For as long as I can remember I have punctuated my day with regular ‘thinking breaks’. I don’t know when I started this habit or how I learned it. I only know that as far back in my working career as I can remember I have stopped mid-morning and mid-afternoon(ish) to switch off by reading [...]
One of the great gifts bequeathed to us by our evolutionary development is the ability to predict – to make assumptions based upon past experience – which allows us to prepare for what will happen in a variety of situations. We make assumptions to save time and to reduce uncertainty, in this they are useful. But we need to distinguish where there is uncertainty that implies real risk, and the sort that just makes us feel uncomfortable.
Lower levels of tolerance for uncertainty can make us risk averse, overly worried, and tend to draw conclusions prematurely.
This is perhaps one of the defining mantras of our age. ‘How to achieve more with less’ is usually applied to the workplace and business, what with spiralling costs and a crashing economy and all that. We hear it so often that we might overlook how the idea can be used to improve our personal lives as well.
Now it seems that there are situations where we benefit from the perception of doing less, while we are actually doing more.
For almost 100 years psychologists have been saying that we should protect ourselves from unremitting negativity, catastrophising and the constant worry of bad news.
That which we focus on becomes our reality, so too much content filled with negativity and disaster does our heads in, as they say. Here’s the antidote.
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