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Happy Christmas everyone.
I hope you have enjoyed coming to this site as much as I have sharing and commenting on all the most up to date research in this area.
May 2006 bring you fulfillment and abundance.
Kevin
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 01:27 PM
"Albert Einstein once defined common sense as 'the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18."
Fantastic quote
What version of common sense are you working off?
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 12:54 PM
Are you an entrepreneur?
Have you the passion, vision, enthusiasm, focus, mentality, to live your dreams?
Find out by clicking on the following link
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:17 AM
Have you ever ducked when a dangerous object was thrown at your friend?
What about grimacing when someone bites into a lemon or crying when a colleague sheds a tear?
According to Italian neuroscientists, those are your ''mirror neurons" at work.
Ten years ago, while studying monkeys the scientists were amazed to discover that the brain has a system of neurons, or nerve cells, that specialize in a sort of ''walking in another's shoes" function.
Some of the same neurons, they found, become active when a monkey actually makes a movement and when it is only watching another monkey, or even a human, make that same movement. It is as if the monkey is imitating -- or mirroring -- the other's movement in its mind.
Researchers are reporting in the January issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience that malfunctioning mirror neurons appear to play a central role in the social isolation of autistic children.
''We found that, lo and behold, the kids that had the most severe symptoms were the ones that had the least amount of activity" in certain mirror neurons, said Mirella Dapretto of the University of California at Los Angeles.
So is rapport our natural state? Interesting.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:38 AM
Fascinating new research from the University of Michigan has identified another benefit of experiencing positive emotions on an ongoing basis – it helps you see the big picture.
Positive emotions like joy and humor help people "get the big picture," virtually eliminating the own-race bias that makes many people think members of other races "all look alike," according to the new research.
"Negative emotions create a tunnel vision," said U-M psychology researcher Kareem Johnson. "Negative emotions like fear or anger are useful for short-term survival when there's an immediate danger like being chased by a dangerous animal. Positive emotions like joy and happiness are for long-term survival and promote big picture thinking, make you more inclusive and notice more details, make you think in terms of 'us' instead of 'them.'"
To simulate getting a quick glance of a stranger, scientists flashed photos of individuals for about a half second, finding subjects recognized members of their own race 75 percent of the time but only recognized members of another race 65 percent of the time, Johnson said. However, researchers found positive emotions boosted that recognition of cross-race faces about 10 to 20 percent, eliminating the gap.
Before reviewing the photos, a group of 89 students were asked to watch a video either of a comic to induce joy and laughter, a horror video to induce anxiety, or a "neutral" video that would not effect emotions. They then looked at 28 yearbook style photos of college-aged people in random order for 500 milliseconds.
Subjects who watched the comedy tested for having much higher positive emotions, while those who saw the horror video had far more "negative" emotions. In a testing phase, more images flashed by and they were asked to push buttons to indicate whether they'd seen the pictures earlier. Those in a positive mood had a far greater ability to recognize members of another race, while their ability to recognize members of their own race stayed the same.
The researchers conclude that positive emotions bring with them a "broadening effect" that helps people see a bigger, broader picture of the world around them.
The ability the see the big picture, enhance your immune system, enjoy better relationships, …..positivity works!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:22 AM
"Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment. Unreasonable men adapt their environment to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the efforts of unreasonable men."
George Bernard Shaw
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 01:52 PM
"When you are prepared to listen, to put aside your ego and work, then you grow as a player and as a person. "
Rafa Benitez
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:46 AM
Andy Groves strategy for problem solving:
Step one - Set aside everything you know.
Intriguing.
Is it because you cant solve a problem with the same strategy that created it?
or
Knowledge will always give you enough reasons not to act?
According to Richard S Tedlow, in 1969, Grove cut the following words from a Time magazine and pasted it in his school notebook:
Vision to Inspire.
Above the cutting he wrote in red biro - "My Job Description."
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 12:19 PM
Very interesting article in the Guardian today which highlights the efforts being made by the British Government to deal with the general unhappiness challenge:
"The hunt for happiness is an ancient human preoccupation, so there is nothing new in all this, but it is being reframed in order to challenge our prevailing political assumptions. The argument starts from the fact that Britain may have got very much richer in the past 40 years but it has not got happier. In fact, by measures such as depression, crime, obesity and alcoholism, we have got very much unhappier. So isn't the preoccupation with rising GDP misplaced? Shouldn't politics be focused around more than just economic growth? Shouldn't politics be as concerned with measures of human happiness?
Second, research has established more clearly than ever what the most likely predictors of happiness are, and there are now proven methods to treat unhappiness - particularly cognitive behavioural therapy which aims to break cycles of negative thinking. Happiness is no longer an elusive fuzzy feeling; a body of data gives us the tools to analyse what it is and what causes it. Happiness has gone respectable, and it's been tagged to intellectual disciplines - the science of happiness, happiness economics - so it will be taken more seriously.
But neuroscientists and psychologists apart, there is an even more pressing reason to take happiness seriously and this is what is grabbing the attention of Whitehall - unhappiness is an expensive business. Most striking is the huge chunk of claimants who are on incapacity benefit because of mental health problems: a whopping 900,000 or 38% of the 2 million total. Mental ill-health is the biggest single cause of incapacity and costs the country an estimated £9bn in lost productivity and benefits. The weight on the NHS is enormous: GPs spend a third of their time on mental health and the prescription cost of drugs is rising.
Plus, there is a whole range of political issues which have roots in mental ill-health, from obesity and alcoholism, to parenting, the respect agenda and antisocial behaviour among children and young people. The combination of incapacity-benefit reform and this "behaviour" politics is giving unprecedented impetus to mental health, the long-time Cinderella of the NHS.
The most dramatic development of the "therapy state" will come with the announcement, expected later this week, of a big increase in the availability of cognitive behavioural therapy on the NHS. But there has been a rash of smaller initiatives as government departments grapple with how to integrate this new dimension into policy. The Department for Education and Skills launched new guidelines earlier this year on the social and emotional aspects of learning (Seal). The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is now proposing to introduce indices of welfare and life satisfaction and how they relate to sustainability."
Happiness is now finally being taken seriously!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 03:00 PM
84% of patients want to be told when they have a serious illness by doctors according to research just published in Chest- the official journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Of those 57% of patients preferred to be told on their own.
Acceptance of the disease is the first step. Second step is to focus on your recovery strategy. This view mirrors my great friend's Andy McGovern's view who has lived for years with motor neurone disease. Since accepting his disease, he has climbed mountains, wrote a book, and in every sense of the world is living a life less limiting.
(207 patients were involved in the study at Merlin Park Hospital in Galway, Ireland and their mean age was 63 years.)
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:31 PM