Change

Drawing upon humor for change

Brilliant— LIz Donnelly and the empowerment that a sense of humor can bestow ( especially for us girls).

Source: TED

Trust Your Gut…but Only Sometimes

When faced with decisions, we often follow our intuition—our self-described “gut feelings”—without understanding why. Our ability to make hunch decisions varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that the trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by what is happening physically in our bodies.

“We often talk about intuition coming from the body—following our gut instincts and trusting our hearts”, says Barnaby D. Dunn, of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, U.K., first author of the new paper. What isn’t certain is whether we should follow, or be suspicious of, what our bodies are telling us. And do we differ in the influence that our gut feelings have on how we make decisions? [continue reading…]

I am a great fan of the Heath brothers books Made to Stick and Switch! (this is not an affiliate link). As we all set about making promises to ourselves about how this will be ‘the’ year we “lose weight, exercise more, write that novel, climb that mountain”, I thought that it would be interesting to share this video where Dan Heath talks about just why change is so hard.

Fat waistline

Image: iStockphoto

Visit the Heath Brothers at their website to find out more.  This is my take away tip from the brothers Heath, who encourage us to use the power of peer pressure ( ‘cos it works). Maybe we should fess up and tell everyone what or resolution is. Oh did I tell you mine by the way? I’m predictably obvious…. I want to shrink my waistline. Oh yes how boring you’re probably thinking. But there! Ive just been and gone and done it now. Ive told you guys. Now you can keep tabs on me, and bug me and maybe even come out to bat for me achieving my goal!

Happy New Year all…  I hope you make this the year you stick to your resolutions 😉