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It’s a funny thing, confidence. Like money, we all feel at times that we could do with more of it and those who have plenty never give it a second thought. It’s an elusive feeling, one that evaporates under the spotlight of attention, but when you’ve got it, you feel you can do anything. What does ‘confidence’ mean?

By ’self-confidence’, people usually mean the feeling of knowing that things will go well. This immediately gives us an idea of why it can be such a problem - we cannot know the future!

Confidence in your own abilities

The essence of self confidence is having faith in your own abilities. Being able to trust that, whatever happens, you’ll be able to deal with it. Why is it then, that we spend most of our time imagining what things will be like when they go wrong, and seeing ourselves being embarrassed, humiliated or failing in some crushing way?

Self Preservation

One reason why we do this is to avoid danger to ourselves. Contingency planning is where you imagine what could happen, and make plans to deal with it. This is fine in business, government or project planning, but in many other situations, such as social occasions or presentations, the possibilities of ‘what might happen’ are far too numerous to deal with in this way.

Confidence, the myth

People often say things like “I can’t do that, I just don’t feel confident”. By this, they seem to mean one of the following. Either “The fact I feel under-confident is some kind of message that I shouldn’t be doing it” or “Before attempting anything new, I have to feel confident about it first.” Both of these leave us less likely to be able to tackle new situations in a comfortable way. As stated previously, what we need more is a sense of ‘whatever happens, it will be OK’.

Self Confidence can be learned

Another common idea about confidence is that you are either born with it, or not. Things you hear are “I’m just not a confident person” or “People who are super-confident are just lucky”. This is obviously untrue, as anyone knows who has seen a friend or colleague grow in confidence. Confidence is a way of approaching things, and it can be learned.

Catch 22?

Now obviously, what builds our confidence in the long-term is doing things that we are a bit scared of and surprising ourselves with our abilities. So is this a no-win situation? If we can’t do the things that we need to feel confident, how can we grow in confidence? Well, we can learn the strategies, approaches and thinking of confident people and, perhaps most importantly, how to mentally prepare ourselves for new or frightening events. Once we do this, it’s like rolling a snowball down a hill. The things that made us under-confident no longer do and we feel more able to tackle bigger things, which in turn raises our confidence levels.

What can I do to be more confident?

If you truly want to be more confident, you can learn how. How long it will take before you are as confident as you want to be depends on what stage you are at now. Very under-confident people are more likely to notice a difference most quickly when they learn how to be more confident. Those who need more confidence for particular situations only may only notice the difference when they go back into that situation.

Above all, to become more confident, we have to do something. It’s one thing thinking different, but that’s only one part of the picture

Low self esteem, a rope that binds; preventing us pursuing our dreams and enjoying simple things that ‘other people enjoy’. We talk of ‘self esteem issues’ and nod sagely to one another.

We use the words but do we examine what they really mean? You can’t hold self-esteem in your hand or take the kids to see it on a Sunday afternoon. So, what actually is self-esteem?

Self-esteem: A Definition

Many religions’ scriptures teach that pride and arrogance are terrible sins, the idea being that you can’t worship yourself and a god at the same time. Supposedly, if you are ‘full of yourself’ you have little space for anything or anyone else.

However, real self-esteem is not arrogance or self-love or vanity.

Real self-esteem consists of:

Another common idea about confidence is that you are either born with it, or not. Things you hear are “I’m just not a confident person” or “People who are super-confident are just lucky”. This is obviously untrue, as anyone knows who has seen a friend or colleague grow in confidence. Confidence is a way of approaching things, and it can be learned.

Catch 22?

Now obviously, what builds our confidence in the long-term is doing things that we are a bit scared of and surprising ourselves with our abilities. So is this a no-win situation? If we can’t do the things that we need to feel confident, how can we grow in confidence? Well, we can learn the strategies, approaches and thinking of confident people and, perhaps most importantly, how to mentally prepare ourselves for new or frightening events. Once we do this, it’s like rolling a snowball down a hill. The things that made us under-confident no longer do and we feel more able to tackle bigger things, which in turn raises our confidence levels.

What can I do to be more confident?

If you truly want to be more confident, you can learn how. How long it will take before you are as confident as you want to be depends on what stage you are at now. Very under-confident people are more likely to notice a difference most quickly when they learn how to be more confident. Those who need more confidence for particular situations only may only notice the difference when they go back into that situation.

Above all, to become more confident, we have to do something. It’s one thing thinking different, but that’s only one part of the picture.

For survival purposes, once we have ‘learned’ that a certain situation is dangerous by panicking, the mind ‘remembers’ this fact to ensure that the next time it sees a similar situation, it can give you the necessary anxiety or panic to enable you to run or fight, just like the woman in the story.

This is not the normal type of ‘remembering’ like remembering a name or telephone number, it is the sort that makes you feel good when you hear a particular piece of music, or feel happy when you look at holiday photos, or maybe feel a bit like a kid again when you walk into school as an adult.

‘Sloppy’ Unconscious pattern matching
We call this type of remembering ‘unconscious pattern matching’ because it is the ‘back part’ of your mind, the unconscious mind, that causes you to react in a certain way when it spots a particular situation or other ‘trigger’.

So if you have a panic attack in a car, you might feel anxious next time you are on a bus or train, because the situation is roughly similar. As far as survival goes, it is much better for us to ‘err on the side of caution’.

When a cliff becomes a gorge
The woman in the story above came to a cliff that roughly matched her terrifying experience in the gorge. She had ‘learned’ unconsciously that ‘high rock walls=danger’.

Despite the fact that she knew consciously that this was a different situation, her unconscious mind, looking out for her survival, ‘erred on the side of caution’ and gave her the necessary resources to get out of there fast.

What does this tell us about treatments for anxiety and panic attacks?
It tells us:

• that we have to take into account the unconscious aspects when treating these problems.
• that they are natural responses that can become habitual ones.
• that this can look like a problem with body chemistry, but that this not true in the vast majority of cases.
• that new skills, approaches and understandings can show us how to be calm again in situations that previously caused anxiety and panic.

Success. Virtually everyone says they want to achieve it.
But most seldom do. What is the secret to attaining true
success? Everyone has their own definition of being
successful but there is one major secret that will decide
whether you succeed or fail tremendously in life if you
choose to follow it.More…

The major secret is to have laser sharp focus in whatever
you do. Successful individuals aren’t any smarter than
those who fail. They’ve learned that to succeed you must
have a clear cut target and focus all your time and energy
into achieving it.

The difference between the successful and those who fall
short of their dreams is the successful think like the
trained sniper. One shot .. One kill.

Those who are doomed to leading a life of quiet desperation
are using the shotgun approach. They have no clear cut
target and their efforts are scattered far and wide.
They’re just closing their eyes, pulling the trigger and
praying.

Your success is guaranteed when you develop laser sharp
focus. You then have the ability to focus on positive
uplifting thoughts and blocking negative destructive
thoughts.

Once you start focusing on what you want and where you
want to go, there is no limit to what you can achieve.

Those who fail do so because they’ve never learned to focus
on their dreams. They focus on what they don’t want. They
dissipate their energy focusing on their fears and the
reasons why they can‘t succeed.

Study the lives of great men throughout history and you’ll
find that the ability to focus all their energy on a goal
or idea was the major reason for their success. Failures on
the other hand lack the focus to accomplish anything of
consequence and curse fate.

