Self Help

Good Medicine, A Stroll In the Park

Author: Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. |

In our rushed and busy lives who has time to contemplate nature? We live in big urban centers, rush to work, rush home to do household chores and many of us even go to a second job in order to pay the bills and have some extra money.

A study, just published in Psychological Science, reported on a piece of research conducted at the University of Michigan. In the study, subjects were asked to study numbers which they had to remember and repeat backwards sometime later. They were then asked to participate in one of two activities. Some of the subjects walked through an arboretum while others walked through city streets. What were the results of the study?

You probably guessed that the students who walked through the arboretum performed better on the memory test than those who walked through city streets. In fact, in another experiment, even those who viewed pictures of nature versus pictures of urban centers performed better on memory tests. Why?

The explanation seems to go back to that early psychological writer, William James. He theorized that there are two types of attention, "involuntary attention," and "directed attention."

In directed attention, a lot of effort is put into doing a task such as memorizing numbers in the experiment. Involuntary attention is relaxed as exemplified by the walk in the arboretum. The participants rated the experience as very pleasant as opposed to those who walked through city streets.

After having memorized the list of numbers, the people who walked through the arboretum were able to be very relaxed. They did not have to make any effort at focusing attention.

According to the researchers, involuntary attention used in the arboretum, preserved lots of energy necessary for the memory test ahead. For those who walked through the urban center, directed attention continued to be used because of all the distracting stimuli surrounding a noisy and busy urban center. In other words, the extraneous stimuli competed for their cognitive and mental energies, resulting in a depletion of energy needed for the memory test.

Failing the Career IQ Test

Author: Thuy Sindell and Milo Sindell |

Like it or not, our work profession, that is "what we do" has significant impact on our lives and our sense of who we are in the world. No matter if you are a professional who knew your calling from an early age or an office administrator who works to pay the bills, each of us at some level depend on our work for the most basic sense of normalcy and alignment between who we are to what we do.

When we look at how we arrived at our work / career situation, for most of us "it" kind of just happened. We learned about a line of work or profession. Or maybe in school we fell into a subject that interests us. Or often pragmatically we just needed to have a job. This is not exactly predictable, organized, nor inspiring. What if there was a comprehensive way for us to create and manage our career that allowed us to understand our options, the requirements, and the roadmap to achieving that destination?

Take your own career IQ test. How intelligent are you when it comes to creating and managing your career? How did you wind up in your current job / profession? Did you intend to be where you are? Was there a clear path that you followed early on to get you to where you are? Do you have the acumen and confidence to pursue a new career if your job or profession no longer interested you or worse, went away? Explore these same questions with people you know.

If career development was taken seriously in this country, there would a curriculum and process that is standard for K-12 across the nation. Such a program would go beyond just introducing the various options for jobs, but would also teach the skills that are universal to navigating both professional and personal life successfully; and we don't mean just math and reading. We means skills like communication, skills that foster learning and curiosity, and skills that help navigate change. Furthermore, such a program would present the options for both professions that exist as well as universal skills that everyone should have as part of choosing and navigating a lifetime of work. What would the world be like if more people had the skills to navigate the ambiguity and challenges of today's job market?

Jennifer Aniston: 'I've Been Guilty of Dirty Fighting'

Author: Parade.com |

Jennifer Aniston lives out another rocky relationship on the big screen in the romantic comedy Love Happens. She plays a single florist who picks the wrong guys for the wrong reasons and is trying to learn to be cautious about commitment.

Can Aaron Eckhart, who plays a widower turned big-time self-help guru, change her mind over a long weekend? Aniston told Parade.com's Jeanne Wolf that she thinks we all have to keep trying to figure ourselves out.

There's nothing wrong with a little advice.
"I'm always going to be interested if somebody gives me a self-help book. I'll at least give it the first couple of pages because sometimes they speak and sometimes they don't. But they're worth investigating."

And don't criticize her for it.
"I say to people who look down their noses at motivational books, 'Screw them.' I'm telling you, people have got to mind their own business. It just shows, so obviously, their own fear or resentment. They put down somebody else's choice to sort of make themselves feel superior. They could probably use a little self-help themselves."

Learning about romance from doing romantic movies.
"They probably don't help because one is work and one is life. I certainly try to access my personal life when I'm doing my job. But you know what they say, 'Art imitates life, life imitates art.'"

Her own prescription for living.
"I say, 'Stay positive.' It doesn't mean that we can get through anything. But we have to recognize that it's fear that sort of sets everything on fire and spreads until everybody kind of gets on the fear bandwagon. That's just ridiculous."

How to argue with someone you care about.
"I'm not a fighter, I'm a discusser. I could probably use more fight in me. I don't yell. I talk. I can get dirty. I've been guilty of dirty fighting. But usually I don't like to fight. I like it to be harmonious and fun. So the quicker we can discuss an issue and get through it, the sooner we get back to the fun."