Month: October 2009

By its very nature, life is dynamic. That makes it impossible to truly stand still.
If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind. So every day, in some way or another, take action to move your life forward.
Just a small improvement, just a subtle positive step, is infinitely preferable to doing nothing. Always, there is some little something you can do to better your life and your world.
What can you do right now to solve a problem that’s been frustrating you? What step can you take in the next few minutes that will bring you closer to the accomplishment of an important goal?
There is something you can do, and those small efforts quickly add up as time goes on. So instead of complaining that you can’t get it all accomplished at once, do a little bit, and then do it again.
Always, your life is filled with energy, and is moving in one direction or another. Harness that energy, align it with your highest purpose, and proceed constantly in the direction of your dreams.

Opposites attract….We use very little of our brainpower….American culture teems with commonly accepted pop-psych beliefs. They’re embedded in TV talk shows, self-help books, websites, movies, magazines, radio talk shows, and, of course, everyday conversation. In a new book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (Wiley-Blackwell), Scott Lilienfeld and his coauthors explore the gulf between what millions of people say is so and the truth. While some of these myths are just plain fascinating, others may lead to bad decisions with unfortunate consequences. U.S. News spoke to Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, about five of the myths exposed in the book:

Opposites attract. This widespread assumption has almost certainly provoked people to seek out mates who are as different from them as possible, says Lilienfeld. But not only do opposites not attract in romantic relationships, but being too different from a partner in personality, beliefs, and attitude is a good predictor of a future breakup, says Lilienfeld. For the most part, similarities attract (although 100 percent carbon-copy couplings can go stale). Pairing up with someone who is a yin to your yang may make life more exciting in the short run, but it’s unlikely to be a recipe for long-term love, he says. (Learn more with the Triple A’s of a Good Relationship.)

We use only 10 percent of our brains. Who wouldn’t like to believe we have a fabulous stockpile of untapped potential? That 90 percent of our brains lie dormant, waiting to be unlocked? There’s no good evidence to suggest that’s true. To the contrary, says Lilienfeld, nearly all of our brain is constantly humming. So much for gadgets promising to boost brainpower. (Try these 4 Exercises to Sharpen Your Brain.)

Mozart makes infants smarter. Hike a baby’s IQ by aiming the Jupiter Symphony at mom’s expanding abdomen? Lilienfeld chuckles. The original study flicking at this notion, he says, wasn’t even based on babies but on college students who performed better on a spatial reasoning test after listening to Mozart for 10 minutes. And that probably was due to a boost in alertness, akin to the effect of coffee, not the classical tunes, he says. Still, the market exploded with Mozart-effect products for infants. Even the governor of Georgia was swayed, Lilienfeld recalls: He added money to the budget so that every Georgia newborn could get a free Mozart CD or cassette.

Low self-esteem is a key to future psychological problems. “The self-help industry has probably persuaded people who don’t have the highest self-esteem [to believe] they can’t amount to much in life,” says Lilienfeld. It may hurt people whose confidence is at basement level, but in general, he says, the link between self-esteem and “mental adjustment” is modest at best. Nor is high self-esteem, the obvious flip side of the belief, always good. A subset of people brimming with self-esteem could be considered narcissistic and are at heightened risk, says Lilienfeld, of aggression if challenged or insulted.

Full moons trigger wacky behavior. Murders, suicides, admissions to psychiatric hospitals, biting dogs, car accidents–all have been blamed on a full moon. But researchers have unearthed no good evidence of a “lunar effect,” says Lilienfeld, despite earlier flawed findings and ideas promoted by writers and psychiatrists. Why has this myth–and others about purely coincidental relationships–persisted? People tend to remember events that confirm their beliefs and ignore those that don’t, says Lilienfeld. If a tree smashes through your Volvo’s windshield on a night the moon is full, you might connect the two and blame the orb in the sky; if nothing odd happens during a full moon, you’re not likely to log that into your mental diary. That hasn’t stopped some police departments from putting more cops on the street when the moon is full, says Lilienfeld.

Give more than is expected of you, and you’ll get much more than you expect. Rather than obsessing over how little you can get by with doing, focus on how very much you can get done.
If you set out to cheat life, it is you who will be cheated. When you set about to get something for nothing, what you end up with is nothing worth having.
Instead, go ahead and give all you can to the effort. Then find ways to give more.
Fulfillment is not in the getting. Fulfillment is in the creating, and doing, and giving.
Fulfillment in life comes from making a difference. When you have an opportunity to make a difference, do so generously and with abandon.
Within every highly successful person is an unquenchable thirst for adding value to the lives of others. Keep finding new ways to give more than you can imagine, and know the joy of true and lasting success.