Fiona Murden's Blog, page 5
November 13, 2020
Self awareness continued – Your Brain & Your World
Your Brain
What do you feel right now? Right at this moment? That feeling comes from your brain – do you know how? Understanding how the brain works and how ‘your’ brain responds will help you to thrive in life.
When I was 24 I went off travelling – to explore, to step out of my comfort zone (I went alone) but most of all to ‘find myself’.
Travelling does open your eyes to different cultures, opinions, opportunities and does give you time to reflect BUT unless you’re looking for yourself in the ‘right way’ it still doesn’t provide the answers.
The reflection time did lead me back to a career in psychology as my ultimate dream. I still wanted to help people and loved learning about the quirky traits of being human.
Initially after travelling I went back to my corporate job (now hating it more than ever) and started talking to anyone and everyone about my options. Ultimately it made sense to build on the experience I had in business. So, I decided to go down the route of performance rather than mental illness. The added bonus was this would hopefully keep my own head from spinning out. I quit my job and went back to uni to do my ‘Master of Science’ degree.
This was when – finally – after all of this time – I started learning more about the brain. It provided a massive turning point both in how I saw myself and how I understood others. I’d learnt about brain damage in my first degree. Now I was learning about the brain in terms of ‘normal’ functioning and behaviour. Things that applied to me and everyone in my world.
Knowing the fundamentals of how the brain works is critical. You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to learn (but I would advise that you take guidance from someone who actually knows rather than claims to know) about the brain. But without understanding the basics of your brain mechanics you can end up wasting a huge amount of energy. It’s a bit like trying to find a location without a map. You may make your way there but you just don’t know if you’re heading south or west (especially without a north star); you can’t tell if each step is taking you closer to or further away from your destination.
Your World
“Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. To be is to be related.” Bruce Lee
You are so interconnected with those around you. Which means that you simply cannot know yourself without knowing how you impact the people in your life. Whoever they are.
Having completed my MSc I found a job working for a firm of business psychologists. To become a chartered psychologist in the UK takes a total of 7 years. I’d done the first 4 but had 3 left, being supervised in a job that enabled me to demonstrate the application of my psychological knowledge.
This was where I learnt step 2 of becoming more self-aware. Feedback and lots of it. Yes I’d had feedback before – we all get it all the time whether it’s someone complimenting us on our new shoes, giving us a mark on an essay or helping us park the car. But this isn’t the type of feedback that helps us to grow as a person.
In order to get a really honest and balanced perspective, to gain accurate self-knowledge about who you are, you need to know what other people see. Put simply, if you don’t get feedback, you don’t know if you’re going in the right direction to achieve your goals. That goal could be anything from picking up a dirty top from the floor to becoming leader of an organization. For example, I learnt that I tend to talk over people in group situations. This is typically because I get a bit excited or want to say things before I forget but it’s not a great tendency to have, especially as a psychologist.
My prime goal is to help people gain a better understanding of psychology. Although this is my work goal, it’s also my broader vision and has an influence in every area of my life. So if I talk over everyone in every social situation, it’s going to negatively affect my progress toward my goal, whereas knowing about my tendency and its impact helps me realign my behaviour to engage people more effectively when I’m “on topic.”
Feedback is essential to performance in all walks of life, from sport (e.g., the score in a match, video analysis of an athlete in action), to business (e.g., how the company is performing in the marketplace, what a boss says about an employee’s work), to our personal lives (e.g., comments on our mood, a partner telling us what they want from the relationship). It’s also critical to our well-being, optimal performance, & success in whatever you pursue.
We are so interconnected that you simply cannot know yourself with it.
We’ll explore how to explore you in the next and final post in 3 part self-awareness series.
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November 9, 2020
What’s getting in the way of your success?
Do you know you want to move forward but get stuck? Do you get frustrated that you can’t move forward or feel weighed down through fears and a lack of confidence? Some of the key things I’ve seen hold people back time and again are also things that with the right understanding can be worked on. They are:⠀
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Self-doubt, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of uncertainty and a lack of clarity over what exactly you actually want. ⠀
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I’ve pulled together a pdf with a bit of explanation so you can see if they fit with what you’re experiencing AND most importantly some ways to address them. Click the link below to access the pdf.
November 6, 2020
Self-Awareness (I) – What is it and why does it matter?
“95% of us think we’re self-aware but in reality research shows it’s more like 10-15% of us who actually are” Dr. Tasha Eurich
Just because I’m a psychologist doesn’t mean I’m completely self-aware.
Just because I spend every day working with some of the most self-aware people and helping them to become even more self-aware doesn’t either.
So what on earth is self-awareness and why is it so elusive?
Self-awareness is “the ability to see ourselves clearly, to understand who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world.” (Eurich, 2017)
My gaps are around self-worth. I know I don’t always see myself as positively as other people do and that hurts. But I’m working on it and ‘am far better than I was 5, 10 and 15 years ago.
Self-awareness is something we all have to work on throughout life. Well we don’t have to but by ignoring it we miss out on the amazing benefits which include allowing you to:
– be more emotionally resilient (something we all need at the moment)
– get closer to fulfilling your potential
– live out your purpose
– have better relationships
– be more creative and so much more…..
Leaders who are self-aware are more promotable. Those who aren’t self-aware are 600 times more likely to derail. Companies that have more self-aware employees perform better, are more financially successful, have better returns.
This all applies to us as individuals too. As Eurich says “There pretty much isn’t any positive outcome that better self-awareness doesn’t impact.” It gives us power. It’s what she calls a meta skill for the 21st century. Self-awareness is not just about being more effective at work but it’s living a meaningful and fulfilling life.
The reason it’s so elusive is that it isn’t as straight forward as simply knowing who we are by doing a personality assessment or thinking we know our wants and needs. It’s more complex than that. While finding more self-awareness is empowering, lifechanging and leads to incredible outcomes. Searching our soul to become more self-aware, done the wrong way is disabling, dangerous and leads to a mental cage. Something I discovered as a teenager.
My Story – searching for answers
I like many other adolescents struggled massively with my ‘head’. I desperately wanted to be understood by others and to understand myself. Despite outwardly having it all – I went to a good school, had no struggles academically, was sporty, had friends – my inner turmoil often felt utterly unbearable and my approach to trying to work things out unwittingly made them even worse.
The relentless anguish made me do whatever I could to find answers, to solve myself, to work things out. I read so many books to try and find out what was going on and how I could ‘fix’ my head. I fought my thoughts because that’s what I thought I should do. It led me to try harder and harder to correct every emotion that came my way. I analysed and analysed. I was unwittingly digging myself deeper and deeper into turmoil.
This only got worse when I went to university to study psychology. I still couldn’t find the answers. Things got worse. I saw a counsellor who sent me straight to the doctor. The doctor diagnosed me with severe clinical depression and said she didn’t know how I’d even made it through so far.
What has this got to do with self-awareness?
This approach is what we’re often led to believe leads to better self-insight. It doesn’t. Instead it leads us down rabbit holes of despair.
When I left uni I ended up working as a management consultant, avoiding psychology because it had seemingly not provided me with the answers I so desperately sought. It was miserable. Despite meeting some wonderful people, learning masses and working for amazing clients it was hugely incompatible with my values, purpose and aspirations.
After 2 years I somehow persuaded them to let me have a year off and bought an around the world ticket heading off (on my own) to look for answers (spoiler alert – this didn’t lead to self-awareness either but it did get me a little bit closer).
So HOW do we become more self-aware?
Well this falls into three steps – the brain, your place in the world and you.
I’ll talk about how my life got so much better by understanding the ‘correct route’ to self awareness and break down what that means to you in the next couple of blog posts so be sure to check back.
We’re also doing a series on it for the Dot to Dot podcast exploring this over the course of 8 episodes, with myself and fellow psychologist Lou Jones. PLUS interviews with people such as New York Times bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich whose Tedtalk on self-awareness has been viewed more than 7 million times.
Links to podcast.
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October 17, 2020
Making the unconscious conscious
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
C.G. Jung
We all live our life carrying out the majority of behaviours unconsciously every day. Many of these things are habit which the American Journal of Psychology defines as “a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience.” Habits move behaviours from the conscious frontal lobe of the brain where thoughts here are more effortful – into the unconscious areas of the brain that enables us to carry out behaviours without much effort. If you think of it in terms of learning to drive a car. Initially it takes a huge amount of effort concentrating on what our feet are doing, our hands, where we’re looking, what we need to do next. Once we know how to drive we can travel along our daily route from start to finish without giving the driving much thought at all. In fact it can sometimes be almost scary how pre-occupied thinking about something else we can be while still reaching our destination.
It’s essential that we have habits and can do things without much conscious thought- we couldn’t operate as humans or get much very done without them. Habits enable us to pass learning to a more automatic part of the brain. The problem is that if we do too much without conscious thought we don’t grow as a person. This ultimately relates to self-awareness. It matters for matters to our day to day happiness and well-being but also to performance.
