Damon Ashworth Psychology

Tag: challenges

  • The Pro Athlete’s Checklist for Optimal Performance: Part Two

    The Pro Athlete’s Checklist for Optimal Performance: Part Two

    This is the second part of a two-part series exploring a checklist that professional athletes can go through to ensure that they perform at their best.

    Part One covered the important mental aspects of training for an upcoming competition and preparing yourself right before an event. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend checking out that article first.

    Part Two will now cover the aspects you need to consider to perform at your best during competition and reflect and learn the most after the event has finished.

    When Competing in an Event

    1. Do you know how to get into a state of flow? [_]

    The flow genome project has a 10 question survey that helps you understand how you best find flow or get “into the zone”. For example, my flow profile result said that I was a hard charger:

    “A hard-charger: You’re a focused go-getter. You thrive in intense situations, both personally and professionally. You seek out challenges. You lead a high-impact lifestyle. When you set out to learn a new skill, you look for training from the best and brightest in that field. If such training is not available, you hunker down and focus until you’ve figured it out yourself. Either way, “slow and steady” progress is not what you’re after.

    The same intensity that fuels your drive and focus also feeds a relentless inner critic. One that ceaselessly pushes you to raise the bar. For you, the Flow State offers a rare escape from the relentless tallying and scoring of yourself against your own ideal goals and past performance. When you find activities that allow this blissful calm and relief, you make them a priority in your life.

    Flow Hacks: Hard chargers gravitate towards adventure sports. Skiing delivers the intensity you seek. You favour non-traditional, off-the-beaten-path travel. You’re less interested in itineraries than you are in cultural immersion.

    Pro-Tip: As a Hard Charger seeking flow, you may lose sight of the trade-off between risk and reward. Make sure you always stay on the recoverable end of that equation. Rather than pursuing bigger and faster, try going more in-depth. Slow down. Take time to develop discipline and to understand all your pursuits have to offer. It’s typically a lot more than thrills. Develop skills instead of seeking challenges. If you’re already hucking off 20-foot cliffs on Alpine skis, try a different approach, like telemark skiing. If you’re surfing big waves, try stand up paddleboarding. You might also benefit from mindfulness training.”

    Check out the website, take the quiz, and see what can help you to best get into a flow-state on a more regular basis.

    2. Do you have a clear objective? [_]

    A clear objective is something that you can focus on that is within your control that, if you do well, will help you to win. In the excellent book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by Timothy Gallwey, he said that tennis only has two requirements for success. The first requirement is to hit each ball over the net, and the second is to hit each ball into the court. What are the requirements for success in your sport, or the essential things for you to keep your focus on during a game or performance?

    3. Are you able to observe what is going on to change things if they are not going right? [_]

    How do you know if things are not working for you while competing? Are you not focused on your objectives, or are you easily distracted or irritated by less important things? Is it that you are in your head too much and not in your body or the zone enough? Is it that things don’t feel quite right? Is it that you feel too physically tense, or your worries are getting the better of you? Is it that you are making mistakes or losing?

    To me, being able to observe well is first to become clear of what my point of focus or objective is going to be during the game, then notice as soon as possible when my focus is no longer on this objective, and then gently bring my attention back to this without getting frustrated with myself for becoming distracted.

    4. Are you able to let go of judgment so that you are in your body and connected with your senses rather than caught up in your head or lost in your thoughts? [_]

    Being non-judgmental of your performance and having trust in yourself and your body and your capabilities are some of the keys to staying in the zone or getting back into it during competition.

    The more you are caught up in judgmental thoughts, the more you will worry, the tenser you will become, and the more your performance will suffer. So if you notice yourself being judgmental or self-critical, treat these thoughts just like you would any other unhelpful thought — challenge them, or try to let them go.

    5. Can you keep your focus on what’s most important and know how to minimise or block out distractions or worries? [_]

    Whenever you are distracted or worrying too much about things during a game, first take one slow, deep breath. Then accept that you have been distracted or worried without judging yourself. Remind yourself that these things are traps and not helpful, then put all of your focus on your clarified objectives from #2 above. Try to be patient and trust that things will be better the more you try to immerse yourself in your movements and the game rather than worrying about what others are doing or saying, including your own mind.

    6. Do you know how to cope with adversity if you are not playing as you hoped or are losing by more than you expected to be? [_]

    When things aren’t going how you have planned, call a time out if possible and re-centre yourself. Select a focal point in the distance below eye level. Form a clear intention of what you aim to do, whether to stick to the plan or make needed adjustments if the plan isn’t working. Breathe slowly and deeply, and release your muscle tension if you feel tight anywhere. Then find your centre of gravity and ground yourself with where you are and what you are doing. Have a process cue that you can say to yourself in these moments to re-focus on your objectives, and then try to channel all your remaining energy into these objectives and inspired performance.

    7. Do you know how to peak under pressure and still perform at your best when the game is on the line? [_]

    Try not to overthink things too much. Although this is easier said than done, remember how much hard work you have put in during practice, and trust that your muscle memory will know what to do in the crucial moments. If you worry that you tense up or worry too much under pressure, remind yourself of times that you performed at your best in the past and visualise how your body was during these times. Try to channel this and see if you can have fun, enjoy the moment, and give 100% to the performance. You won’t regret it if you know that you have applied yourself as much as you could towards the important things within your control.

    After the Competition or Event

    1. Have you spent some time reflecting on how you felt your performance was? [_]

    How do you normally feel after an event? Relieved? Disappointed? Happy? Sad? Whatever it is, spend some time just sitting with your feelings about your performance, all the hard work you put into the lead up to the event, and how you prepared for it. Do you feel grateful and appreciative of all the hard work you put in or dissatisfied, knowing that you could have done more or better or pushed yourself harder?

    2. If you performed at your best, do you know what you did that helped you perform so well? [_]

    If you managed to get into a flow state or were in the zone while competing, even if it was only for part of the time, do you know how you did it? If you smashed your opponent and felt super confident and unbeatable, how did you do it? Do you know how you could replicate these things again next time?

    3. If you did not perform at your best, are you aware of what triggered the poor performance or the traps you fell into? [_]

    Let’s say you under-performed and did much worse than expected. What happened? Was it an issue with your training or your preparation, or was it purely what went wrong during the competition? Do you know how to make sure a similar outcome doesn’t happen again next time?

    4. Are you reflecting on your performance too much? [_]

    Reflection doesn’t need to take any longer than 30 minutes, so if you find yourself continuing to stew over what has happened, especially in a self-critical way, you might be ruminating rather than reflecting.

    5. Regardless of how well you performed, have you written down three things that went well, either for you or the team? [_]

    Writing this down will help you to remember that it wasn’t all bad and reinforce the positive. Even if you are bitterly disappointed, what did you or other people in your team do that went according to plan or better than expected? If it is what you did, give yourself some acknowledgment or a pat on the back. Even though it didn’t quite work out how you wanted it to, you still put in so much hard work and effort and deserve some acknowledgment for that. If it’s what your teammates or coaches did, make sure you let them know when appropriate.

    6. If you made any mistakes, have you written down up to three things that you could do differently next time to overcome these mistakes and improve your performance next time? [_]

    Even if you performed amazingly or won the event, was there anything you could have done better? What will help you shave an extra millisecond off your time, turn the ball over less, or take higher-percentage shots? Whatever it is, please write it down so that you don’t forget what you can do to keep improving and growing and getting better over time.

    7. Have you written down anything else that you would like to focus on that is in your control that you think will increase your likelihood of success next time? [_]

    Things that you may want to write down include:

    • A different plan for training?
    • A different plan for pre-competition?
    • A different plan for during the next performance?

    If you are unsure what else to write after the 30 minutes of personal reflection, make sure that you also talk to your teammates and coaches about your performance. Others may be able to pick up on different things than you could. Maybe they saw things that you did not. They might also be more objective than you were about your performance too, especially if your emotions were high in the heat of the moment. If someone filmed your performance, watch it back with your teammates or coaches if possible. Ask for feedback, and then write down the essential points that you know you could improve. Only give your teammates honest feedback if they ask for this too. Then come up with a plan with everyone to address these issues together before the next event.

    How many checklist items do you usually do? If it’s not many, are you willing to try and implement a few more of these steps in your next competition? If you do, I’d love to hear about how much it helps. Keep up the great work, and all the best in your athletic endeavours!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • What Psychological Strategies Can Improve Your Sporting Performance the Most?

    What Psychological Strategies Can Improve Your Sporting Performance the Most?

    I’ve played a lot of sport in my lifetime. When I was six years old, my first basketball game was on the Diamond Valley mini-courts in Victoria, Australia. My most recent game was this week at Wan Smol Bag in Port Vila, Vanuatu. So that means I’ve been playing organised sport for over 27 years now.

    Both of my parents were Physical Education teachers and excellent sports coaches, and they consistently encouraged my two siblings and me to play sports and be active. I’m not sure if my siblings felt this too, but there was a sense that we should take sport seriously, and it was essential to try our best and be unselfish team players and fair opponents.

    For example, this Larry Bird Converse poster hung on the wall in our house when I was younger:

    “It makes me sick when I see a guy just watching it go out of bounds.” — Larry Bird

    I was a super competitive kid, with most of my childhood consisting of competing against whoever I could find, especially my brother and friends. I also tried to compete in anything, including board games, computer games, card games and multiple sports.

    I’ve managed to have some success in several sports. I finished in the top 10 in the state in swimming in Primary (Elementary) School, the top 20 in discus throwing, and the top 30 in alpine skiing. In High School, I made the State team in volleyball for three years and the Victorian Institute of Sport and the Australian Youth Squad for volleyball. I then moved to the USA at 16 to play Varsity volleyball, basketball and tennis in California and Virginia. Later on, I won a State Championship in the top division in the Victorian Volleyball League at 25 and won a championship playing Semi-professional basketball when I was 27 in Australia.

    Despite this modicum of success, I don’t think that I reached my potential.

    I was a bit like Allen Iverson in his famous “practice” speech:

    https://youtu.be/eGDBR2L5kzI

    I loved to play, but I hated to practice. I was not overly goal-focused outside of turning up on the game day, giving my all, and doing whatever I could to help my team win. When I was younger, I also had what is known as a ‘fixed mindset’, and thought that I could not change my athletic capabilities with deliberate effort.

    It wasn’t until I started to learn psychology at university that I realised that I could mentally change how I approached the games that I played. I began to apply the psychological skills I had learnt and developed a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. As a result, I became less afraid of losing, more able to learn from setbacks and mistakes, and more able to step up when the game was on the line. I also discovered how to bounce back after making a few mistakes, keep pushing and trying when we were losing, and perform at my best on a much more consistent basis.

    I wish I could have had these skills earlier in my life, and I would like to share them with you so that you can hopefully take your game to the next level.

    How Strong is the Mental Side of Your Game?

