emotions or life satisfaction. She included self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. Now, these seem like good things to measure if you want to see if someone is psychologically healthy.

    Seligman also formulated his PERMA model of well-being. He said that we needed five main things in our lives to thrive or flourish. He detailed these five things in his 2012 book ‘Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being’. They were p = positive emotions, e = engagement, r = (positive) relationships, m = meaning, and a = achievement.

    Self-determination?

    Ryan and Deci (2000) came up with self-determination theory (SDT) over twenty years ago. The researchers derived three core needs that they said each human must-have for optimal functioning. They are needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy. Competence covers environmental mastery and personal growth from Ryff’s model and achievement from Seligman’s, and autonomy is in Ryff’s model too. Relatedness and positive relations with others and positive relationships are all similar. However, SDT doesn’t adequately account for self-acceptance, positive emotions, engagement, purpose in life and meaning.

    Curiosity?

    Kashdan and colleagues (2009; 2017) defined curiosity as “the recognition, pursuit and intense desire to explore novel, challenging and uncertain events“. There are five dimensions of curiosity, including joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity and thrill-seeking.

    These aspects definitely consider positive emotions, engagement and achievement from Seligman’s well-being model, but less so positive relationships and meaning. Unless social curiosity leads to positive relationships and meaning can be found in trying new things and being curious about everything you encounter?

    A Good Life?

    The Good Lives Model is a strengths-based approach to rehabilitating offenders. Ward and colleagues (2004) first proposed nine classes of primary goods, which have since been extended to 11 because of further research by Purvis (2010).

    The 11 classes of primary goods are life, knowledge, excellence in play, work, agency, inner peace, relatedness, community, spirituality, pleasure, and creativity. If people do not have much of a primary good in their life, approach goals are set to help them achieve more of this good. It can then reduce the person’s risk of reoffending or committing another crime.

    Self-actualisation?

    Maslow put self-actualisation at the top of his hierarchy of needs. But, according to Scott Barry Kaufman in his excellent book, ‘Transcend: The new science of self-actualisation’, Maslow never intended his hierarchy to be a pyramid of needs, as most people think of when they hear Maslow’s name.

    Maslow thought human maturation was an ongoing growth process towards the transcendent experience of being “fully human“. You don’t tick off an area and never think about it again. Instead, over time, you become less concerned with the security needs of safety, connection and self-esteem and more interested in growing and exploring, loving and finding purpose.

    The more self-actualised one becomes, the more they understand themselves and their identity. People who have become self-actualised can utilise who they are and their strengths to best help others and the world.

    Kaufman has since developed the characteristics of self-actualisation scale (CSAS). In it, there are ten elements of self-actualisation that are assessed. To see how self-actualised you are in each area, say whether you strongly disagree with each statement (1 point), disagree (2 points), are neutral (3 points), agree (4 points), or strongly agree (5 points). Then add up your total for each element, or complete the test here.

    1. Purpose

    “I feel a great responsibility and duty to accomplish a particular mission in life.”

    “I have a purpose in life that will help the good of humankind.”

    “I feel as though I have some important task to fulfil in this lifetime.”

    2. Humanitarianism

    “I feel a deep sense of identification with all human beings.”

    “I feel a great deal of sympathy and affection for all human beings.”

    “I have a genuine desire to help the human race.”

    3. Equanimity

    “I tend to take life’s inevitable ups and downs with grace, acceptance, and equanimity.”

    “I am relatively stable in the face of hard knocks, blows, deprivations, and frustrations.”

    “I am often undisturbed and unruffled by things that seem to bother most people.”

    4. Continued freshness of appreciation

    “I can appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.”

    “I often feel gratitude for the good in my life no matter how many times I encounter it.”

    “A sunset looks just as beautiful every time I see one.”

    5. Peak experiences

    “I often have experiences in which I feel new horizons and possibilities opening up for myself and others.”

    “I often have experiences in which I feel one with all people and things on this planet.”

    “I often have experiences in which I feel a profound transcendence of my selfish concerns.”

    6. Creative spirit

    “I bring a generally creative attitude to all of my work.”

    “I have a generally creative spirit that touches everything I do.”

    “I am often in touch with my childlike spontaneity.”

    7. Authenticity

    “I can maintain my dignity and integrity even in environments and situations that are undignified.”

    “I can stay true to my core values even in environments that challenge them.”

    “I take responsibility for my actions.”

    8. Good moral intuition

    “I have a strong sense of right and wrong in my daily life.”

    “I trust my moral decisions without having to deliberate too much about them.”

    “I can tell deep down right away when I’ve done something wrong.”

    9. Acceptance

    “I accept all sides of myself, including my shortcomings.”

    “I accept all of my quirks and desires without shame or apology.”

    “I have unconditional acceptance of people and their unique quirks and desires.”

    10. Truth-seeking or efficient perception of reality

    “I try to get as close as I can to the reality of the world.”

    “I am always trying to get at the real truth about people and nature.”

    “I often have a clear perception of reality.”

    Once you have scored up the totals for all of your elements, you can see which ones are strengths or weaknesses for you. For example, authenticity was my top score, with peak experiences being my lowest.

    Conclusion

    Self-actualisation is not precisely the same as psychological well-being or curiosity, but it seems to include elements from both.

    Being more curious, psychologically healthy or having optimal psychological well-being are all worthwhile goals in therapy. They are also better to aim for than wanting to “just feel happy”.

    Striving for self-actualisation is also another worthy target to aim for in therapy.

    Self-actualisation is associated with emotional stability, goal attainment, constructive thinking, authenticity, and meaning in life. It can reduce disruptive impulsivity. Self-actualisation can also increase life satisfaction, curiosity, positive relationships, personal growth, and environmental mastery. Higher self-actualisation scores can also improve work performance, work satisfaction, skill development, creativity and humour ability. Lastly, it can increase one’s feelings of connectedness with the world.

    Interestingly, self-actualisation is not correlated with age, education, ethnicity, gender, childhood income or school performance. So while many variables, including one’s environment, can impact a person, it does not look like it has to stop them from becoming more self-actualised.

    Exactly how to reach self-actualisation isn’t fully known, but practising Mindfulness Meditation or Loving-Kindness Meditation daily could help. You could write a gratitude letter to thank someone you really care about. Or write down three things that either went well or you appreciated or felt grateful for each day. Or try to look for opportunities to help others, volunteer your skills or time, be curious about others or the world, or engage in a random act of kindness.

    Different fields, including mindfulness and positive psychology, are looking into ways to help build psychological health and optimal well-being. Many of these strategies and practices are also likely to help people become more self-actualised.

    Now that there is a modern instrument for measuring self-actualisation and its ten components, it will be possible to also create interventions that directly aim to improve these areas over time.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist