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In this weeks Time Magazine, recent research conducted in the University of Lubeck highlights that "though sleep isn't absolutely necessary to gain insight into a thorny problem, it can be an enormous help."
106 test students were asked to transform a string of numbers into a different string of numbers, using a simple but tedious mathematical equation. Unbeknownst to the students, there was a hidden trick, that if identified ,could cut their response time dramatically.
A good nights sleep between practice sessions more than doubled the discovery rate from 23% to 59%.
In the context of reaching your goals in life, I would be a great advocate in declaring your intent, visualising the desired outcome just before you go to sleep or in relaxation period. This imprints the desired reality into your psyche with impressive positive consequences - ie you begin to attract teachers, circumstances and events that help you on the journey always ending up in a place you describe as better than your starting place.
So the message is simple - sleep on it!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:47 AM
Three ways to stop you putting your foot in it according to new research:
Destress - improve your energy levels and stay focused.
Yes - Stress, tiredness and being distracted increase your chance of "putting your foot in it", telling people what you really think of them, or making other social blunders, researchers say.
While we can all censor our thoughts, some of us are better at it than others, and it's easy to slip up.
Australian researchers have looked at what happens when things go wrong and will publish their results in Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
"The dinner party guest who puts his foot in his mouth could lack a crucial mental ability that stops the rest of us from blurting out our true feelings," says Associate Professor Bill von Hippel from the psychology school at Sydney's University of New South Wales.
He tested socially accepted behaviour in 71 people with three main tests.
First, the researchers tested how good the people in the study were at holding their tongues and suppressing irrelevant or inappropriate thoughts.
They sat the Stroop test, where they had to say the colour of the word, but not read the word itself.
The people in the study had to block out the irrelevance of the actual word, a test scientists widely use to judge inhibitory ability.
The researchers were then asked to eat a chicken's foot under conditions thought to be of high or low social pressure.
In the "high pressure" group, a Chinese woman served a chicken foot, which she described as the national dish of China and her personal favourite.
This meant there was a high expectation to be polite about the meal, despite personal thoughts.
In the "low-pressure" group, a woman who wasn't Chinese served the chicken foot and said only that it was Chinese food.
As expected, those who performed poorly on the earlier inhibitory test also performed poorly in this situation.
They acted in a way thought socially inappropriate, like making a disapproving face or saying "that's disgusting".
The experiment also manipulated attention by including distractions.
The people in the study had to remember an eight-digit number while they were served the dish. Their attention was now divided between remembering the number and conforming to social etiquette.
"Even people with good inhibitory ability were likely to behave inappropriately when distracted. This suggests that our ability to suppress our true feelings is disrupted under demanding conditions," von Hippel says.
"It's well established that older people, very young people, and some brain-damaged people have less inhibitory control over thought and action. However this new research suggests that important variations occur in the general population in this inhibitory ability; some of us are naturally better at holding our tongue than others.
Based on the recently released Grant Thornton’s 2005 International Business Owners Survey, stress levels have rocketed by more than a third worldwide.
This picture is mirrored in the UK, where research of more than 600 business owners reveals that a third (33%) admit that their stress levels have either increased or significantly increased in the last year.
This means quite alot of people are putting their foot in it!
As mentioned on an earlier entry should taking timeout be the management goal for 2005.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:38 AM
"Never frown; you never know who's falling in love with your smile." Unknown
"Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your
children, smile at each other- it doesn't matter who it is- and that will help
you to grow up in greater love for each other." Mother Teresa
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 04:52 PM
The aim – converting the relationship into a friendship.
Remember customers leave – friends don’t.
How do we achieve this?
Thinking differently
Have you ever secured business for your customers?
Do you always deliver more than expected?
Are your front line people enthusiastic and excited about their product or service?
Careful observation of customer service/ sales people's physiology which is a blueprint of their thinking leads me to believe that energy and enthusiasm is more the exception than the norm.
Expect to find more of it in an organization that truly cares for their people, whose mission statement truly reflects the dreams and thoughts of their workers. When this happens, you have employee buy in, it is their company.
What is the level of emotional intelligence within your organisation?
Treating customers like friends will transform the relationship - they will know you really care.
Trust, respect, honesty, gratitude, fun will be the keywords of the 2005 Customer Charter
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 10:52 AM
Having a cold bath in the morning could cut stress levels among workers, research has found.
The study by the University of Hull found the regime of cold showers taken by athletes could be transferred to the world of work. Dr Peter Clough said stressed workers often became hot and sweaty but their condition eased if they had a cold bath in the morning.
