- Daniel Goleman explains the importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence in this talk to Google staff as part of the Authors@Google series.
2007; duration 55 minutes; viewed by> 167,000 people
- Richard Davidson presents Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain as part of the Google Tech Talk series.
2009; duration 65 minutes; viewed by > 115000 people.
must-see videos on how our mind works
June 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Elliot Aronson – a collection of info
June 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
From the NPR website:
We all have a hard time admitting that we’re wrong, but according to a new book about human psychology, it’s not entirely our fault. Social psychologist Elliot Aronson says our brains work hard to make us think we are doing the right thing, even in the face of sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Elliot Aronson, co-author, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me); social psychologist; professor emeritus, psychology, University of California Santa Cruz
An excerpt from Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson’s book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me):
Cognitive Dissonance: The Engine of Self-justification
It’s fascinating, and sometimes funny, to read doomsday predictions, but it’s even more fascinating to watch what happens to the reasoning of true believers when the prediction flops and the world keeps muddling along. Notice that hardly anyone ever says, “I blew it! I can’t believe how stupid I was to believe that nonsense”? On the contrary, most of the time they become even more deeply convinced of their powers of prediction. The people who believe that the Bible’s book of Revelation or the writings of the sixteenth-century self-proclaimed prophet Nostradamus have predicted every disaster from the bubonic plague to 9/11 cling to their convictions, unfazed by the small problem that their vague and murky predictions were intelligible only after the event occurred.
Click here to read more.
Click here to hear Elliot Aronson give a wonderful 30-minute radio interview on Cognitive Dissonance
Click here to go to Elliot Aronson’s website: Jigsaw Classroom. This web site is an effort to share some of the results from Professor Aronson’s research on cooperative learning techniques.
Overview of the Jigsaw Technique
History of the Jigsaw Classroom
Jigsaw in 10 Easy StepsJigsaw Method for Busy Teachers (Part 1)
Jigsaw Method for Busy Teachers (Part 2)
Elliot Aronson in an interview explaining how the Jigsaw Classroom improves cooperation and harmony among children:
How to improve our marriage and other important relationships: John Gottman’s research discoveries explained in a series of short videos
June 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment
John Gottman speaking about how his ground-breaking research into relationships came about and the fundamentals of his approach.
Dr John Gottman’s research on couples in a lab setting in the Love Lab
John Gottman on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Dr. John Gottman that can predict relationship disaster and even physical illness and disease are: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, & Stonewalling. Dr. Gottman offers ways of healing intense conflict.
John Gottman on the Four Horsemen
Learn about the Master and Diasters in relationships and the secret on how to make yours great. Hear what Dr. John Gottman saw in relationships from his 35 year study of over 3000 couples.
John Gottman on the best predictor of divorce: Contempt
Dr. Gottman talks about how a critical mindset poisons relationships and even affects the immune system. Couples can learn how to avoid this by learning some new skills. For more information visit us at www.gottman.com.
John Gottman: Why do 50% of marriages fail?
After the honeymoon phase, many marriage partners begin to struggle with one another. Why are things often so difficult? Listen to the answer in this interview with KCTS, Seattle’s PBS station. Visit www.gottman.com for more information.
John Gottman: How can you keep your marriage together?
The three things to focus on for relationship harmony. From an interview with KCTS 9, Seattle’s PBS station. For more information please visit www.gottman.com
John Gottman: What if we can’t make it work?
If your best efforts and professional assistance over time still aren’t helping, what then? Dr. Gottman shares his opinion in this interview with KCTS 9, Seattle’s PBS station. For more information please visit www.gottman.com
John Gottman: How much negativity can your relationship stand?
Dr. Gottman talks about how the ratio of positive to negative interactions during conflict predicts divorce. For more information visit us at www.gottman.com.
John Gottman on criticism:
What discriminated the disasters from the masters is that the masters are really very gentle. This was filmed at a Seattle Rotary Meeting in October 2009. Learn more about Dr. Gottman and relationships at www.gottman.com.
John Gottman: The mental divorce:
The ability to accept influence is critical for solving difficult problems in relationships. In this clip Dr. Gottman explains what happens when partners cannot accept influence from each other. Fortunately, there are ways to talk and build trust enough to learn how to do this. For more information, visit www.gottman.com
John Gottman: 7 key things couples need to do:
86% of the couples who attend our weekend workshops get “unstuck” on a painful or gridlocked conflict. This is just one positive result of the 2 day, 5x a year program. Here Dr. Gottman details 7 key areas couples will learn about and will take home the skills to build and maintain good relationships.