    The Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI) looks at seven sub-scales related to how you mentally approach sport and helps to highlight areas in which you might struggle:

    Sub-scale #1: Coping with adversity — assesses if you remain positive and enthusiastic even when things are going badly. Also determines if you stay calm and controlled, and can quickly bounce back from mistakes and setbacks.
    • Do you remain positive and enthusiastic during a competition, no matter how bad things are going?
    • When things are going badly, do you tell yourself to keep calm and does this work for you?
    • When you feel yourself getting too tense, can you quickly relax your body and calm yourself?
    • Can you maintain emotional control regardless of how things are going for you?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, you currently are not coping as well as you could with adversity.

    TO IMPROVE HOW YOU COPE WITH ADVERSITY

    • If things are going bad during a competition, try cognitive restructuring. First, tune in to what thoughts are going through your mind. Then ask yourself if they are realistic thoughts and helpful thoughts to be having right now? If you are thinking about anything that is not what you are meant to be doing in the present, they are probably not helpful. If it’s the mistake you just made, let it go and move on. If you worry that you might keep making mistakes and lose, let it go and move on. Tell yourself, “this isn’t helpful!” or ask yourself, “what is a more helpful way to be thinking right now?” It might be “keep calm”, or it could be another mantra that you find helpful. Then stop focusing on your thoughts and focus on whatever is in your control in the present that will help you to get back on track. Then do it.
    • If you are feeling overwhelmed or out of control during a competition, try deep breathing. Tune into your breathing. Chances are, your breath is probably rapid and shallow if you feel overwhelmed, tense or out of control. Then, exhale and breathe out all of the air in your lungs. Slowly breathe deeply into your stomach, pause for a second or two, and then exhale all of the air out again. Keep breathing slowly and deeply and exhaling all your air until you feel a bit calmer and more in control. Then stop focusing on your breath and put your focus back to the main objective that you have that is in your power in the present.
    • If you feel too physically tense during a competition, try progressive muscle relaxation. Tune in to where you feel most tense, then pick one area to target first. Squeeze it as hard as possible, take a deep breath in, pause, breathe out and relax. Then repeat if needed or move onto another tense muscle area. If you can’t tense it because of the sport you are doing, try to breathe in and around the tight area and then see if you can relax it with the out-breath. Repeat as often as needed. Once you feel less tense, stop focusing on your body tenseness and put your focus back to whatever is in your control in the present that will help you to achieve your objectives.
    Sub-scale #2: Coachability — assesses if you learn from coaches instructions and are open to accepting constructive criticism or advice without taking it personally or becoming upset:
    • Do you manage not to take it personally or feel upset when a coach tells you how to correct a mistake you’ve made?
    • When a coach criticises you, do you feel helped rather than upset?
    • If a coach criticises or yells at you, do you correct the mistake without getting upset about it?
    • Do you improve your skills by listening carefully to feedback and instructions from your coaches?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    You are currently not very coachable if you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items. For example, my dad said I was uncoachable growing up, but I did improve by applying a few strategies.

    TO IMPROVE HOW YOU COACHABLE YOU ARE

    • When a coach criticises or yells at you, try not to take it personally. The coach is likely to be on an emotional roller coaster if it is a competition, just like you. They may care just as much or even more than you about winning, but they cannot control your behaviour on the field. They can merely make suggestions or sub you out, which may make them feel even more stressed or anxious than if they were out there performing. See if there is merit in what they are saying to you regardless of how they have said it. If it is useful advice, take it on board. If it is not helpful, try to tune it out and re-focus on whatever is within your control that will help you achieve your objectives.
    • Develop a growth mindset and let go of your ego. When you make a mistake in practice, try to listen to feedback from coaches about what led to the error and how you can improve it. If they don’t give you any feedback, ask for it when it is appropriate. It is generally a lot easier for someone else to see what you are doing wrong and how you can improve it than it will be for you to view it. Asking someone in your coaching staff to film what you are doing can also help because then you can view what they see and discuss how to improve it.
    • Listen carefully to your coaches’ advice and instructions, especially during practice and before and after a game. The coach’s job is to help you perform at your best, so try to take what they suggest and give it a go before rejecting it as not helpful. Having a growth mindset sees mistakes and losses and failures as opportunities to reflect on what went wrong and how you can improve it. A coach can help with this, especially after a game and in practice. Asking questions to clarify what they said if you don’t understand can also help ensure you follow or try what they suggest. Don’t overthink things too much during a game, and get back to the game plan you and your coach established before the event.
    Sub-scale #3: Concentration — reflects whether you become easily distracted and whether you can focus on the task at hand in both practice and game situations, even when adverse or unexpected conditions occur:
    • When you are playing sports, can you focus your attention and block out distractions?
    • Is it easy to keep distracting thoughts from interfering with something you are watching or listening to?
    • Do you handle unexpected situations in your sport very well?
    • Is it easy to direct your attention and focus on a single object or person?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, your concentration ability is not as good as it could be.

    TO IMPROVE YOUR CONCENTRATION LEVELS

    • Meditate regularly. It doesn’t matter which type of meditation you do, but practice it for at least 10 minutes a day. Developing a daily meditation routine will help you improve your concentration levels on a game day more than anything else. I prefer mindfulness meditation the most, and the apps I would recommend the most to download if you want to have a guided meditation session daily are:
      • Smiling Mind
      • Insight Timer
      • Headspace
      • Calm
      • Waking Up
      • Ten Percent Happier
      • Buddhify
      • Balance
    • Avoid multitasking. Whatever you are doing throughout the day, try to focus on one thing at a time rather than attempting to do two or three things at once. It will be less tiring for you, and will also train your concentration. Just ask yourself, no matter what you are doing, “What is most important right now?” and try to put all of your attention and focus on that one task. If your mind tries to distract you or get you to do something else, thank your mind and bring your attention back to whatever is most important at that moment.
    • Practice informal mindfulness. Formal mindfulness involves sitting down and doing mindfulness meditation for a set period. However, you can also approach any other task that you are doing mindfully, called informal mindfulness. To do this, no matter what you are doing, try to see if you can approach the task as if you have never done it before in an open, accepting, non-judgmental way without wishing for it to be any other way. Jon Kabat-Zinn calls these the attitudes of mindfulness, and when applied to sports, you are likely to have a sense of relaxed concentration that is the key to getting into the zone or a state of flow more regularly.
    Sub-scale #4: Confidence and Achievement Motivation — measures whether you are confident and positively motivated. Also assesses if you consistently give 100% during practices and games, and work hard to improve your skills:
    • Do you get the most out of your talent and expertise?
    • Do you feel confident that you will play well?
    • Do you give 100% during practices and competition and don’t have to be pushed to practice or play hard?
    • Do you try even harder when you fail to reach your goals?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, you do not have high levels of confidence and achievement motivation.

    TO IMPROVE YOUR CONFIDENCE AND MOTIVATION FOR ACHIEVEMENT

    • Know your personality: Take the IPIP-NEO personality assessment to get a good sense of your personality and what will likely motivate you. If you are an extrovert, you probably need to train with other people and need excitement and fun. You may not need as much rest, either. If you are an introvert, you may need some individual sessions to remain focused and motivated and plenty of time to reflect and recover between practices and competitions. If you are agreeable, you will enjoy cooperating with the plans of your coaches or other athletes and helping out others. If you are disagreeable, you will probably need to do things your way a bit more to stay motivated and confident. If you are highly conscientious, you could have a consistent training schedule and pre-game routine, and you will be able to follow it and benefit from it. If you are low on conscientiousness, you will need more flexibility and variety in your training and preparation and goals to stay on track. If you are highly neurotic, you will have more times to feel down, anxious, angry, self-conscious, but developing skills to assist you with these emotions will help. If you are low on neuroticism, you are unlikely to be bothered by intense emotions or self-doubt and need additional strategies. Lastly, if you are very open to experiences, you are likely to remain confident and motivated even if things don’t go according to plan and accept whatever is happening and make room for whatever feelings arise. If you are low on openness, you will probably need more contingency plans to know what to do and feel less overwhelmed when things don’t go according to plan.
    • Clarify your essential values: The values exercise that I have previously written about is a great way to identify and remember why you are playing sport and what you are hoping to get out of it — knowing our why can help us to be much more motivated to push through pain and challenges when things get hard. By figuring out which values are essential, quite important and not relevant to you, you can see if you have been living in line with your fundamental values or applying them in your sport. If you haven’t, setting some consistent goals with these values will increase your motivation and hopefully improve your confidence.
    • Apply your character strengths to your sport: The VIA character strengths survey is similar to values clarification, with the VIA standing for values in action. Please take the survey, identify your top 5 key strengths and apply them to your practice and competition. It could help your confidence and motivation a lot.
    Sub-scale #5: Goal setting and mental preparation — assesses whether you set and work toward specific performance goals. It also determines if you plan and mentally prepare for competition, and if you have a “game plan” for performing well:
    • Do you set concrete goals to guide what you do in your sport daily or weekly basis?
    • Do you tend to do a lot of planning about how you will reach your goals?
    • Do you set your own performance goals for each practice?
    • Do you have your game plan worked out in your head long before the game begins?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, you are currently not setting enough goals for yourself in your sport or preparing yourself mentally as much as you could be.

    TO IMPROVE YOUR GOAL SETTING AND MENTAL PREPARATION SKILLS

    • Get on the same page as your coach (and teammates if you have them) about your sport’s objectives and the steps you will all need to take to achieve these objectives. By doing this, including having contingency plans for if things are not going well, your coach should help you stick to your plan and encourage you to switch to a contingency plan if things are not working as well as you both hoped. You can apply this for your training sessions, your weeks in the lead up to competition, before a game, during competition, and afterwards. If your coach changes the rules and goes off course, it is vital to raise this and remind them of your overall objectives so that you can remain on track and make progress towards your long-term goals.
    • Make sure the goals that you set are SMART goals. SMART means that your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-framed. You will then know if you have achieved them or not in the time that you have set and can make adjustments as needed.
    • Have a consistent pre-game ritual to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the game. Maybe eat the same meal the night before a competition (carbo-loading), do things to wind down and switch off to ensure you don’t get to bed too late and obtain a good quality sleep. If possible, wake up at a similar time in the morning and have the breakfast that your nutritionist has suggested is most helpful. Stay well hydrated. Have a game plan figured out with your coach well before the competition, and keep that fresh in your mind on game day. Get to the event place early enough to not have any unnecessary stress. Choose the location that allows you to get into the state you want to be when the competition starts. If you can’t choose the room, bring noise-cancelling headphones or other things that can still help you feel settled wherever you are. Then listen to music or motivational material as needed, warm up your body as required, visualise doing well or think back to times you have performed well in the past, and centre yourself before the competition. Then go out there and enjoy it.
    Sub-scale #6: Peaking under pressure — measures whether you are challenged rather than threatened by pressure situations and if you perform well under pressure — if you are a clutch performer:
    • Do you tend to play better under pressure because you think more clearly?
    • Do you enjoy the game more when there is more pressure during it?
    • Are pressure situations challenges that you welcome?
    • Do you make fewer mistakes when the pressure is on because you concentrate better?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, you are currently not peaking under pressure or getting into the zone as much as you potentially could.

