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Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of human or animal mental functions and behaviors.

Holiday happiness

It seems to be human nature to compare everything. I see my two daughters doing it every day; “but she has more sweeties dad!”. Heaven help me if I don’t ensure that both girls have exactly the same size piece of cake. Adults are not immune and past studies of happiness have shown, rather cynically, we’re happiest when we’re doing better than our peers. This is a rather secular point of view on happiness and does not include any spiritual dimension that might mitigate against our urge to buy a bigger TV. Anyway, the point is that we do tend to compare what we have with what our peers have, and if we think they are better off we are miserable.Read More »Holiday happiness

Confucius says…

How many of us wonder what it must be like to be the guy who has the world’s best job? Usually, said person has found a way to earn a living doing something they love. And how many of us then think “lucky guy but that’s never going to happen to me?”Read More »Confucius says…

Memory, perceptions and positive thinking

In the last couple of posts (sadly more than a month ago – sorry) I talked about awareness and attention, remembering, forgetting and how, under certain conditions, our memories are altered.

Our memories are fragile. We do not commit to memory everything we see, and we do not remember everything we have committed to memory. We can never be one hundred percent sure that we remembered something. Moreover, our memories guide what we expect to see, what we expect to see guides what we pay attention to, and what we pay attention to determines what goes into our working memory, and we retain most those things that have meaning or we understand best (that which is already in our memory banks). In this post I’d like to explore the relationship between memory, perception and positive thinking.

Positive thinking, affirmations, neuro-linguistic programming, vibrational energy and so on all promise to change your world. Read More »Memory, perceptions and positive thinking

The reliable eye witness

The lawyer approaches the stand and asks,

“Mrs Doogood, did you see a tall slender man running into the alley with the TV”

“Yes I did”

“Is that person in the room today?”

“Yes, he is sitting right over there”

Implanting memories is not as difficult as you might think. We never have a perfect representation of the world, and our brains are very good at making sense of what we see. We see the whole, even though some of the parts are missing (we see the “gestalt”)Read More »The reliable eye witness

Where did I put my keys?

I am always hunting for my keys, usually because I wasn’t paying attention when I put them down, or I was interrupted by something else when I walked in the door, or I put them down on Friday evening and never needed them again until Monday morning,

We really don’t know why we forget things, but there are a number of possible reasons. Firstly, memories are physical, and physical things decay. Neural connections, if not reinforced through rehearsal simply fade away.

Read More »Where did I put my keys?

As a Man Thinketh

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” Quote by James Allen, the author of the classic (and possibly the first) positive thinking self help book, “As a Man Thinketh” (published in 1902). More than a century later, neuroscience is… Read More »As a Man Thinketh

Who defines us?

How would define yourself? As a doctor, lawyer,  CEO, surfer, father, daughter? How would other people define you? As rich, poor, attractive, skinny, friend, foe? How would marketers define you? As middle class, 30 to 39, black diamond? The world is full of labels, branding, in-groups and out-groups.Read More »Who defines us?

Where were you on September 11?

If I had to ask you whether you wish you could improve your memory”, I would imagine many of you would sound a resounding “yes”. There have been many books written on improving memory (names, phone numbers, lists) and they usually rely on memory tricks where you attach vivid imagery to poetry to create in the hope of creating meaningful associations. That might work when remembering names, but what else influences what we remember?Read More »Where were you on September 11?

Could you be James Bond?

Do you what it takes to be a secret agent? James Bond needs to have a high  level awareness and attention. Let’s see if you make the grade. Here’s an exercise for you to do to test your awareness. Watch the video below and see how many passes the team in white makes?

[vsw id=”Ahg6qcgoay4″ source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

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Attention is a “spotlight on experience”. The mechanism of attention  decides what we bring into conscious awareness and what we do not.
Read More »Could you be James Bond?