Posts tagged with 'goals'
Purpose in life: reduces dementia risk, increases life expectancy, treats depression and builds wellbeing
23rd May 2012
I was struck by a paper published this month in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry - "Effect of purpose in life on the relation between Alzheimer disease pathologic changes on cognitive function in advanced age". The authors wrote "In recent years, systematic examination has shown that purpose in life …
Commitment contracts: a personal example
23rd March 2012
(This post is downloadable as a Word doc or a PDF file). I've already written a couple of posts about commitment contracts - "Commitment contracts: another good way of helping us reach our goals" and "Orientation, practicalities & use as therapeutic tools". I'd like to illustrate some points about setting …
Commitment contracts: orientation, practicalities & use as therapeutic tools
22nd March 2012
(This post is downloadable as a Word doc or a PDF file). I wrote yesterday about "Commitment contracts: another good way of helping us reach our goals". In today's post I'd like to look a bit more at the practicalities of setting up and using commitment contracts. I'll illustrate this …
Commitment contracts: another good way of helping us reach our goals
21st March 2012
(This post is downloadable as a Word doc or a PDF file). In a paper - "Commitment contracts as a way to health" - published a little earlier this year in the British Medical Journal, the authors (Halpern, Asch & Volpp from the University of Pennysylvania "Center for Health Incentives") …
Particularly if you're socially anxious, try to stay task-focused rather than self-focused
17th December 2011
(This & last week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it) "Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point" C. …
Fear of blushing is more a problem of hyperawareness than of facial temperature
10th December 2011
(This & next week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it) "At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and …
Building willpower: the eight pillars
10th July 2011
(this post is downloadable as both a Word doc & as a PDF file.) In the earlier post "Self-control, conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation, willpower - whatever word you use, it's sure important to have it" I described the extraordinary benefits achievable through increased self-control & willpower. I noted occasional downsides …
Building willpower: it's like strengthening and nourishing a muscle.
9th July 2011
(this post is downloadable as both a Word doc & as a PDF file.) "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you ..." "If" by Rudyard Kipling In yesterday's post on "Self-control ... the importance of training", I talked about …
Self-control, conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation, willpower - the importance of training
8th July 2011
Over the last few days I've written a series of four blog posts on self-control - the first was "Self-control, conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation, willpower - whatever word you use, it's sure important to have it" and the most recent "Self-control, conscientiousness, grit ... how do you measure it?". These …
Self-control, conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation, willpower - how do you measure it?
27th June 2011
(the "brief self-control scale" is downloadable as either a Word doc or a PDF file; the "grit scales", assessing ability to commit to longer term projects, are downloadable as PDF files; assessment of the broader quality of "conscientiousness" as part of the big five personality assessment is downloadable as a …