    TO PEAK UNDER A PRESSURE ON A MORE REGULAR BASIS

    • Try the seven steps of centering:
      1. First, select a comfortable focal point in the distance that is below eye level.
      2. Form a clear intention in your mind of what you aim to do.
      3. Breathe slowly and deeply in a mindful way and breathe all the air out with each breath.
      4. Release your muscle tension by observing where you are most tense in your body, then release this tightness by first tensing it further and then letting go, or just trying to release it with each out-breath.
      5. Find your centre of gravity or “chi” and use that to help ground you where you are and with what you are doing.
      6. Repeat your process cue, or imagine what it sounds, feels and looks like to achieve what you aim to do in step 2. If there is a word that describes this, you can use it as your cue. For example, golfer Sam Snead would use the word “oily” to describe the smooth and effortless swing that he wanted.
      7. Channel your remaining energy into a dynamic and inspired performance. Trust that all the hard work you have put in during training will pay off and help you achieve your aim and see if you can enjoy the competition and the peak performances that can come with this.
    • Develop your inner game. Timothy Gallwey wrote one of the best sports psychology books of all time with ‘The Inner Game of Tennis.’ The first step of the inner game is to observe what is happening in a non-judgmental way. The second step is to picture the desired outcome. The third step is to trust your body to reach your desired outcome and not try to overthink it. The last step is to nonjudgmentally observe the change in your performance and results by doing this.
    • Get into a flow state. To increase your chances of getting into a flow state, you first need to remove or zone out from all potential distractions. It is also important that the task you are aiming for strikes a good balance between your current skill level and the challenge you face. Flow is most likely to happen if the challenge is slightly greater than you perceive your current skills. If it is not challenging enough, you are likely to be bored. If it is too challenging, you are likely to be anxious. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that there are eight main characteristics of flow:
      1. You need to put all of your concentration on the task at hand.
      2. You need to be clear about your goals and get immediate feedback about if you are on the right track.
      3. Flow transforms time, and things feel like they are either speeding up or slowing down in a flow state.
      4. The experience must be intrinsically rewarding or enjoyable in and of itself, and not just a means to another end.
      5. Your performance should feel effortless in a flow state.
      6. There needs to be a good balance between challenge and skills; ideally, what you are doing is challenging and requires a lot of skill.
      7. Your actions and awareness are merged, and you are no longer in your head thinking about what you are doing or worrying about your performance.
      8. You feel fully in control of what you are attempting to do in pursuit of your objectives.
    Sub-scale # 7: Freedom from worry — assesses whether you put pressure on yourself by worrying about performing poorly or making mistakes. It also determines if you worry about what others will think if you perform poorly:
    • Do you worry quite a bit about what others think of your performance?
    • Do you put a lot of pressure on yourself by worrying about how you will perform?
    • While competing, do you worry about making mistakes or failing to come through?
    • Do you think about and imagine what will happen if you fail or screw up?
    How often do you do these things — rarely, sometimes, often or almost always?

    If you have said rarely or sometimes to most or all of these items, your worries probably impair your performance.

    TO FEEL FREER FROM YOUR WORRIES WHILE COMPETING

    • Try constructive worry. I don’t recommend this strategy during competition, but it is excellent to do before or after a game or when you are training for an upcoming event and are feeling worried. Create a table with three columns, and say what is worrying you in column one, what you can do to address the worry in column two, and when you can solve it in column three. It shouldn’t take much more than 5 minutes and might look like this:
    Worries/Concerns What Can I do to address this? When can I address this?
    What if I lose? Train hard, prepare well, try my best Now and at the competition
    What if I make mistakes or fail? Mistakes help me to learn and improve. Remember the Michael Jordan quote about failure leading to success Anytime I have a setback, try to have a growth rather than a fixed mindset and see what I can learn from it to get better
    What if others judge me? Try to care less about this and focus on what is in my control, which is training hard, preparing well and trying my best. Also, don’t forget to have fun. If others judge me for trying my best, that is more about them than it is about me Now. I can put my energy into things that are within my control, which is my intention and my actions, and let go of everything else
    • Practice grounding yourself in the present. Ask yourself: “What are five things I can see right now?” “What are four things I can touch or feel right now?” “What are three things I can hear right now?” “What are two things I can smell right now?” “What is one thing I can taste right now?“. These questions help you to become fully grounded in the present, instead of worrying about things going wrong in the future or ruminating about a mistake you made in the past. Finally, ask yourself: “Am I safe?“. If there is no imminent physical danger, you do not need to be in ‘fight-or-flight’ mode, and your brain can relax while you take a few deep breaths and re-focus on what you need to do next to achieve your objective.
    • Defuse from unhelpful thoughts. Sometimes it is helpful to challenge our worries if we know they are unhelpful. If you instead think of something more useful to believe, it might eliminate your fears. If it does not, try to defuse from your worry instead and aim not to get too caught up in it. Thinking “I’m going to miss this shot” won’t help, so if it crosses your mind, imagine putting this worry on a leaf on a river and let it float downstream, or put it on a cloud and watch it float away, or put it in a box on a conveyor belt and let it speed away into the distance. There are many different defusion strategies to help you let go of worrying thoughts. Look them up, try them out when you are not competing, see which ones are most effective for you, and then apply the most effective ones during your next competition. The less you worry, and the more you focus on what you can do that is in your control, the better your performance is likely to be.
    To answer the title question, the best psychological strategies to improve your sporting performance are the ones that work best for you. See which sub-scales you score the lowest on, try some of these strategies that I have recommended, and then let me know what worked and how much your performance improved. I look forward to hearing about your improvement and growth! Dr Damon Ashworth Clinical Psychologist
  • What Values Do You Try to Live Your Life By?

    What Values Do You Try to Live Your Life By?

    Values are guiding principles for our lives that are endless pursuits. We cannot achieve a value in the same way we can accomplish a goal. However, at any point in time, you can connect with them, act in accordance to them, and receive the vitality, energy, improved self-worth, greater emotional well-being and happiness that are often the result of living consistently with our values.

    To figure out your most important values, first write if each value in the list below is very important to you (V), quite important to you (Q), or not important to you (N).

    It is essential that we choose the values that feel right to us, rather than pick the values that we think our parents or society might want us to follow.

    Then, for only your very important values, score from (0-10) how much you have been living according to this value over the past month, with:

    0 = not following this value over the past month,

    1 – 3 = following this value occasionally,

    4 – 6 = following this value sometimes,

    7 – 9 = following this value often, and

    10 = always living by this value.

    VALUES LIST

    1. Connecting with Nature: Importance of value to you (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency with value if it is very important to you (0-10?) = _________
    2. Gaining wisdom: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    3. Creating beauty (in any domain, including arts, dancing, gardening): Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    4. Promoting justice and caring for the weak: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    5. Being loyal to friends, family and/or my group: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    6. Being Honest: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    7. Helping others: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    8. Being sexually desirable: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ________
    9. Having genuine and close friends: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = _____
    10. Having relationships involving love and affection: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    11. Being ambitious and hard working: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ____
    12. Being competent and effective: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    13. Having a sense of accomplishment and making a lasting contribution: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    14. Having an exciting life: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    15. Having a life filled with adventure: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    16. Having a life filled with novelty and change: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    17. Being physically fit: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    18. Eating healthy food: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    19. Engaging in sporting activities: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    20. Acting consistently with my religious faith and beliefs: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    21. Being at one with God: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    22. Showing respect for tradition: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = _____
    23. Being self-disciplined and resisting temptation: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    24. Showing respect to parents and elders: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) =____
    25. Meeting my obligations: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    26. Maintaining the safety and security of my loved ones: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    27. Making sure to repay favours and not be indebted to people: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    28. Being safe from danger: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) = _______
    29. Being wealthy: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    30. Having authority, being in charge: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ____
    31. Having influence over other people: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ____
    32. Having an enjoyable, leisurely life: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ____
    33. Enjoying food and drink: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    34. Being sexually active: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    35. Being creative: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    36. Being self-sufficient: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    37. Being curious, discovering new things: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    38. Figuring things out, solving problems: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ______, Consistency (0-10?) =______
    39. Striving to be a better person: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    40. Experiencing positive mood states: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    41. Feeling good about myself: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _______, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    42. Leading a stress-free life: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _______, Consistency (0-10?) = _______
    43. Enjoying music, art or drama: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    44. Designing things: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    45. Teaching others: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    46. Resolving disputes: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    47. Building and repairing things: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    48. Working with my hands: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = ______
    49. Organising things: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    50. Engaging in clearly defined work: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) =_____
    51. Researching things: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    52. Competing with others: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _______
    53. Being admired by many people: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = _____
    54. Acting with courage: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    55. Caring for others: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    56. Accepting others as they are: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ____, Consistency (0-10?) = _______
    57. Working on practical tasks: Importance (V, Q, N?) = _____, Consistency (0-10?) = ________
    58. Seeking pleasure: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    59. Avoiding distress: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________
    60. Avoiding self-doubt: Importance (V, Q, N?) = ________, Consistency (0-10?) = _________

    It will be difficult/impossible to always live by all of our very important values, because some values will come into conflict with each other. However, if you are have scored it a 5 or below in your consistency rating, then try to set a goal for the next month of how you can live more consistently with this value.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

    PLEASE NOTE: These value descriptions were taken from a values cards exercise that I did during my doctoral degree. I am not sure who developed it, but will happily give credit to them if anyone can let me know who did.

     

  • The Four Ultimate Concerns in Life

    The Four Ultimate Concerns in Life

    I’ve been afraid to say this for a while because of how it will be perceived, but my favourite book of all time is actually a textbook. So before you think that makes me someone you would never want to speak to, I’ll ask if you have ever read anything by Irvin Yalom, American Psychiatrist and Author?

    His book ‘Existential Psychotherapy’ is a true masterpiece he worked on for 10 years and is written as eloquently as any of his other titles, including ‘When Nietzsche Wept’, the best fiction novel award winner in 1992.

    What is Existential Psychotherapy?

    Existentialism is the philosophical exploration of existential issues or questions about our existence that we don’t have an easy answer for. We all suffer from anxiety, despair, grief and loneliness at times in our lives. Existential Psychotherapy tries to understand what life and humanity are about.

    In the book, Yalom explores what he considers to be our four most significant existential issues in life:

    1. Death
    2. Freedom
    3. Isolation
    4. Meaninglessness

    These existential issues or ultimate concerns are “givens of existence” or “an inescapable part” of being an alive human in our world. He shows how these concerns develop over time, how we can run into problems with each of these issues, and what they might look like in patients coming to therapy. He also talks about how we can try to live with these concerns to negatively impact our lives less, even if we don’t have clear-cut solutions to them.

