Meditation

By Mira Williams

 Group Therapies

Nine people make their way into a room, each looking tentatively at others. Although each person has met the therapist during a diagnostic interview, no one knows any of the other clients. Some of the people seem reluctant, others enthusiastic. All are willing to follow the therapists recommendation that group therapy might help each of them learn to cope better with their problems. As they sit down and wait for the session to begin, one thinks, Will they really understand me? Another wonders, Do the others have problems like mine? Yet another thinks, Can I stick my neck out with these people?

Group therapy is diversified. Some therapists practice psychodynamic, humanistic, behavior or cognitive therapy. Others use group approaches that are not based on the major psychotherapeutic perspectives. Six features make group therapy an attractive format.

1. Information. Individuals receive information about their problems from either the group leader or the other members of the group.

2. Universality. Mainly individuals develop the sense that they are the only persons who have such frightening and unacceptable impulses. In the group individuals observe that others also feel anguish and suffering.

3. Altruism. Group members support one another with the advice and sympathy and learn that they have something to offer others.

4. Corrective recapitulation of the family group. A therapy group often resembles a family (and, in family therapy, the group is family), with leaders representing parents and other members siblings. In this new family, old wounds can be healed and new, more positive family ties made.

5. Development of social skills. Corrective feedback from peers can modify flaws in individual interpersonal skills. A self-centered individual might see that he is self-centered if five other group members inform him about his self-centeredness; in individual therapy, he may not believe the therapist.

6. Interpersonal learning. The group can serve as a training ground for practicing new behaviors and relationships. For example, a hostile woman might learn that she can get along better with others by not behaving so aggressively.

If you think that you are also having some problems with people communication socially or anything like that, then you should be looking for a group therapy. However, you should know about the therapy before you go so that you could be able to do what is required to solve your problem easily.

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Personal Development

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By Donald Mitchell

 Many people yearn to stand out from the crowd, but draw comfort from fitting in with everyone else. What life path should they follow?

Some people enjoy straddling the gap between the desires to stand out and to fit in through continually innovating in ways that appeal to many other people. Their innovations allow them to feel unique. Whenever their innovations are widely adopted, the use of and interest in their innovations brings the innovators closer to others.

Does such a life appeal to you? Most people I ask answer “yes.”

But many people who find continual innovation to be attractive don’t believe that they can succeed in that activity.

Could you become such a successful innovator? I think so based on what I’ve learned by helping thousands of people create popular innovations.

Have you already produced innovations that many other people use? Perhaps not yet. My answer is based on asking tens of thousands of people about their creative experiences.

Do you think you have what it takes to be a successful innovator? Perhaps you don’t, but I have good news: Successful innovation can be learned and become a habit. If you can follow the dots from A to B to C, you can be an influential innovator.

To share more about being a successful innovator with you, I interviewed Dr. Wayne Lotherington about how he changed from being a creative person working in advertising to someone who is a leading expert in helping others learn to be successful innovators.

To dispel some of the common misunderstandings about innovation, Dr. Lotherington offers this commonsense definition for creativity, one of innovation’s foundations: “the act of merging or connecting ideas that have not been merged before.”

You can put together ideas that haven’t been put together before. I know you can. To show you how, let’s start by developing a fictional story. Imagine a platypus, a pretty unusual creature you must admit, that can talk. Now put the talking platypus into the White House in Washington, D.C. advising President Obama on reviving banks.

You’ve got the basis for a pretty interesting story, don’t you think? You’ve put together three ideas for the first time — a platypus, having a platypus talk, and having a talking platypus advise President Obama.

Now, add your own twist to that story idea to create something new. Here’s an example of what I mean: Perhaps you decide to have the platypus advise Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, on how to eliminate poverty. Now, you’ve got the idea!

Make another innovation in the story. You might have President Obama and Bill Gates advise the platypus on how to be more successful in playing basketball. Now that you see how easy this is, keep going.

Write the best story idea you develop (or hire someone to do so) and you’ve created a successful innovation. Self-publish that story, then develop a series of connected stories, and later add related products, and you’ve established a stream of business innovations based on your creativity.

Even if you work in an ordinary business, effective innovation works just the same way. Imagine that you need better advertising to attract more potential customers: Use the talking platypus as your spokesperson to explain how your business provides combinations of features that customers can’t find anywhere else. If you want a friendlier spokesperson, substitute a teddy bear.

