Category: psychology

Based on researches and experiments children can achieve more, when you switch the regular praises, like: “you’re smart/talented” to “good work”, “you put in real effort” to motivate.
So this way we referr to the effort as a cause, which is controlled and managed by us regarding the activity.
Until in the first case we point to an existing trait, which attributes the success to an outer influence. Then at the second case we emphasis the work and effort, which keeps the window of opportunities more open.

An extra part from the experiments: The participants were asked after the tests, how much they enjoyed the tasks? By using the beneficial praises the their impressions were much more positive.
While the internal control receiving group enjoyed more the activities, the other group enjoyed it less or not at all.

Why we’re working like this?

If we look at it on psychological level , our life is affected by a lot of factors. We live in a complex world, we receive more stimulus, then ever before in our history. All of these are could affect us higher or lower level.
This makes it important, what to take as we have control over and what and how we feel because of those. We see opportunities to improve, or we’ll pointing to external circumstances as consequence of our failure.

Locus of Control (internal/external)

The base of the concept is a healthy separation of things, which are in or out of our control in our life situations.
Our goals is focus as much as we can on the things, where we have control. We should find the solutions for those problems and challenges.
The things falling under the external control, we should accept and maybe somewhat ignore, and hope, the internal control solutions will affect eventually this part too in some ways.
This thinking has importance, it comes up also in a person responsibility and liability.
However we have to deem in a realistic way on those boundaries. A desire of an excessive control to regaluate and manage everything is a wrong goal.
Famous and successful people also have a bunch of failures. Mostly these aren’t advertised that much, when we’re presented by the success stories. This is called as iceberg illusion. A lot of times the only difference is that they keep trying despite of the failures, a different way or on a different field.

One of these famous people is Elon Musk, check out the infographics about him: Elon Musk failure

Fixed vs. Growing Mindset

Fixed

• belief, which states, the skills are given and cannot be changed
• person, and skill based praise
• motivation, with the reason to look smart
• the fact of failure leads to giving up

Growing

• belief, which states, the skills are improvable
• process, the praise of effortand strategy
• the motivation is the learnig and improvement
• the failure points to the right direction and stimulates to new challenges

CounterPoint

However there are studies , which saying by reachign the teenager-adult age this strategy is not always so effective.
At these ages they probably fall back to fixed mindset more so, because of the strengthened ego. The ego plays vital role at these peoples, but they lack of a fully developed healthy level self-evaluation and confidence.

THe Conclusion

Everyone can have experience, when the result was missing even after hard work. We can have disappointed, missing the fruit of the hard work. At these times referring to the effort could backfire.

Such as like a lucky or easy success can hinder you, that the hard work worth it. Like if we have a student, who has pure luck, by learning 2 of 10 thesis, but get an A. Then if he looses the luck he falls into a downwards spiral.

I think in general there is no generic method, a silver bullet. There are methods, which can have a higher or lower success rate. Sometimes all can fail, at a rebellious or contradictory period.
So the sad news it’s always depends on the situation, which method kicks on a mental state to the right way and stimulate to improvement.

Positive philosophy, this title can be deterring at the first glance, because there is a a lot of crazy explanations around, whole lectures for sale in this topic. These lecturers are mostly aware, this is an exaggeration, and still we have a bunch of these motivational trainers.
I won’t overly explain things, just trying to examine, what I think about this topic and what are the relevant evidences, which can backup my beliefs.

The positivity, the self talk can be helpful to make the correct decisions, could improve the success and move you closer to your goals.
It can give motivation to not give up, when we’re somewhat close to our goals.
We should have a healthy confidence, look at the problems as a challenge and see the upcoming opportunities for the further development.

The only problem is measuring. It’s hard to exactly define measures for the effect of this kind of viewpoint/philosophy.

Why could this work?

The self talk, affirmation affects the unconscious mind, which is responsible for 95% of our decisions.
We have to recognize, during our life we have enormous amount of small decisions. These are mostly working automatically, by patterns and habits, so they relief us from mental fatigue.

It could sound banal, but you can see many hyper-productive people who’re dressing always the same. (Jobs, Zuckerberg, Obama). The reason is partly: they require to make less decision at morning dressing and at buying new clothes.
This is sort of a minimalism, however also a clean but unique style. Which makes a brand and could have an influence on others. note: I’ll write about minimalism in a later time

Motivation

I feel like motivation and positivity have a relationship.
While Positivity as I mentioned before, could help to overcome hardship and give strength, the Motivation is a support to starting and keeping on the right track.

It’s important to put the emphasis on the internal control and try to not worry and care too much about the external control.
But how we could change on things, if we are down and despondent?
Probably all of us had a moment, when a simple song cheered, energized us. This made you happier, more positive, maybe even energetic.
Of course, all of these are brain induced hormonal effects. But the weariness, melancholy are also in lot of cases are only feelings. In the reality, we have much more reserves, than we think both physically and mentally. A really good example for this is the 40% rule.

The 40% rule : it’s originated from the book Jesse Itzler – Living with a SEAL. It’s a rough estimate based on experience, even when you have a feeling of total fatigue, you’ll still have 40 percent in you, you just have to overcome a stalemate.