    Let’s go through each of these ultimate concerns…

    1. Death

    Homo sapiens, or humans, as far as I know, are the only species in the animal kingdom that are aware that one day they are going to die.

    The first time I heard this, it fascinated me and made me wonder if life would be more comfortable not being aware that one day we cease to exist.

    Imagine it. Life is going well. Then suddenly, it is no more. No worry about what the future holds. We are born. We experience life. Then we are no longer there. No fear. Just nothingness.

    Being aware that we will die shapes and influences our lives much more than we would like to admit. This is because so many of our anxieties and phobias at their core are fear of some loss or death.

    Irvin Yalom says that while the actuality of death is the end of us, the idea of death can actually energise us.

    If we don’t know when we will die, being in touch with the fact that one day everything will vanish is enough to overwhelm some people and make them panic.

    For others, it is enough to make them follow the maxim of carpe diem and helps them to seize the day by appreciating everything they have so that they can make the most of the precious time they have left on this planet. Time is really just a bright spark of lightness between two identical and infinite periods of darkness — one before we are born and one after.

    Death is the ultimate equaliser, for no matter how much we have achieved or done with our time on this planet, the truth is that we will all one day die.

    It is also true that we will not know exactly when death will happen. It might be with a car accident tomorrow, from cancer in ten years, motor neurone disease in twenty years, a heart attack in thirty years, a stroke in forty years, or during our sleep in fifty years.

    Because our knowledge of our inevitable death is so inescapable and hard to confront and deal with directly, we instead focus on smaller and more manageable worries or concerns in our lives that we can do something about if we want to. If we successfully address all these minor concerns, however, we then come in contact with our fear of death again, and the cycle repeats itself.

    Most people tend to have one of two basic defence mechanisms against their fear of death:

    A. They can think that they are “special” and that death will befall others but not them, and try to be an individual and experience anxiety about life.

    Or

    B. They can think they are an “ultimate rescuer” and try to fuse with others and experience anxiety about death (their own mortality and that of their loved ones).

    A breakdown of either of these defences can give rise to psychological disorders:

    • narcissism or schizoid characteristics for the “special” defence, and
    • passive, dependent or masochistic characteristics for the “ultimate rescuer” defence.

    In general, trying to be an individual is a more empowering and effective defence than fusing with others. Still, the breakdown of either can lead to pathological anxiety and/or depression.

    The way to feel better about death anxiety is through an exercise called “disidentification”:

    1. To begin with, ask yourself the question “Who am I?” and write down every answer that you can think of.
    2. Then, take one answer at a time, and meditate on giving up this part of yourself, asking and reflecting on what it would be like to give up this part of yourself and your identity.
    3. Repeat this with all the other answers until you have gone through all of them.
    4. You have now disidentified yourself from all parts of your identity. See how you feel, and if there isn’t still a part of you, that feels separate from all the labels you give yourself. This provides comfort and reduces anxiety about death and life for a lot of people.

    What I try to manage death anxiety is to only focus on whatever is most important to me that I can do something about in any given moment. I try to appreciate and be grateful for the time that I have had with each important person in my life. I try to be as fully present in the moment and with others as I can be. I try to use every moment and meeting as an opportunity to impact someone’s life positively. That way, I’ll hopefully not have too many regrets and be glad for the time I have had on this planet, no matter how long it ends up being.

    2. Freedom

    The second ultimate concern is about freedom, responsibility and will.

    Every country in the world talks about fighting for the freedom of its citizens and about taking away some people’s freedom to ensure the safety and security of all. Therefore, the existential dilemma is how much freedom do we give up to others to feel safe and secure, or how much safety and security do we give up to feel genuinely free? Are these concepts in direct opposition, or is it sometimes possible to have enough of both?

    Responsibility means taking full ownership of:

    “one’s own self, destiny, life predicament, feelings, and if such be the case, one’s own suffering” — Irvin Yalom

    In the past, one’s life was set out for them by their parents or society, and many people struggled to fight for the right to live an authentic and genuine life.

    These days, most people struggle instead with the amount of choice that they have in their lives. They come to therapy because they don’t know what they want to do or how to choose, given all of the available options. They also know that if no one else is telling them what to do, it is ultimately their responsibility if things do not work out the way they want them to. People wish to choose for themselves but fear not having someone to blame when things don’t work out.

    There are various defences that we engage in to avoid responsibility and shield ourselves from freedom, including:

    • compulsivity
    • displacement of responsibility to another
    • denial of responsibility (“innocent victim” or “losing control”)
    • avoidance of autonomous behaviour, and
    • decisional pathology

    We can do something over and over again to relieve anxiety or stop thinking about things. This can present as OCD, hoarding, or any addiction ranging from technology to drugs and alcohol and even dependency on others.

    We can try to coerce others to make decisions for us or seek out and find controlling partners, bosses or friends. But, we can also play it safe and try to do what we think everyone else does; focus on keeping up with the Joneses, engaging in passive activities that don’t require much effort, and feeling stuck in an unfulfilling relationship or career.

    The problem with giving up the responsibility for how our lives turn out is that it creates an external rather than an internal locus of control. Depression and other forms of psychological disorders are more highly correlated with an external locus of control. It can also lead to learned helplessness, where people no longer feel like they can do anything to change their life in a positive direction.

    The way to manage the responsibility and freedom paradox is to develop an internal locus of control. This is generally more beneficial for most people’s well-being unless we blame ourselves or change things out of our control. This includes what has happened in the past, what other people do or say, and acts of nature.

    The serenity prayer nicely spells out how we should approach responsibility:

    “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
    Courage to change the things I can,
    And wisdom to know the difference.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

    Paradoxical intention is a good antidote too. This means that we try to do the opposite of what we typically do for a period of time and keep an open mind and observe how things go. We can then see if the outcome is better than what we usually do or if it has taught us something about what will be best for us going forward.

    Anything that creates a double bind is potentially helpful for encouraging people to take more responsibility in their lives. One way is to remind someone who struggles to make their own decisions that by not deciding, they are still making a choice not to choose. This means that no matter what they do, it is impossible not to make a decision that impacts the direction of their lives. Even if we choose to follow what someone else wants us to do, we still choose to do this. Therefore, why not take responsibility for our own lives and forge our own paths?

    3. Isolation

    There are three types of isolation:

    “A. Interpersonal isolation: isolation from other individuals, experienced as loneliness

    B. Intrapersonal isolation: parts of oneself are partitioned off from the self, and

    C. Existential isolation: “an unbridgeable gap between oneself and any other being.”

    A common way that people try to escape from existential isolation is to fuse with another fully. This is also a strategy for dealing with death anxiety, with people trying to be the “ultimate rescuer” of someone else. It can lead to an individual feeling temporarily less alone. Unfortunately, however, the less isolated we are from others, sometimes the more isolated we are from ourselves.

    Other people try to overcompensate for their feelings of isolation by never relying on anyone and trying to be fully independent. Both extremes can have negative consequences.

    The main thing we can do to manage our feelings of isolation is to realise and accept that we are social creatures and have always relied on others to survive. This drive creates a desire to feel closer to, more understood, and more connected to people than we can ever achieve and sustain.

    Growing up, many people feel loved and comforted in an unbalanced relationship towards their needs being met over their parents. They then try to reenact this within their adult relationships and usually end up feeling resentful, angry and disappointed as a result.

    Yalom believes that a good relationship involves “needs-free love”, which is about loving someone else for their sake. This is opposed to “deficiency love”, a selfish love where we only think about how useful the other person may be to us. Creating a relationship where you want the best for the other person is a healthier way to manage interpersonal isolation than demanding for them to meet every need for you.

    Some of the best solutions to intrapersonal isolation are to have time to get to know ourselves through practices such as journaling, therapy and meditation. Introverts may need to have more of this time than extroverts, so it’s important to tune into how agitated or lonely you feel to know if you have found the right balance or not.

    Unfortunately, existential isolation cannot be fully breached, and therefore needs to be accepted, as it is out of our control. To feel the pain that comes with this isolation and our desire not to have it is challenging, but it can help reduce the intensity of the feeling. Being grateful for the meaningful connections we have in our lives and trying to strengthen them without losing our sense of self is another way to lessen the intensity of the feeling.

    4. Meaninglessness

    According to Yalom and many non-religious philosophers, humans are meaning-seeking creatures in a world without a universal sense of meaning. As a result of this, most of the world turn to a religious or spiritual belief system of one type or another that clearly lays out the meaning of the world and our purpose in it. People who truly believe these systems often provide a lot of clarity, reassurance, and guidance. The tricky part is that these belief systems can vary widely, and it is hard to know which one is more correct than another or if some of them are even harmful.

    What we do know is that most belief systems tend to agree that

    “it is good to immerse oneself in the stream of life”.

    People can try to find meaning through:

    A. Hedonism: Seeking out pleasure and positive experiences and trying to avoid pain,

    B. Altruism: Dedication towards a cause that helps other people, and

    C. Creativity: Transcending oneself through art.

    Many philosophers believe that both the search for pleasure and the search for meaning are paradoxical. By this, they mean that happiness and meaning or purpose in life are tough to achieve when they are aimed at directly, but possible if they are aimed at indirectly.

    So if you or someone that you know is complaining about a lack of meaning in life, try to see if there are other issues. If possible, address these other issues first, and see if your worry about meaninglessness has lessened or gone away.

    The best indirect way to increase a sense of purpose and meaning in life is to build kindness, curiosity and concern for others. This is often best done by helping out with a charity, joining a club, fighting for a cause, or attending a group activity or group therapy.

    Yalom strongly believes that a desire to engage in life and satisfying relationships, work, spiritual and creative pursuits always exists within a person. Therefore, the key to managing meaninglessness is to remove the obstacles that prevent the individual from wholeheartedly engaging in the regular activities of life.

