Perfectionism

From Psychology today Link

Far too many of us feel the unbearable weight of our perfectionism. These unrealistic expectations, often internalized as the expectations of others, are a sickness within us. Research consistently shows that this maladaptive perfectionism is related to our unhappiness, distress and our inability to successfully pursue our goals. In this brief post today, I offer up a poet's voice with words of healing.

When we struggle with our internal battles, long-held irrational thoughts, emotional turmoil and spiritual pain, we can find healing in the most unexpected places. Art and music often can play a role in our healing.

On holidays

I am away on holidays so the blog entries will be sparse. Should be back in full swing in December 2010.

The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions

On some days it seems that your world is full of issues.  If you want to step back and get some perspective have a listen to this video where Michio Kaku tells us about the 11 dimensions of the multiverse.  This is from Big Think and here is the link to the video.

Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science.  If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it.

Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Andre Lepiere: Are there only three dimensions in other universes, or could there be more?

The Pursuit of Happiness

From Psychology Today - click here for the link to the full article.

Welcome to the happinessfrenzy, now peaking at a Barnes & Noble near you: In 2008 4,000 books were published on happiness, while a mere 50 books on the topic were released in 2000. The most popular class at Harvard University is aboutpositive psychology, and at least 100 other universities offer similar courses. Happiness workshops for the post-collegiate set abound, and each day "life coaches" promising bliss to potential clients hang out their shingles.

In the late 1990s, psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania exhorted colleagues to scrutinize optimal moods with the same intensity with which they had for so long studied pathologies: We'd never learn about full human functioning unless we knew as much about mental wellness as we do about mental illness. A new generation of psychologists built up a respectable body of research on positive character traits and happiness-boosting practices. At the same time, developments in neuroscience provided new clues to what makes us happy and what that looks like in the brain. Not to be outdone, behavioral economists piled on research subverting the classical premise that people always make rational choices that increase their well-being. We're lousy at predicting what makes us happy, they found.

Introducing Managerial Change

This is a link to the Manager Tools where you can download the podcast on this topic.

This guidance recommends how to introduce changes in how you manage your team.

We had a conversation recently with a client who asked, what do I do to reduce the resistance my directs seem to have to my new way of doing things? He went on to say, I'm trying to change the way we do reviews, using some simple metrics, and I'm trying to put a budgeting process in place. But they just keep either not doing what seems pretty clear to me, or they just act like it's totally foreign and a bad idea.

We get this a lot. Look, sometimes it's just a manager blaming his team for being stubborn when in fact the ideas he's trying are just bad ideas. Those directs aren't resisting so much as standing up for the old, better way. But those situations aren't that common. What's common is a manager trying something new, something that probably will work, and having a plurality or a majority of her directs either playing passive aggressive, or maybe just plain aggressive.

What can we do to increase the chances that our directs are as receptive as they can be to our changes?

Why we're conditioned to blame our partners for our unhappiness

For the full article go here to Psychology Today.

With general affluence has come a plethora of choices, including constant choices about our personal and family life. Even marriage itself is now a choice. "The result is an ongoing self-appraisal of how your personal life is going, like having a continual readout of your emotional heart rate," says Cherlin. You get used to the idea of always making choices to improve your happiness.

The Little Book of Procrastination Remedies

From Zen Habits. Procrastination is one of those topics that, it seems, I can’t write enough about. There isn’t a person among us who doesn’t procrastinate, and that’s a fact of life. It’s deep within us. We think we’re going to do something later, or read that classic novel later, or learn French later. But we always overestimate how much we can do later, and we overestimate the ability of our later selves to beat procrastination.
If our current self can’t beat procrastination, why will our future self do it? I thought I should cover some of the best procrastination-beating strategies, in light of my recent book, focus. People seem to want ways to beat procrastination, so they can actually get down to focusing.  Click here for full details from Zen Habits.