If you’re serious about succeeding and living the life of
your dreams, try this exercise for the next thirty days. At
the end of the thirty days you’ll find you have a greater
sense of self worth. You’ll be taking a major step towards
developing the laser sharp focus necessary to make you a
success.

Before going to bed at night and in the morning upon
rising, repeat the following affirmation.

“I am going to choose my own thoughts, and to hold them as
long as I choose. I am going to shut out all thoughts that
weaken or interfere; that make me timid. My Will is as
strong as anyone else’s.”

You now know the secret to success. There are no more
excuses. Your success is in your hands.

Wishing You Success,
John Colanzi
http://www.johncolanzi.com

I was set up for a blind date once with a woman who described herself in a letter to me as ‘fun and bubbly!’ The way people describe themselves is sometimes rather sharply at odds with the way others see them, I find. I spent the whole of that date wondering where the writer of the letter had got to But that’s enough about me. What about you?

Do you know much about yourself? Or do you just think you do?

When you refer to your ’self’, do you mean the self that relaxes in front of the TV, the self that dreams at night, the self that gets angry, sexy, curious - or all of these combined? Do we all have multiple ’selves’ that get wheeled on and off again as circumstances require, obscuring a truer, more timeless ’self’, as the mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, for example, believed? And what about the ‘average person’?

We get ourselves wrong

The average person doesn’t think they are average. On average, people claim to be more disciplined, more idealistic, more socially skilled, a better driver, better at leadership and healthier than? the average person. Logically, this is impossible. The average person is not ‘above average’. Average and above average people also believe themselves to be worse in many of these areas than average. So low self-esteem is really just misperception. If you really are as bad as you think you are, then you are ahead of most people, because you really do know yourself.

How do you really know someone? How do you really know yourself? Would you eat your best friend if you had to?

How to really know someone

After you meet someone for the first time, you might tell me “Wow, they were nice!” and I would want to know: How do you know? Have you been shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island with them, had to go into battle and trust your life to them, had to share your wealth, or be sold into slavery with them?

The fact is you can’t know someone just from socializing with them. The closest bonds are forged in extreme circumstances. There will always be deeper and truer bonds between men who have fought in battle together, or between women who have survived against great odds, than the flimsy superficial associations that come from mere socialising. In extreme times the outer layers of self are peeled away and a truer self emerges. Connections with other people become more real. Team bonding isn’t just about drinking in the same bar.

But what has Plato got to do with all this?

Plato and you

Quite a long time ago the Athenian philosopher Plato (first known describer of the ‘platonic friendship’ between men and women - see beginning of article) famously told us, presumably in Greek, to: “Know thyself!” This injunction implied, of course, that most of us don’t and we really need to. Accurate self-knowledge is vital for real fulfillment. Since then hippies have gone to India to ‘find themselves’ without first checking behind the sofa. People go on ’self development’ courses. What are they developing, exactly, I wonder? Do they know, or are they just after the warm fuzzy feelings?

All right, let’s get to the crunch. Do people really perceive themselves accurately? On the whole? Look around at the people you know. What do you think? Naaaah! Of course they don’t. Let’s look at what people think they are like and what they are really like. Oh, and when I say ‘people’, I include myself.

Research Plato would have loved

Strong emotion always clouds perception and so distorts it. Self-perceptions of character and abilities are often filled with high doses of bias, misconceptions, and vanities - leading to high self esteem - or conditioned feelings of inadequacy - leading to low self esteem. People routinely and grossly over- and under-estimate their own honesty, aptitude, courage and attractiveness to others.

Researchers Mabe ,West and Dunning found that self-perception of ability and actual ability have a very low correlation. I already mentioned that the average driver believes they are above average drivers! Most people think they have an above average sense of humour (including me). More worryingly, family practitioners rating their knowledge of thyroid disorders failed to show any insight into their actual level of knowledge [1]. Other people can sometimes see our situation clearer than we can ourselves. College roommate ratings are better predictors of which romances will survive than self-impressions [2]. Peer ratings among junior doctors strongly predict who will do well on a surgical exam; self ratings do not [3].

We get other things wrong too.

Not listening to Plato

People over-predict the likelihood that they’ll perform generous, ethical and kind acts. They overestimate the odds they’ll buy a flower for charity, vote, maintain a successful romantic relationship, volunteer for an unpleasant lab experiment so a 10-year-old girl won’t have to, and cooperate with one another when money is at stake. People consistently mis-predict themselves even though they are roughly accurate in predicting how others will perform in these areas [4].

It seems it is easier to know others than to know ourselves. This is why it is so important to have honest and fair friends and to listen to them. It’s not that people are entirely wrong about themselves, but they tend to exaggerate their flaws or abilities. One of the roles of the court jester during the middle ages was to tell the King things about himself that others dared not. The rich and famous are often surrounded by people who never give them straight feedback about themselves, so they can turn into prima donnas and lose sight of themselves altogether.

We don’t like to see ourselves as greedy, cowardly or unkind, of course, but surely any course in true ’self development’ would need to provide a way of encouraging the participants to objectively observe these unacceptable parts of the self without tipping into self-chastisement, low self-esteem or self-congratulation? We need to know something before we can do something about it. Wouldn’t you rather know?

Bypassing self-esteem

To be more honest with ourselves we need to bypass the whole self-esteem question. If your self-esteem is the most important thing to you (and in our society you’d be forgiven for thinking it is the most important thing), then the need to feel good about yourself will always push you into defending your self-esteem, and thus warp how you actually see yourself. When we can a) spot our weaknesses and deficits and b) get to know them and know when they’ll arise and c) not be ruled by them, then we can start to develop real self confidence. Not the fake confidence based on refusing ever to look at ourselves and maintaining our self-deception.

The good old rationalisation

We use rationalisations all the time to explain away positively to ourselves and others why we did - or didn’t do - certain things. Rationalisations are biased creations of interpretation rather than the fruits of self-observation. Pompous people use rationalisations (and so do governments). Rationalisations can turn vice into virtue - for example, by describing lack of generosity as ‘being cruel to be kind’, or laziness as ‘thinking time’. Until we are clear about ourselves and what we are really like, we’ll go on repeating the same old mistakes and put it down to that other popular rationalisation ‘fate’, or ‘just my luck!’ When you know yourself more accurately you can be more effective and successful, as you won’t need to waste time and energy propping up your self-esteem though fabrication and self-deceit. Nor will you have to ‘work blind’, as you will know when fear, or selfishness, or whatever other weakness, is operating in you and allow for it, rather than pretending it isn’t there.

Of course, the ‘real you’, your ’self’, isn’t in an ashram in India or behind the sofa or on a retreat - it’s inside you right now. Possibly wrapped in layers of bias, habit, vanity, fear and conditioning - but it’s there!

References

[1] Tracey et al, 1997; ‘The validity of general practitioners’ self assessment of knowledge’. Cross sectional study. British Journal of Medicine, 315, 1426-1428

[2] MacDonald and Ross, 1999; ‘Accessing the accuracy of predictions about dating relationships: How and why do lovers’ predictions differ from those made by observers?’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1417-1429.

[3] Risucci et al, 1989; ‘Ratings of surgical residents by self, supervisors and peers’. Surgical Gynecology and Obstetrics, 169,519-526

[4] Epley and Dunning, 2000, 2006; ‘Holier than thou: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self or social prediction?’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,79,861-875.

It’s 9am on a Monday morning. Public speaking couldn’t be further from your mind and your manager tells you have to do a presentation to fifty colleagues next week. What’s your response?

- Do you feel that public speaking is just part of the routine?
- Do you respond to the challenge and wonder how you can make your presentation compelling, informative and inspiring?

Or, like most people do you feel you would rather die than stand up and be judged by the hard unforgiving scrutiny of your fellow man and woman?

- Is it possible to be an average presenter and learn the skills to become an inspiring and entrancing speaker?
- Is it possible to be totally terrified of the mere thought of public speaking yet learn to relax and even enjoy it?

Without a doubt, the answer is YES!

Public Speaking on the Increase

It’s a cliche to say that we live in an information culture. But it’s true! Never before has so much information been so readily available. The rate of change and development is so fast that we have to work constantly to ?stay ahead of the game’

More than ever, people are having to present information to others as part of this constant up-dating. People are being increasingly called upon to present publicly their information to co-workers and other departments.

To get ahead, you have to present!

But how often are we taught how to present? There are 2 main areas of skill:

1) Skills of effective presenting; use of teaching aids, use of the voice, structure and so on.

2) Self-management; the ability to remain calm and composed in front of an audience.

Learning these skills make a huge difference not only to the quality of your public presentation but also to your enjoyment. Truly fantastic presenters are quite a rare commodity, but that’s only because most people never took the time to learn.

Being an excellent presenter will enhance your career, social life and your enjoyment of work in general.

Great presenters can transform almost any subject into one of interest or even inspiration. A friend once told me that the most entertaining and thought provoking presentation they ever saw was about print processing!

Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.

Adapted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigee in September 2007.

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)

   Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran to socialization by media.

   Women’s desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.

   Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman’s health status.

   Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they seek women with small waists.

   Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman’s breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman’s age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

   Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).

   Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

   Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.

   The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.

2. Humans are naturally polygamous

   The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.

   Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.

   Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the “winners” and the “losers” in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.

   In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.” Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)

3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy

   When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

   The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.

   Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim

   According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?

   The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

   What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.

   So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

   However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

   The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

   It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.

5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce

   Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?

   Since a man’s mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman’s is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.

   The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.

6. Beautiful people have more daughters

   It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.

   One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)

   This hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters. Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons. Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters, while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for daughters.

   The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family’s wealth and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they will have more girls.

   Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The generalized hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case. Americans who are rated “very attractive” have a 56 percent chance of having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for everyone else.

7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals

   For nearly a quarter of a century, criminologists have known about the “age-crime curve.” In every society at all historical times, the tendency to commit crimes and other risk-taking behavior rapidly increases in early adolescence, peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, rapidly decreases throughout the 20s and 30s, and levels off in middle age.

   This curve is not limited to crime. The same age profile characterizes every quantifiable human behavior that is public (i.e., perceived by many potential mates) and costly (i.e., not affordable by all sexual competitors). The relationship between age and productivity among male jazz musicians, male painters, male writers, and male scientists—which might be called the “age-genius curve”—is essentially the same as the age-crime curve. Their productivity—the expressions of their genius—quickly peaks in early adulthood, and then equally quickly declines throughout adulthood. The age-genius curve among their female counterparts is much less pronounced; it does not peak or vary as much as a function of age.

   Paul McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends much of his time painting. Bill Gates is now a respectable businessman and philanthropist, and is no longer a computer whiz kid. J.D. Salinger now lives as a total recluse and has not published anything in more than three decades. Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.

   A single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are expressions of young men’s competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.

   In the physical competition for mates, those who are competitive may act violently toward their male rivals. Men who are less inclined toward crime and violence may express their competitiveness through their creative activities.

   The cost of competition, however, rises dramatically when a man has children, when his energies and resources are put to better use protecting and investing in them. The birth of the first child usually occurs several years after puberty because men need some time to accumulate sufficient resources and attain sufficient status to attract their first mate. There is therefore a gap of several years between the rapid rise in the benefits of competition and similarly rapid rise in its costs. Productivity rapidly declines in late adulthood as the costs of competition rise and cancel its benefits.

   These calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly why.

   The similarity between Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, and criminals—in fact, among all men throughout evolutionary history—points to an important concept in evolutionary biology: female choice.

   Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.

8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of

   Many believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in middle age. Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it’s not because they are middle-aged. It’s because their wives are. From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man’s midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife’s imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman. It’s not his midlife that matters; it’s hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he’s not trying to regain his youth; he’s trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.

9. It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)

   On the morning of January 21, 1998, as Americans woke up to the stunning allegation that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern, Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig thought, “I told you so.” Betzig points out that while powerful men throughout Western history have married monogamously (only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards. Genes make no distinction between the two categories of children.

   As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate and otherwise), while countless poor men died mateless and childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record, but he was by no means qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.

   The question many asked in 1998—”Why on earth would the most powerful man in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?”—is, from a Darwinian perspective, a silly one. Betzig’s answer would be: “Why not?” Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.

   What distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs while in office—others have, more will; it would be a Darwinian puzzle if they did not—what distinguishes him is the fact that he got caught.

10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

    An unfortunate consequence of the ever-growing number of women joining the labor force and working side by side with men is the increasing number of sexual harassment cases. Why must sexual harassment be a necessary consequence of the sexual integration of the workplace?

    Psychologist Kingsley R. Browne identifies two types of sexual harassment cases: the quid pro quo (”You must sleep with me if you want to keep your job or be promoted”) and the “hostile environment” (the workplace is deemed too sexualized for workers to feel safe and comfortable). While feminists and social scientists tend to explain sexual harassment in terms of “patriarchy” and other ideologies, Browne locates the ultimate cause of both types of sexual harassment in sex differences in mating strategies.

    Studies demonstrate unequivocally that men are far more interested in short-term casual sex than women. In one now-classic study, 75 percent of undergraduate men approached by an attractive female stranger agreed to have sex with her; none of the women approached by an attractive male stranger did. Many men who would not date the stranger nonetheless agreed to have sex with her.

    The quid pro quo types of harassment are manifestations of men’s greater desire for short-term casual sex and their willingness to use any available means to achieve that goal. Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is “not about sex but about power;” Browne contends it is both—men using power to get sex. “To say that it is only about power makes no more sense than saying that bank robbery is only about guns, not about money.”

    Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as “overly sexual” or “hostile” behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.

    Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men’s repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.

If you are suffering from an emotional problem such as depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour or repetitive addictions, there is only one place you should start when looking for a solution. Your basic human needsIt seems obvious, but all too often, when it comes to psychology, common sense goes out the window, and the textbooks come off the bookshelf. Why not leave them there for just now, and ask yourself the following questions…

- If you had no petrol in your car, would you be wondering why it won’t start?

- If your garden hadn’t seen rain for 6 months, would you be racking your brains about why all the plants had died?

Of course not. But ask human beings to apply the same objective observation to their own lives and you are setting a much trickier task.

Nine basic human needs

Apparently, if you chuck a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will hop straight out again. But if

you put him in cold water and slowly heat it up, he will sit there until well and truly

poached.

Problems due to missing ‘basics’ in peoples lives tend to develop over time, and so can be

easily missed. Then, when the problem arises - be it anxiety, depression, addiction or some

other nasty - they can’t for the life of them fathom out why!

It’s therefore a great idea to know what your own garden needs in order to grow well, so when

you see something starting to wither, you can check your list and apply the necessary

nutrients.

So here’s the list. (At least, our list. If you think we’ve missed any, do let us know!)

1. The need to give and receive attention

“No Man Is An Island”

Without regular quality contact with other people, mental condition, emotional state and

behaviour can suffer quite drastically. This is often particularly obvious in elderly people who

have become isolated. After days alone, their first contact may be their GP, who sees them

for 10 minutes.

They are highly likely during this short period to appear ’strange’ as their thwarted need for

attention asserts itself in an outpouring of communication. If the GP takes this as

representative of the patient’s general mental condition, they may prescribe drugs, where

really a few hours of being listened to would suffice.

You may also have noticed this in evening-class attendees who command the teacher’s

attention all the time, asking seemingly daft questions and not really listening to the

answers!

2. Taking heed of the mind body connection

This is so important, and so often neglected. Without correct and regular nutrition, sleep and

exercise, your psychological state can suffer considerably. It is often seen that young people,

on leaving home and the structure that provides, succumb to one mental illness or another.

Their mealtimes, sleep patterns and other regular habits become disrupted, with predictable

consequences.

It seems that people are increasingly treating themselves as machines!

3. The need for purpose, goals and meaning

“The devil will make work for idle hands to do.”

Perhaps the overriding element that sets human beings apart from other animals is the ability

to identify, analyse and solve problems. This is what enabled us to develop to where we

have.

If this ability is under-used, the imagination can start to create problems of its own - perhaps

in an attempt to give you something to do because it is not occupied doing anything else.

Regardless, if a person is deprived of the outward focus and satisfaction created by achieving

goals, mental illness is often close behind.

The need for meaning is perhaps even more profound. Viktor Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for

Meaning’ documents the impact of lack of meaning on concentration camp prisoners, of which

he was one. He says in it that “What is the meaning of life?” is a question that is asked of you,

not one that you yourself ask. It is a hugely powerful and important read when considering

mental health.

4. A sense of community and making a contribution

Tying in with the need for meaning, this basic need provides a context for a person. It gives

them a reason for being, over and above their own personal needs, that has been shown to

benefit the immune system, mental health and happiness.

One obvious fulfiller of this need is religion, but can also be an idea shared with others, a

club, charity or community work. In fact, anything that takes the focus off the self.

5. The need for challenge and creativity

Learning something new, expanding horizons, improving on existing skills all provide a

sensation of progress and achievement. Without this, a person can feel worthless, or that

there is no real reason for their being.

6. The need for intimacy

Tying in with the need for attention, it seems that people have a need to share their ideas,

hopes and dreams with others close to them. For some, this can be as simple a talking to a

loved pet, but for most of us, it requires that we have at least one individual with whom we

can converse ‘on the same level’.

7. The need to feel a sense of control

“All your eggs in one basket.”

The results of total loss of control over your surroundings, relationships or body are not hard

to imagine, and have been well documented.

From survivors of torture, to someone losing their job, those who are able to maintain a sense

of control somewhere in their life fare the best. This is why having a variety of interests and

activities is so important.

8. The need for a sense of status

It’s important to feel important. And we all know some people for whom this need is too

important! However, if someone feels recognised for being a grandmother or parent or good

son or daughter, this may be enough. Young people finding their feet can have improved self-

esteem if they feel they have attained a position of trust and recognition. Young boys in

Birmingham, UK who were at risk of exclusion because of behavioural problems were trained

as mentors and paid for helping younger kids who were also at risk of exclusion. Not only did

the mentors’ own behaviour improve, they also reported greater levels of happiness,

contentment and self-esteem. Much disruptive, problematic behaviour may be a misapplied

attempt to meet this need for recognition.

9. The need for a sense safety and security

We need to feel our environment is basically secure and reasonably predictable. Financial

security, physical safety and health, and the fulfilment of other basic needs all contribute to

the completion of this need. As with all of the following needs we can take it too far and

become obsessive about it – you will see this sometimes if the need for creativity is not

met.

Many Needs, One Life

It may seem that a life that meets all of these needs would be intolerably busy. But of course,

one activity can meet many needs. Charity work for example, could be said to fulfil 1, 3, 4 and

5, and could contribute to 6 and 7.Walking with a friend as a pastime might go towards 1,

2, 3, 5 and 6.

Generally, what this suggests, and what has been borne out by recent research, is that a

more complex life is a more healthy one.

Then if one area of life fails or is taken away from you, your basic needs are maintained, at

least in part, by those that survive.

So the message is…

If your progress through life has gone a bit awry for you or a friend, check if there is petrol in

the car, and that the battery is charged before going to a mechanic to have the engine taken

apart

The symbolism in dreams is often simply ‘borrowed’ from recent events. The first time the above dream occurred was after the woman had been watching a television programme about sailing. The symbols are rather arbitrary; it is the feelings in the dream which hold the key to unlocking dreams and what they mean.
The feelings in the dream are usually an exaggeration of feelings from the real-life issue which caused the dream. If you feel terror in the dream think of when recently, in your waking life, you felt a little frightened. Or if you laugh hysterically during a dream look for a recent time when you found something funny but were maybe constrained from laughing too uproariously.

When you find the dream’s match it often feels like a ‘clicking into place’ - like a perception rather than an intellectualisation.

Every year I train thousands of people in hypnosis and the role of positive psychology in overcoming difficulties and maximizing success. So I see every day how crucial attitude is for human performance and happiness. So why do I link attitude to hypnosis? Well, another word for ‘attitude’ is ‘focus’. And when you narrow your focus – either inward or outward – you begin to go into a hypnotic trance. When your attitude is strong, then you have strong focus and a strong focus is always hypnotic. Now the content of that focus is vitally important. A negative attitude means you expect things to go wrong or to be difficult or unpleasant. A positive attitude, on the other hand, means you expect things to be fun or productive or worth the effort. In other words, you expect success.

Hypnosis can help create success because hypnosis is about creating expectations. These expectations aren’t the so called ‘positive thinking’, or just hoping for the best. They are a part of you. They become your instincts. Now because your instincts work for you automatically, this positive attitude means you’re freed from the effort of trying to be positive – which never really works. You just can’t help it. You can’t help being positive. You begin to expect the best quite naturally.

With hypnosis you can change unhelpful patterns so your expectations and instincts start to work productively for you. The advantages are huge. Even setbacks are seen in positive ways. Positive people learn from setbacks and often say afterwards that in fact they didn’t see them as setbacks at all.

So where do you get your attitudes from? Well, you learn attitudes in two ways. Either they get conditioned into you by others, or you condition yourself through natural self-hypnotic experiences. Every time you learn something new to the extent that it becomes automatic, then you’ve been hypnotized. Remember, hypnosis can last just a few seconds and your eyes can be wide open. This is why we talk about anger, pessimism, anxiety, addictions and depression as hypnotic trance states, because they all require a restrictive, narrowed focus combined with a use (or misuse) of imagination.

People trance out just as much when they’re being negative as when they’re strongly positive, because your instincts are essentially programmed through natural hypnotic focus states. So it’s perfectly possible to program yourself to believe unhelpful or limiting things about yourself. The argument of pessimists usually comes back to what they call realism. You know the kind of thing. I’m just being realistic. Things really are that bad.

