Can You Hear Compliments? How to Let Praise into Your Life

I was recently having a conversation with an old friend. We were talking about what was up lately and I was so excited about what was going on in her life, that I didn’t even realize that I was missing so much of what she said. It wasn’t until later, when I was recounting the conversation to my husband, that I realized she had paid me a lot of compliments and I glossed over every one like they never happened.

It’s not humility. Humility means not focusing on yourself, it doesn’t mean ignoring or degrading your achievements. So what is it that makes it so hard to hear and accept compliments?

I often struggle with perfectionism and have a tendency to hear criticism above all else. It’s one way in which perfectionism keeps satisfaction at arm’s length. It keeps us from feeling pride in trying and taking joy in our success. It’s full of sentiments like: I could have done more. I’ll have to do better next time. Everything worked out, but it’s not exactly what I wanted.

Nothing is good enough for perfectionism and it seeks confirmation from our environment that this is the case. It skews our ability to pick up on the positive feedback we receive. Perfectionism is achievement-blind. That’s how confirmation bias works — we tend to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms the preexisting belief that nothing we do is good enough. This is clearly self-sabotage.

And perhaps we feel we aren’t even good enough. Shame tells us there is something quintessentially wrong within us. We are separated from other people, unable to do and be what we want in life because we are flawed. “Unlike guilt, which is the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong,” said Marilyn J. Sorensen, Ph.D., in this 2015 article. “When a person experiences shame, they feel ‘there is something basically wrong with me.’”

“Early in life, individuals develop an internalized view of themselves as adequate or inadequate within the world,” Sorensen said. “Children who are continually criticized, severely punished, neglected, abandoned, or in other ways abused or mistreated get the message that they do not ‘fit’ in the world — that they are inadequate, inferior, or unworthy.”

We internalize verbal and nonverbal criticism we receive during childhood and they become shame-based beliefs we have about ourselves — I’m stupid. I’m unloveable. I’m a phony. I’m ugly. This is toxic shame which creates deeply held feelings of inadequacy.

“Emotional aspects of the psyche, both good and bad, seek expression. Therefore, when presented with any opportunity to interpret a situation as personally shameful and confirm what you learned about yourself, this aspect of your subconscious will rise to the surface, like it or not,” writes life coach Mike Bundrandt in his blog NLP Discoveries.

“It’s accompanied by voices, images, or beliefs originating in childhood and is associated with a negative ‘shame story’ about ourselves,” writes Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT, author of Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.

Whether it’s chronic shame or perfectionism editing the praise out of your life, there are steps you can take to start listening to positive feedback.

1. You might start by reviewing your conversations with other people. I often find that there are compliments I glossed over. Scroll up through your text messages or down into your Facebook timeline. I know the praise is there.

2. When someone says something nice to you, resist the urge to immediately say something kind in return. Really hear what they said. If someone thanks you, don’t turn around and say “No, thank you.” Receive that positivity, don’t just hand it back.

3. Don’t approach feedback with fear. When you know someone is critiquing something you did, fear will make you tense up and become almost impervious to anything but disappointment. Criticism is something you can accept or reject — it doesn’t have to be a mark against you. You’re just as likely to receive praise. Approach feedback with an open mind. It’s not about hurting your feelings.

4. Realize that your life consists of far more success than failure. Success shouldn’t be based on some grandiose scale like whether or not you’ve become a billionaire. Success is intangible. You fear failure but you’re resilient, you have a long history of overcoming obstacles. That personal history endures.

You are accomplished, highly competent, and resilient. Keep the focus on this and fill up your tank with praise.

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New Gaming Software Hopes to Train Brain to Resist Sweets

Innovative research uses technology to help people with a sweet-tooth lose weight. Researchers believe they can train the brain to better resist temptation and warn people of an unhealthy urge before the temptation occurs.

Specifically, Drexel University psychologists have created a computer game aimed at improving users’ inhibitory control. Additionally, the investigators are also rolling out a mobile app that used in conjunction with the Weight Watchers app, will alert users on unhealthy urges before they strike.

The game is designed to improve a person’s “inhibitory control,” the part of the brain that stops you from giving into unhealthy cravings — even when the smell of French fries is practically begging you to step inside a fast food restaurant.

In a second study, the researchers have developed a mobile app that intelligently detects patterns in a person’s eating habits. When users are likely to slip from their dietary plans, the app provides tailored strategies to put them back on track.

