What I would say to my 22-year-old self

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I worked hard. I was focused, determined, and disciplined. But I did not necessarily allow myself the space and time for creativity and self-expression. I would encourage my 22-year-old self to take a moment to nurture my friendships--in person. Call them, make a plan, do something together--share experience. Laugh out loud every day. -Naomi Simson

What Growth Requires

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Growth requires hard work. The world is a complex place. We all become creatures of habit in the ways we think and act. To learn is to strip away those deeply ingrained habits of the mind. To do so requires that we push ourselves, that we keep building and rebuilding, questioning, struggling, and seeking.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

Style is not Ability

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People and institutions tend to value other people and institutions like themselves. The result is that we tend to see as higher in ability those who are like us. As a result, many children as well as adults are never appreciated for what they are, but rather for how they fit into the stylistic pattern of the evaluator.

There are those who look for and appreciate only others like themselves, and there are those who look for quality, whether or not it is the same kind of quality they have to offer. We will better utilize other people’s talents, and better help them develop, if we recognize people for their own stylistic strengths, rather than for what we might ideally like them to be.

Robert Sternberg, Thinking Styles

One Creative Thing Every Day

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A study found participants who engaged in creative pursuits one day significantly boosted their mood for the following day. Overall, they reported feeling more energetic, enthusiastic, and excited.

These findings might not seem too surprising, but here’s the kicker: it didn’t take much creative activity for participants to reap the benefits. Just one, small creative activity a day helped. And you don’t have to be a skilled artist either. Something as simple as mindless doodling, making a joke, or even daydreaming will do.

Patrick Allan writing for LifeHacker

Fixed Intelligence

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We’ve long assumed that positive feedback always has desirable results. But some recent research has painted a more complex picture. Melissa Kamins discovered that children who receive primarily person-praise (“how smart you are”) rather than good words about their efforts will usually develop fixed views of intelligence. When children are young and family members consistently tell them how brilliant they are (or how dumb), they get the message: life depends on your level of intelligence, not on how you work at something. You’ve got it or you don’t. Nothing can change that reality, they think. In short, fixed views of intelligence or growth mindsets stem from conditioning, not from some inborn character trait. They too can change.

Ken Bain, What The Best College Students Do

Social Media is no Panacea for Loneliness

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A new study finds that spending more time on social media platforms is actually linked to a higher likelihood of feeling socially isolated. Although it's possible that increased social media use could help alleviate feelings of social isolation, increased social media use could also have the opposite effect in young adults, by limiting in-person interactions, the researchers wrote in the study.  In addition, social media can give people the impression that others are leading happier lives, because people sometimes portray themselves unrealistically online, the researchers wrote.

"It's possible that young adults who initially felt socially isolated turned to social media. Or, it could be that their increased use of social media somehow led to feeling isolated from the real world. It could also be a combination of both," said senior study author Dr. Elizabeth Miller. "But even if the social isolation came first, it did not seem to be alleviated by spending time online, even in purportedly social situations.”

Sara G. Miller, Live Science

I'm not who I used to Be

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Feel like you’re not the person you used to be? You’re probably right. The longest-running personality study ever conducted reveals that people change so dramatically as the years go by that they often bear little resemblance to their younger selves.

In 1950, researchers asked teachers to assess specific personality traits of 1,208 14-year-old students, including their self-confidence, originality, perseverance, conscientiousness, stability of moods, and desire to excel. In 2012, 174 of the original students agreed to participate in a second evaluation. Now in their 70s, they completed cognitive tests and answered detailed questionnaires, rating themselves on the same characteristics. They also had a close friend or relative evaluate their personality.

After comparing the results, the researchers found no correlation between the participants’ current personality and who they were as teenagers, HuffingtonPost.com reports. “Personality changes only gradually throughout life, but by older age it may be quite different from personality in childhood,” the authors say, noting that genetic and environmental factors likely influence how personalities evolve over time.

The Week Magazine

 

pick a side

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"There’s nothing I can do."  (Let’s look at our alternatives.)

"That’s just the way I am."  (I can choose a different approach)

"He makes me so mad."  (I control my own feelings)

"They won’t allow that."  (I can create an effective presentation)

"I have to do that."  (I will choose an appropriate response)

"I can’t."   (I choose)

"I must."  (I prefer)

"If only."  (I will)

A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces--other people, circumstances, even the stars--for their own situation.

Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

a mental short-cut that can lead us away from truth

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Imagine I tell you that a group of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers have applied for a job. I show you a single application that reveals a person who is great at math and bad with people, a person who loves Star Wars and hates public speaking, and then I ask whether it is more likely that this person is an engineer or a lawyer. What is your initial, gut reaction? What seems like the right answer?

Statistically speaking, it is more likely the applicant is a lawyer. But if you are like most people in their research, you ignored the odds when checking your gut. You tossed the numbers out the window. So what if there is a 70 percent chance this person is a lawyer? That doesn’t feel like the right answer.

That’s what a heuristic is, a simple rule that in the currency of mental processes trades accuracy for speed. A heuristic can lead to a bias, and your biases, though often correct and harmless, can be dangerous when in error, resulting in a wide variety of bad outcomes from foggy morning car crashes to unconscious prejudices in job interviews.

David McRaney writing in BoingBoing

Getting closer to the truth

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Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters optimistic overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases. Because optimistic bias can be both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.

Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person -- you already feel fortunate.

An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer.

Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality.

Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders -- not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge. Their self-confidence is reinforced by the admiration of others. This reasoning leads to a hypothesis: the people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow