Mental Health Training

Extroverts and introverts are two types of people who generally prefer different activities, environments, and work styles. Extroverts tend to be more social and enjoy being around other people, and they seek stimulation from their environment and thrive on new experiences.

They may appear to be having fun, but they’re likely just doing it for you. Introverts are the opposite. They generally don’t enjoy being around many people or doing activities requiring attention from others.

Instead, they prefer to spend time alone to recharge their batteries and think more abstractly. However, that doesn’t mean that extroverts are incapable of understanding the needs of an introvert or vice versa.

In fact, most extroverts are comfortable spending time alone as well. Here is an overview of the differences between an extrovert and an introvert so that you can better understand your friends or family members who may seem like they dislike being around others or who don’t seem like they enjoy your company. 

Introversion and extroversion are clarified

Introversion is the tendency to prefer spending time alone and can be an influential part of one’s personality. It’s characterised by a preference for solitude and reflection over social interaction.

Someone introverted will likely avoid parties, large gatherings, or other situations in which they would have to engage with lots of people. On the other hand, extroversion is the tendency to seek out social interaction and stimulation to feel comfortable.

Extroverted people enjoy being around others and even thrive in many social situations. They also tend to talk more regularly than someone introverted. Extroverts typically enjoy getting together with friends and can sometimes be found at parties or other gatherings without any real sense of awkwardness or discomfort.

As you might have guessed, extroverts are always looking for new people or experiences, whereas introverts are often content with their own company or want some peace and quiet time away from it all. However, there’s still a lot of overlap between these two personality types regarding how they spend their free time!

Extroverted people are almost always willing to talk about themselves and their thoughts on various issues, especially topics that interest them. Conversely, introverts may have a more demanding time talking about themselves or very rarely do so unless they’re under close observation in social settings where they usually wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so, for example, when asked questions like “What do you".

Introverts and Extroverts Together: Why They’re Different?

Introverts and extroverts are two different types of personalities. They do not always see eye to eye on things, but they can cooperate when necessary. If you’re trying to communicate with an introvert, it’s best to break the conversation into smaller segments so that the introvert can process what you’re saying. 

That is unless they’re very well-adjusted and socialised. In general, extroverts don’t feel like they need to be around people all the time to have a good time. They thrive off of new experiences without being distracted by their surroundings. They also tend to do things for other people, as it’s more fun that way than if they were doing it themselves.

Introverts typically feel like they need time alone to think more clearly or recharge their batteries before engaging with others again. Because of this, they might not respond well if someone tries to make them come out of their comfort zone quickly or if someone tries to force them into social situations where they don’t want to be.

It’s important not to push an introvert too hard because that will make them feel like you’re trying to manipulate them into doing something that doesn’t fit who they are or what makes them happy.

Five Steps to More Confident Decision-Making

How do you make a decision?

Do you know the steps?

If you’re having trouble feeling confident in your actions and wish you had an unwavering self-belief in your decisions, maybe it's time to look at your decision-making process.

Decisions made impulsively or without careful thought might not always turn out the way you hope they will.

Of course, there's something to be said for instinct and even dumb luck. But what if good decisions were inevitable rather than occasional? Imagine for a moment how it would feel to know you're right before you even act.

This is because there are steps you should be going through when making a decision. Let’s take a look at those now.

Start With an Open Mind

Do you automatically have all the answers? Probably not. Some of your beliefs might be biased, faulty, or illogical. Accepting you might have things to learn is the first and most crucial step to making decisions. Take a step back from everything but the raw facts regarding what you're trying to decide.

Get the Facts

Do you have all the information you need to make an informed decision? Are there things you need to learn? What about examining the options? Have you considered multiple solutions? Take time to put the work in to gather what you need to proceed with confidence.

Predict the Future

Once you have some choices in mind, try to imagine how they're going to play out. Sometimes what looks good might be a great temporary solution, but you're going to need to do something different in the long run. If you make a certain decision right now, ask yourself if this will still be a good decision in the morning? What about next week?

Or next year?

Get Another Opinion

Do you have a mentor or someone you can trust whom you could talk to about this? While you might skip this step on the small stuff, it's worth having someone you trust to weigh in with their opinion whenever you make a big decision. They might see something you're missing.

Act

Sometimes the hardest part of making decisions lies in making the actual decision. It’s tempting to go back over the research a few more times or keep looking for other alternatives. At some point, you’re going to need to act. Take your best solution and move forward with it with confidence. You’ve done all the work. Now comes the part where you put this newfound trust in yourself into action.

The best part?

The more you run through this process, the more confident you’ll feel about making decisions in the first place.

8 Tips That Work for Stopping Negative Thinking Patterns

You’re tired, and it’s been a long day. It feels like there’s more in your life going wrong than going right. You come home and slump on the couch and wonder just how it was that your life started going so wrong.

Stop.

We all fall prey to negative thought patterns. It’s so easy to see the worst-case scenario, to focus on the bad things in our lives, especially when we’re tired. But by focusing on the negativity, what we’re doing is hurting ourselves mentally and even physically.

Negativity drives us down by making us depressed and anxious. With too much negativity, your sleep becomes difficult. Your body even starts to show the effects on how you feel, and also how you’re able to fight something as mundane as a cold.

So how do you stop these negative thought patterns?

1. Remember to breathe.

When a negative thought surfaces, before you get caught up in the negative cycle, take a deep breath. Relax. Accept that negative thoughts are going to creep up once in a while.

2. Acknowledge the thought.

Without focusing too heavily on why the thought is there, stop and listen to it for a moment. Remind yourself that this is something that very likely isn’t true and that it can’t control you.

3. Examine the triggers.

Why do you have the negative thought? What just happened that led to your having this thought?

4. Look for the root.

The chances are that those triggers are rooted in something much deeper. Where did the thought originate?

What do you need to work through to keep these thoughts from happening again?

Don’t let this step overwhelm you. If the roots are deep, it might be that you’ll need help to dislodge them.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help or to visit a counsellor to help with this step.

5. Focus on where you’re going.

Realize that this negative thought doesn’t control your future. Keep your eyes on your goals!

6. Replace the thought with something else.

With your eyes firmly on your goal, focus on what you need to do next to realize that dream. Fill your mind with that thought instead.

7. Erase perfectionism.

Realize that all of this takes practice and that you’re not always going to succeed on the first try. It’s OK. Jump in where you are, and if you fail, try again. You will get this!

8. Adopt a positive attitude.

Remember, positivity is a choice. YOUR choice. 

Stopping negativity is one of the most important habits that you’ll ever break. By pulling more positivity into your life, you’re going to feel better, and even like yourself a lot more.

You’ll be more productive and experience less stress. With all that on the line, don’t you think it’s time to think positive?

Confidence

I talk to a lot of professionals and salespeople and even entrepreneurs, people starting their own businesses, and they want to learn how can I develop more confidence or even just get myself a bit of confidence so that I can be more successful in what I do.

You have to realize what confidence comes from and what confidence means.

Confidence is your ability to take action and feel good about yourself. Feel like whatever it is you're about to endeavour into, that you can do a good job and that you can come out of the other end of it looking good.

Now, this doesn't happen by accident.

When you look at the way confidence appears in our lives, it appears as a result of doing things over and over again and developing a proficiency from it.

Confidence, in and of itself, is not something that you're born with or not born with. It's something that's developed over time through practice and through repetition.

When you first learn how to walk, when you were let's say 12 months old or 13 months old or whatever it may be for you, you were not very confident at walking. In fact, you couldn't walk. But you were determined to try.

You stood on the side of the sofa, and you pushed yourself off, and you would fall. You would try it again, and you would fall, and you would do it over and over again.  

Your level of confidence, in the beginning, was tiny. In fact, there probably was no confidence. But you were so determined to do it, that you kept going. 

Eventually, you took a step, you followed that with another step, and soon enough you were walking, and now you're an adult, and you can walk from one side to the other of a room or a hallway or whatever, and not even think about the act of walking.

It's just something that comes to you naturally.

If someone were to ask you your level of confidence on a scale of 0 to 10, how confident you are that you could walk across the room, you'd probably say 11. It doesn't even occur to you. You just do it.

The same thing goes for confidence in all areas of life, including your professional life.

Let's say your success right now requires your ability to sell. To sell a product, to sell an idea, to sell a service, sell a training program. I don't know what it is for you.

Well, you might not be confident right now in your ability to communicate the value and close a deal, AKA sell. However, how are you going to get that confidence? 

You weren't born with it. Right now, you think about yourself going into a situation where you might have to sell somebody, and you're nervous. How do you get to a point where you're confident in doing it?

Well, you go through the nerves, you go through those comfort zones, you put yourself in situations where you're probably not all that comfortable, you're a little nervous, and you do it.

You learn from it, and you make mistakes, and you fall on your face, just like you fell on the ground when you were learning how to walk.

But you do this once, and you get a bit of feedback, you get a bit of insight. Maybe your manager was with you on that sales call and saw a couple of things that you could have improved on and gives you that feedback.

I want to talk a little about goal setting and goal achievement, which quite truthfully is probably the most overdone topic in any genre in the world.

Everybody has done a goal-setting exercise at some point, whether it was in high school or in college or university or their first job.

I realize that we've all done it, but the truth of the matter is very few people, in the grand scheme of things in this world, anywhere on the globe, very few people have goals written down.

What that tells me is that very few people actually know what they want.

Why is that? Why do so few people know what they want? I believe it's because a lot of us are programmed, from a pretty early age, to not acknowledge that we can have what we want.

Instead, we're told what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing, and we should follow this path to be successful. You should do this to make sure that you have enough money when you grow up to do whatever it is you need to do.

They never actually think, "Well, is that really what I want? What if I want to spend my life travelling the world?"

A lot of times, somebody that says that will just get laughed at or mocked, that that's not a realistic thing to want.

But here's the thing. You can want anything you want, but it's up to you to create it.

A lot of people, and maybe this is you, the very first thing you need to do when it comes to goal setting is have an acknowledgement with yourself that there are things that I want me to don't have right now.

It could be some pretty big things that you're looking at like I'm at a job that I hate. I don't want to be here. What I want is to do X. 

By coming to that realization, the next step is to translate that into something you can control, which is where goal setting comes into place.

Acknowledging that it's okay to have wants, then defining what those wants are. Next, turning that into a goal.

So, "I don't want to work here. I want to travel the world. Let's set a goal that 12 months from now, I'm not going to be in this job. I'm going to be travelling at that point."

How do you make that become a reality? That's when the real work kicks in, the goal achievement.

Setting the goal is really the easy part. It's the fun part. Figuring out the rest is much, much harder to do.

But that's where your real test of character comes in.

Goal achievement can't happen without goal setting. But goal achievement also can't happen without commitment. So that's the big equator in this whole thing.

The level of commitment you have to making your goals become a reality.

8 Proven Ways Walking Improves Your Brain

It might surprise you to hear that something as simple as walking can actually improve your brainpower. It doesn’t even have to be full-on power walking! Even a twenty- or thirty-minute walk during your lunch break can have a positive impact on your brain. Here are eight ways science has proven that walking is excellent for your brain.

1.    Walking Helps Lower Your Risk of Depression

Walking is an excellent way to improve your mental health. A 2018 study showed that any kind of moderate aerobic exercise like brisk walking can boost your brain health and lower your risk of developing depression by a third.

2.    Walking Improve Your Cognitive Function

A number of studies have shown that the magic amount of twenty to thirty minutes of daily aerobic exercise, such as walking, improves cognitive function and memory.

3.    Walking Stimulates Endorphins

Just ten minutes of walking is enough to start your brain releasing endorphins, the brain chemicals that lower stress, boost your mental health, and make you feel good. You’ve heard of the runner’s high? Well, you can get a similar positive rush from a brisk walk!

4.    Walking Releases the Brain’s Magic Protein

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) has been dubbed the brain’s ‘magic protein’ as it helps to rewire and build new neural pathways. Scientists believe it can even help lower your risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. And cardiovascular exercise is an easy way to stimulate the production of BDNF and keep your brain in peak condition.

5.    Walking Lowers Physical and Mental Fatigue

A 2008 study by the University of Georgia found that just three sessions a week of low-intensity exercise like walking can reduce fatigue levels by as much as 65 per cent.

6.    Walking Builds Hippocampus Strength

Your hippocampus is the key part of the brain for forming and storing memories. Research has shown that even brief walks can actually increase the size and efficiency of your hippocampus.

7.    Walking Improves Creativity

Artists, writers, and philosophers have long known the importance of walking for clearing blocked creativity and getting inspiration flowing again. Science can now back this up with a 2014 study by Stanford University that shows that walking increases your creative output by up to sixty per cent.

8.    Walking Increases Blood Flow to the Brain

Blood is vital for every organ in your body, not least of all, your brain. That magic twenty-minute is all it takes to increase the blood flow to your brain to keep it active and healthy.

In psychology, emotion is often defined as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behaviour.

 In other words, It impacts how we feel, believe, and behave, and it also plays a role in determining how we manage social situations and make decisions.

Different Types of Emotions

There are three main types of emotions: 

1. Positive Emotions (enthusiasm, joy, love, pride, gratitude, and hope),

2. Negative Emotions (anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, envy, resentment, jealousy, rage, and hatred).

3. Neutral Emotions (including boredom, indifference, apathy, confusion, disgust, and surprise).

These emotions affect our behaviour and influence our decisions. For example, we tend to eat more food when feeling sad, angry, or anxious.

We see these emotions in ourselves and others, and awareness is the key to controlling them. There are many ways to manage our feelings, including meditation, yoga, and mindfulness, and these techniques help us gain perspective and become aware of our emotions.

Learn more:

When Is Empathy the Wrong Response?

Are you an empathetic person? A lot of people will answer that question positively. No one likes to admit that they're selfish or that they can't understand the emotions of others. Then there are those people who simply don't realize they aren't good at identifying situations that require an empathetic response.

The definition of empathy is understanding another person's feelings about a situation by looking at it from their point of view. Empathy then means stepping forward and providing some assistance in an attempt to move that person out of a negative emotional situation.

By the way, this isn't always the right response when you notice someone struggling emotionally.

Just because you can put yourself in someone else's shoes doesn't mean you should act. You don't owe anyone your empathy. That may sound cold. We're not encouraging you to stand by and let someone suffer. We're just saying that some individuals in certain situations should be left to their own devices.

Imagine the following scenario.

You have a friend who's always causing problems. In your group of friends, this person brings people down and seems to go out of his way to harm relationships and cause emotional damage. You might wonder what's going on in his life and why he acts this way.

Wanting to help this person is admirable. He's a friend, so you might want to talk to him about his actions. In many cases, this type of person isn't going to respond positively to you or anyone else pointing out what you see as negative behaviour.

Here's another time when empathy might not be the best course of action.

You Don't Take Care Of Yourself First

Do you know anyone like this? Everyone says she's the most wonderful person. She's selfless. Maybe she's always volunteering at a charity or a homeless shelter. She's that caring person who is so empathetic that she's always bringing home another stray dog or cat.

Those are wonderfully selfless actions. The problem is that sometimes these people go out of their way to find situations where they can respond with empathy. They place the world's problems ahead of their own. They don't take care of themselves physically. Finances and relationships suffer because of their constant empathy.

Being empathetic is beautiful. It means you have a kind soul. Know when to treat yourself with empathy instead of suffering in some way because you're always taking care of others.

Empathy Can Give You Tunnel Vision

Here's what sometimes happens. You find someone in a desperate situation. You respond with empathy because that's who you are. You identify their emotional distress and provide assistance in some way. That's beautiful.

Sometimes when this happens, you can put on blinders. All you see is that person needing assistance over and over and over. You develop a sort of focused vision on that person's problems, and on nobody else. The result is that you become pushy and the person feels you're smothering them with your good intentions.

They also might think your constant attention means you believe you're better than them. Neither one of these outcomes is what you were trying to produce, but things turned out that way despite your best efforts.

Empathy can be a wonderful thing. It can also be the wrong response. Use the situations we just discussed to see if you're possibly turning to empathy when there's a better response.

