Posts in category: Psychology

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we all feel stressed every now and then.  Some of us more often than others.

There are all sorts of things we can try to help reduce our feelings of stress, and get negative emotions under control.  We can practice mindfulness, take a bit of time out to do some yoga, or try some flower remedies to see if they work for us.

But what if there was something we could do that took very little time or effort but that has been shown in studies to reduce these kinds of emotions?

Next time you’re feeling stressed out and overrun by negative emotions, try this one little trick.

Talk to yourself in the third person.

Stick with me on this, there really is some science behind it!

A study was carried out in Michigan that basically found that talking to ourselves in the third person really does help us to regulate our emotions.  The researchers think it’s down to the fact that referring to ourselves in this way helps us get a bit of emotional and psychological distance from our problems.

So, if you’re stressed out about something, rather than asking yourself “why am I so stressed out by this?” you would think “why is Madeline so stressed by this?”.  Or, you know, whatever your own name is.

One of the things that is particularly interesting is that the researchers noted that thinking to ourselves in the third person isn’t any more taxing than doing it in the first person.

It doesn’t take any extra effort.

So it’s potentially a really simple way to reduce our feelings of stress, instead of things like mindfulness or yoga that take a fair bit of effort and concentration.

The researchers in Michigan carried out 2 different studies to test their theory.

• In the first study the participants were asked to react to images that were either neutral or disturbing, in both the first person and the third person.  They found that emotional brain activity decreased really quickly, within one second actually, when the participants used the third person.

• In the other study the participants were asked to recount painful experiences from the past, again using both the first person and the third person when referring to themselves.  The researchers found that the participants had less brain activity in the region that’s used for reflecting on painful emotional situations when they used the third person.

So both of the studies showed the same thing; that using the third person can help us to experience less negative emotions.

You just have to get past the fact that it feels like a slightly weird thing to do!

What do you think?  Would you give this a try next time you feel stressed out or upset?  I think it has to be worth a try, and can definitely see the logic behind it helping you distance yourself from your emotions a bit.

This post has been linked up with The List Linky.

We’re well and truly into Autumn now, and it won’t be long before we slip into Winter.

If you’re one of the many people who suffer with the winter blues, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, then you might already be feeling like curling up and hibernating with a Game of Thrones boxset (while hoping that our winter doesn’t last anywhere near as long as the ones that Old Nan liked to talk about).

According to the NHS 1 in 15 people in the UK struggle with SAD.

So you’re really not alone in feeling down as the days get colder and the evenings get darker.  It’s thought to be down to the fact that in the winter we’re exposed to less natural light, so our bodies produced more melatonin, making us feel more lethargic and generally a bit down.

There are some things you can do to help get you through though, because if you’re anything like me when it comes to binge-watching then that boxset won’t last you the whole winter.

A study carried out by Conner et al. last year found that creative activities can improve our sense of well-being.

Specifically, they found that engaging in a creative activity one day, leads to a boost in positive emotions the next day.  And feeling better makes us more inclined to engage in those creative activities again, and so we feel another boost and so on in a lovely little upward spiral.

Don’t worry though, you don’t have to be an artist or even a particularly creative person to get these benefits.  There are all sorts of creative activities you can try this winter that don’t require you to be amazingly skilled.  Remember, no one will be judging your efforts when Spring rolls around!

So, to get your creative juices flowing, here are 7 different things you can try this Winter:

• Creative writing

Grab a blank notebook and a pen and get writing.  Who knows, you might have a bestselling novel in you!  If you’re not a natural story writer though you could try other forms of writing, like poetry.  If traditional poetry feels too intimidating then give haikus a go, they’re pretty fun to put together!

You could also go down a slightly different route and write some letters to your children.  Maybe put a little scrap book together, of your memories of what it was like waiting for them to arrive.  Your favourite memories of them so far.  Your hopes for their future.  Anything goes really.

• Knitting and crocheting

These hobbies have had a bit of a revival in recent years, and have become a pretty trendy thing to know how to do.  And there is something cosy about the idea of curling up on the sofa of an evening, with a load of wool and creating something.

If you’ve never done it before then you can get a book on knitting or crocheting for beginners easily enough, or check out some of the videos on YouTube to get you started.  My friend has basically taught herself how to do it this year and what she makes now is amazing.  If you want something to inspire you, check out her Etsy shop – JoJoDesignsOnline.

