【哈佛积极心理学笔记】第10讲如何改变

第10讲如何改变

Change

gradual approach
acute apporach

lasting change, neither is quick-fix

neruoplasticity and neurogenesis

sledge hammer 巨锤 eureka experience 恍然大悟的体验
The great insight that doesn’t come in vacuum, it comes after a lot of work, after a lot of preparation.

perspiration 出汗

few thing we need to understand:

do I really want to change:
Do I really want to improve certain things in my personality things or character or behaviour things that I don’t like.

rhetoraical 空洞虚无
rigidity 古板 gullible 轻信 grimness 苛刻

perfectionism -> driving ambition
worry and anxious -> responsible
guilt -> not being empathic and sensitive
simplify -> losing my edge
fault-finding -> realism
happiness -> slacking off

detached pollyannas 盲目乐观的人

Because the dominent paradigm, the dominent mantra in our culture today, is “no pain, no gain”, and if I’m happy now, I ignore experiencing pain, it means I’m letting go, it means I’m not gonna be successful, it means I’m gonna lose my edge, it means I’m gonna lose my driving ambition.
So subconcious prefers to keep us unhappy so that we don’t lose the other things that we value highly, things such as ambition, things such as having an edge, things such as our hard work.

they don’t necessarily have to go hand in hand.
On the contrary, happeniness, from Broaden and Build Theory that positive emotions are actually associated with higher level’s of success.

about perfectionism:
We know that letting go of this fear of failure and coping, putting ourselves on the line more, learning from failures, looking at it as stepping stone that contributes to our success in the long term.
It doesn’t need to take away from our driving ambition.
On the contrary, and the key if we want to overcome this fear of failure or the worry and anxiety or the guilty there or this lack of happiness, it’s very often, not always, very often about understanding or gaining a better understanding of these characteristics.

For example, understanding that I want to let go of my fear of failure, the debilitating fear of failure not just fear of failure, cause everyone is afraid of failure to some extent. But to let go of the debilitating fear of failure and yet, maintain my driving ambitions, so more nuance understanding, you need to go hand in hand.

can’t say no -> because I want to see myself and want other people to see me as empathic, as sensitive, as a nice guy.
unpack the two, say no to other very sensitively, I had a better, more nuance understanding of when I can say no and when I don’t wanna say no, while maintaining my sensitivity and my empathy without experience the same level of guilty
that I experience before whenever I said no. And same you can do for everyone of these characteristics.

the baby can stay, the bath water can go if we have more nuance understanding of what it is that we want to change.

ABCs of psychology:

A affect, the emotion
B behaviour, the action
C cognition, thought

gradual and acute 3*2

John Dryden, Britsh poet, “we first make our habits and then our habits make us”.
predisposition 本性

comprise or explain an individual’s happiness, three factors:

genetic set range, 50%
external circumstances, 10% (extrems definitive out of)
intentional activities, 40% -> work on this area, as our interpretation of the world, and our action

A affect, the emotion

without emotion, we won’t move. we need emotion in order to move.

the gradual change -> mindful meditation
cultivating mindfulness can lead to the discovery of deep realms of relaxation, calmness and insight within yourself. The path to it in any moment lies on further than your own body and your own breathing.

Tara Bennett Goleman, in her book Emotional Alchemy:
Mindfulness means seeing things as they are, without trying to change them. The point is to dissolve our reactions to distrurbing emotions, being careful, not to reject the emotion itself.
This is what “permission to be human” is all about. Along the emotion, experiencing the emotion, and just breathing throught it, and very often we do that, not always, but very often, it dissolves. And with it, with the emotional dissolution of the emotion, comes also the psychological dissolution of this painful emotion.

equanimity 宁静

the acute change
example: post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD 创伤后应激障碍 an negative shock treatment
post-traumatic growth -> most people are extremely resilient, ablt to withstand trauma and that is very empowering understanding to have -> to become more self-fulling prophecy -> and more people will experience post-traumatic growth if the only knew it was a possibility, that it was common.

Ask and you shall receive. A question begins a quest.

Hypothesis: peak experience from Maslow
repercussions 反作用
maybe, peak experience is the postive equivalent to the trauma
maybe, it’s a shock treatment of ecstasy
PPEO Post-Peak Experience Order

replaying it in mind
take actiion

B Behavior

gradual change
There is a relationship between attitudes and behaviors.
attitude affect behavior, behavior also affect attitude, it works both ways
Because we have an attitude, and our behavior is the outside world. The mind doesn’t like when there is incongruence between the inside and the outside.
It’s going to create equality between the two, congruency, consistency between the two. And the way it’ll do that is either by changing our behavior, or more often by changing our attitudes.

change attitude, then follow up with change behavior, building the congruency and consistency between the two, then it become lasting change

When there is a conflict between behavior and a belief. And what cognitive distance says is that this disease has to be resolved. And the way we resolve it is usually by getting our attitudes, our thoughts, our believes to match our behavior.

self-perception theory. We see ourselves, and we derive certain conclusions about ourselves.

Facial feedback hypothesis. If you put up a frown now, or a nice gentle smile, your body chemistry is actually going to change to reflect whatever your face is showing.

William James:
Smooth the brow, brighten the eyes, contract the dorsal rather (抬头挺胸) than the ventral aspect of the frame (弯腰驼背), and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it does not gradually thaw. -> body feedback hypothesis

Fake it until you make it - David Myers

actue change
coping, putting ourselves on the line.
when we cope, the important thing-wen we to-it’s to take risk, it’s to do something we don’t feel comfortable doing. In other word, it’s about exiting our comfort zone and entering our stretch zone.
the key is optimum levels of discomfort
Nothing will happen unless we bring out real acutal behavioral change, real actual behavioral action, and when we do that, then the sky is the limit.