In our work we don’t use unrealistic and simplistic positive thinking ideas, but we do encourage life transformation through developing productive creativity, optimism and staying power. Remember, expectation is powerful. Your brain works towards what it’s been programmed to expect. This principle can be much more powerful than you may currently realize.

I’ve sometimes set my alarm clock for seven and then – due to high expectation in my brain – I’ve woken up one minute before the alarm goes off. Friends and colleagues tell me of similar experiences. People often talk of consciously struggling to remember someone’s name – so creating expectation for their brain to manifest. Hours later they may have been mowing the lawn or taking a bath and suddenly the name pops up, even though they were no longer thinking about it consciously. Expectation is powerful stuff and works below the level of your conscious mind.

It’s the power of unconscious expectation that determines your attitudes in life, and attitude is really a subconscious expectation; and, as any medic will tell you, expectation can even cure some illnesses. This is why placebos work in reducing swelling or pain even when they’re just sugar pills. Placebos also make excellent anti-depressants. It’s the expectancy produced by the positive belief that these substances are powerful healing medications that produces the positive result.

Hypnosis is a medium through which positive subconscious expectancy can be programmed and maintained. The more the patient’s attention is locked onto the placebo and the more their imagination is engaged, the more successful the placebo will be in actually reorganizing cellular structures in the patient’s body. This is the hypnotic part and the success of the placebo is the completion of the expectancy. Few doctors understand that the working of a placebo pill is a post-hypnotic response, but that’s exactly what it is.

If you truly believe that things are going to work out well, then you’ll feel confident and have more staying power to keep trying longer. You’ll also have more energy and enthusiasm, which is more likely to attract others to your project, and your creative mind will be working for you, so you’ll produce unexpected solutions and ideas.

Your subconscious mind will be constantly working towards manifesting the expectation and your brain is a powerful engine and what it is geared towards is absolutely crucial. Research shows that optimists have better immune systems, live longer, become less stressed by challenges and persevere longer, meaning they’re more likely to ultimately succeed.

Hypnosis is a natural learning state and happens spontaneously and continually, and most of the time we’re unaware of it happening. This means we can easily get hypnotized by the attitudes of people around us, and by TV and advertising.

Fortunately, optimism is a strategy that anyone can learn and the quickest way to do this is also through hypnosis. Optimists see positive things as part of who they are – permanent and relating to life as a whole. It’s as simple as this. The more times you enter positive and productive hypnotic trance states relating to your life, the more positive – and likely to be successful – you become.

Because negative emotional states also work on people in hypnotic ways, we can use hypnosis as the optimum tool to overcoming depression, anger and other conditions. Similarly, because determination, inspiration and the ability to enter performance flow states are also hypnotic, we can again use hypnosis to create and enhance positive states until they become a lasting way of relating to your life.

Of course, anything worthwhile takes perseverance. But individuals who can keep creative, upbeat and determined and see through the limitations of negativity are the ones who’ll thrive.

In summary

All psychological limitations are learned through natural trance states. Likewise, all skills, abilities and positive attitudes become fixed through hypnotic experiences. Negative attitudes produce negative expectations – which makes people give up too early and miss opportunities. Positive expectation means more energy and likelihood of success and happiness. Both optimism and pessimism tend to be infectious. Positive expectation and focus can be programmed through regular and effective hypnosis.

Over the last decade we have found that one of the most common uses for self hypnosis is confidence building, so we thought that it would be a good idea to explain just how you might build self confidence using hypnosis. As our starting point, let’s take a look at how you build self confidence in the real world. How do you get to the point where doing something scary just isn’t scary any more?

Well basically, you do it and do it until it just isn’t scary any more! Hardly a deeply insightful answer, but true. Think of anything you have mastered that was difficult at first, and you’ll see that’s what happened.

Fear, or lack of confidence, is all about uncertainty, and once you have done something enough for the uncertainty to mostly disappear, the fear disappears too.

But that leaves a big problem. What if you’re so scared to do something you can’t even get started? Or what if it’s not the sort of thing you can practise?

This is where hypnosis comes in. Hypnosis builds a ‘bridge’ from where you are just now to your destination - doing what you want to do comfortably.

Time for an example I think…

Jane, a client of mine, was terrified of driving her car. She had been driving home from work one day when an angry driver had started harassing her by driving right up behind, swerving in front of her and shouting out of the window. She was very stressed at the time as her mother had just died, and she had a panic attack behind the wheel. When she got back in the car the following day she had another panic attack and was unable to drive. Now she had bravely got herself to the stage where she could ride in one if someone she trusted was driving, but she couldn’t drive herself.

Now, she could go no further in her career without a driving licence and so was in a very difficult situation.

So what to do? Jane has to drive, but is terrified of it. It’s the sort of situation that can make you feel pretty hopeless. But not if you know hypnosis.

Firstly, we used hypnosis to get Jane to feel differently about the road rage incident - so that she could remember it without panicking and - more importantly - so she didn’t experience panic when she got behind the wheel.

Then we had her rehearse driving over and over in hypnosis so she could ‘experience’ doing it while relaxed.

After the hypnosis, Jane said she felt more relaxed about driving, but how could she be sure it would be OK?

I told her she couldn’t be sure. You can never be sure until you do it. You can fool yourself into thinking it will definitely be OK, develop some powerful optimism, but you can never be 100% sure. Used in the right way, hypnosis reduces the feeling of uncertainty to tolerable levels, so you can go and do that thing that used to terrify you.

But when it comes down to it - it’s down to you to make the final leap. (It’s just that it feels more like a hop!

Jane made that final leap and things got easier and easier from then on. She didn’t do it because I ‘told’ her to - she did it because I helped her reduce the unpleasant emotions to a level where she could do what she needed to solve the problem.

Hypnosis builds a bridge over the chasm you have to leap.

If you read the Master Series essay on What is Hypnosis? you will remember how Mark Tyrrell described how hypnosis accesses the REM state to create a new blueprint for the instincts. These sessions create a more confident emotional blueprint for specific events.

And here are some more great reasons why you can be more confident…

As I said above, you can never be sure before you do something that ‘everything is going to be OK’.

But you can trust yourself that you’ll do your best.

And you can accept the possibility that you’ll surprise yourself.

And you can concentrate on relaxing so that your unconscious mind can help you.

And you can form a clear picture of your desired outcome so your unconscious knows what to aim for.

In summary

So to sum up, hypnosis works by re-educating the unconscious mind, giving you control over responses that you can’t control consciously, or by trying harder.

Take the pressure off yourself - delay making crucial decisions.

You may find it hard to think of anything else when you are caught up worrying about some future decision. Realise that sometimes you can choose not to make a decision for the time being. Say to yourself “I’m not ready to make a decision on that yet. I’ll think about it again in 5 days time”, and put the date in your diary.

Getting yourself too worked up with worry can have a detrimental effect on your mood, sleep patterns, memory and problem-solving ability. Dwelling on a problem can make it harder to find a solution. By giving yourself ‘time off’ from thinking about it - you’ll find you get a greater perspective and find solutions easier. Writing down your worries and putting them aside until you decide to deal with them, allows you to put them to rest for the time being.

Worry your way to a solution, not more problems!

Chronic worrying can quickly make you feel helpless, as you imagine more and more problems until you reach the point where you can’t possibly solve them all. It usually goes a bit like “If that happens, then this will happen, and then that will be a disaster!”