Just remember to be kind to yourself, allow yourself to be a beginner.  It might take some time and practice but once you’ve learnt the basics you’ll be away and the dark winter evenings will fly by!

• Cooking and baking

If you’d prefer a creative activity that gets you up off the sofa then cooking and baking could be the answer.  Dig out your old family recipe book, or spend a bit of time on Pinterest to get some recipe inspiration, then get making!

To get you started, you could try my really easy slow cooker carrot and lentil soup which is so lovely and warming to eat on chilly winter days.  Or if you’re more in the mood for something sweet, then my recipe for chocolate ginger bites should hit the spot!

• Drawing and sketching

For the more artistically inclined, grabbing a sketchbook and some pencils and getting sketching could be a great option.  If you find yourself staring at the blank pages of your sketchbook, with inspiration not so easy to come by then Pinterest is your friend.  Just search on there for something as simple as ‘what to draw’ and you’ll find so many ideas to get you going.

• Painting

Taking the last idea one step further, you could give painting a go.  There are so many options with painting that you’re bound to find a style to suit you.  You might discover a natural talent for watercolour landscapes, you never know!

Even if paint-by-numbers is more your level, it really doesn’t matter, as long as you’re enjoying yourself and being creative.

• Playing an instrument/songwriting

Dig out your old recorder from your school days and see if you can still remember how to play three blind mice on it.  Or step out of your comfort zone and find a local music teacher to help you learn something new.  If writing is more your thing, then try your hand at songwriting instead.  You could even team up with a musical friend to come up with a melody and some lyrics together.

• Photography

I’ve saved one of my personal favourite creative activities for last.  Photography can be such a great hobby for sparking your creativity.  And I love how you can practice indoors on wet, gloomy days but it can also give you a push to get outside to capture some landscapes or fun outdoor photos of your family.

It doesn’t stop when you press the shutter either.  Playing around with editing your photos can also be a lot of fun.  Try various filters to find a style you like.  See what photos work well as black and white rather than colour images.  Then get some of your pictures printed and spend a few evenings sorting them into albums, designing a scrapbook around them or planning some fun ways to display them in your home.

Hopefully this post has inspired you to get a bit creative this winter, and that it goes some way in helping to keeping the winter blues at bay.

What are your favourite creative activities?  Do you find you naturally spend more time doing them in the colder months?

The first night after we brought Rhys home from the hospital he barely slept at all.  I was up with him pretty much all night, absolutely exhausted.  Which it turned out is a really common experience with newborns.

They don’t have any concept of night and day when they’re first born.  So one of our first jobs as parents is to try and set their little body clocks and get them to be more awake during the day and sleep more at night.

Light plays a huge part in this, and throughout our lives it’s so important for a good night’s sleep.

We should be exposed to natural light as much as possible during the day.  Exposure to sunlight increases the levels of serotonin in our brains, making us feel calmer and happier and more awake.

In the summer it’s often easier to make sure we get enough natural light as we tend to be out and about a bit more. 

But lots of people find it harder in the winter, and seasonal affective disorder is really quite common.  If you find that you’re suffering with the lack of natural light in the mornings to wake you up and get you going, then something like the Lumie body clock can be a great option for keeping your body clock on track and your mood lifted.

As the day goes on and we get closer to bedtime, we should be reducing the amount of light we’re exposed to.

Our bodies naturally produce a hormone called melatonin in the evenings, which prepares our bodies for sleep and makes us feel sleepy.  The thing is, too much light can suppress the body’s production of melatonin.

So to keep our body clocks on track it’s really important to try and keep lights dim at bedtime, and throughout the night as much as possible.

Adults might want to try sleeping with a light-blocking sleep mask on to stop as much light as possible reaching their eyes.  For children’s rooms black out blinds are a great option to stop natural evening light or artificial light from street lamps creeping in and disturbing sleep.  There are so many different designs now for blinds, you can choose something that fits your child’s room like these Star Wars blinds from Velux.

If you have a little one who is scared of sleeping in complete darkness you might need to have a night light in their room.  If you can, try and find one that emits red light rather than blue light, as it’s less disruptive to our circadian rhythms.  The same goes for bedside lamps, if you might need to turn one on in the middle of the night to care for your baby, then try and get a light that emits a red light rather than blue.