Researchers in Drexel’s Laboratory for Innovations in Health-Related Behavior Change are now seeking participants for both studies.

Innovative interventions to help people control their weight are sorely needed. On a national level, more than one-third (35.7 percent) of adults are considered to be obese and more than 74 percent obese or overweight.

While a number of factors contribute to the nation’s obesity epidemic, often the mind is the biggest barrier when it comes to losing weight, said Evan Forman, PhD, professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

It’s been shown, for example, that sweet foods trigger the same feel-good brain chemicals as addictive drugs.

“Millions of people are trying to lose weight, and they are going about it in a reasonable way – by trying to reduce calories. But you’re going to slip from your diet plan. That pretty much happens to everyone,” Forman said.

“You could say the secret of helping people actually lose weight is preventing these lapses, so we concentrated on how to best do that.”

Researchers believe weight control begins with mind control.

All day long, you have to make choices about what foods you consume. And it’s no secret that there is “a powerful part of your mind that drives you toward things that taste good and feel good,” Forman said.

Let’s say a colleague brings a box of doughnuts into the office. For a person who habitually consumes sweets, the first reaction is, “I want one.” The secondary response tries to pump the brakes on that urge. But that reaction is typically slower and less strong than impulse, according to Forman.

“However, studies have shown that if you do certain tasks that involve this inhibitory control over and over again, it actually gets stronger,” he said.

Forman and a team of researchers tested this theory in a recent study, published in the journal Appetite. Habitual snack food eaters were assigned to one of four short, training exercises designed to increase their mindful decision-making and strengthen their inhibitory control.

The study concluded that both types of training were successful in reducing snack food eating.

The researchers are now looking to find out whether inhibitory control training can help participants reduce their consumption of sugary foods, and ultimately lose weight.

Their new training game — called DietDash — first requires study participants to disclose the types of sugary foods they consume most frequently. They will then be assigned to one of four versions of a game that is customized to their diet.

For example, if someone lists soda and chocolate chip cookies as their favorite treats, those items will appear in the game.

Players are instructed to press certain keys to respond to different types of images, including pictures of tasty sugary foods and pictures of healthy foods. As the player’s inhibitory control improves, the game speed increases for an extra challenge. Users are instructed to play this game for eight minutes per day, every day for six weeks.

Though other studies have shown this type of training at least temporarily affects users’ eating habits, the researchers want to know what will happen over a course of two months.

“The study is really the first to attempt to train people for weeks in a row,” Forman said. “We think this can translate to real-world behaviors, because just like any task, it improves with practice.”

Once the study is complete, Forman said the computer game could also be developed into a mobile app.

Trending a person’s weight and providing feedback based upon user experience is an additional are of study.

To this end, the researchers’ second design is a weight loss app called DietAlert, developed with funding from Weight Watchers and the Obesity Society.

Used in conjunction with the Weight Watchers app, the smartphone application collects information about users’ eating habits and uses a mathematical algorithm to determine when they are most likely to lapse from their diet plans.

For example, the app may conclude that a person is most likely to eat junk food after lunch when she has skipped breakfast. As the app learns about someone’s patterns, it will send out a warning alert and offer a tip to help the user stick to his or her health plan.

“Part of the difficulty with a diet plan stems from an inability to determine and target factors that continue to cause lapses over and over again,” Forman said.

The DietAlert app distinguishes itself from the hundreds of other diet applications available, because it not only tracks a person’s eating habits, but it uses that information to give personalized advice.

“This app targets each individual person exactly when they need the help,” Forman said.

Source: Drexel University

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Optimists Make Better Lovers - People who predict happy endings with their partners have better relationships in the now.

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Human Ears Can Hear Better-Than-CD Quality (Just Barely)

Jay Z's "Tidal" platform promises listeners CD-quality streaming music, in all its 44.1 kilohertz, 16 bit glory—much better, they say, than compressed files, like mp3s. But why stop there? Neil Young's PonoMusic Store sells music that's even better than CD quality. 

In a YouTube video for the service Young compares mp3 listeners to scuba divers, muddling around the seafloor. "You know you're walking around in the murk and there's big fish down there, that's kind of like listening to an mp3." 

CD listeners are underwater, too. The only way to rise to the top, he says, is to dial up sample rate to over four times that of CD: to 192 kilohertz. "When you make it to 192, you actually break through the surface, and you're breathing air. And the feeling is different, it actually is a visceral relief. You feel good."