Instead, try challenging worry-provoking thoughts with questions like “What evidence is there for that?” and “Just how likely is that, based on my past experience?” Learn to distinguish between possibility and probability. It’s your mind - take control of your thoughts!

Worrying is about balancing the odds of whether or not to do something. If you have to do it, then what you need is preparation, not worry. For example, with public speaking, prepare intellectually by learning your material, and emotionally by doing relaxation and visualisation, or self-hypnosis.

As we all know, worrying creates stress, and stress is a health risk. Worrying can raise your blood pressure, cause you to suffer sleepless nights and affect your digestion, your immunity - even your sex life. But worrying isn’t all bad - the ability to worry about possible dangers and prepare for them has been a crucial factor in the development and survival of Mankind. Here’s how to tap into your evolutionary birthright and make stress work for you!

Turn stress into your friend - understand when to worry

Thousands of years ago worrying ensured our survival. Humans were the feeblest, slowest, most poorly protected food around. ‘Man the hunter’ is a hopelessly inaccurate idea, as for most of our evolution we survived by spotting dangerous situations and staying well away!

And how did we do that? By worrying! Or put another way; using our thinking ability to explore every possibility before putting ourselves at risk. Possibilities like “There could be a tiger in there”, had to be checked out first! These days few situations threaten our physical survival, but we still behave as if there are many. Most of us face many potentially worry-provoking situations every day and if we avoided them all, we’d get nowhere fast.

Make worrying constructive - learn how to ‘worry well’.

Take time to think over all your worries, dilemmas and problems. Set aside half an hour for worrying during the day. When you find yourself worrying at any other time, note the worry down and keep it for later. Once you write down your worries, you can be more objective, and ‘leave them alone’ for a while.

Try using the following template:

• “I am worried about….”
• “The worst that could happen is….”
• “The best that could happen is….”
• “Things I can do now are”….
• “Other factors to remember”.

Also realise that tiredness, hunger, anxiety and other ‘low’ mood states can lead to your thoughts becoming more doom-laden. So worry after you’ve eaten, in the morning after a good sleep, or best of all, after 20 minutes exercise

The rebellious smoker usually started smoking as an adolescent behaviour in their early teens. It was a form of rebelling or revolting against parents, teachers, society, whatever. The rebellious association for these smokers has persisted into adulthood, so telling them they should quit smoking is like telling an infatuated teenage girl she should stop seeing that enigmatic edgy guy –she’ll want him even more. Encourage her to see him – even insist – and she’ll see through him quick enough. It’s the same for the rebellious smoker.

The rubber band effect

If you force yourself (or I try to force you) to deny yourself something you want, you build an inner tension. That tension grows.

Telling that teenage girl not to see that guy she is infatuated with is likely to just increase her desire to see him. You pull her one way and she becomes more attracted to going the other way. It’s just like a rubber band you’ve stretched too far – it springs back.

Telling people they shouldn’t smoke when so much of smoking is about rebellion against advice and ‘orders’ can actually encourage more smoking, especially if the smoker in question has never discarded their adolescent associations to the habit.

Rebellion needs to be used and directed

I have treated hundreds of smokers, ranging from those who are well and truly out of love with it to those who are still fondly staring at it through rose-tinted spectacles.

When treating infatuated smokers, we need to address this matter of rebellion – because you’ll always be suspicious of anything or anyone who seems to want to attack the object of your attachment. We need to bring it out into the open and deal with it.

Protecting that which seeks to destroy you

People are often protective and defensive about things (such as cults, individuals or, indeed, substances) that damage and undermine them. Why? There are two main reasons:

• ‘Cognitive dissonance’. You have to justify and rationalise to yourself (and others) why you do something which has no advantages and many disadvantages. So if a cult has taken all your money it’s easier to assert that this was somehow a good thing than to admit to yourself or others that you’ve been a schmuck.
• Misdirected rebellion. Of course, the smoker who is slowly being killed by nicotine should really be rebellious toward the smoking itself.

If we think of smoking as an interloper – something outside the core identity of the smoker (which of course it is) – we can see it working something like this:

To maintain itself and ’survive’, the smoking habit has to collect this rebellious force and direct it against the ‘rubbish day’ or the ’stressful meeting’ or the fact that ‘everyone is telling me to quit, so to hell with them, I’ll smoke if I want…’ In other words, the rebellion has to be directed anywhere except toward the smoking itself. This use of and deflection of rebellion is regularly used in cults. And it’s also the standard tactic of dominant and manipulative partners in emotionally abusive relationships.

Cults and manipulators

The manipulative abusive partner and the controlling cult will effectively direct rebellion onto ‘outsiders’, so that their victims come to defend what is undermining them and attack what may threaten the abuser, cult, or addictive habit. This is why formerly family-minded cult victims may start hating and avoiding their own families. The cult hasn’t tried to stop their need to rebel, it has just directed this away from itself. So the need for conflict is harnessed. The emotional manipulator will try bit by bit to undermine their ‘partner’s’ friends, families and outside interests (all possible threats to the manipulator).

When the cult/relationship victim starts to turn round and see what it was that was really undermining or destroying them, there is a moment of awakening: ‘Oh, it’s you I need to rebel against! You are not my friend after all!’ Rebellious smokers need to reach this stage in order to break free of the need to use smoking as rebellion – and hopefully escape with their lives.

But be warned! People are prepared to die for their beliefs. Beliefs are powerful and influential things. Just ‘talking sense’ to the cult member, infatuated abused lover or rebellious smoker will do little to help, and may strengthen their resolve to continue their self-destructive pattern. This is because, far more often than not, beliefs are formed though emotion rather than logic.

Being prepared to die for beliefs

Rebellion is always part of the equation in the cult/bad relationship dynamic. At first, you protect what damages you by directing your rebellion outwards to protect the source of the damage (this process is, unsurprisingly, busily encouraged by the source of the damage – such as the tobacco industry – to protect itself). Then (hopefully, once you’ve had that moment of awakening) you re-direct the rebellion against what is really destroying you and so save yourself. Rather than blind rebellious force against, for example ‘busybody non-smokers’, we now have intelligent rebellion. But the common element is rebellion. It is always there. The rebellious smoker has unwittingly been brainwashed into being prepared to lay down their lives for the ’cause’ of smoking.

Beliefs are truly powerful. We all, sadly, know of terrorists who were willing to die for their beliefs. But many smokers are only too equally willing to die for their beliefs. People don’t just throw away their health, their looks or their lives unless they have beliefs. Even if these beliefs are unconsciously held and not fully recognised. People believe in their own autonomy and powers of independent thought, and will claim that they have formulated their beliefs themselves. They often fail to recognise when their dearly held views have actually been supplied by others.

Smoking beliefs and arguments

There’s plenty of them. Some are quite imaginative!