Introduction

Grief is a powerful emotion generally associated with death. You might hear that someone is grieving after the loss of a loved one. It's a natural step to recovery. Psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler Ross published a book in 1969 titled "On Death and Dying" and introduced us to the five stages of grief.

These are different emotions a person experiences when dealing with a terminal illness or the death of someone close to them.

Author David Kessler added a sixth stage of grief in his book, "Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief" in 2019. As an expert on death and grieving, he says he's noticed that people who suffer the death of a loved one usually attempt to find some meaning in their loss.

To some lesser degree, we all experience similar emotions when we experience one of life's hardships.

The feelings you have to work through to recover after losing a job or failing to achieve some personal goal can be found in the grieving process. Understanding the different emotions you may deal with after any setback or hardship can help you recover more quickly. You have the resilience to absorb and overcome the setbacks and speed bumps life will lay in your path.

Knowing that you're going to have to deal with them before failure or loss appears in your life makes you more resilient. You can prepare emotionally for their arrival. It can speed up the recovery process, so you get back on your feet as soon as possible. Let's take a look at these different emotional states of recovery that can improve your bounce-back ability from any setback, large or small.

(It should be noted that these are not sequential in every case. You may experience them in any order. They don't necessarily appear in the order listed here. Additionally, you may not have to work through all these emotions. Just knowing you may encounter them after experiencing one of life's difficulties can power you with the resilience to overcome them.)

Understanding the 3 Types of Empathy

Empathy is a wonderfully selfless response to someone else's plight. Not only do you feel sympathetic for someone in a bad situation, but you understand their feelings. You fully experience the event from the perspective of the person going through it.

In some cases, it's almost as if you're physically and emotionally living through the experience yourself. This can be very draining for the highly empathetic individual. They're always seeing situations where they internalize another person's emotions and feel they have to help in some way.

Some people don't have that level of empathy. They will happily help another person and might even understand the point of view of an individual. They don't necessarily identify with what caused the problem in the first place. Even so, they still respond with empathy.

To understand more about yourself and your feelings, let's take a look at the three different types of empathy. One isn't better than another. They're just different ways of responding to the same situation.

1 – Understanding Emotional Empathy

We'll introduce you to cognitive empathy in a minute. One of the best ways to understand emotional empathy is with a comparison to the cognitive variety. Just remember this.

"Cognitive empathy is an attempt to walk a mile in another person's shoes, while emotional empathy is screaming in pain when someone else steps on a nail."

That definition from the MasterClass website hits the nail on the head, pun intended.

This almost always occurs when someone experiences something you've been through before. You might not respond in that way if you never stepped on a nail yourself. If you have, and you see someone else do it, your mind and body can go through a nearly identical physical and visceral experience.

This is truly understanding what another person is experiencing because it's accompanied with a physical response of some kind.

2 – Cognitive Empathy

We just talked about how this form of empathy is different than when you have an emotional empathetic response. Cognitive empathy can be described as taking someone else's perspective.

You relate to what someone else is going through even if you've never experienced it yourself. This might mean looking at a situation or listening to someone talk while actively trying to imagine their feelings. You aren't inserting your personal point of view. There's no bias on your part and you're not trying to insert your own experiences.

Cognitive empathy simply means a conscious effort to understand the perspective of someone else. This is used in interviews to get the subject to open up and share deeper feelings.

3 – Compassionate Empathy and Problem-Solving

Do people often come to you for advice? This might be because you've displayed compassionate empathy. It's a wonderful skill in problem-solving situations.

Compassionate empathy means looking at a negative situation and trying to get at the cause. You analyse the underlying reasons why something happened, as well as the effects. Compassionate empathy can be considered a hybrid of both the cognitive and emotional forms of empathy.

With this ability, you can demonstrate to a person that you totally understand where they're coming from. You don't offer any bias or prejudice. You may even offer an alternative way of thinking or some insight that helps the person in need.

Empathy in any form makes the world a better place. It's selfless and caring. Understanding what type of empathy you're practising can give you a better idea of the reasons behind your response.