    We may never be able to find the absolute meaning of life. However, what we can do is work at creating a life that is personally meaningful to us.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • 33 Thoughts About Turning 33

    33 Thoughts About Turning 33

    This will be an unfiltered post. No thinking things through. No edits. Just reflections on life, age, and anything else that pops into my head. Here goes nothing:

    1. Turning 33 feels weird.
    2. I feel old at times, especially in my body.
    3. I still feel like a child at other times, and I wonder whether I will ever feel like a proper adult.
    4. I can’t believe I have so much grey hair now.
    5. It’s strange to wonder where the time has gone.
    6. Yet when I think about it, I really have done a lot and had many amazing experiences in my time on this planet.
    7. I’m happier now than I have ever been before.
    8. We never really know how our life will turn out.
    9. I couldn’t have planned for what has occurred in my life, yet, amazingly, things have turned out the way they have.
    10. I’m excited about the future.
    11. I used to get scared about the idea of getting older, but I don’t anymore.
    12. I’ve stopped searching for the right answers these days and instead focus on asking and living the right questions.
    13. I don’t regret much from my past, even though some of it really sucked at the time.
    14. I still don’t fully understand people, even after I have studied psychology for 8 years, seen patients since 2010 and read over 200 psychology books.
    15. I will never fully understand myself or someone else, which is okay as long as I keep trying to learn and grow.
    16. 33 is a palindrome.
    17. When I was younger, I would have seen 33 years old as “really old” and “over the hill.”
    18. I thought that I would have been a parent by now.
    19. I am glad that I haven’t just tried to follow the crowd and live a traditional life.
    20. I used to think it was better to receive gifts from others, and now I can see how it is better to give.
    21. I worried and stressed way more than I needed to as a child.
    22. I focused on my body image and appearance way too much as a teenager.
    23. I’ve never really looked after myself that well regarding what I put into my body. This will eventually catch up to me if it hasn’t already.
    24. I’ve let go of being perfect, which feels great.
    25. Not everything happens for a reason, but we can learn something from everything that we go through.
    26. Everyone suffers in life to some degree.
    27. Everyone has baggage.
    28. Life isn’t about getting the best job, house, partner, but the best one for you and your lifestyle and values.
    29. No one truly knows what the future holds, and that is both exciting and scary.
    30. It’s much better to only focus on trying to change what is in my control.
    31. Having unconditional positive regard and compassion for others is tough to do but really rewarding if you can.
    32. Living an honest and ethical life is so much less tiring in the long run than being dishonest, self-centred and egotistical.
    33. There are many kind people out there, and being kind to others is the best way to see it.

    Thanks for reading these last three years, and happy holidays to you all!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • It’s Okay to Still Fall into Life Traps… We All Do!

    Life traps are self-defeating ways of perceiving, feeling about, interacting with oneself, others, and the world.

    If you want to get a sense of what your life-traps may be, the book ‘Reinventing your life’ by Jeffrey Young is an excellent place to start, as it goes into 11 different ones. If you want a more in-depth analysis, however, then go and see a Psychologist who specialises in Schema Therapy.

    A Psychologist has much more thorough and scientific questionnaires that can give you results on 18 schemas (life-traps), help you identify your most common traps, and show you what you can do both in therapy and outside of it whenever you realise that you have fallen into a trap.

    My Life-traps

    I have taken the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ-L3) three times to help identify my main life traps. The first time was at the beginning of 2014 when I was stuck in the middle of a complicated relationship while also trying to complete the last part of my Doctoral thesis and play basketball at a semi-professional level.

    The second time was in April 2017, when I was in a Clinical Psychology job that I loved. I had also stopped playing basketball at such an intense level and played with some friends (and without a coach) twice a week, which was way more fun.

    The most recent time was August 2018, where I had just finished up my work in private practice in Melbourne, Australia and was about to leave my friends and family to volunteer for two years in Port Vila, Vanuatu, as part of the Australian Volunteers Program (funded by the Australian Government).

    I want to share these results with you to show you that:

    1. context influences personality and how people view themselves, the world and others,
    2. personality and ways of perceiving yourself, relationships, and the world can change, and
    3. Even though it is possible to grow and improve over time, we all still fall into traps at times, which is okay. It’s about identifying when you have fallen into a trap and then knowing what you need to do to get out of it.

    When looking at the results, a 100% score would mean that I have answered every item for that life-trap a 6, which means that they describe me perfectly. The higher the % score, the more likely I will frequently fall into this life trap.

    YSQ-L3
    2014 Results 2017 Results 2018 Results
    Schema or life-trap Schema or life-trap Schema or life-trap
    1. Subjugation – 75% 1. Self-sacrifice – 60.78% 1.Self-sacrifice – 60.78%
    2. Dependence – 64.44% 2. Punitiveness (self) – 57.14% 2. Emotional Deprivation – 59.26%
    3. Self-sacrifice – 61.76% 3. Emotional Deprivation – 51.85% 3. Punitiveness (self) – 50%
    4. Approval seeking – 54.76% 4. Unrelenting Standards/ Hyper-criticalness – 48.96% 4. Subjugation – 50%
    5. Punitiveness (self) – 51.19% 5. Approval Seeking – 48.81% 5. Unrelenting standards – 43.75%
    6. Unrelenting standards – 48.96% 6. Subjugation – 48.33% 6. Approval seeking – 41.67%
    7. Insufficient self-control – 46.67% 7. Negativity/ Pessimism – 43.94% 7. Vulnerability to harm/illness – 40.28%
    8. Emotional inhibition – 46.30% 8. Mistrust/ Abuse – 41.18% 8. Negativity/Pessimism – 39.39%
    9. Emotional deprivation – 42.59% 9. Dependence/ Incompetence – 41.11% 9. Dependence/ Incompetence – 38.89%
    10. Abandonment – 41.18% 10. Emotional Inhibition – 40.74% 10. Mistrust/Abuse – 37.25%

    What’s Changed?

    people riding canoe boat view from inside pipe

    By looking at the table above, the green items indicate an improvement in comparison to the prior assessment, meaning that these life-traps are a little bit less powerful for me. The yellow indicates no change since the last assessment, and the red indicates a worse score, meaning that these life-traps may have a more powerful sway over me.

    From 2014 to 2017, 7 out of the initial top-10 life-traps had improved, one stayed the same, and two had worsened. Two additional traps not included in the initial top 10 had worsened and made the list (Negativity/Pessimism & Mistrust/Abuse).

    From 2017 to 2018, seven out of the 2017 top ten life traps had improved yet again, with one staying the same and two becoming worse. One additional trap (Vulnerability to harm/illness) had increased. Still, I believe this was due to the medical and safety briefings that I had been going through in the preparation of moving to Vanuatu for 2 years.

    Overall, I am less likely to fall into any life trap in 2018 than in 2014 and 2017. For example, the average of my top ten in 2014 was 53.29%, whereas in 2017, it was 48.28%, and in 2018, it was 46.13%.

    I also rated 21 items a 6 (= describes me perfectly) in 2014, only five in 2017, and none in 2018. This means that I am much less likely to get completely pushed around by my life traps. However, they still have some sway on me, especially the self-sacrifice and the emotional deprivation schemas, and to a lesser degree, punitiveness and subjugation.

    Here is Young’s description of these schemas:

    SELF-SACRIFICE: Excessive focus on voluntarily meeting the needs of others in daily situations, at the expense of one’s own gratification. The most common reasons are: to prevent causing pain to others; to avoid guilt from feeling selfish; or to maintain the connection with others perceived as needy. Often results from an acute sensitivity to the pain of others. Sometimes leads to a sense that one’s own needs are not being adequately met and to resentment of those who are taken care of.

    EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION: Expectation that one’s desire for a normal degree of emotional support will not be adequately met by others. The three major forms of deprivation are:

    1. Deprivation of Nurturance: Absence of attention, affection, warmth, or companionship.
    2. Deprivation of Empathy: Absence of understanding, listening, self-disclosure, or mutual sharing of feelings from others.
    3. Deprivation of Protection: Absence of strength, direction, or guidance from others.

    SUBJUGATION: Excessive surrendering of control to others because one feels coerced — usually to avoid anger, retaliation, or abandonment. The two major forms of subjugation are:

    1. Subjugation of Needs: Suppression of one’s preferences, decisions, and desires.

    2. Subjugation of Emotions: Suppression of emotional expression, especially anger.

    Subjugation usually involves the perception that one’s own desires, opinions, and feelings are not valid or important to others. Frequently presents as excessive compliance, combined with hypersensitivity to feeling trapped. Generally leads to a build up of anger, manifested in maladaptive symptoms (e.g., passive-aggressive behaviour, uncontrolled outbursts of temper, psychosomatic symptoms, withdrawal of affection, “acting out”, substance abuse).

    PUNITIVENESS: The belief that people should be harshly punished for making mistakes. Involves the tendency to be angry, intolerant, punitive, and impatient with oneself for not meeting one’s expectations or standards. Usually includes difficulty forgiving mistakes in oneself, because of a reluctance to consider extenuating circumstances, allow for human imperfection, or empathize with one’s feelings.

    Three out of my top four life traps have improved since 2014, but emotional deprivation, unfortunately, continues to climb with each assessment. I think that self-sacrifice, subjugation, and emotional deprivation schemas may be common life traps for people who decide to become psychologists. The therapeutic relationship is meant to be one-sided and focused on the patient or client’s needs, not the psychologist’s needs. For this reason, psychologists must get their relational needs met outside of their job and get their own therapy if needed to ensure that they can have a space about them. I wonder how these life traps will continue to evolve over the next two years in Vanuatu…

    How Can Life-traps Be Overcome?

    The first step to changing anything is awareness. If you are not aware that you are falling into any traps, it means that you either don’t have any, or you are so enmeshed in your experience that you cannot see them.

    Once you are aware of your traps, the next step is to understand them and why they occur for you. Most life traps originate in childhood typically, which is why most psychologists and psychiatrists will ask about your upbringing and your relationship with your parents in particular.

    Life traps are actually considered to be adaptive ways of coping with maladaptive environments. This means that your life traps were probably quite useful in the particular family dynamic that you had, or you wouldn’t have developed them in the first place. For example, my family often called me a martyr when I was younger because it didn’t matter what I wanted. In reality, it was just much more comfortable to let everyone else decide and take charge. Then if things didn’t work out, others couldn’t blame me. I saw it as a win-win but often didn’t get what I wanted because I didn’t speak up and then complained that my parents loved my siblings more, who were more than happy to speak up and ask for what they wanted.

    However, once you move out of the family home, these coping methods are generally ineffective. They tend to become maladaptive ways of interacting with yourself, others or the world. If I keep playing the martyr and refuse to speak up as an adult, my needs still don’t get met. As a result, I may become excessively demanding of others as a counterattack measure (not likely for me), or I may try to escape from all relationships where I need to speak up about my needs. Either way, it keeps the life trap going, and it isn’t helpful.

    I need to realise that there are relationships out there where it is beneficial for me to speak up, as people then know what I want and respond effectively to the situation at hand. It still doesn’t “feel right” when I think about telling others my wants or needs (and I’m not sure if it ever will), but I logically know that it is the best approach for me to take going forward. If I want to break free from my main life traps, I must learn to speak up reasonably when important to me (and others). By doing this, eventually, the life traps will become much less prevalent and less powerful too.

    If you have been trying with therapy for a long time but don’t think you are getting anywhere, please seek a Psychologist with experience in Schema Therapy. Also, if you are stuck in a relationship where your needs aren’t being met, it could help too.

    Learning about Schema Therapy and undergoing training in it has taught me more about my own personal life traps than anything else that I have done before and really does give me a sense of what my most significant challenges are going forward. I’ve made a lot of progress so far, but there is still a long way to go, and that is okay. I know that I will continue to improve with acceptance, self-compassion, patience, reflection, and perseverance, and I am confident you can too!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

    P.S. For a full description of the other 14 maladaptive schemas, please click here.