Maybe one of the most important guidance in motivation and avoiding procrastination:
Even if you don’t have the strength and motivation for a task, start it, but just for 5-15 minutes. Probably if you dived in you’ll eventually spend more time as your 5-15 minutes vow.

A lot of times even if you feel tired, it’s worth to try start the activity. Commit just for a small activity and finally most of the times you’ll be satisfied and more happy. You’ll realize, you haven’t been so tired after all.
However if you’re feeling tired or injured after the start, then you should skip. But this decision should come from a real reason.

So the connection is that you have ot overcome the hardships.
This can happen in mental or physical level. The mental can be inducted more so by the corresponding nervous system hormones. The physical activities in turn inducing hormones, which eventually helping to be more content, positive and happy.

More details about: Motivation, praise on the effort

The potential trap

However, it’s also important to use positivity and it’s concept in the right way. Don’t lie to yourself, if you feel down or depressed. We have to be aware and handle these feelings. We couldn’t deceive our conscious mind with positive mantras.

Don’t let yourself believe, you’ll reach any result with simple positive attitude. The results and development requires hard work.
Moreover it’s also good to use the motivation in a right way.

therefor, what is this Positive philosophy?

In my opinion, the positivity is only a multiplier factor, which increases the potential results or could shorten the road to reach the goals. You could never replace the hard work and effort.
Also if you have a positive viewpoint, the hard work potentially would feel like a good, satisfying activity, and you could really value it and feel pride.

Eventually your goal is not just the joy of an end result, because you’ll never know where you’ll reach. You could end up in a different place what you’ve imagined. Still it’ll be perfect.
That’s why is so important, to enjoy the small wins, and the whole road, while we go ahead.

What it IS?

The meaning of the situational awareness is the sensing of the environment, the objects and events in face of them happening all around us. We mean these also on space and time horizon.
This requires

• active awareness
• the analysis of the observations
• some intuition, prediction about the consequences and possible outcomes

All of these plays vital roles in our jobs, but also in our everyday life with more or less priority.
At jobs, we can consider law enforcement, security, air traffic control and basically any high responsibility jobs, where it has importance.
In our everyday lives it can provide major help to avoid traffic incidents, bad peoples, situations, etc.

Color Coding

In general there are color coding, which shows different levels of the awareness. Usually this contains 4+1 levels of the awareness, alertness.

• White:
  unpreparedness, the lack of awareness, which can lead to be a potential victim
• Yellow:
  awareness, aware of the environment, pays attention to the objects, living beings, persons
• Orange:
  Recognized or suspects a potential threat, and ready to take steps against it
• Red:
  Fully aware of the situation, and his actions to take, Ready to fight, fleet or any neccessary action
• Black:
  This is the exact action, in progress, either fight, fleet or assistance for others

Spacial awareness

An important part of our lives. We face a lot of stimulus and distractions, so as a result we tend to pay less attention to our environment.
A recent general issue is the mobile usage and it consequences, accidents. This is exactly one source of a major distraction, which ditracts our senses and attentions.
The spacial awareness has of course big importance in driving for example. We have to more and more aware what’s happening around us, to avoid accidents even if that is caused by others.

In everyday life situations can be beneficial. Take consider a restaurant. Tactical point of view it’s worth to take a visual note and remember the back exits, kitchen entrance (this almost definitely leads to an exit), potential covers. These can be beneficial not just in case of a shooting, but in case of disasters, emergencies can be important ones.

Methods to gain awareness

Kim’s Game is a game, which helps to improve the concentration, observation abilities and memory. The basis of the game is, to capture the most information as possible in a time frame based on a picture or by the look of real-life objects. You watch them for a minute and you have to memorize the most to be the winner.

This kind of learning of course was present always in our lives. Let’s consider traffic situations. We have patterns, which we recognize, experience and we learn from those, to prevent dangerous situations (uncertain driver, who missing the lanes, kids running to the road from the cover of a bus around a school area).

Let’s see an interresting movie part, which is frequently cited in this topic, the part of a Bourne movie.

However here they have different points as well, some descripiton are overly detailed or unnecessary, the main points are there, which was mentioned about the spacial and general awareness in a diner. Note the exits, the people around us, and the environment.

Summary

I want to emphasize, in our everyday life, we should imagine action movie scenes, instant disasters or terror events. However these can happen as well. Moreover if we take just small steps, little smarter decisions, those can help avoid unwanted situations.
If you aware to not choose the table with your family and children, the table next to a drunk crowd.
If you cross the street if you see a weird crowd in front of you on the street.
Those action are not prejudices, however there are some profiling aspects. Those profiling are not based sole criterias (race, status), but a multi-point criteria system, a global experience based big picture.
This is not paranoia, not fear, just practical behavior.
The real strong warriors don’t need to take victory upon everybody. They rather avoid the fights, prevents the conflicts, even if they have no point to afraid at all.
So it definitely worth to learn and not being unaware with your environment. That way you can be more open, conscious in you life.