If we don’t understand the loops that we go through by consciously taking a step back from them, we continue to do them and assume they are out of our control (which is what Jung meant by calling them fate). Whether that’s always saying yes to things we don’t really want to do, to understanding the things that lead us to feel worn out to watching our peers get ahead at work. We can feel sorry for ourself or blame our situation for not getting that promotion. But much of it is down to us. Not always. Referring back to a quote from earlier this week. If you’re not even aware of it you can’t move on by – accepting it, changing it or leaving it.
There’s more to come on self-awareness including a podcast interview I’m so excited to share where I talk with the brilliant Tasha Eurich New York Best Selling author on this very topic.
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October 15, 2020
Talking about burnout
OUT NOW another bitesize episode with fellow psychologist Lou Jones. This week we’re talking about burnout, something that is becoming way to prevalent during the pandemic.
What is it? How do you know if you are experiencing it? What should you do about it?
Burnout has three key dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism and a decline in professional efficacy – which in English means having reduced productivity.
Exhaustion – worn out, lost energy, depleted, debilitated and fatigued.
Cynicism – negative attitude towards others, becoming irritable and withdrawn.
Reduced productivity – low morale, decreased capability and an inability to cope.
What should you do about it?
One paper written specifically for those at the brunt of burnout (i.e. healthcare workers) offers some useful quick tools, aka “micro-practices.”
Taking a moment to name your emotions (especially challenging emotions). For example, when I notice that I am feeling upset, is it anger? Concern? Exhaustion? This aids self- awareness and self-management.
This “name it to tame it” practice as Dr Dan Siegel calls it is backed by fMRI research. Simply the process of naming shifts brain activity from the amygdala (the emotional centre of the brain) to the more advanced thinking area of the brain. This means that it can help bring a sense of calm. For a list of words to use in this practice try the following link:
https://www.healthline.com/health/list-of-emotions
Another evidence-based technique is the simple act of writing down three things that you’re grateful for several times a week.
If you work in a group setting then showing gratitude in ways such as starting meetings by giving kudos for recent efforts, can also help stimulate positive emotions and positive relationships.
Hand hygiene—now a constant routine — is an opportunity for self- awareness and self-management. A chance to focus on your breath, centre your mind and body, and visualize the kind of presence, empathy, and calmness one would like to bring to the next person you interact with. It’s also an opportunity to self-connect—Am I well hydrated? Hungry? Carrying an unreasonable emotional vestige from the last news update?
Opportunities to engage in this type of mindfulness micro-practice are available in a myriad of other situations such as waiting at a red light, boiling the kettle or brushing your teeth.
Making use of social support found within both the workplace and home (family, friends, neighbours) is also a very effective and incredibly important practice.
For longer term solutions other approaches include eating more nutritious food, engaging in regular exercise building your self-awareness and understanding, time management, cognitive restructuring, relaxation strategies – such as meditation, biofeedback, naps and a longer night’s sleep and changes in work patterns – working less, taking more breaks, avoiding overtime work, and taking more time off or more holiday.
Links to podcast recording:
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References:
Fessell, D., & Cherniss, C. (2020). Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and beyond: micropractices for burnout prevention and emotional wellness.Journal of the American College of Radiology,17(6), 746-748.
Maslach, C. (2017). Finding solutions to the problem of burnout. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(2), 143.
September 26, 2020
Dot to Dot Behind the Person
I’ve now recorded 17 episodes, 11 interviews exploring interesting people’s backgrounds and all that makes them tick. Guests include Kenny Wilson CEO of Dr Marten’s, Andrea Thompson Editor in Chief of Marie Claire, Jonathan McMullan Detatchment Commander in the Australian Airforce and many more.
There are also 6 bonus tracks with me speaking to fellow psychologist Lou Jones about all sorts from imposter syndrome to curiosity.
https://apple.co/3bSkWls
https://spoti.fi/3dHLS8Q
https://bit.ly/2WWbmbN
[image error]Kenny Wilson CEO of Dr Martens
And my new book Mirror Thinking How Role Models Make Us Human is now out in the USA and Canada:
https://bit.ly/MirrorUSACan
What’s it all about:
Parents, friends, teachers, relatives, and even work colleagues – from the people close to us to those we never even meet – other people are constantly shaping who we are.
The mirror neuron is a part of the brain that has shaped each and every one of us throughout our lifetimes. It is the very essence of what makes us human, but most of us have never even heard of it.
Mirror Thinking explores how the mirror neuron has defined us through the role models we observe and interact with. All of the learning we take from our world is down to our brain’s mirror system, but it doesn’t stop there. This incredible system is also responsible for our emotional connections with others, how we pass on learning between the generations through stories, and how we imagine and innovate within our own minds.
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June 25, 2020
Mirror Thinking
I’m so excited that Mirror Thinking How Role Models Make Us Human is out 2 weeks today (9th July) in the UK.
It’s coming to the rest of the world in September.
Here’s a very short (3 min) video I put together about the book. Please do comment and share if you think you know anyone who would be interested. Links to pre-order or buy are below.
Waterstones: https://bit.ly/2ylrc7H
Amazon.co.uk: https://amzn.to/2yKpf4j
Bloomsbury: https://bit.ly/31blrFt
May 21, 2020
#Be Kind
This week is mental health awareness week and the focus is on being kind. But why be kind if we’re trying to look after our own mental health?
Being kind not only benefits those we are kind to but also ourselves. Giving and sharing with others is part of what makes us human and has huge psychological and physiological benefits. Being kind is not just good for the person you’re helping but it’s good for you too.
In my new book Mirror Thinking I talk about role-modelling and how so much of what we inadvertently learn from the day we are born to the day we die comes from watching other people’s behaviour and their emotional responses. This is true for example with pro-social behaviour. Even teenagers who are renowned for being influenced by the negative tactics of peers are more pro-social if they see their friends being.
Prosocial behaviour, which includes role-modelling in order to help others see how to behave, is becoming more widely recognised as a vehicle for improved mental health and well-being across society. Significant evidence shows that focusing on other people rather than ourselves consistently makes us happier. Katherine Nelson, an American developmental psychologist, published research in the journal Emotion that contrasted the mood and well- being boosting effects of prosocial behaviour with self-orientated behaviour over a six-week period. The 2015 study, which included 472 people, found that prosocial behaviour led to significantly bigger increases in ‘psychological flourishing’ than the self-focused group. Flourishing in this context means positive emotional well-being, high life satisfaction, good relationships with others, being socially accepted and having a sense of purpose in life.
A 2017 study carried out by Jennifer Crocker, professor of social psychology at the University of Ohio, points to similar findings. Crocker explained that as humans we are ‘hardwired’ to promote both self-interest and concern for others depending on our survival situation. From an evolutionary perspective self-interest came into play when fleeing a predator, but survival at a species level meant depending on each other to live in cooperative groups, helping one another to remain safe. She explained that we are constructed in a way that means ‘giving to others can be rewarding despite its obvious material costs, and selfishness can be costly despite its immediate material benefits. In other words, humans should be psychologically disposed to find benefits in giving that counterbalance the costs.’
Crocker’s review shows that in the majority of everyday situations giving benefits our psychological well-being, physical health and the quality of our relationships. She proposes that the mechanisms that enable this include positive affect (i.e. a more optimistic outlook), increased confidence, a greater sense of connection to others and a clearer sense of purpose.
Susan Whitbourne, professor emerita of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, showed that making a difference to the lives of others is one of the key aspects to fulfilment. She explored happiness levels in midlife adults and found that no matter what their job, those who reached out to younger people and helped them overcome life obstacles were most fulfilled.9 In other words those people who were involved with some sort of role-modelling experienced the greatest levels of happiness.10 Even the act of volunteering to be a role model improves well-being, leading to better self- health ratings, increased life satisfaction, decreased mortality, higher levels of contentment and lower levels of depressive symptoms.
It really is worth being kind. Even at the times when you don’t really feel like it or when the world is pushing you in the other direction. Kindness (together with many other behaviours and emotions) can spread in a similar way to a pandemic, but sometimes to make that happen means pushing against the systems and complexity of the world around us. If we do it can have massive returns both for us and for others. And who doesn’t want to have a positive impact on the world.
Extract adapted from my book Mirror Thinking – How Role Models Make Us Human which is out in July but available for pre-order at:
Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2yKpf4j
Waterstones https://bit.ly/2ylrc7H
Amazon USA and Canada https://amzn.to/2TsjiR9
Barnes & Noble (USA) https://bit.ly/3bRZyN4
Chapters (Canada) https://bit.ly/2zU8Drx
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May 20, 2020
Episode 2 of Dot to Dot Behind the Person
@Apple https://apple.co/3bSkWls
@Spotify https://spoti.fi/3dHLS8Q
@Google https://bit.ly/2WWbmbN
Episode 2 with Andrea Thompson – Editor in Chief of Marie Claire
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Some of the topics we explore this week – How investigative journalism provides marginalised women with a voice, why the Weinstein scandal happened when it did, and how social media has galvanised communities to create positive change.