  • How Do You Deal With Your Problems?

    How Do You Deal With Your Problems?

    Throughout my schooling years, I was a horrible procrastinator. I would leave everything to the last minute, sometimes even having to take a day off high school to finish an assignment that was meant to be due that day.

    Once I got to university, I couldn’t do this anymore, as the due date remained the same whether I went to classes or not. So I would instead consume a lot of energy drinks the night before an assignment was due and generally do the majority of the assignment in an anxious, tense and sleep-deprived state, printing it out and submitting it 20 minutes before the deadline.

    Exams were the same. I’d miss classes, not pay attention when I was there, and then try to cram an entire semester’s contents into the last 4 days before an exam. I would lock myself in my room and study up to 12 hours a day, only leaving for toilet breaks and something to eat until I was utterly exhausted. Luckily, I have a knack for remembering vast amounts of information in short periods of time, so I always passed, but it wasn’t easy or fun.

    I sometimes tried to start early but never found this effective, as the negative consequences seemed far away. So eventually, I figured I would follow the mantra, “if you leave everything to the last minute, it only takes a minute”. This mantra actually helped me fit a lot of things into my life by being more efficient, but it did have its limitations.

    Once I got to my Doctorate of Clinical Psychology degree at Monash University, I was suddenly faced with the prospect of having to do a 70,000-word thesis that was meant to take 3.5 years to do. How could I possibly cram something so big, especially when it consisted of making a research proposal, ethics application, recruiting participants, conducting a clinical trial, collating all the results, running data analysis and writing up the thesis and journal articles? It turns out I couldn’t.

    The thesis ended up taking me 4 years to complete, and there wasn’t too much of it that I enjoyed. Moreover, it required a direct challenge of my usual defence mechanisms, which was no easy feat, especially because I didn’t know what they were. I knew that I had always procrastinated with my studies, but I was never entirely sure why.

    What Are Your Defence Mechanisms?

    Fortunately, a fun test over at personalityassessor.com on coping styles’ titled ‘How Do You Deal?’ helped me identify which defence mechanisms I typically used. So if you are interested in knowing what yours are, I definitely recommend taking it.

    It is a bit time-consuming as there are 2 parts and over 200 questions, but I like this questionnaire so much because it is tough to fudge the test to get desirable results. This is because the survey doesn’t have face validity, and therefore doesn’t appear to measure how much someone engages in a particular defence mechanism. Two examples of questions are:

    “I am bothered by stomach acid several times per week” or

    “It is annoying to listen to a lecturer who cannot seem to make up his mind as to what he really believes”.

    I’m not sure which defence mechanisms these questions are tapping into or if the correct answer is true or false. However, previous research has shown that specific patterns of responses on the questionnaire are quite good at identifying people who regularly use 10 common defence mechanisms, including repression, displacement, denial, regression, projection, reaction formation, intellectualisation, rationalisation, isolation and doubt. My results were astonishing to me.

    My Defence Mechanisms

    I first took the ‘How Do You Deal?’ questionnaire in February 2013. I had just finished a year-long practical internship at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and I found supporting individuals with cancer really rewarding and meaningful, but also quite challenging as I had lost a dear friend to cancer when I was 21. In addition, I wanted to finish my thesis by July but was falling way behind, and I was also a month away from getting married and moving in with my then fiancé. So I had many big changes coming up, and I was both stressed and scared about how everything would go.

    Here are my February 2013 results, alongside the descriptions of these defence mechanisms given by the personality assessor website:

    1. Denial — 94th percentile — extremely high

    Denial is a defense mechanism where people avoid thinking about problems, or even pretend like their problems don’t exist. For example, someone might deny that they have a drug problem. Or someone might deny that they’re currently having conflict in their romantic relationship.

    Since denial can be subconscious, people who use denial might honestly believe that their problems don’t exist!

    2. Isolation — 91st percentile — extremely high

    Isolation is a defense mechanism where people compartmentalize their thoughts and feelings so that their thoughts don’t affect their feelings.

    Isolation differs from denial. Using denial, a person with a drug problem might refuse to even see that they have a drug problem. Using isolation, a person with a drug problem would acknowledge they have a problem, but would not let the fact they have a problem affect their feelings. If intellectualization is all about staying in your head to avoid your heart, isolation is about keeping your head and your heart separate.

    3. Displacement — 81st percentile — very high

    Displacement occurs when we “take out” our frustrations on someone/something else. For example, imagine that you hate your boss. It might have dire consequences if you expressed your hate toward your boss. So, if you displaced those feelings, you might go home and yell at your family.

    This is different than projection. In projection, we don’t see our own feelings — we see them in other people (e.g., I am not angry, my boss is). In displacement, however, we still “own” our feelings (e.g., I am angry) but we “take out” those feelings on the wrong target (e.g., angry at boss, but kick dog instead of boss).

    4. Regression — 73rd percentile — high

    Regression is a defense mechanism where people essentially start acting or thinking like a child. The idea is that when life feels too overwhelming or our problems feel too big, that we regress to an earlier, easier time when other people (our parents) used to take care of us. As such, regression can include:

    * desiring for other people to take care of your problems for you

    * acting dependent on other people

    * acting like a child (e.g., temper tantrums)

    * refusing to take responsibility for your actions

    5. Doubt — 72nd percentile — high

    The defense mechanism of doubt occurs when people doubt their senses or thought processes when they encounter problems. For example, imagine a good friend tells you they don’t really like you. You might utilize the defense mechanism of doubt by thinking “I must have misunderstood what they meant.”

    Doubt is kind of like a mixture of denial, intellectualization, and rationalization. Doubt lets us deny that our problems are real (or avoid making big decisions we’re afraid of) by questioning our ability to accurately see the world and make good decisions. In contrast to denial, when people use doubt, they are aware of their problems on some level.

    6. Rationalization — 68th percentile — high

    Rationalization is when people excuse their actions with usually irrational false explanations. For example, if someone binges and eats an entire large pizza, they might think “Well, the food was going to waste anyway! I might as well have eaten it.”

    Rationalization is kind of like a mixture of denial and intellectualization. Essentially, rationalization allows people to “explain away” their problems (usually bad habits, personal flaws, etc.) with a superficially valid explanation. The biggest difference between rationalization and intellectualization is that intellectualization is used to avoid feelings, whereas rationalization is used to avoid seeing our own personal flaws.

    7. Intellectualisation — 64th percentile — high

    Intellectualization occurs when people avoid painful feelings by thinking oftentimes inappropriate impersonal thoughts. For example, if someone’s pet dies, they might think, “Pets die every day. Why should I be upset?”

    Basically, the idea is that people who use intellectualization minimize their problems — or at least their feelings — and avoid the pain in their hearts by staying lodged solidly in their heads.

    8. Projection — 47th percentile — about average

    Projection occurs when we project our own thoughts and feelings onto other people. For example, you might really hate your boss. If you used the defense mechanism of projection, you might be unaware of your own feelings toward your boss, but instead think your boss hated you. This defense mechanism would allow you to deny your feelings and, in turn, believe that any conflict between you and your boss is your boss’s fault (not yours).

    Projection basically lets us believe that are problems aren’t really ours — they’re someone else’s!

    9. Repression — 37th percentile — low

    Repression occurs when people push down or block-out memories or desires that they feel are threatening. For example, someone might repress painful childhood memories and try to not think about them. As another example, someone might repress their attraction to a friend that they fear wouldn’t reciprocate their interest.

    Repression is similar to denial, but slightly different. Denial is about convincing yourself that your problems don’t exist. Repression is about blocking out part of yourself — memories or desires, usually — perhaps to avoid creating a problem!

    10. Reaction formation — 15th percentile — very low

    Reaction formation is a fascinating defense mechanism where we do the opposite of what we really want to do. For example, imagine you are very attracted to another person. If, for some reason that attraction is a problem (e.g., you are married, they are married, etc.), you might start to feel the opposite toward them — you may think they are disgusting and/or actively dislike them.

    Reaction formation allows you to avoid your problems — and also creates a buffer to ensure you avoid your problems. In the example above, you’re not merely repressing your attraction toward the other person — you’re actually feeling negative feelings toward them. These negative feelings will ensure the attraction doesn’t resurface.

    Seeing that my marriage ended up being far worse than I had predicted, I maybe should have paid attention to these results a bit more, especially my denial and doubt scores.

    It did help with the writing up of my thesis. I stopped trying to avoid the problem, started coming into the lab from 9 am — 5 pm every weekday regardless of how I felt and began making some real and consistent progress without cramming for the first time in my life. I finished a full draft of my thesis by September 2013, started working as a Psychologist in private practice shortly after that, and submitted the final copy of my thesis for examination in February 2014.

    Have My Defence Mechanisms Improved?

    I retook the ‘How Do You Deal?’ questionnaire at the end of April 2017. I now live a life that is much more consistent with the experiences I want to have rather than what society says that I should be doing. I believe that I am a lot happier and in the best place that I have ever been psychologically. But have my defence mechanisms actually changed?

    Defence Mechanisms 2013 2017
    Denial 94th percentile 75th percentile
    Isolation 91st percentile 92nd percentile
    Displacement 81st percentile 77th percentile
    Regression  73rd percentile 68th percentile
    Doubt 72nd percentile 64th percentile
    Rationalisation 68th percentile 53rd percentile
    Intellectualisation 64th percentile 18th percentile
    Projection 47th percentile 56th percentile
    Repression 37th percentile 20th percentile
    Reaction formation 15th percentile 9th percentile

    As you can see, eight of my results had improved, with denial dropping 19 percentile points and losing its position as my most used defence mechanism. This is great, as I am now more aware of my issues and can actually do something about them.

    My most noticeable improvement was my reduction in intellectualising things, but I also repress things much less than I used to, rationalise my actions less, and doubt myself less too. This means that I am now turning into what I feel and need more, not just remaining in my head. By understanding and accepting my emotions rather than avoiding them or explaining them away, it really does make it easier to know what action I need to take. Regular journaling, mindfulness and therapy have definitely helped me to create these changes. So has being more honest and authentic with others.

    The two defence mechanism scores that have increased are projection and isolation. The increase in projection isn’t helpful, as this means I could be externalising some problems rather than taking responsibility for my role in creating them. The high isolation score isn’t so bad, though, as separating my head and heart is something that I have worked on to make sure that I am making decisions in line with my values and not my fears going forward. If this never changes, that will be fine by me.

    Can We Change How We Deal With Problems?

    It’s not possible to completely avoid engaging in defence mechanisms. We all have different coping methods, and many of these coping styles are developed in childhood and modelled on what everyone else in our family did.

