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How to handle and learn from mistakes
The benefits of psychological safety in a workplace
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Myth – Incantations
"Repeat yourself a mantra and you will eventually come to believe it and embody it."
The Truth:
"We have found that merely repeating positive statements to yourself does not raise mood or achievement very much, if at all.", says psychologist Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology
What To Do:
- Work to improve yourself to the point where you receive (real) positive feedback from others.
- Challenge your negative thoughts, “talk back” to them with well-reasoned arguments.
- Ask yourself questions and then force yourself to come up with positive answers.
107
1.01K reads
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Myth – EI Is 80% Of Success
"IQ doesn’t matter, it’s all about how you understand and get along with people."
The Truth:
- Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, found out that EI rises until mid-level management but then decreases at CEO level.
- Hence, if we ...
98
773 reads
Myth – Only 7% of Communication is Verbal
"Most meaning of human communication is nonverbal, so you can forget about the actual words."
The Truth:
This is what, in a nutshell, the Mehrabian study tells us:
"When it comes to feelings and atittudes, we get most of our cues of the speaker’s i...
100
803 reads
Once the ratio hit about 11 to 1, positive emotions began doing more harm than good. Beyond that balance of positive-to-negative, Life becomes a festival of Panglossian cluelessness, where self-delusion suffocates self-improvement.
DANIEL PINK
100
639 reads
Myth – Goal Setting in Yale
"A survey of Yale’s class of 1953 found out that people who wrote down their goals out-earned all the rest by several orders of magnitude."
The Truth:
Some people looked for the source of this study.
And there was none.
Finally,
98
591 reads
Myth – Brain Plasticity
"The brain can rewire and change itself, and that means that you can learn anything."
The Self-Help Lie:
- There is no talent, only effort.
- Since the brain is plastic, you can learn anything and you can get good at anything.
T...
101
934 reads
Myth – Release Anger
"To feel better and live fully, you must let out all negative emotions."
The Truth:
There is plenty of evidence that venting your anger actually only makes you more angry and aggressive and increases the negative consequences of anger.
96
688 reads
Violence ensues when people feel that their favorable views of themselves are threatened or disputed by others.
As a result, people whose self-esteem is high but lacks a firm basis in genuine accomplishment are especially prone ...
ROY BAUMEISTER
100
571 reads
Myth – Force Yourself Into Positive States
"You become what you think of. Force yourself to think positive and you’re good."
The Truth:
- Research shows that switching to a good mood when we’re normal is easy.
- When we’re anxious or stressed and we “force” ourselves to feel good is that we f...
103
555 reads
Myth – Focus Only on Positives
"If you focus on positives you will be happier and more successful. If you focus on the negative you will be unhappier."
The Truth:
- Frederickson and Losada found out that too many positi...
102
725 reads
Myth – Smile And You’re Happy
"To be happy, you just need to smile."
The Lie:
This was actually backed by a famous study originally called in psychology the “facial feedback hypothesis” (
97
608 reads
Myth – Visualize Winning
"The more you visualize yourself winning, the closer you get to actually winning."
The Truth:
- Thinking about goals increases the number of times people thought of those goals and decreased the amount of a...
105
561 reads
Myth – High Self-Esteem
"The more confident and the higher your self esteem, the better off you are."
The Truth:
That’s not wholly wrong. High self-esteem is good.
But only if accompanied by a
102
633 reads
Myth – The 10,000 Hour Rule
"If you want to become world-class good all you need to do is put in 10,000 hours."
Why It’s Wrong:
- It focuses on the quantity of time practicing, not the quality of the practice ...
115
1.56K reads
Myth – Law of Attraction
"If you think often enough and with enough conviction about what you want you can attract it in your life."
The Truth:
From a psychological perspective, this notion has some merit but there is
99
919 reads
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