He said the research showed cold water increased mental toughness.
Dr Clough took a group of university students up a mountain in Derbyshire and made them put their hands in a bucket of cold water while answering questions.
The outward bound-style training increased mental toughness and the ability to face stressful situations, the research found.
Dr Clough is now developing mental toughness courses which use the research following concerns over the level of stress among British workers.
Cold water, a good nights sleep in which solutions to your daily challenge pop into your mind, timeouts to reduce the traffic in your mind - natuiral solutions to big personal challenges?
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:42 AM
OK, I must admit that shopping doesn’t do it for me!
You can imagine how enthused I was to see that in the US, shopping centres or malls are now being replaced by “lifestyle centres.”
The design, the promoters contend is the difference - leather lounge chairs in place of hard plastic benches, natural sunshine instead of fluorescent tube lighting. tree-lined streets and beautifully designed stress-relieving fountains and so on.
Aristotle once said that words are a symbol of our mental experience – worrying in this context.
I can see the advertising campaign already
Change your life – go shopping!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 11:12 AM
New research by the University of Warwick reveals that our rank position within an organisation has a bigger effect on our happiness within that job than the happiness generated by our actual level of pay.
The researchers studied data from 16,266 individuals from 886 separate actual workplaces, and also carried out two further psychological experiments.
The results from the analysis of happiness, pay and rank data from the 16,266 individuals found that the level of actual pay, or the average level of pay in an organisation, had very little effect on how happy people were with the level of respect they had within that organisation. It also had little effect on how happy people were with their achievements within that organisation."
In contrast, when one looked at people's overall rank position, the researchers found that this did produce a significant impact on both how happy people were with the level of respect they had within that organisation, and how happy people were with their achievements.
When asked to rank how happy they were with their pay, the researchers found that rank within an organisation had 50%-60% more effect on that level of happiness than the actual amount that people were paid!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:22 AM
New research at the University of Alberta has highlighted the significance of “sleeping on it!”
Researchers found that during sleep, dreams may offer solutions to difficulties within a week after the trouble starts.
During the study, which has been published in the journal "Sleep Research," 470 Canadian undergraduate psychology students recorded their dreams for a week. They rated how well they recalled their dreams, as well as their dreams' intensity, emotions and impact.
The next week, participants took a closer look at their most recent, well-recalled dream. They noted any connections between the dream and events on a randomly selected day up to a week before the dream.
According to the researchers it was found that dreams really do try to offer solutions, the dream world apparently works quickly, churning out insights and advice the night after a triggering event, and also six to seven days later.
The solutions that surfaced after about a week were especially significant for women. There weren't enough men in the study to be sure about any gender differences.
Other research has shown that men and women dream differently. For instance, young women (up to age 39) recall dreams more often than men of the same age. Women are more likely to remember their dreams after experiencing stress and to describe their dreams as more vivid, meaningful, and impactful.
Many of my seminar participants have claimed that by recording their dreams on a daily basis they were able to foresee potential happenings in their life.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 11:19 AM
In Popular Science, Amar Bose reveals his business philosophy:
"I never went into business to make money," he said. "I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn't been done before."
He also revealed he is driven by curiosity.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 10:33 AM
-To finally achieve competency in swimming after thirty eight years of sinking!
-To continue to work on myself. Personal Development is a journey, not a destination afterall.
-To keep contribution to the forefront of my daily endeavours.
-To live my mission, trust and detach.
I trust that 2005 will be as exciting, challenging and meaningful as it’s predecessor.
And finally for those who have pinpointed wealth accumulation as the focus of their efforts for 2005, consider the following story extracted from a recent USA Today edition:
"Jewel Whittaker, wife of the lottery winner who took home the richest undivided jackpot in U.S. history — a lump-sum payout of about $113 million after taxes — now says she regrets his purchase of the ticket that won the $314.9 million jackpot. Since winning two years ago, her husband, Jack Whittaker, 57, of West Virginia has been arrested twice for driving under the influence and ordered into rehab, faces charges that he attacked a bar manager, and is accused in two lawsuits of making trouble at a nightclub and a racetrack."
Obviously all the wealth in the world doesnt come gift wrapped in happiness.
Money cannot buy happiness but ironically happiness can bring you more wealth as proven by many of those who have chosen to a do a job they love.
Choose happiness today.
Again, Happy New Year.
Here’s to abundance, available to us all.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:11 AM