    However, some defence mechanisms are more helpful than others, and they can change in time with deliberate practice. Head researcher of the Grant longitudinal study, George Vaillant, has separated defence mechanisms into immature, intermediate and mature defences. Acting out, projection, passive-aggressive behaviour, and denial are considered immature. Reaction formation, repression and displacement are intermediate defences. Mature defences include:

    1. humour: seeing the funny side of things,
    2. sublimation: channelling difficult emotions into something prosocial and constructive,
    3. anticipation: planning for upcoming situations that might be challenging,
    4. suppression: not reacting to your feelings or letting them show if this would interfere with you achieving your goals, and
    5. altruism: deriving pleasure from helping others.

    A 2013 study by Malone and colleagues found that men who used more mature defence mechanisms between 47 and 63 years of age had better health between 70 and 80. This was mostly because the people who regularly engaged in more mature defence mechanisms had better social support and stronger interpersonal connections than individuals who used immature defence mechanisms (Malone et al., 2013).

    If you want to build up healthier coping strategies, understanding which defences you currently use is a great place to start. The best way to do this apart from taking the ‘How Do You Deal?’ questionnaire is consulting with a therapist, especially a psychologist or a psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psychotherapy. Friends and family might be able to point out some potential defence mechanisms that you use, but I think it is better to get this feedback from professionally trained and impartial. They can then help you replace these defences with more mature and adaptive coping strategies to have more supportive relationships and better long-term health and well-being.

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • The 5 Lessons I Discovered From Being Kind

    On January 1st, 2018 we kickstarted our Deliberately Better movement.

    Along with other passionate and driven allied health professionals, we aimed to highlight the various ways that people can choose to act if they wish to scientifically improve their health and well-being.

    In January, we aimed to engage in a random act of kindness each day.

    This was a fun experiment, and I tried to make a video of my acts of kindness every second day, which I was mostly successful with:

    • On day 4, I supported a friend on a hang gliding expedition
    • On day 6, I spent some quality time with my dad and played a round of golf with him
    • On day 8, I donated some spare change to the Royal Children’s Hospital
    • On day 12, I bought a copy of the big issue to support a rough sleeper
    • On day 14, we left a big tip at a restaurant that stayed open for us
    • On day 16, I donated plasma to the red cross blood bank
    • On day 18, I topped up some stranger’s parking meters
    • On day 20, I donated some clothes to charity
    • On day 22, I supported an organisation that was trying to raise money to protect a wilderness area in Tasmania
    • On day 24, I proofread a book that my friend had written and wanted to publish
    • On day 28, I went and played a beach volleyball tournament with my sister.
    • On day 30, I handed out bottles of water to people who were homeless around Melbourne.

    Even though it was weird to film and promote the acts of kindness that I engaged in, the month really did teach me a few valuable lessons. These are:

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    1. Trying to be kind to others feels good

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    2. Viewing or hearing about others acts of kindness feels great

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    3. Hearing about or seeing others acts of kindness encourages people to be kinder too

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    4. Trying to be kind to others can improve social anxiety

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    5. Trying to be kind to others can enhance energy levels and physical health

    To assess changes in how I felt from the beginning to the end of the month of kindness, I completed the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), as developed by Watson, Clark and Tellegen (1988). This scale has two 10-item scales; one for positive affect and one for negative affect.

    If you would like to assess your levels, please answer from 1 to 5 on the following questions for how much you have felt this way recently:

    1 = very slightly or not at all

    2 = a little

    3 = moderately

    4 = quite a bit

    5 = extremely

    Positive affect items:

    _______ active

    _______ alert

    _______ attentive

    _______ determined

    _______ enthusiastic

    _______ excited

    _______ inspired

    _______ interested

    _______ proud

    _______ strong

    Negative affect items:

    _______ afraid

    _______ scared

    _______ nervous

    _______ jittery

    _______ hostile

    _______ guilty

    _______ ashamed

    _______ upset

    _______ distressed

    If you want to compare your scores to previous norms, first add up your totals for your positive affect and negative affect.

    A 1989 study of 815 Detroit adults by Quinn found an average for positive affect of 36.0. For negative affect, the average was 18.2 (Quinn, 1989).

    In 1993, an unpublished study by Wilkinson found an average of 33.5 for positive affect in 114 adult men and 33.9 in 115 adult women. For negative affect, it was 14.2 for the men and 15.5 for the women (Wilkinson, 1993).

    What I find interesting about these findings is that US adults report both higher positive and higher negative affect, indicating that they may be more expressive (and more aware) of their emotions than Australians.

    My score for positive affect before the kindness challenge was a 32, which was below the norms for both Australian and US adults. Given that I was feeling exhausted by the end of 2017, this makes sense to me. Extraverts are more likely to experience higher levels of positive affect also, and I would consider myself more of an ambivert.

    After a month of kindness, this score had shot up to 41, which was more than one standard deviation higher than the norm for Australian men, and much higher than the average for US adults too.

    My negative affect was less impacted by my acts of kindness, however, with my score remaining at 16 at both the start and the end of the month. I was slightly less irritable by the end of the month, but I was also a little bit more afraid, and this could have been due to the videos that I was putting up.

    Either way, I seem to experience slightly more negative emotions than the average 1993 Australian, and somewhat less than the average 1989 individual from Detroit.

    My experiment with being kinder didn’t solve all of my problems, but it did help me to take a few risks, challenge myself, put myself out there more, grow as a result, and hopefully put a few smiles on some people’s faces. That is enough for me, for now.

    2018 DELIBERATELY BETTER AGENDA:


    * In February, we gave up or cut down on something that was having a negative impact on our quality of life.
    * In March, we focused on our diets and looked at what were the most effective ways to lose weight or get into the best shape of your life.
    * In April, we looked into the different habits of high performers and how they improve their skills and become as effective as they are at what they do.
    * In May, we’ll be looking at how to hijack your hormones and get in control of your sleep, metabolism and energy.
    * In June, we’ll be checking out the latest and greatest developments in health and wellness literature, and passing on the top tips from the fields of medicine, psychology, neuroscience, behavioural economics, fitness and nutrition.
    * In July, we’ll be exploring the benefits of minimalism, looking at ways to develop and stick to a budget, how to financially plan for the future, how to cut back on spending, how to create passive income streams, and the top tips for investing in or trading on the stock market.
    * In August, we’ll be getting into the gym and out onto the track to explore how to bulk up, shred down, get ripped and be the most physically capable than you have ever been in your life.
    * In September, we’ll be looking at the latest trends in health technology, and exploring the various options that you have if you want to improve your psychological and physical well-being.
    * In October, we’ll be focusing on how to stress less, and sharing the latest tips to calm down quickly if you are distressed and want to live a more relaxed lifestyle in general.
    * In November, We’ll be trying something new, and looking at the multitude of benefits that novelty can play in our lives.
    * Last, but not least, in December, we’ll be taking stock of the year, reviewing what worked and what didn’t, and cultivating gratitude for all of the fantastic things in our lives.

    Thanks,

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • Are You Living the Life That You Want?

    Are You Living the Life That You Want?

    In 2016, I decided to take on the challenge of accountability. As a Clinical Psychologist, being accountable was all about evidence-based living — engaging as much as possible in thinking patterns and behaviours that have been shown to lead to a happier, more satisfying, higher quality of life.

    The following were the five key areas that I highlighted in my ‘Do You Want to Be Deliberately Better?’ Article:

    1. Tuning in rather than tuning out

    2. Turning towards my values rather than away from my fears

    3. Maintaining an ideal work/life balance

    4. Writing things down rather than keeping things in

    5. Developing a growth rather than a fixed mindset

    I made this declaration public as I was aware that people’s desire to remain consistent meant that I would be more willing to follow through on these targets and achieve these goals. All of them were based on solid research and were expected to have a positive flow-on effect for my long-term psychological well-being in 2017 and beyond.

    While I did make some progress in being more accountable to myself, especially with numbers 2, 4 and 5, I continued to struggle with numbers 1 and 3.

    Part of the problem was that I’ve always wanted to be able to do everything, and I struggle at times to prioritise and separate what is essential to me from what is critical to others. The other part of the problem is that I was working too hard, not saying no to what I didn’t want to do enough, and not leaving adequate time for leisure and socialising or even personal growth, creativity and health.

    I was often extraordinarily drained and fatigued by the end of the workweek. I would spend most of the weekend recovering and trying to catch up on chores and paperwork to avoid falling even further behind with administrative duties than I already was. I was also financially in debt even though I was working full-time, and I was stressed out.

    Mainly, I didn’t have enough time or space to reflect on where I was or what I needed, and when I did, I still didn’t make the necessary changes to ensure that my life was consistent with how I wanted it to be.

    It’s not just me

    What seemed to help me a lot was reading the thought-provoking self-help book ‘Take time for your life’ by Cheryl Richardson. She highlights the seven common obstacles that people seem to face in living their best lives. These are:

    1. They generally have difficulty putting themselves first

    2. Their schedule does not reflect their priorities

    3. They feel drained by certain people or things

    4. They feel trapped for monetary reasons

    5. They are living on adrenalin

    6. They don’t have a supportive community in their life

    7. Their spiritual well-being comes last

    I don’t know about everyone else, but I could check yes to all of these items except for number 6. I wasn’t spending as much time as I wanted with friends, but I felt well supported by them all when I did. As for the rest, I wondered, “How does she know me so well?” but then I realised how many people there are out there that must be falling into similar traps.

    My aim for 2017 was to take time for my life.

    Here’s how I’ve gone towards creating my ideal lifestyle so far:

    • I have moved into a fantastic apartment in the city where I am within easy access by bike, foot or public transport to all of my work, sport and leisure commitments.
    • I have begun regularly using the swimming pool, spa, sauna, and gym part of this unique apartment complex. As the gym here is excellent, I have saved by cancelling my external gym membership.
    • I have sold my car to avoid having to pay $70 a week for a car spot, not to mention the registration fees, car insurance, petrol, parking fees, fines, and depreciation in the car’s value. This also has the added benefits of never getting stuck in peak hour traffic and more walking and bike riding to get to places, which reduces the amount of time I need to set aside for these activities elsewhere.
    • I have started listening to audiobooks more whenever I am walking around the city by myself. This has resulted in me getting outdoors more, reading less inside, and opened up more time for other personal growth, leisure and social activities.
    • I have finished working at Mill Park and moved into the city for all of my workdays. This means that I can get up later in the morning on workdays and ride or walk or catch public transport to work no matter where I am.
    • I have cut down the days I see clients from 5 to 4, with Mondays now dedicated to maintenance, administration, health, creativity, and well-being. Because of this reduced workload, I am less stressed and more energetic. I am currently up to date with all of my administrative duties, paperwork, and continued professional development for the first time in 3 years.
    • This has also helped me enjoy my weekends more, as instead of playing catch-up on things, I can socialise and relax and plan various adventures that I may not have had the time or energy to do in the past.
    • Even though I am working one day less per week, by buying less stuff and reducing my expenses, I am no longer in any financial debt and am saving towards buying a place of my own.
    • I have now donated plasma and platelets through the Red Cross Blood Bank three times. This can be done every two weeks and takes about 45 minutes, and really can make a huge difference for those who have leukaemia and certain autoimmune diseases.
    • I have found a new General Practitioner, Nutritionist and Dentist to ensure that my physical health is going well and made the necessary appointments to assess or fix up any of the issues that have become apparent.
    • I have had a DEXA scan to assess my bone density, lean muscle mass and fat. I will be having another one of these in 3 months to monitor my progress and ensure that I remain in the healthy range for a male my age.
    • I have resumed monthly sessions with my Psychologist to ensure that my mental health and clinical practice are as optimal as possible.
    • I have signed up for a year membership with the meditation app Calm, which will help me to continue strengthening my meditation practice. I will aim to practice this for at least 10 minutes per day to make sure that I keep trying to tune in rather than tune out.
    • I have also booked in for a 10-day Vissapana meditation retreat in April and a 12-day P&O cruise at the end of July. Both of these getaways involve switching off from all technology for the duration of my stay. They will provide me with plenty of time for rest, relaxation and reflection, essential elements for tuning in and developing greater insight.

