Strategies for Getting Motivated

Ten Strategies for Getting Motivated

1. Make a commitment: Commit yourself by making a plan, writing it on the calendar sharing your plan with another person.
2. Calendar or day book: Write tasks and activities down on a wall calendar or small day book. Carry your day book with you, and look at it frequently. Check things off when completed.
3. Think of all the resources available to you: Who and what might be able to help you to follow through with your plan or commitment? What creative ideas can you think of to get around obstacles? Ask for help if you need it.
4. Be open minded to new ideas: Recognize that trying to do things the same old way may not be working for you. Listen to how others are getting things done. Try the suggestions of others.
5. Visualize the positive benefits: Think about all the positives you will get from following through with the task of activity. Imagine the sense of accomplishment you will feel later.
6. One step at a time: Break activities down into manageable steps, to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It is easiest to get started if you remind yourself it is OK to just do the first step.
7. Action before interest: Remember that the feeling of being interested in an activity often sets in after starting an activity, not before. Get started on something no matter how you feel, and the interest will come. Try activity even if initially you feel tired, bored, nervous or uninterested.
8. The buddy system: It is often easier to get moving when you have the support of a friend with whom to face a challenge. Go to a new activity with a friend or supportive family member.
9. Keep your expectations realistic: What are your expectations for yourself when trying something new? Keep them realistic. Do not aim for perfection. Expect to feel nervous. Expect to make mistakes. Expect it to be difficult.
10. Do the five times test: When joining a new activity, club or class do not make a decision quitting until you have attended at least five times. It is not fair to judge the merits of something until you have given it a fair chance. That’s five times!

Getting motivated... Illustration by Elena.

What motivates you (survey)

Different things motivate different people. Your motivation may be low right now, but by identifying what tends to motivate you, you may find some ways to move yourself forward.  Have a look at the list below and check off items that apply to you. It is not a complete list, so add your own ideas.

• Doing my best
• Others depending on me
• Being encouraged or complimented by others
• Seeing the positive result of my actions
• Being around positive people
• Proving something to myself
• Proving something to others
• Feeling of accomplishment
• Last minute pressure
• Wanting independence
• Seeing my children happy
• Conflict
• Money
• Enjoying a sense of pride in my actions
• Having to meet a deadline
• Learning new things
• Enjoying the challenge
• To avoid the pressures caused by procrastination
• To avoid criticism from others
• To avoid feeling guilty
• Getting encouragement from others
• Reward motivation
• Internal focus of control and personal mastery

Select one of your motivators that were checked from the list above… Now develop a plan for using this to enhance your low motivation. For instance, “getting encouragement from others” is one of your motivators, consider asking a friend or family member for this type of support in a particular area where you need a push.

See if you can make a plan for any of the other motivators that you checked.

Getting motivated: It is easier when you have a support… Illustration: Megan Jorgensen.

Cognition and Sleep

Cognition

Psychology, the scientific study of the mind, like most disciplines contains many branches. An undergraduate student in psychology, while perhaps wishing to specialize in health psychology, must go through a panoply of introductory level courses: neuroscience, perception, child psychology, social psychology, abnormal psychology, learning and memory, cognition and so on.

Cognition relates to thought processes and mental schemas. Further, social cognition refers to how humans see, and think about, the social world. Social psychologists define social competence as the ability to positively interact with others, a crucial skill in teamwork, a quality many employers look for in potential candidates today.

But what about social cognition? How do humans perceive others' intentions, emotions and states of mind? One such process is called Theory of Mind (ToM) and has been widely documented as deficient in autistic individuals (Sally's hidden object test is often used to measure subjects' ability to "read others' minds"). Body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, vocabulary alongside content, and other social cues are likewise used in face-to-face interactions to detect deception and aid interpersonal communication in general.

Sleep

In the long run, humans need sleep in order to survive. Even a single night out partying without sleeping can cause significant impairment to one's cognitive function. Sleep is divided into non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM). NREM consists of N1, N2 and N3 stages. Circadian rhythms vary from person to person, but typically span the usual daylight schedule.

Sleep deprivation weakens memory, a function associated with the hyppocampus. Conversely, the amygdala represents responses to real and imagined threats, fear and anxiety, respectively; while the frontal lobe is the seat of executive function (impulse control, decision-making, inhibition, planning). Executive dysfunction is diagnosed using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost). Illustration : Megan Jorgensen.

Beast

Beast

By Peter Benchley

By the time Darling rounded the point into Mangrove Bay, the blue of the sky was fast turning violet, and the departed sun had tinted the western clouds the color of salmon.

A single light bulb burned on the dock, and beneath it, moored to a piling, was a white twenty-five-foot outboard motorboat with the word Police stenciled on the side in foot-high blue letters.

“Christ,” Mike said, “he's reported us already.”

“I doubt it,” said Dorothy, “he's a fool, but he's not crazy.”

Two young policemen stood on the dock, one white, one black, both wearing uniform shirts, shorts and knee socks. They watched as Darling eased the boat against the dock, and they passed Mike the bow and stern lines.

Darling knew the policemen, had no problem with them – no more than he had with the marine police in general, whom he regarded as ill-trained, underequipped and overburdened. These two he had taken to sea with him on their days off, had helped them learn to read the reefs, had shown them shortcuts to the few deep-water channels in and out of Bermuda.