• I could be run over by a bus tomorrow/got to die from something
  One in 14,000 people are run over; one in two 20-a-day smokers are killed by their cigarettes.
• It’s not the smoking that’s giving me this cough etc.
  No, of course not – and beating someone up in a relationship just proves how much they love you right?
• Smokers are more interesting/creative/exciting/cool/bohemian/etc – Smoking is part of my identity!
  Not even going to comment! Where are we – high school? Was no one interesting, cool etc before tobacco was introduced? OK, so I did comment.
• I’ll give up when I choose to. I just haven’t chosen to.
  Yeah, yeah! Just do it.
• It’s my friend/companion/’secret vice’. It ‘looks after me’ when I’m stressed/upset/disappointed/bored etc.
  Yeah, weakening your gums, destroying your serotonin so you get more depression and pain, slowing blood flow into your penis (if you’re a man) and shrivelling your ovaries (if you’re a woman), dimming your vision, and making you look 10 years older. If a person did this to me I wouldn’t be sending them Christmas cards.
• I only smoke one to four cigarettes a day. Where’s the harm?
  Compared with those who have never smoked, men and women who smoke between one and four cigarettes a day are almost three times as likely to die of coronary artery disease.
• It punctuates the day – full stop at the end of a meal, comma in a meeting etc. Mmmm… right!
• My Uncle Fred smoked every day of his life and ran marathons until he was 110!
  Good! Was he insane? The average smoker pays seven years of life for their habit.
• If I didn’t smoke, what would I do with my hands?
  Errrr… go look at some non-smokers or people who haven’t started yet – or think back!
• I use smoking to relax, concentrate etc.
  So which is it – relaxation or stimulation? It can’t do both. Do non-smokers never relax/concentrate? That’s your reason for sacrificing yourself for the tobacco company?
• I’m completely physically addicted and there’s nothing I can do.
  Ah – so smokers never go on long haul flights or sleep eight hours without waking up to smoke? Conditioned association to certain times and activities is not physical addiction.

There must be more in the smokers’ belief system, but I have outlined the main ones, I think. None of them sound as compelling to me as the thought of eternal glory and reward in paradise which inspires other believers to lay down their lives.

Since 1945 90,000,000 people have sacrificed their lives for the tobacco industry’s profits. About ten people would have been killed by smoking during the time it takes you to read this. Three thousand children ’sign up’ everyday in the US and become regular smokers. They join the cult and some never break free. In Britain twelve times as many people have been killed by smoking as died in World War Two. We justify, protect, and romanticise to ourselves and others what kills us. We do the head in the sand thing. But, believe it or not. I am not an anti-smoker! Not at all.

Get over it

If you loved someone but now you hate them, you are still emotionally involved. You are still attached. Love and hate both have intense emotional focus in common.

It’s the same for ex-cult members and ex-smokers. The worst kind of ex-smoker is the sanctimonious ‘anti-smoker’. Get over it, I say. When something no longer fits, when you’ve really outgrown it, you don’t need to hate it or focus on it at all. It just fades into irrelevance. When curing people of smoking, I take account of their possible need to protect (the smoking habit) and their need for rebellion, and agree the goal of becoming a relaxed ‘non-smoker’ rather than an impassioned ‘ex-smoker’. Hypnosis – done well – can be an excellent treatment for smoking as long as the hypnotherapist has a sophisticated understanding of psychology and can appreciate how the smoker has already been hypnotised by the cigarettes. Smokers have to be de-hypnotised as much as hypnotised.

But haven’t they really got to want to stop?

When faced with a rebellious smoker or a reluctant quitter, I think we can forget the old much-bleated cliché: ‘Yes, but they’ve got to really want to stop!’ As a therapist, it is one’s job to increase motivation and use rebellion as the powerful force it is to rescue the captive of smoking before it kills them.

It’s going to be interesting to see the results of the public ban. Maybe there will just be a greater incidence of rebellious and infatuated smokers!

ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2007) — Telecommuting is a win-win for employees and employers, resulting in higher morale and job satisfaction and lower employee stress and turnover. These were among the conclusions of psychologists who examined 20 years of research on flexible work arrangements.

The findings, based on a meta-analysis of 46 studies of telecommuting involving 12,833 employees, are reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

“Our results show that telecommuting has an overall beneficial effect because the arrangement provides employees with more control over how they do their work,” said lead author Ravi S. Gajendran. “Autonomy is a major factor in worker satisfaction and this rings true in our analysis. We found that telecommuters reported more job satisfaction, less motivation to leave the company, less stress, improved work-family balance, and higher performance ratings by supervisors.”

An estimated 45 million Americans telecommuted in 2006, up from 41 million in 2003, according to the magazine WorldatWork. The researchers defined telecommuting as “an alternative work arrangement in which employees perform tasks elsewhere that are normally done in a primary or central workplace, for at least some portion of their work schedule, using electronic media to interact with others inside and outside the organization.”

Gajendran and his fellow researcher David A. Harrison, PhD from Pennsylvania State University, found that telecommuting has more positive than negative effects on employees and employers. “A work-at-home option gives telecommuters more freedom in their work arrangement and removes workers from direct, face-to-face supervision,” Gajendran said. In addition, the employees in their study reported that telecommuting was beneficial for managing the often conflicting demands of work and family.

Contrary to popular belief that face time at the office is essential for good work relationships, said Gajendran, telecommuters’ relationship with their managers and coworkers did not suffer from telecommuting with one exception. Employees who worked away from their offices for three or more days a week reported worsening of their relationships with coworkers. However, managers who oversaw telecommuters reported that the telecommuters’ performance was not negatively affected by working from home. And those who telecommuted reported that they did not believe their careers were likely to suffer from telecommuting.

The typical telecommuter examined in the analysis was a manager or a professional from the information technology or sales and marketing department of a firm. The average age of a telecommuter was 39; men and women were equally represented.

Women telecommuters may derive even greater benefits from telecommuting. The authors found that study samples with greater proportions of women found they received higher performance ratings from their supervisors and that their career prospects improved, rather than worsened.

“Telecommuting has a clear upside: small but favorable effects on perceived autonomy, work-family conflict, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent and stress,” the authors wrote. “Contrary to expectations in both academic and practitioner literatures, telecommuting has no straightforward, damaging effects on the quality of workplace relationships or perceived career prospects.”

Journal article: “The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta-Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences,” Ravi S. Gajendran, PhD and David A. Harrison, PhD, Pennsylvania State University; Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 92, No. 6.

here have been so many times I have been overwhelmed with
the amount of clutter that has gathered in my home and my workspace. Sometimes it gets so much
I just can’t start for wondering where to start.

We are inundated every day with junk mail through the door, paperwork from
the kids school, paperwork from club meetings, and at work there is a mountain
of paperwork (although we are trying hard to be a ‘paperless office’).

Well it’s time to take your power back and clear it or bin it.

Plan a day to clear the clutter

Take a full day, plan it and tell your family what you are doing and get rid
of them for the day. Go through all the drawers in the kitchen and clear
the paperwork. One pile for the bin and one pile to be filed. Clear
the rest of the clutter from the drawers once the paperwork’s been sorted.

Go through all the cupboards and do the same there. One room at a time,
one cupboard at a time. Depending on the size of the house you should
have cleared your house of clutter in 4 or 5 hours. Now, bin it and file
it as appropriate. Do this with your wardrobes and clear clothes that
you haven’t worn for more than six months. Once the whole house
is done, sit back and wallow in the feeling of emptiness. It’s
a great feeling, your mind will be freer, your soul will feel lighter and your
thoughts will be free to concentrate on your desires.

Do this at work as well. Clear the inbox, clear the in tray and shred
the paper you don’t need. It’s better to do this when nobody
is in the office so you won’t be disturbed and it will take less time.

This is one of the best tips to clear your mind and lighten the spirit. It
also has the knock on benefit of being able to manifest your desires quicker
as your mind is freer and cleaner to concentrate more.

