Enhancing Perception: Strategies for Positive Living

1. Perception

2. What Are Perceptions? Cognitive interpretations of people, things, and events within your world

3. Dan Miller “perception”

7. Perception Intervention • Selective awareness • Focusing on the positive • Realize that there is both good and bad in every situation • Perspective • Look around “Take time to smell the Roses” page 133 • We don’t have it “so bad” • Contentment • Comparison • Envy

8. Perception Intervention • Attitude • Gratitude & thankfulness “Attitude of Gratitude” • Sand analogy: can either irritate or create • Sand in Oyster makes • Sand can cause a blister on your foot or be silicon for surgery • Road crew working: 1st says moving dirt, 2nd says making a living, 3rd says building a highway! • Humor- “Patch Adams” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fx_qA4-aE • Self Esteem • Self perception & value

9. Perception Intervention cont. • Locus of control • Internal vs. external • External locus of control: perception that one has little control over these events • Internal locus of control: perception that one has a good deal of control over life events • Type ‘A’ vs. ‘B’ behavior • “A”- a particular complex of personality traits, including excessive competitive drive, aggressiveness, impatience, and a harrying sense of time urgency. • “B”- Behavior pattern that is not excessively competitive, with no free-floating hostility and no sense of time urgency. • “C” and “D” page 141

10. “Type A” Behavior Hurry Sickness • High competitiveness • Chronic sense of time urgency • Fast-paced actions and speech • Aggressive, ambitious, achievement-orientation • Difficulty relaxing without feeling guilty • Impatience and hostility • Social isolation

11. “If you hire good attitudes, you can teach them nuclear physics. If you hire bad attitudes, you can’t teach them to shovel pea gravel.” Wal-Mart Executive

12. Anxiety Management Controlling Unrealistic Fear • Environmental planning • Plan your day around environment- traffic • Re-labeling • Give it a different label or name, look at it differently • Self talk • Send yourself positive messages, you control your thoughts • Thought stopping • Use thoughts/memories to take your mind off problems/stress

14. Mental health studies regarding forgiveness • Forgiveness mitigates depression and anxiety, increases self-esteem, and improves physical health and emotional well-being • Forgiveness releases people from living in bondage and allows them to live in freedom. It heals the soul. • Forgiveness is a process, not an event. It is a decision of the will, not an emotion we feel.

15. Who owns the problem? • “I”own the problem • What action can I take to solve the problem? • “You”own the problem • Just listen, are there actions you can take to solve this problem?

16. Who owns the problem? • “We” own the problem • What actions can we take to solve this problem? • You have no problem • If no action can be taken in the first three questions.

17. Be a resource person, not a rescuer! • Three feelings you get when you try to ‘fix’ things outside your control: • Frustration • Helplessness • Hopelessness

18. Anxiety Management Controlling Unrealistic Fear • ABCDE Technique • A – Activating Agent • Identify stressor • B – Belief System • Identify irrational beliefs • C – Consequence • Mental and physical • D – Dispute Irrational Beliefs • E – Effects & Changed Consequences

19. Hardiness • People who are hardy have the “3 C’s” • Commitment • Control • Challenge • Hardy people are able to better withstand the onslaught of stressors • Become ill less often from stressors • Have less psychological distress, increased happiness and adjustment, and happier marriages