John Gottman on constant conflict: Is there hope?
All couples have conflicts, but what does it mean when you can’t come to a compromise? Dr. Gottman sees possibilities within the seeming dead-end of gridlock. To learn more visit us at www.gottman.com
John Gottman: The magic realtionship ratio
Dr. John Gottman has revolutionized the study of marriage. He uses rigorous scientific procedures to observe the habits of married couples in detail over many years for unprecedented insight into the inner workings of successful relationships. Here is the culmination of this life’s work: the seven principles that guide couples on the path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Learn how to build a positive dynamic with your spouse; Hear tips for getting closer through everyday interactions; Gain insight into the ways lasting marriages operate. This presentation is sure to spark some serious conversations about your relationship. More importantly, this DVD can put you and your partner on a real path to a stronger, more fulfilling and ultimately happier relationship.
John Gottman: Relationship repair that works:
Dr. Gottman describes how the “masters” of relationships make repairing things after an argument a priority. But what makes some repair attempts succeed while others fail? Have a listen. For more information visit us at www.gottman.com
John Gottman: Is it ever too late to turn things around?
The short answer is no, and it’s simpler than you may think. From an interview with KCTS 9, Seattle’s PBS station. For more information, please visit www.gottman.com
Simple activities to generate a positive mood
June 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
- Make kindness a habit:
“Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested … Find one wholly unexpected kind thing to do tomorrow and just do it. Notice what happens to your mood.” (Martin Seligman, Flourish, p 20-21) - Make gratitude a habit:
“Gratitude can make your life happier and more satisfying. We we feel gratitude, we benefit from the pleasant memory of a positive event in our life. Also, when we express our gratitude to others, we strengthen our relationship with them … In this exercise, called the “Gratitude Visit,” you will have the opportunity to experience what it is like to express gratitude in a thoughtful, purposeful manner.Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did. Make it sing!
Once you have written the testimonial, call the person and tell her you’d like to visit her, but be vague about the purpose of the meeting: this exercise is much more fun when it is a surprise. When you meet her, take your time reading your letter. Notice her reactions as well as yours. If she interrupts you as you read, say that you really want her to listen until you are done. After you have read the letter ( every word), discuss the content and your feelings for each other.
You will be happier and less depressed one month from now.” (Martin Seligman, Flourish, p 30-31).
Special Gratitude letter:
Write a gratitude letter to your parents.
- Make acknowledging excellence in others a habit:
Write a letter to your child on her or his graduation day telling them all the ways you admire them so much.
- Making savoring the positive stuff a habit:“Most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events … To overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking what went well.
Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before to go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote.
- Make allowing-others-to-savor-their-good-news a habit:
“Shelly Gable, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has demonstrated that how you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations than how you fight. People we care about often tell us about a victory, a triumph, and less momentous good things that happen to them. How we respond can either build the relationship or undermine it. There are four basic ways of responding, only one of which builds relationships:Your partner shares positive event: “I received a promotion and a raise at work!”
Active and Constructive: “That is great! I am so proud of you. I know how important that promotion was to you! Please relive the event with me now. Where were you when your boss told you? What did he say? How did you react? We should go out and celebrate.”
Nonverbal: maintaining eye contact, displays of positive emotions, such as genuine smiling, touching, laughing.Passive and Constructive: “That is good news. You deserve it.”
Nonverbal: little to no active emotional expressionActive and and Destructive: “That sounds like a lot of responsibility to take on. Are you going to spend even fewer nights at home now?”
Nonverbal: displays of negative emotions, such as furrowed brow, frowning.Passive and Destructive: “What’s for dinner?”
Nonverbal: little to no eye contact, turning away, leaving the room.Listen carefully each time someone you care about tells you somethings good that happened to them. Go out of your way to respond actively and constructively. Ask the person to relive the event with you; the more time he or she spends reliving, the better. Spend lots of time responding. Hunt all week long for good events, recording them nightly in the following form:
Other’s event
My response (verbatim)
Other’s response to meIf you are not particularly good at this, plan ahead. Write down some concrete positive events that were reported to you recently. Write down how you should have responded. When you wake up in the morning, spend five minutes visualizing whom you will encounter today and what good things they are likely to tell you about themselves. Plan an active, constructive response. (Martin Seligman, Flourish, p 48-50)
- Make immersing ourselves in the uplifting behavior of others a habit:Movies that have characters demonstrating strong character virtues are an effective and fun way to expose ourselves to elevating behavior. Watching a character act out uplifting behavior is heaps more fun — and more effective — than just listening to or reading about someone sermonising about the virtue of behaving well.