Remember too that electronic devices with bright screens can affect us too so try to turn off the tv/computer about an hour before you need to go to sleep, and resist the urge to scroll through Facebook on your phone in bed before you drift off.

Easier said than done I know, but you really might find the quality of your sleep improves you step away from the bright lights of electronics at bedtime.

Disclaimer – this is a collaborative post

If you’re anything like me, you’ll know that feeling of having a thousand and one things that you’re trying to keep track of, and keep on top of every day.  I find it utterly exhausting trying to keep up with my mental to-do list.  I much prefer getting everything out of my head and on to paper.

I still feel though that I’m not getting the best out of my to-do lists.

One reason for this is that I tend to have several lists on the go at once, so I still feel completely overwhelmed and end up losing track of where I’ve even put some of those lists.

So if you, like me, need some help to rock your to-do list and actually get stuff done, this is the post for you.

I think most of us love a good to-do list. 

One of the reasons they help us feel better is down to a psychological phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect that comes into play when we get all our to-dos out of our heads and onto paper.

Zeigarkik, a Russian psychologist, was watching waiters in a busy restaurant one day and noticed that they were brilliant at remembering what people had ordered.  But as soon as the dishes were served, the memory of who had ordered what just vanished.  It wasn’t important any more for them to remember the order.  They had completed that task and so there was no need for their brains to hang on to that bit of information any more.

What Zeigarnik concluded from watching all this, was that we tend to remember the things we need to do better than things we have completed.

A more recent study by Baumeister and Masicampo at Wake Forest University took this idea a little further.  They found that our brains are occupied with the things we need to get done, but simply writing down a plan for getting them done can free up that brain space and stop us feeling so anxious and overwhelmed by how much we have to do.

So that’s a bit of the psychology behind why to-do lists are so useful, and now we can get to the part about rocking yours and getting more stuff done!

Get it all out.

The best place to start is with a huge brain dump.

Grab a pen and a notebook and get everything single task that is floating around your head down on paper.  Don’t try and edit yourself at this stage, just write down every last to-do that you can think of.

Break it down.

Go through your list and start to break it down.  I like to split my to-dos into separate lists for my blog, my photography and my life in general.

From there start looking at any tasks that are really big and overwhelming, or just a big vague.

Make sure each item on your to-do list is easily actionable.  So rather than have something like ‘get fit’ on your list, you want to have a few things like ‘book an induction at the gym’ and ‘buy new running shoes’.

Get your priorities straight.

Look through your list and work out which tasks are the most important/urgent.  Then look at the tasks that will bring you the most results.  The Pareto Principle states that, in many cases, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

If you take a look at all the items on your list, it most likely that only a few of them are related to important issues.  These are the tasks you want to prioritise and try and clear off your list first according to the Pareto Principle.  Those few important tasks will produce the most significant results, more so than if you clear off 20 smaller, less important tasks from your list.

Make a plan and set a deadline.

Once you know which tasks to focus on first, set yourself deadlines for when those tasks need to be completed.  Be realistic with your deadlines, but be strict with yourself too.  Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

So if you have a task that needs to be done by the end of the day, you will get it finished before you head to bed.  But if you decide that actually it needs to be done by the end of the week, then it will take that long to complete it.

Giving yourself a tight deadline forces you to fight against the urge to procrastinate and just get things done.

Celebrate your completed tasks.

I’m not saying you should throw yourself a party or crack open the champagne, but giving yourself a little reward for crossing items off your to-do list isn’t a bad idea.  It’s all down to operant conditioning.  If you celebrate completing one of your tasks with a little reward, then you’ll feel good about it, and so be more likely to want to keep going and cross more things off your list.

Speaking of which, make sure you actually cross things off your list.  Psychologically, this gives you a sense of achievement, a little boost which encourages you to keep working on the rest of the list.

Hopefully this approach to tackling your to-do list will help make it more efficient and you more productive. 

The main thing really though, is to just start taking action on it.  Just do something, anything, to get some momentum going and get some items crossed off that list.

Look for little windows of time when you can fit in some of the smaller jobs on your list, like phoning to make your dentist appointment while waiting for the kettle to boil for your mid morning cuppa.  Having a well-organised to-do list means that when you find yourself with a bit of time, you can get straight on with tackling the important tasks, rather than trying to work out what needs to be done.

Are you a to-do list fan?  Do you work better with a paper copy of your list, or have you moved to a digital system?  I would love to know what works best for you!