    No Regrets?

    Now that I’ve shared the changes that I’ve started to make towards my ideal lifestyle, I want to ask you this:

    If you only have one life to live, and that life is yours, what changes do you need to make now to ensure you don’t accumulate any more regrets in the future?

    In her viral blog post and subsequent book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, palliative nurse Bronnie Ware listed the top five regrets that the dying people she cared for typically had. These were:

    1. They wished they’d had the courage to live a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them.

    2. They wish they hadn’t worked so hard.

    3. They wish they’d had the courage to express their feelings.

    4. They wish they’d made a bigger effort to stay in touch with their friends.

    5. They wish they had let themselves be happier.

    Remember, we tend to regret the things that we don’t do much more than those we do. So be brave, give it a go, and see what happens. If you’re not sure what you want or how to figure it out, booking in for a session with a Psychologist could definitely help!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist

  • The Top 20 Movies of My Lifetime (10-1)

    The Top 20 Movies of My Lifetime (10-1)

    Looking at the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films of All Time list that came out in 1998, most films are super old. For example, ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) ranked at #1, ‘Casablanca’ (1942) ranked at #2, ‘The Godfather’ (1972) ranked at #3, ‘Gone With the Wind’ (1939) ranked at #4 and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962) ranked at #5.

    I loved ‘The Godfather’ but fell asleep in ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. However, I agree with ‘Gone With the Wind’ being up there, especially seeing that it is the highest-grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation. I also need to see ‘Citizen Kane’ before making any judgments on it, but I tend to like modern movies more than most movie critics.

    Out of the entire top 100, only 8 came out after 1985, the year that I was born:

    • Schindler’s List (1993) — #9
    • The Silence of the Lambs (1991) — #65
    • Forrest Gump (1994) — #71
    • Dances with Wolves (1990) — #75
    • Platoon (1986) — #83
    • Fargo (1996) — #84
    • Goodfellas (1990) — #94
    • Pulp Fiction (1994) — #95

    None of these movies made my top 20 countdown either, so clearly, the movie critics and I don’t always see eye to eye.

    In 2008, the AFI came out with their 10th-anniversary list, and ‘Raging Bull’ (1980) and ‘Singing in the Rain (1952) had replaced ‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ in the top 5. The top 100 choices were still predominantly old movies, with only 14 movies released after 1985:

    • Schindler’s List — #8
    • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) — #50
    • Unforgiven (1992) — #68
    • Saving Private Ryan (1998) — #71
    • The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — #72
    • The Silence of the Lambs — #74
    • Forrest Gump — #76
    • Titanic (1997) — #83
    • Platoon — #86
    • The Sixth Sense (1999) — #89
    • Goodfellas — #92
    • Pulp Fiction — #94
    • Do the Right Thing (1989) — #96
    • Toy Story (1995) — #99

    There were two movies from my top 20 countdown in the list, which makes me feel a little better. Interestingly, ‘Fargo’ and ‘Dances With Wolves’ became less admired over time and dropped out of the list. On the other hand, ‘Unforgiven’, ‘The Shawshank Redemption, ‘Titanic’, ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Toy Story’ became more admired since 1998 and made the 10th-anniversary list after missing the first countdown. I hope they come out with another list in 2018 to mark the 20th anniversary and look forward to seeing what they include.

    After seeing a movie these days, I get interested in knowing what movie critics thought of the movie. Rotten tomatoes is a great website that accumulates all of the professional movie critics reviews on a particular movie and gives an aggregate score out of 100% based on how many reviews are positive for the film. Here are the Tomatometer ratings for numbers 20 through to 11 in my top 20 movies of my lifetime countdown:

    #20 — The Conjuring (2013) — 86%

    #19 — The Castle (1999) — 88%

    #18 — Midnight in Paris (2011) — 93%

    #17 — Groundhog Day (1993) — 96%

    #16 — Donnie Darko (2001) — 86%

    #15 — Before Sunrise (1995) — 100%

    #14 — The Truman Show (1998) — 94%

    #13 — The Sixth Sense (1999) — 85%

    #12 — Inglourious Basterds (2009) — 89%

    #11 — Good Will Hunting (1997) — 97%

    To qualify for this countdown, I need to have seen the movie, enjoyed it, and found that it had an emotional impact on me somehow. Here is my top 10, with their IMDb star rating and their rotten tomatoes Tomatometer score:

    # 10 — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) — IMDb star rating: 8.3/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 93%

    The tagline for the movie says it all: “You can erase someone from your mind. But, getting them out of your heart is another story.” A strange but touching movie about a couple who keep going to a memory clinic to try and erase the memories of someone they love in the hope that they can move forward with their lives. However, without even knowing why, something keeps bringing them back together. Seeing that Jim Carrey now has 2 movies in my top 20, it seems that he should have played serious roles more often.

    # 9 — Requiem for a Dream (2000) — IMDb star rating: 8.4/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 78%

    I feel like this should be shown to anyone who thinks that drugs are cool, especially teenagers. I haven’t spoken to anyone who has watched this movie and hasn’t had a strong visceral reaction to it, either positive or negative. It may be why it has the lowest Tomatometer score out of any movie on my countdown. The director Darren Aronofsky achieved more critical acclaim for his 2010 movie ‘Black Swan’, which was also quite unsettling to watch, but this one had more of an impact on me.

    # 8 — The Lion King (1994) — IMDb star rating: 8.5/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 92%

    Drawing inspiration from William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, I was obsessed with ‘The Lion King’ when I was younger, and it first came out. The story and the music were amazing, and I bought the soundtrack on CD and the movie on VHS as soon as they were released. It’s heartbreaking, uplifting and hilarious, and my favourite Disney cartoon of all time.

    # 7 — Back to the Future (1985) — IMDb star rating: 8.5/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 96%

    A movie that nearly wasn’t made. When the writer and director first sent the script of ‘Back to the Future’ around to the Hollywood studios, nobody wanted to touch it. The studios knocked it back about 50 times, and it wasn’t until the director had success with another movie that it was greenlit for production. A movie about a hero who befriends a weird old scientist who takes him back into the past where he has to evade his biological mother, who is crushing on him, seems like a weird premise for a movie. However, it became a massive box office hit with two sequels and a huge fan base even to this day. Time travel, when done well, is another truly magical aspect of going to the movies. Being able to learn about where you have come from and what your parents were like when younger is another really fascinating thing that we will never be able to see unless they captured it on video.

    # 6 — The Usual Suspects (1995) — IMDb star rating: 8.6/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 88%

    “The smartest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. A very clever movie by Bryan Singer and the best in his career, in my opinion, although some of his X-Men movies were good too. But, like ‘The Sixth Sense’, it also has a twist at the end that completely changes the viewing experience of the movie. Who is Keyser Söze? It would be best to watch to find out and then see it a second time to see what signs you missed.

    # 5 — The Matrix (1999) — IMDb star rating: 8.7/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 87%

    I remember the marketing campaign in Australia when it first came out — “What is the Matrix?” It gave nothing away about the movie and yet made me feel like I had to watch it or I would miss out. Once I saw it, it blew my mind. Probably the most original action movie that I have ever seen. It has been copied and emulated many times since, so it probably doesn’t seem groundbreaking these days, but the bullet-dodging and slow-motion sequences were amazing. I wish they didn’t bring out the sequels, as they took away some magic from the first movie. If you had a choice, would you take the red pill and be exposed to the truth, or would you take the blue pill and live in ignorant bliss?

    # 4 — Inception (2010) — IMDb rating: 8.7/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 86%

    Another very creative and inventive premise with great visual effects. I think Christopher Nolan is a great director, and he likes to get his audiences to think. The difference between reality and dreams is something that has come up a few times on this list. Still, Inception takes it to a whole new level, saying that we can implant an idea into the subconscious mind of someone else during their sleep to impact their behaviour when they are awake. The way that time is altered at the different levels of dreams is great. Also, the spinning top at the movie’s end leaves the interpretation of what happened wide open.

    # 3 — Fight Club (1999) — IMDb star rating: 8.8/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 79%

    David Fincher is another of my favourite directors. He has an especially great knack for turning good books into excellent films, including this, ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Girl With a Dragon Tattoo’. The antisocial, antimaterialistic and anarchistic nature of this film really appealed to me at the time. It made me question what I thought I knew about what was important in this world. It didn’t make me want to start a fight club or punch anyone, but to live a life that was more autonomous and genuine. The surprise ending is almost as good as ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’ too.

    # 2 — The Dark Knight (2008) — IMDb star rating: 9.0/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 94%

    This movie is epic in scale and is really all about Heath Ledger as the Joker. I was concerned that he wouldn’t size up to Jack Nicholson’s version, but he surpassed it in every way possible and stole the scene whenever he was on the screen. It is one of the greatest performances of all time, in my opinion, and he truly deserved the Oscar for the role, especially considering the toll that it seemed to take on his emotional and psychological well-being. It was annoying that the character of Rachel changed from Katie Holmes in ‘Batman Begins’ to Maggie Gyllenhaal. Apart from that, this is the greatest Batman movie of all time, and the car chase scene through the tunnel is also the best chase scene of all time.

    # 1 — The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — IMDb star rating: 9.2/10, rotten tomatoes Tomatometer = 91%

    The highest-rated movie of all time on IMDb and, therefore, well-deserving of the #1 movie on my list. Interestingly, this wasn’t a big hit when it first came out but continued to build an audience over time once released for home movie consumption. Morgan Freeman is always great in movies, especially when he plays the narrator, but this one is his best. The ending is exceptionally uplifting, too and would give hope to even the most cynical viewer out there.

    Thanks for checking out my list. Do let me know if you agree or disagree with any of these titles in the comments section below or if you think another title should have made the countdown!

    Dr Damon Ashworth

    Clinical Psychologist