By actively exposing ourselves to elevating movies, we benefit in two ways: first by experiencing the positve glow that comes form watching another human being behave in a morally admirable way, and second, by having this positive modelling trigger a desire in us to emulate that positive behavior in our daily lives
Martin Seligman, in his book Flourish, wrote about he schedules movie nights in his Applied Masters course in Positive Psychology :
“Each month, I hold an optional movie night with popcorn, wine, pizza, and pillows on the floor. I show movies that convey positive psychology better than lectures full of words, but devoid of musical sounds and cinematic sights, can. I have always opened with Ground-Hog Day, and , even after having seen it for the fifth time, I am still stunned by how much it presses us, yearning, toward positive personal transformation.” (p 75).
Identify a list of movies that demonstrate strong character values. Then watch them. Better still, schedule regular movie nights and watch them with your family and friends so you can enjoy the positive glow of watching human beings behaving admirably and have uplifting discussions afterwards.
Here is Martin Seligman’s list of movies demonstrating strong moral virtues:
Groundhog Day
The Devil Wears Prada
The Shawshank Redemption
Chariots of Fire
Sunday in the Park with George
Field of Dreams
You can add to this list:To Kill a Mockingbird
- Make savoring the good times a habit:The Three-Good-Things Exercise
Write down three good things that happened to you at the end of each day for a week. The three things can be small in importance (I answered a really hard question right in language arts today”) or big (” The guy I’ve liked for months asked me out!!!”). Next to each positive event, write about one of the following “Why did this good thing happen?” “What does this mean to you?” “How can you have more of this good thing in the future?”(Martin Seligman, Flourish, p 84)
- Special signature strengths exercises
(a) Develop a family tree of signature strengths. Interview each family member and ask them what they believe are their signature strengths.
(b) As you read a novel or watch a movie, think about the characters’ signature strengths.
(c) keep a diary of how you have applied the 24 signature strengths in your daily life for a week. Include missed opportunities too. - Make savoring the postive emotions a habit: Review the list of positive emotion words each day and try to imagine feeling that emotion as you read them. Try to recall a time during the day where you experienced these emotions, no matter how weakly or fleetingly.
- Make choosing to respond positively over negatively a habit:Increasing the 3:1 Losada positive to negative ratio
- At your child’s 21st birthday party: give a speech where you talk about 21 positive things about your child.
- Select 50 quotes that best sum up the guiding principles of life for you.
- Your own philosophy of life:”In twenty-five words of fewer,” instructed Pete Carroll, the hottest of American college football coaches, fresh from his 2009 Rose Bowl victory with the University of Southern Californian Trojans, ” write down your philosophy of life.” (from Martine Seligman’s Flourish, p 126).
My suggestion: Use just single words or simple phrases. Try to pack in as much meaning as you can. For example: to live rather than just exist; to conquer my fears; to grow every day. To love fearlessly; to throw myself into things worth doing. To practise loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and unconditional joy for others’ good fortune.
- In one exercise that Dr. Albert Ellis promotes, patients are encouraged to imagine situations that normally provoke extreme fear, panic or rage. Holding the imaginary situations in their minds, the patients are asked to change the feeling to acceptance. Practiced daily for a month, the exercise can help people change their most deep-seated feelings about situations, he said. (reported in New York Times article From Therapy’s Lenny Bruce: Get Over It! Stop Whining!
What makes up well-being?
June 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Well-being is bigger and better than happiness.
Well-being = positive emotions + engagement + positive relationship + meaning + accomplishment (PERMA) (Martin Seligman in Flourish, 2011)
Positive emotions
Engagement – flow
Meaning ( opposite where you look in mirror and ask yourself “am I merely fidgeting until die?” Seligman, p 12)
Accomplishment — to choose to achieve things for their own sake, just for the satisfaction of achieving them
Positive relationships –
How to cook and simple, popular dishes: seven 3-minute Howcast videos
May 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment
learn a language
May 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Learn any language
- at My Happy Planet
From the site’s homepage:
MyHappyPlanet.com is an online community for people who are passionate about learning languages.
Our vision is to bridge cultures around the world through language learning. Our aim is to make language learning more fun, more dynamic, and more effective — without having to pay for it.
