Archives for January 2010

January 31, 2010

The Law of Attraction vs. Science

I like to think that people are becoming more intelligent in their approach to personal development, getting a better, deeper, more realistic understanding on human psychology and life. Then I see the exploding popularity of ideas such as the Law of Attraction, and it makes me wonder.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the Law of Attraction is a concept promoted by New Thought writers, widely spread through the release in 2006 of a film called “The Secret”, followed by a book with the same name. It states that you attract in your life what you think about, not just through motivation, but also through other means. In other words: thoughts become things.

So if you think about what you want and really focus on it, you will make it manifest in your life. On the other hand, if you think about what you don’t want, what you’re running way from, like a lot of people do, you will attract more of that in your life.

I think that if the formulation of this so called ‘law’ of attraction would have stopped at the first part, saying that your thoughts affect your motivation and thus your results, it would have been just fine. And this is something I can agree with whole-heartedly. What you think about has a great influence over your emotions, which has a great influence over your behaviors, which has a great influence over your results.

But nooooo, the Law of Attraction takes one giant leap further by stating that your thoughts directly alter the very fabric of reality. Thoughts are sending out magnetic signals which rearrange the reality and attract what you’re thinking about back to you. The supporters of the Law of Attraction say it is science and it is supported by what is now known in the field of quantum physics.

Well, let’s look at what science truly has to say about this and more specifically, let’s look at this through the thorough eyes of the Scientific American, one of the most credible science magazines:

The brain does produce electrical activity from the ion currents flowing among neurons during synaptic transmission, and in accordance with Maxwell’s equations any electric current produces a magnetic field. But as neuroscientist Russell A. Poldrack of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained to me, these fields are minuscule and can be measured only by using an extremely sensitive superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) in a room heavily shielded against outside magnetic sources. Plus, remember the inverse square law: the intensity of an energy wave radiating from a source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source. An object twice as far away from the source of energy as another object of the same size receives only one-fourth the energy that the closer object receives. The brain’s magnetic field of 10x15 tesla quickly dissipates from the skull and is promptly swamped by other magnetic sources, not to mention the earth’s magnetic field of 10x5 tesla, which overpowers it by 10 orders of magnitude!

In other words, as much as you would like to think, you’re thoughts are not powerful enough to directly change reality. If you want change, you actually have to get your butt off the couch and do something about it.

It doesn’t stop here. Supporters of the Law of Attraction also state that your thoughts can have radical influences over your own body. Here is one quote relating to this from the book called “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne:

The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.

Are you fucking kidding me? Any person with some decent knowledge of human physiology and psychology can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. This idea borderlines on insane: even if you can consciously influence some activities in your body through your thinking, you can’t directly control the process of gaining weight this way, just like you can’t directly control some of the muscles in your face.

I find it amusing that the Law of Attraction is even labeled as a law. Because when I think of a law, I think of something which has been tested and confirmed through serious scientific research, using scientific methods. In this case, it simply does not apply. The Law of Attraction is over-simplified and pumped-up personal development, made out to sound like science.

Nevertheless,  a lot of folks buy into it. I sometimes meet people who are eager to improve their lives with just one big self-improvement idea, and they talk to me about the realism of the law of attraction like it’s plain as day: “It’s been proven! Haven you seen ‘The Secret?” I did. But when I want stand-up comedy, I still prefer George Carlin.

Focusing on your goals is an important piece of the puzzle called getting the life you want; but it is still just one piece. Effective planning, action, perseverance and adaptation are also important pieces. Take these into account as well in your personal development, and then you’re talking.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Personal Development, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , 49 Comments
January 26, 2010

Facing Your Fears the Right Way

Facing your fears is one of those ideas in the realm of personal development which is getting so wide spread I think it’s becoming dangerous. Why? Because I believe facing fears can be done in many ways, and some of the more popular ones have more negative consequences than positive ones.