I am trying to stop eating as much rubbish as I can just now. My downfall is biscuits and cakes. If I see a pack of cookies you can be pretty
sure that with a cup of tea or coffee they will be all gone in a matter of
minutes. I want to stop eating them as much as I know the pounds will
pile on; however is it fair not to have them in the house at all when I have
2 healthy children? No it’s not. So I was looking for another way
of stopping myself eating a packet of biscuits whenever I had a cup of tea
or coffee. I have finally discovered a really simple way of doing it. I
have been using it for the last 7 days and it is working brilliantly, I can’t
believe how easy it is.

Train your brain method

Whenever you reach for that pack of biscuits say out loud ‘I don’t
like biscuits!’, whenever you are offered the food you crave say ‘I
don’t like (the name of the food)’, if you are talking about your
downfall food in conversation tell people you don’t like that particular
food. Don’t tell people you are telling yourself this to stop you
eating as much, just tell them you don’t like it and leave it at that.

I can imagine the conversation between my brain and my conscious:

Brain: “Steve reach for that pack of biscuits I’m dying on a little
biscuit fix.”
Conscience: “I don’t like biscuits!”
Brain: “Yeah right! just put out your hand a slide a few from the packet
and into your mouth.”
Conscience: “I don’t like biscuits!’ A little more forceful
this time.
Brain: “What! You love biscuits, you had twenty just yesterday. What’s
going on?”
Conscience: “I don’t like biscuits!”
Brain: A little confused “Okaaaay, I’ll play your little game.”

2 days later

Brain: “Steve, reach out for that pack….oh, sorry I forgot you
don’t like biscuits. Fancy an apple”
Conscience: “I love apples, take my legs to the fridge.”

What is happening here is that there is, what psychologists call, cognitive
dissonance. You are saying to yourself you don’t like something
but your brain doesn’t believe that just now. After a few days
both brain and conscience work hand in hand as the brain has been told that
many times it believes the conscience and simply accepts the fact that you
don’t like the food.

This is simplifying it a little but you get the picture.

I am thinking of ways of using this method on other areas of my life. Let
me know your thoughts on this.

Do you ever feel you do the same things over and over again and it feels like
Groundhog Day? Why not take a leaf out of the Dice Man’s book and roll
the dice and make a choice for you.

Luke Rhinehart wrote the Dice Man back in 1978 and it is still as fresh today
as it was then. I read it about 7 years ago and thought the concept of
living your life by the dice was a great concept. I didn’t have
the balls or the inclination to try it out in my own life back then but it
is a great way to try something new which is not too life changing.

How to use it:

By way of an example, list six things you would like to do. Make two
of them quote mild and run of the mill, make another two a bit more daring
and the last two way out there. For example say you want to do something
different on Friday night as you usually go out for a meal and a drink afterwards. Your
choices might be:

1. Go to a restaurant in a town you have never been to
2. Go out on the town and then stay in a hotel
3. Go to a club you don’t like
4. Go to a midnight showing at the movies
5. Make love in a strange town
6. Go to the ballet

These are quite mild examples, but I am sure you get the picture.

I have tried this in the past with my sons. I have asked them to choose
6 different things they would really like to do and then we have rolled the
dice and let it decide what we do. We made a game of it, it was great
fun and we have had some great days out.

Roll the die take a chance!

One of his techniques which I have used in the past and recently discovered again is called ‘Noise removal breathing’
Win hypothesised that for every situation in our lives there is a different breathing pattern. This is logical as when we are angry our breathing pattern is different from when we are calm and relaxed. This is obvious as the two situations are opposite ends of the spectrum. However breathing patterns are also different when we are calm and sleeping and calm and alert.

Using this information we can control and rid ourselves of certain behaviours, fears and phobias.

There are various methods for using these techniques but I will use the ‘noise removal technique’ to describe to you here:

This method is used to rid yourself of all the bad energy, toxins, and leftover emotions that dwell inside your body. It’s like having a really refreshing shower after a hot sticky day, only you are cleaning the inside of your body.

The noise removal method:

1. With each breath in, begin imagining (even picturing and feeling, if possible) that your air is coming in through the bottoms of your feet, all the way up from there. Breathe in as if you have to pull your air all the way up through ankles, legs and body, up to where you can breathe out through normal channels. (Perhaps picturing a nose in your feet might help, a nostril in the bottom of each foot between mid-arch and toes.) With each breath, breathe in against the pull of your air having to make its way up through the tissues and cells of your feet, ankles, legs and lower body …. Continue for several minutes, examining the effects you feel from this procedure ….

2. Picture or imagine piles of dried leaves or other debris being swirled up with each breath, out of your tissues and cells. Experience this stuff as being swirled up by each incoming breath, swirled up from the breath-swept tissues of your feet, legs and body, and swept up out of you on your deeply exhaled breath. Experience this as vividly as you can, with every breath. Sweep all that stuff cleanly out of you with your breath. (let all these leaves or debris represent all “noise”— tensions, toxins, tiredness, other pollutants which didn’t belong there.}

3. As these clouds of “noise” sweep cleanly out of you on your slowly, deeply, calmly exhaled breath, as all this debris hits the open air, see it flaming into showers of bright sparks!

(Even “noise” is energy: there is no such thing as “bad” energy, only congested energy compared to free flowing, useful energy, so that when this stuff is swept from “bad” configurations and hits the open air, it becomes good clean usable life-enhancing energy again.)

Sweep up as much of that stuff as you can with each and every incoming breath, blowtorch out that shower of bright sparks with your breath, deeply and softly breathed out as the flame of a blowtorch, and see how much more, with each breath out, you can fill the space around you with good released energy …

Continue for some minutes, studying the effects you feel from doing this…

4. Breathe in not only through your feet but through whatever parts of your body come to your attention in this context….. Breathe in against the pull of the air having to come in through the tissues and cells of each such part, swirl up as much “noise” as you can with each breath in; blowtorch out as much released energy in bright hot spark-showers as you can, with each breath …

(You may find it interesting to make mental note of just which parts of your body do come to your attention in this context, for you to breathe in through and to thereby swirl up and remove even subliminal “noise” from….)

Continue for several minutes, studying the effects you feel from this pattern of breathing and imaging.

5. In the same manner, use your breath to breathe up and away whatever could have in the slightest stood between you and even more profound levels of relaxed awareness. Continue this breathing-goal for several minutes, studying the effects you feel from it …

(In the same manner, use your breath to sweep up and away any feeling of discomfort, whenever experienced and not just during these exercises. Throughout your life, make it a reflex to respond to any problem, discomfort, difficulty or distress by this deep, slow, calm, releasing, noise-removal breathing. Emphasize breathing slowly when dealing with any distress … But first, before using this breathing on specific “targets” and problems, get in, over several sessions, a total of at least an hour’s worth of this type of breathing, emphasizing the clarity and pleasure aspects especially, to build your general comfort levels.)

For future reference—If and when you like: think back to some situation, relating to problems or difficulties or hurts you have experienced, and “breathe on it” in this manner, drawing up and away any static or negative feelings out of that experience, until you feel perfectly, wholly, comfortable while clearly recalling all aspects of that situation …. )

6. In the same manner, for several minutes before any task, creative work, schooling or performance of whatever nature, picture your goal for that activity and breathe up and away whatever could in the slightest have impeded full swift rich clean attainment of that goal—then go directly into that work and let fly!

7. In the same manner, breathe up and away whatever could in the slightest have impeded your clear, rich perception of beauty or of some insight ….