Still, he chose to remain on the flying bridge, sensing instinctively that altitude reinforced his authority.

He leaned on the railing and raised a finger and said, “Colin... Barnett...”

“Hey, Whip...” Colin, the white cop, said.

Barnett said, “Come aboard?”

“Come ahead,” said Darling. “What brings you fellas out of the night?”

“Hear you found a raft,” Barnett said.

“True enough.”

Bernett stepped aboard and pointed to the raft lying athwart the cockpit, “That it?”

“That's the one.”

Barnett shone a flashlight on the raft and leaned down to it. “Lord, it stinks!”

Colin stayed where he was and said hesitantly, “Whip... we gotta take it.”

Darling paused: “Why's that?” Somebody claim to have lost it?”

“No... not exactly.”

“Them it's mine, isn't it?... First law of salvage: finders keepers.:

“Well...” Colin seemed uneasy. He looked at his feet. “Not this time.”

“Dr. St. John,” Colin said. “He wants it.”

“Dr. St.John.” Now Darling knew he was bound to lose, and his temper was bound to win. “I see.”

Liam St.John was one of the few men in Bermuda whom Darling took the trouble to loathe. A second-generation Irish immigrant, he had gone away to school in Montana and graduated from some diploma mill that awarded him a doctorate. Exactly what the doctorate was in, nobody knew and he never said. All anybody knew for certain was that little Liam had left Bermuda pronouncing his name “Saint-John” and had returned pronouncing it (and insisting everyone else do, too) “SINjin.”

Armed with an alphabet appended to his name, St.John had rallied a few powerful friend of his parents and besieged the government, arguing that certain disciplines, such as maritime history and wildlife management, were being grossly mishandled by amateurs and should be turned over to certified, qualified experts – which meant him, since he was the only status-Bermudian with a doctorate in anything other than medicine. Never mind that his degree was in an unknown field, probably some thing utterly useless like Druid combs.

An island. Pic by Elena.

Famous Psychological Experiments

Famous Psychological Experiments

Stanley Milgram at Yale University conducted experiments on obedience to authority in the 1960s. Subjects were brought into a lab with a one-way mirror; they could see another person on the other side, whom had electronic devices attached to their body (this person was actually a paid actor). The subject was asked to teach words to the other person, and to (supposedly) give electric shocks of increasing magnitude if the “student” got it wrong. After a while, the “teacher” wanted to stop, but the experimenter insisted that science needed this study of vocabulary acquisition, and urged the participant to continue. Shockingly, most complied despite screams and the dangerous intensity and amounts of shocks.

In an attempt to salvage humanity’s reputation, some critics attributed the results to the Hawthorne effect, which can mean that people behave differently in laboratory situations because they are being watched and because they trust that the experimenters will not let anything truly bad happen. Alas, this is contradicted by Stanford University Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment, which had to be stopped earlier than planned due to cruelty ensuing from the newly bestowed power on those acting as guards in the simulation.

The conformity experiments carried out by Solomon Asch fail to give much credit to the human race either, at least as far as independent thinking is concerned. Asch had one participant placed with a group of other apparent subjects (who were all paid confederates), showed two lines of different lengths and asked which one was shorter. Most of the group chose the wrong answer, and although the difference was obvious, in most cases the unwilling lone wolf conformed to the general blatantly wrong opinion.

It's hard to feel that you are an object of a psychological experiment. Illustration by Elena.

Cognitive dissonance has to do with the fact that humans are uncomfortable when what they say and feel or believe is contradictory. How do they fix it? According to the 1959 experiment developed by Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith, they simply lye to themselves. In that study, a person was asked to perform a very boring task and to subsequently tell other participants that the task was exciting. After informing others, the responders were questioned on how they themselves found the task.

Depending on how the persons were compensated for disseminating the unintuitive piece of information, the replies varied. When individuals were paid a large sum in return, they described the task as tedious; when they received minimal remuneration, they said that they actually liked it. Apparently, the smaller the reward, the greater the need to convince oneself of the deception, through internalization, otherwise the mismatch would cause disagreeable cognitive dissonance.

B.F. Skinner is well known for his elucidation of behaviorism (perspective dealing with classical and operant conditioning and external, observable qualities) and creation of what became known as the “Skinner box”. The concept of magical or superstitious thinking was demonstrated by some of his pigeons in the following set-up.

The birds were in a cage that dispensed one grain of corn every 15 minutes. Naturally, this situation is very frustrating to hungry pigeons, who tried to find out what they were doing that was causing the corn distribution. After a period of time, the birds all exhibited strange behaviors, such as flapping wings ritualistically or dancing around, presumably because they figured that since it was exactly what they happened to be doing when one of the grains came along, by repeating the action they could thusly induce better food rationing.

Most bad behaviour comes from insecurity (Debra Winger, an American actress and producer). Illustration: Megan Jorgensen.

Push en 2019

Push en 2019

Le beau marcheur blanc

To Jump or not to Jump! This is the question!

The Master and Commander of the Universe.

The Cat that Changes our Universe.

Cat thinking about the trip to the Moon.

A gorgeous Light Cat. 

Push Reflecting.

Push the Wise Cat.