The basic premise of this advice is that by facing your fears and doing what you know is right, not only that you get the desired results, but you also make the fear go away as you get used to the thing you’re afraid of. Sometimes, this truly happens, which is why in principle, getting out of your comfort zone and facing your fears is solid advice.

However, sometimes (more often than a lot of people would like to admit), facing your fears does nothing to lower your anxiety and actually reinforces them. Let’s dig into some human psychology and cognition, to find out why.

Imagine a person who is afraid of public speaking. So she decides as part of improving her people skills, to face this fear head on. So she forces herself to speak in front of 500 top managers, at an important business conference. She thinks this way she’ll get read of her fear once and for all.

She is up on stage, looking at the people and feeling scared like she’s in front of an execution squad. She feels the fear, she sees the audience, she’s thinking to herself: “Damn, I’m scared! This was a bad idea”. What happens in this situation is that mentally, the intense fear and the public speaking situation get linked one with the other, and the fear of public speaking only gets reinforced.

In my coaching activity, I have met a lot of people who go around facing their fears every day like this. And most of the time, they are still afraid of those same things they’re facing for a long time. They’re running around scared half the time. I don’t know about you, but I call this self-torture.

There are better ways to do it. Methods like CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), which I often use in my coaching practice, provide some solid, well documented ways for facing your fears effectively. Here are two essential traits they have:

1. Gradual exposure. You don’t face a stimulus which triggers fear at its highest intensity. You start with a low intensity one, and as you get used to it and your fear decreases significantly, you move on to one of a higher intensity. If for example, you are afraid of public speaking, you start by speaking in front of 10 people who seem friendly.

2. Combining the behavioral with the cognitive. As you face your fears, you also focus on addressing your automatic thinking and your limiting beliefs which fundament these fears. Your combine using the right external tools with using the right internal tools.

If you do it this way, over time, the fears you’re facing will actually drop and eventually disappear. It will take time and practice, but you will see it happen. This means you can start to enjoy the things you dreaded, that you experience more freedom. It’s what I like the most about personal development.

Filed Under: Attitude, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 25 Comments
January 22, 2010

Your Ability to Smoothly Handle Hearing ‘No’ Is Crucial

This is a guest post from Armen Shirvanian, who writes words of wisdom about mindset, communication, relationships, and related topics at Timeless Information. You can follow him on Twitter at @Armen.

The more you try to do, the more you will have to deal with rejection. The laws of probabilities are on the side of there being some rejections in your efforts. There are a couple of types of rejection that come to mind. There is direct rejection, which offers quick feedback, and can let you go on to your next step right away. Then, there is indirect rejection, which is based on getting very little feedback, or none at all, for a frustrating period of time.

People worry about direct rejection, but getting that is way better than being left to wonder if you were accepted or not. The wait can be tough to handle, and makes you start doubting yourself. While direct rejection doesn’t use up any more of your time, the time loss felt wondering about any indirect rejections is not appealing. The following example shows some of the benefits of direct rejection, and the problems with indirect rejection, and how to deal with it:

Applying to join a club example

You apply to get into an exclusive club of some sort. This could be any club related to what you do or wish to do. Exclusive clubs exist sometimes out of too much demand for minimal supply, or out of a hope of creating perceived demand. Either way, they have limits on who can enter. If you apply to join one, you could hear one of a few things said to you. Being accepted is one possibility(which is why you should always try for what you want). Another possibility is that they will tell you that you’ve been turned down. This feels bad for a few minutes, or a bit longer, but you will soon adjust to this feedback. It is different information to then respond to.

Then, there is the terrible third possibility that you will either not get a response, or get back something like a “maybe” or “we’ll get back to you”, which leaves you in a state of confusion. It doesn’t tell you much about if you were qualified to enter, or if you weren’t, and you then have to decide whether to ask more questions or not.

How you respond is the key

To deal with this in a smart way, you want to not allow yourself to get frustrated, which is an important aspect of personal development. You have an opportunity to handle it a few ways. You can let the person know that they are not being direct enough to your liking. This puts you in a dominant position. Another great way to respond is to pretend they rejected you. If they wanted you to join, they would have announced it proudly, but since this did not occur, they lose out on your presence. As you can see, even with rejection, or “partial rejection”, you come out ahead based on how you respond. The cards are always in your hands.