Do you think anyone was covering the story of Weinstein 15 years ago? If they were, why did it take so long to ignite international interest? Is Covid-19 going to create a fresh start for women or set equality back? Can a fashion and beauty brand embody a genuine feminist agenda? These are all topics we explore in the second episode of Dot to Dot ‘Behind the Person’ with this week’s guest Andrea Thompson.
Andrea started her career in her 20s as a fearless undercover journalist, and is no less passionate about righting wrongs and giving under-represented communities a voice today. She has been Editor in Chief of Marie Claire for the past 6 months, taking the helm of the iconic international brand as the first of the 25 countries to go digital. Andrea studied English at The University of York, but it was actually working part time in a pub during her studies and listening to people’s stories that really ignited her passion for storytelling. She pursued a career in publishing, first entering into the world of books (which she found wasn’t quite fast paced enough for her) then working for a range of publications including the Daily Mail, Channel 4 and Marie Claire.
In this episode we talk about growing up in London with an English mother and father from Barbados and what it felt like to be ‘different’. We explore how seeing the way in which her father was treated compared to her mother made Andrea determined to allow marginalised voices to be heard. Andrea tells me about her time as a fearless young reporter meeting Weinstein face to face, exposing one of Trump’s businesses, investigating Russian companies and uncovering sweatshops in India. We discuss the four pillars that underpin the values she really cares about: women’s empowerment, sustainability, education of girls and women and mental health, and how this is driving the current agenda at Marie Claire.
Andrea is passionate about unveiling injustice but doing so in a way that provides people with the everyday relief and inspiration to make a difference and get on with their own lives with a spring in their step. This underpins everything she does including the fashion and beauty at Marie Claire which is about celebrating women as they are, instead of as they ‘should be’. I’m sure that you will be able to feel the energy that she puts into her career and ensuring that people are heard seep through the recording to positively infect your day, week and maybe even your year ahead.
May 14, 2020
Episode 1 of Dot to Dot Behind the Person
@Spotify https://spoti.fi/3dHLS8Q
@Google https://bit.ly/2WWbmbN
@Apple (coming soon)
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Why when you pursue your passions you can do just about anything you put your mind to.
My guest on the very first of my podcast Dot to Dot ‘Behind the Person’ is Brenda Trenowden. Someone I met through work and ‘am extremely grateful to call a friend and mentor. Brenda is energetic, engaging, clever, driven and fun – known aptly by her friends as Wonder Woman.
Do you think that people can change careers later in life? Do you think experiencing life threatening illness brings your values into clearer focus? Do you believe that women and minorities should be more fairly represented across society? Is family important no matter what is going on in your career and life more broadly?
Brenda is extremely passionate about gender equality and was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in June 2018 as a result of the work she’s done. She has chaired the 30% Club since 2016. In this role she has encouraged, persuaded, convinced and corralled CEOs globally to understand and support the need for diversity. The campaign hit a milestone in September 2019, when the number of female directors on the boards of the UK’s 100 largest listed companies hit 30.42 per cent. Brenda was listed as the number one Champion of Women in Business 2018 in the Financial Times HERoes awards and in the Summer of 2019, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Queens University in Canada. Brenda spent more than 25 years working in the finance sector living in Paris, Singapore, Mumbai, Dhaka and London. She recently changing careers to work as a Partner at PWC championing Diversity & Inclusion. She is an advisor to the UK Government’s Hampton-Alexander Review. She is also on the England and Wales Cricket Board which reflects her family’s passion for the game.
In this episode we talk about what and who has influenced and shaped Brenda in life. We discuss the importance of curiosity which as a psychologist I know helps with both mental and physical health – allowing us to fulfil our potential. We discuss her role in leading the 30% club campaign and her passion for championing diversity and inclusion. We chat about moving careers in your 50s while being focussed on your values and what matters. We also talk about living with cancer and having a ‘glass half full’ approach to life (even touching on what Brenda calls cancer perks) and the reality of having days that are far from perfect. Most important of all we discuss Brenda’s family and how they are at the heart of who she is.
Brenda’s drive and passion for life is infectious. I hope after listening to this chat you’ll feel motivated to explore your own influences, interests and how you can go about pursuing and fulfilling your dreams.