With MyHappyPlanet, you can practice speaking with a native speaker, learn more about other cultures, and make friends with people anywhere in the world. We’ve built in great features so you can teach and learn from each other through live chat, messaging, videos, and fun lessons.
MyHappyPlanet is easy to use and it’s completely free, so why not just try it and see?
Learn Spanish
- at SpanishDict: the world’s largest Spanish learning website.
This site offers free video lessons, flashcards, Spanish-English translator, a Spanish dictionary with the spoken pronunciation and an active community forum, plus lots more.
- at ENGLISHnSPANISH: an excellent source of lists of most used Spanish words and their pronunciations; lessons and quizzes.
“Quizzes are completed only when all answers are correct. Quiz remembers every incorrectly answered question and asks same question again.. and again.. and again.. until you answer it correctly. It is basically a drill; test is completed only when you know all the answers.” (from the homepage)
Handy informative terms
May 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment
- deferred dreams:
dreams we put off until “later”. The classic deferred dreams are all those things we promise we’ll do “when we retire”. (Tim Ferriss) - not-to-do list:
(Tim Ferriss) - mini-retirements:
longer than annual holidays, say three to six months months, taken every few years; they could coincide with job changes. (Tim Ferriss) - cognitive net:
a protective device against memory lapses. The term cognitive net was coined by Atul Gawande in his book The Checklist Manifesto . Gawande explains how a checklist acts as a cognitive net:
“Checklists seem able to defend everyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws.”
Applying a cognitive net in the form of a checklist will catch small mental oversights, which could prevent major disasters,such as in medical practice, aviation and investing. - cocaine brain:
This term appeared in Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto. Gawande is discussing the highly profitable share-investing strategies of fund investors Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier:“[Pabrai] hits upon hundreds of [stock market] possibilities but most drop away after cusory examination. Every week or so, though, he spots one that starts his pulse racing. It seems surefire. He can’t believe no one else has caught onto it yet. He begins to think it could make him tens of millions of dollars if he plays it right, no, this time maybe hundreds of millions.“You go into greed mode, ” Pabrai said.Guy Spier called it “cocaine brain.” Neuroscientists have found that the prospect of making money stimulates the same primitive reward circuits in the brain that cocaine does. And that, Pabrai said, is when serious investors like himself try to become systematic. They focus on dispassionate analysis, on avoiding both irrational exuberance and panic.” (p 163)
- imposter syndrome:
The fear that you’re not as good as other people (usually your work colleagues) think you are and that any day now you’re going to be exposed as a fraud. - pretty power:
exploiting the very real “beautiful is good” phenomenon, where we unconsciously treat attractive people more favorably than we do less attractive people. (The easiest way to present ourselves attractively is to smile! Smile sincerely, generously and often and you will increase your “pretty power”.) - post-traumatic growth:
“A substantial number pf people show intense depression and anxiety after extreme adversity, often to the level of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], but then they grow. In the long run, they arrive at a higher level of psychological functioning than before. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” said Nietzsche.” (from Martin Seligman’s book Flourish, p 159) - the epidemic of inactivity:
We human beings are designed to move our bodies, but our generation as a whole isn’t moving much. The evidence strongly suggests that this epidemic of inactivity is hurting us more than is the epidemic of obesity. (Martin Seligman in Flourish) - self-sustaining activities:
activities that, once we start doing them, we are happy to keep doing them because we enjoy doing them and enjoy the benefits they bring. (Martin Seligman) - being wisely selfish:
This is a term the Dalai Lama uses. “We want to be happy, so the best thing we can do is to contribute to the happiness of others,” explains David Michie in Buddhism for Busy People, p 136) - unconditional acceptance of the complete package:
The ideal way to approach a relationship with someone, as opposed to being critical of them and wanting them to change. - the Abundance Mentality and the Scarcity Mentality:
Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People defines these as follows:“The Abundance Mentality [is] the paradigm that there is plenty out there for everyone. Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. . . People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit–even with those who help in the production.They also have a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people–even, and sometimes especially, members of their own family or close friends and associates. It’s almost as if something has been taken from them when someone else receives special recognition or windfall gain or has remarkable success or achievement. . .Their sense of worth comes from being compared, and someone else’s success, to some degree, means their failure. . .