People rejected me many times, in many different ways, and so I have built up resilience to most potential responses. I view this as a big advantage of mine. We often see this as a weakness when it occurs, but we should not see rejection this way. It’s pretty nice to for those us who understand this, because those who think we’re worse off due to rejections are later even more surprised at the strength and experience we possess.

Let me add that I’m not saying to try to get rejected as many times as possible in a day, but if it does occur, it doesn’t mean to make a U-turn and drive the other way. The person who rejected you is a person as well, and they will certainly take notice of the composure and tact you use in your response.


Filed Under: People Skills Tagged With: , , , , , 12 Comments
January 19, 2010

Being Mysterious Is Overrated

When I was in high school, some people used to say about me that I was mysterious. I kind of liked it. This was the result of me keeping mostly to myself, talking about facts and stuff I read but not talking a lot about myself, not expressing my feelings or my beliefs, especially if they differed from those of other people present.

I was also… shy. Over time, I realized that being mysterious was just the flip side of being shy. And since the negative effects vastly outgrew the appeal of my mystery, I decided to shed it altogether. As part of improving my people skills. Now, looking at the trait of being mysterious in general, I see its benefits as vastly overrated.

For a lot of people, a mysterious person has a sort of charm and it gets them interested. There are some psychological phenomena at work here which fascinate me. Firstly, humans are naturally very curious creatures, interested in the unknown. We are drawn to mystery and we seek to solve it. Secondly, mystery often makes our part if the brain which creates fantasies go wild. We start to imagine all sorts of things about a mysterious person and what she has to hide.

All fine and dandy so far. There is only one problem: the appeal of being mysterious doesn’t last. And this happens for one of two reasons:

  • Either we solve the mystery, we discover the real person, and then the source of the appeal is gone;
  • Or we don’t solve the mystery, but we quickly get used to it and it becomes boring, uninteresting.

Whichever road you take, the result is pretty much the same. Being mysterious ends up in being a blur. This does not mean you should start pouring your heart out in the first 30 seconds of every interaction with a new person. That can be traumatizing. And it doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to keep some parts of you and your life private, at least to some people.

What it does mean is to not be mysterious as a person, as a whole. It means to be more open and expressive than mysterious. I means being (do I dare to say it?)… authentic.

One interesting thing I discovered is that the correlation between mystery and shyness is very common. Most people who are very mysterious are actually shy. They don’t think they’re good enough to put themselves out there, they think they have bad people skills and they’re afraid of being rejected.

On the other hand, a confident person, who is comfortable in her own skin and trusts her people skills, will usually be very expressive in social interactions. This person will talk about her experiences, her life, her belief and her feelings. Good or bad, conventional or unconventional. Self-expression is a natural thing for human beings. But a lot of us have learned to fight it.

When instead of being mysterious, you are expressive, what you create is not a short lasting appeal and interest in you. What you create is lasting appeal, based on your confidence, and a deeper, more intimate connection with other people. This is what I think we need more of in this world. Not being mysterious, like in a romance novel.

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills Tagged With: , , 9 Comments
January 13, 2010

Effective Personal Development Starts Here

I recently organized a public speaking training. While talking to the participants about their expectations from this training, one woman told me she was looking for a job and she wanted to learn skills which will help her get a good job. For a moment, I had to ask myself: “Wait! What training is this?” Cause I could only see a thin, anorexic link between public speaking and getting a job.

Did the training help her? Sure. Did it have a great impact on her ability to get a good job? Probably not. Because what she needed for that was mainly to develop interview skills, job hunting skills, networking people skills, skills to sell herself. Not skills to speak in front of an audience (unless she would have panel interviews with 50 interviewers at once).

This example reflects what in my experience is a common scenario for people who are interested in personal development. They usually know they want a better job, better relations, a better life, more money, more happiness, but their awareness stops here. They don’t have a clear and accurate image of the skills or attitudes they need to develop in order to achieve these objectives.