Let’s look a little deeper at your situation. How can you gain a lot of skill and experience as an innovator and launch a more successful innovation career? Dr. Lotherington’s experiences provide helpful perspectives you can use.

Dr. Lotherington began his post-secondary education by earning a Bachelor’s degree in economics, and went on to gain a graduate diploma in education, followed by a Master’s degree in administration. He applied this knowledge foundation to the advertising industry where creativity is highly valued. Eventually, curiosity drew him to learning more about creativity and innovation, and he left advertising to speak about and teach these subjects as part of his own training and consulting firm.

Despite being well qualified and very successful as a trainer, teacher, and consultant, Dr. Lotherington knew that he could be even more innovative. To prepare for making a breakthrough, he decided to learn even more about creativity and innovation. In addition, he was aware that many of his speaking and training competitors held doctoral degrees. Dr. Lotherington concluded that earning a Ph.D. could increase his knowledge and strengthen his professional credibility.

Earning a doctorate is a hard task for any mid-career professional. When your work involves traveling all over the world as Dr. Lotherington’s work does, it’s impractical to study at a university that’s located in only one place. He decided that Rushmore University was just right for him because all of the work could be done online from wherever he was, at whatever time of day he was available.

During these doctoral studies, Dr. Lotherington drew on these principles to helping others become more successful innovators:

1. Aim to become the best at what you do.

2. To improve beyond what you know now, break important activities into repeatable mental and physical steps that can be learned and applied successfully by those with limited experience.

3. Learn new skills in a context where your results count.

4. Work hard, set high standards, and meet difficult deadlines.

As a result of his doctoral research, Dr. Lotherington was able to go from being a highly creative person to someone who can help anyone else become a successful innovator. His work identified these principles for you to apply:

1. Creativity improves results.

2. There’s a repeatable method to creative thinking.

3. Creative thinking methods can be learned.

4. Creative thinking can become a habit.

How was Dr. Lotherington’s life changed by pressing forward into his challenging studies of creativity and innovation? He gained a lot of confidence. Drawing on that confidence, he became much more active and influential in his profession.

While studying for his doctorate, Dr. Lotherington published a book and his business grew by 89 percent that year. Two years later he graduated, and his business grew by 89 percent again.

Since beginning his Rushmore courses, Dr. Lotherington has authored two books and coauthored three others. Several other coauthored books are currently under development. In addition, he was asked to join the Rushmore faculty as an associate professor who provides individual tutorials in creativity and innovation.

Are you ready to follow Dr. Lotherington’s creative example for standing out while fitting in? I hope so. All you have to lose is your dissatisfaction with your life as it is.

Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who often teaches students who are interested in business innovation. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit

http://www.rushmore.edu

Personal Development

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By Mira Williams

 Impression of your psychology professor, you might respond, “She is great.” Then you might go on to describe your perception of her characteristicsfor example, She is charming, intelligent, witty, and sociable. These opinions represent inferences you make from the samples of her behavior you experience directly. From this description we can also infer that you have a positive impression of her.

As we form impressions of others, we organize the information in two important ways. Our Impressions are both integrated and unified. Traits, actions, appearance, and all of the other information we obtain about a person are closely connected in memory, even though the information may have been obtained in an interrupted or random fashion. We might obtain some information today, more next week, some more in 2 months. During those 2 months, we interacted with many other people and developed impressions of them as well. Nonetheless, we integrate each relevant experience with a particular person and perceive it as unified, a continuous block of information.

Consider Peg. You meet her and she tells you that she is about to have her first baby. You make a mental note about her situation and form some impressions about her personality. These impressions will be distinctive no matter how many other people you meet. When you encounter Peg later, you notice that she looks tired and disheveled. You remember her pregnancy and now infer that new motherhood must be a tiring business. You integrate this new information to maintain a coherent impression of her.

Our first encounter with someone also often contributes to an enduring impression we form. Primacy effect is the enduring quality of initial impressions. One reason for the primacy effect is that we pay less attention to subsequent information about the indi-vidual (Anderson, 1965). The next time you want to impress someone, a wise strategy is to make sure that you put your best foot forward in your first encounter.

Social Comparison. How many times have you asked yourself questions such as “Am 1 as smart as Jill?” “Is Bob better looking than I am?” or “Is my taste as good as Carmen’s?” We gain self-knowledge from our own behavior; we also gain it from others through social comparison, the process in which individuals evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to other people. Social comparison helps individuals to evaluate themselves tell them what their distinctive characteristics are, and aid them in building an identity.

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Personal Development

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