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making.” (p 219-220)
- upward spiral:
A positive chain of events where one good thing leads to more good things, which in turn lead to more and more good things! The accumulated positive growth is so big and far-ranging it’s hard to believe it could come from such small beginnings. If we could just take the first positive tiny steps, imagine where we might end up? - the disruptive questioner:
This person is the perfect antidote to “groupthink” and is the one “who speaks up when there’s a problem, is vocal about the mistakes they and others make, and asks those annoying “Why do we do it this way?” types of questions. . .Organizations that learn–and and improve–need the disruptive questioner.” (from Counter Clockwise by Ellen J. Langer, p 143). - interdependence:
the emotionally mature state where “we cooperate to combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together. . .Interdependence is all about “we”. . .As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to the vast resources and potential of others human beings. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to be interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves.” (from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p 49-51). - being proactive:
Stephen Covey defines proactive to mean:
“. . . as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Look at that word responsibility–“response ability”–the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”The opposite of being proactive is being reactive.
“Reactive people are often affected by the physical weather. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. . .Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them” (from The 7Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, p 71-73).
- conversational narcissism:
where individuals employ numerous techniques to turn the course of a conversation towards themselves. (from The Pursuit of Attention by Charles Derber) - logic bubble:
Edward de Bono coined this term to help us learn to see things from the other person’s perspective. He writes: “When someone does something you do not like or with which you do not agree, it is easy to label that person as stupid, ignorant or malevolent. But that person may be acting ‘logically’ within his or her ‘logic bubble’. That bubble is made up of the perceptions, values, needs and experience of that person. If you make a real effort to see inside that bubble and to see where that person is ‘coming from’, you usually see the logic of that person’s position.” (How to Have a Beautiful Mind, p 6). - technology-induced ADD:
a term coined by Jamais Cascio in an article Get Smarter to describe how the internet and other new technology may be teaching us to become easily distracted and to lose our ability to concentrate and think deeply. Nicholas Carr explored this idea that the internet is making us shallow in his book aptly called The Shallows! - crowdsourcing:
literally meaning “out-sourcing” to the crowd. According to Kathy Davidson in her book Now You See it, crowd-sourcing was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine in 2006 to refer to the widespread Internet practice of posting an open call requesting help in completing some task. Davidson says: “Crowdsourcing works best when you observe three nonhierarchical principles. First, the fundamental principle of all crowdsourcing is that difference and diversity–not expertise and uniformity–solves problems. Second, if you predict the result in any way, if you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likelihood of success. And, third, the community most served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it.” - the inventor’s dilemma:
a term coined by Clayton Christensen where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it so get left behind in the innovation race. - eudaimonia:
Aristotle’s term meaning a life well-lived with a sense of purpose and virtue ( as defined by Timothy Wilson in his book Redirect). - compulsion for closure:
a term Edwin Bliss uses in his classic time management book Getting Things Done, where he urges us to “develop that precious habit to finish what we start known as compulsion to closure.” He writes: “Once you start something, finish it. Don’t accumulate a backlog of half-finished projects.” (p 114)
Randy Pausch’s time management video — watched by over a million people
May 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In this hour-long talk on time management, Randy Pausch offers lots of pragmatic tips and thought-provoking questions on how we can manage our time better.
His message is especially poignant as he knew he had only a few months to live when he gave this talk.
In fact, when deciding whether to give this talk, he was making a significant time-management decision himself:
Would all the time to prepare and deliver this talk represent the best way he could be spending this limited time he had left?
He decided it would be time well spent giving this talk as a legacy gift. I’m sure the one million people who have downloaded this video so far would agree.
Randy seemed such a nice guy. For some reason, hearing a time-management message from a really nice guy who knows this is his last chance to get an important message through before he has to go makes me feel almost duty-bound to apply at least some of his excellent ideas to my life!
Here’s a summary of the key points of Randy’s talk:
- “A lot of this is life advice. This is how to change the way you’re doing a lot of things and how you allocate your time so you will lead a happier, more wonderful life… The overall goal is fun.”
- “Being successful doesn’t make you manage your time well;
it’s managing your time well that makes you successful.” - A good question to ask ourselves:
“This thing I am doing: why am I doing this?…What will happen if I don’t do it?” - “It’s very dangerous to focus on ‘doing things right’. It’s much more important to do the right things. If you do the right things adequately, that’s much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully.”
- Draw up a list of 100 things to do in your life. Then ask yourself, “If I’m not working on those 100 things, why am I working on these other things?”
- Remember the 80:20 rule. (to be continued)
Short videos – 5 minutes or less – on how to achieve goals
May 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Zig Ziglar – this guy is so funny to watch — but he’s good!
1. 
2. 
3. 
Brian Tracy – he’s good too!
1.
2. 