Mark Twain said: “Use the right word, not its second cousin”. Well, it also applies to personal development. We can also say, for instance: “Use the right training, not its second cousin”.

I think a lot of people embark in this process of personal development mostly by doing undocumented guessing about the skills and attitudes they need to develop. As a result, one of two things happens: either they choose to work on skills which in reality are not that relevant for getting what they want, or they define these skills in a very broad, general way, like; “I need to work on my people skills”. Which ones? Cause there are about a dozen of them I can think of right now.

The result is they waste a lot of time, energy and money by using them in the wrong area. They sabotage their personal development and don’t get the results they hoped for. Some people realize this mistake and refocus their personal development; some just give up and become bitter.

There is a very simple and important lesson here: start your personal development with the right foot, by getting a clear understanding of the skills and attitudes which will help you the most if you develop them.

Don’t overestimate how easy this will be. The preparation for personal development can involve just as much work as the personal development itself. Clearly understanding your self-improvement needs means doing some very intelligent detecting work. Here are some of the things you can do:

  • Observe your specific behaviors and results, look for the patterns;
  • Focus inward, on your feelings and automatic thoughts in various situations;
  • Get some quality, 360 degrees feedback;
  • Go to trainings and activities dedicated to improving self-awareness;
  • Study people who have the results you want;
  • Work with a competent coach;
  • Stopping and really thinking about what you have and what you need.

As you do these things, you will be able to define your personal development goals in a more clear and accurate way. As an immediate consequence, this will boost your motivation and at the same time will make you more selective in what you read, the training you go to and so on. In the end, it will make your growth a lot more effective and you’ll see some very impressive results.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , 12 Comments
January 8, 2010

Positive Thinking Won’t Help You Now

I’m not a big fan of positive thinking as a tool for self-help. I believe that used in the wrong place, at the wrong time, it can be just as dangerous as negative thinking. I’m rather a fan of what you might call strategic thinking in personal development: focusing on the positive or the negative, depending on what serves you best in the given context.

From my perspective, challenging economic times like the ones most of us are living right now, are just some of those contexts in which seeking help in positive thinking can cause some serious trouble.

In the past months, I have seen people loose a tone of money and bankrupt businesses by looking on the bright side and thinking positively. It can be quite shocking to see such a popular personal development tool have such negative consequences instead of providing the promised help.

Why do things like these happen? Because positive thinking means focusing on the good things and always expecting excellent results. In the face of big challenges, this is the equivalent of ignoring important parts of reality. It’s like blinding yourself while speed driving on a mountain road, during a storm, in a convertible. Why the hell would you wanna do that?

For the people I’m talking about here, positive thinking meant they ignored that the status quo has changed and doing what they did before will no longer get them the same results, or the same results where sometimes no longer possible. They blinded themselves to the fact they needed to adapt in a dramatic way. One man for instance, while being in a plummeting industry, convinced himself he can have the same sales numbers he had last year, if he just… tried harder. He called this “being positive”.

You cannot deny important facts and expect good results. Like it or not, we are in a global economic crisis, people have less money, they are spending less and there is more competition between businesses. No matter how good you are at what you do, this will have consequences over you.

Positive thinking is not a panacea, even if some trainers, coaches, speakers or authors promote it in this manner. It will not help you solve all of your problems and get everything you want, doing what you want, all the time. Being positive is a way of thinking which only has power to help you if you use it the right way.

There is a way of using positive thinking that can help you in challenging times. But it does not involve day-dreaming. It involves these two things:

  1. Realizing that even if some negative things may happen, even if you may not get your way now, it’s not a tragedy.
  2. Realizing that times change and in the long run, you will get your way and you can achieve your bold objectives.

That’s it. It’s strategic, realistic positive thinking. A more effective self improvement tool, that can help you handle the challenges of life both practically and emotionally.

Filed Under: Attitude, Career, Inspirational, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , 21 Comments