Resilience from equanimity

How often do you find yourself going over something upsetting? Something someone said or did which you found hurtful? Hurts have an impact. They make their marks on us. The bigger the hurt, the deeper, more long-lasting the mark.
Is there anything we can do reduce the impact? Or do we have to just stand and [...]

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The colour of water

Look at the colour of this water. It’s an amazing colour isn’t it?

Why is it that colour? It’s the effect of all the leaves on the trees of the forest through which the stream is flowing. On another day, in another season, this very water (well, actually, this very stream, not this very water!), looks [...]

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The need to fit in, and the need to be different

Everyone has to deal with this paradox – how can I preserve my individuality, yet not be isolated? I think of it as a spectrum, with individuality at one end of the line, and shared membership of a group at the other. Our immune systems are designed to recognise anything that is “not me” and [...]

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to see ourselves as others see us

That famous line from Burns’ “To a Louse”…….Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us – lovely sentiment, but just not possible! I was reminded of it as I read two related articles by Emily Pronin recently (published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,Vol. 28 No. 3, March [...]

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Affirmations, worst for those who need them most?

A study by psychologists has looked at the common recommendation found in self-help books – affirmations. You know the kind of thing…..where you are encouraged to repeat over to yourself phrases like “I am a lovable person”, or “I accept myself completely.”
What they found was that in people who had high self-esteem, these affirmations helped [...]

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How extroversion improves the body’s defences

Here’s an interesting study published in the journal, “Brain, Behaviour and Immunity”. In a nutshell, they’ve found a relationship between personality traits of extraversion and the levels of an inflammatory chemical in the blood (Interleukin-6). The more extraverted, the lower the levels of this chemical. Why’s that a good thing? Well, the higher levels are [...]

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Mood and the culturally constructed self

Here’s an interesting piece of research.
Psychologists decided to study how mood affected a sense of identity. The first thing they did was split the volunteer subjects into two groups – European and Asian. They claim that Europeans culturally value individuality and independence most highly, whilst Asians rate community and harmony most highly. I can see [...]

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Storytelling and the science of the mind

Because I deal with stories every day, I decided to learn more about the place of narrative in human experience, but coming from a medical perspective I couldn’t find much about narrative, even though there are emerging disciplines of “narrative-based medicine” and “narrative-based research”. Instead, I found the best thinking on storytelling lay in the [...]

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Inside the mind of Juliette Binoche

Juliette Binoche is one of my favourite actresses so I was delighted to read a short interview with her in “Psychologies” magazine this month. The article referred to her creative range – as an actress, a painter and, now in London, a dancer. Even if you just check out her filmography, it’s clear this is [...]

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Two mindsets – fixed and growth

Stanford university psychologist, Carol Dweck has published a book entitled “Mindset. The New Psychology of Success” (ISBN 978-0-345-47232-8). Guy Kawasaki posted about it, and wrote a commendation which is printed on the front page. And Stanford Magazine did an article about it last year.
She’s identified two “mindsets” in relation to how people approach challenges and [...]

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