But… how good? What researchers, record producers, audiophiles, sound engineers, want to know is: "Is CD, compact disc, enough?" Joshua Reiss (RICE), who leads audio engineering research at Queen Mary University of London. "And the arguments seem to be never-ending."

Reiss took a stab at settling the argument with a meta-analysis—a study of studies—on whether people can really perceive better-than-CD quality sound. He analyzed data from 18 studies, including more than 400 participants and nearly 13,000 listening tests. Overall, listeners picked out the better-than-CD-quality track 52.3 percent of the time. Statistically significant, if not all that impressive.

But when Reiss isolated studies that trained listeners first and gave them a chance to feast their ears on the difference, their odds of picking the higher-quality track climbed to 60 percent. Suggesting there may actually be some perceptible difference... at least enough to convince Reiss to change his listening habits. "Yes I think I actually will, based on this." The analysis is in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. [Joshua D. Reiss, A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation]

Not that it will settle all arguments. "No, no never. But what I think it might do is allow the researchers to move on a little bit from this question and to start looking deeper into the causes of the perception." And for the audiophiles out there? It's no doubt music to their ears.

—Christopher Intagliata

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

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Jessica lost 91 pounds

Transformation of the Day: Jessica lost 91 pounds. This AKA Soror had been overweight since childhood, but she was able to change her lifestyle by setting attainable goals, having great support system and never giving up. It’s taken 5 years of hard work and commitment to figure out what works best for her and she doesn’t […]

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Weekly Coffee Date

Happy Friday, friends, and happy Fourth of July weekend! The Fourth is always such a happy time. Everyone seems to be in a good mood–grilling (FYI this is the most popular burger recipe of all time on Pinterest), celebrating, lighting the fireworks we bought in another state. And I don’t know if this is yet another...Read More

The post Weekly Coffee Date appeared first on Andie Mitchell.

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Discrimination Can Lead to Alcohol Abuse

Over the last 3 decades’ research has discovered that discrimination can physically affect the health of individuals. Specifically, investigators learned that discrimination may be linked to poor cardiovascular health within the African American Population.

Eventually, the scope of these studies broadened, uncovering a connection between discrimination and other health disparities among minority groups. New research emanating from the University of Iowa, finds another negative health outcome linked to discrimination: alcohol abuse.

“We’ve had this idea that discrimination is associated with heavier drinking and drinking-related problems, but we didn’t have a clear understanding of the evidence underneath that,” says Paul Gilbert, assistant professor of the Department of Community and Behavioral Health.

“I wanted to uncover what we know and how we know it. What does the science actually say?”

Experts have known for decades that drinking is a common coping response to stress–a phenomenon called stress-reactive drinking, Gilbert says.

“We recognize discrimination as a stressor, and we recognize people drink in response to stress,” Gilbert says. “But do they drink in response to discrimination?”

The paper, “Discrimination and Drinking: A Systematic Review of the Evidence,” appears online in in Social Science & Medicine.

For the study, Gilbert searched six online databases for studies related to discrimination and drinking, winnowing his potential sources down to about 1,200 scientific studies that met his criteria.

From there, he identified 97 peer-reviewed, published research papers with quantitative evidence that showed a link between discrimination and heavy and hazardous drinking. Seventy-one studies involved racial discrimination, and the rest examined discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender.

“Our study supports the notion that discrimination is harmful to health, specifically through alcohol,” says Gilbert.

Investigators discovered several gaps in the research. For example, the majority of studies involved interpersonal discrimination against African Americans, such as being treated poorly in a store or being called a name.

Gilberts says more studies need to be done about discrimination against other groups, including other racial and ethnic groups, and discrimination due to religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, or disability status.

He also would like to see a more nuanced look at what types of discrimination might be linked to heavy and hazardous drinking.
For example, studies could involve systematic or structural discrimination, such as school and neighborhood segregation.

Additionally, studies of internalized discrimination — which occurs when members of a racial minority absorb the racist messages they hear, resulting in self-hatred or hatred of their minority group — demand investigation.

Finally, Gilbert hopes researchers will take a closer look at the types of alcohol abuse linked to being discriminated against.

“The basic knowledge is now there,” he says. “The next step to advance science is to say what specific groups are involved, what specific type of discrimination are they experiencing, and what specifically were the alcohol outcomes.

Was it just heavier drinking, or was it heavy drinking that led to dependence–or is it alcohol-related problems like getting in a car crash or work and family problems?”

Source: University of Iowa

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