HAVE COURAGE AND BE KIND: CINDERELLA

The much talked about movie Cinderella was as wonderful as expected.... have you watched it lately? Ella is different from the girls of her kingdom. She believes in the magic of kindness and power of courage, this is what makes her different. It’s her true inner beauty for which the prince falls, when he meets her in the woods before the ball.

Courage is a universally admired virtue, and courageous individuals in all cultures have survived against all odds to become the heroes of subsequent generation.

Courage is the ability and willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. Not every risk taking activity can be signified as courage. A mugger might be facing risk, uncertainty and fear but to call him courageous would be to defame the trait. Good intent is an essential component of courage. It is a part that lets us admire it and that touches us when we see it in action.

Interestingly it is this goodness or kindness that keeps us from recognising our own courage. When Biswas- Diener (positive psychologist) interviewed courageous people in his research most of them didn’t see their actions as anything special. “Anybody would have done the same thing”, they would tell them. We are courageous because it seems like the right thing to do, because it’s what we expect of ourselves or what we believe that others expect of us.

Courage can be physical, moral or vital courage. Physical courage involves the maintenance of societal good by expression of physical behaviour. Moral courage involves the preservation of justice and service of common good. Vital courage refers to perseverance through a disease or disability even when the outcome is ambiguous.  

Life is not fair, at times we are surrounded by difficult people and situations, instead of returning evil for evil choose to be kind towards someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for any advantage, but for that person. The Cinderella's tale teaches us to live in the present moment, enjoying simple pleasures and maintaining an optimistic attitude.

Courage and kindness is shortest route to good life.  Courage is also wisdom, knowing when to act and when not to act. Disney teaches moral values and virtues which are indeed important for leading a fulfilling life. The universal virtues of courage and kindness are basis for our wellbeing and happiness.  These virtues help us develop our full potential and lead a more purposeful life. Be the master of your own destiny. Take risks and work hard. Have courage and be kind, where there is kindness there is goodness and where there is goodness there is magic. Believe in yourself and magic will follow.

                                                         

WHAT DOES YOUR FAVOURITE COLOR SAYS ABOUT YOU (COLOR PSYCHOLOGY)

                  

What is your favourite color? What color appeals to you the most? Don’t overthink this, answer this question spontaneously. It’s okay to have two or three favourite colors. Write that down, this is the key to your personality color.

It is this instinctual choice of a color that tells a lot about your. It’s a way to understand your behaviour and personality traits, reflecting your strengths and weaknesses. The colors you dislike are also of great importance as they reflect your weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Your personality color is usually your favourite color, the color that excites you the most and makes you feel alive when you see it and not the one which you wear most of the time. Often you will find a tendency to choose a specific color or colors, which suggests that these are your personality colors.

RED: Red is the color of energy, passion, action, ambition and determination. It is also the color of anger. People with red personality type are usually quite active, cheerful and optimistic. These people are quite competitive and are not willing to settle for second best. On a negative side they are impulsive and have lack of patience. Egoism and narcissism are also important negative traits of them. Many famous artists, actors, and vagabonds exhibit characteristics of red color personality type.

BLUE:  Blue is the color of trust and peace. It can suggest loyalty and integrity as well as conservatism and frigidity. Lovers of blue have a deep need to find inner peace and truth, to live their life according to their ideals and beliefs. The blue color personality type typically has a lot of friends, many of these friends they know from childhood. They are very loyal in all their relationships, including romantic relationships.

GREEN: According to color psychology, people with strong preference for green strive for safety, security and acknowledgement. They need to love and be loved. Green is the color of balance and growth. It can mean both self-reliance as a positive and possessiveness as a negative, among many other meanings.

YELLOW: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity are common traits of yellow color personality type. With a personality color yellow, one can be very critical of himself as well as others - they are a perfectionist. They are generally impulsive, make quick decisions and can be anxious at times.

ORANGE: Orange is the color of social communication and optimism. Physical comfort, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun are traits of this personality type. From a negative color meaning it is also a sign of pessimism and superficiality.

PURPLE OR VIOLET:  The person is likely to have a deep need for emotional security and to create order and perfection in all areas of your life, including your spiritual life. The color violet inspires unconditional and selfless love, devoid of ego, encouraging sensitivity and compassion but is often impractical, with a great imagination, dreaming of an idealistic future world where they exclude the ugly side of reality - tend to look at life through rose-colored glasses.

If your personality color is pink you have a deep need to be accepted and loved unconditionally.

BROWN: “Brown” people enjoy simple life, having good friends and close relationships is what makes them happy. They are friendly yet serious, down-to-earth color that relates to security, protection, comfort and material wealth.

WHITE: White is a color that is complete and pure in itself and also the color of perfection. The color meaning of white is purity, innocence, wholeness and completion. White personality type is about looking for simplicity, openness and purity.

BLACK: Black is the color of the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, creating an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world. Black color personality is independent and strong-willed and sophisticated. Personality color black was described by color psychologists as decisive, powerful and confident, people with this personality type will make excellent leaders or entrepreneurs.

GREY: Grey is solid and stable, creating a sense of calm and composure, relief from a chaotic world. The person is neutral about life, often to the point of being indifferent. They are often trying to protect themselves from the chaotic world, even to the point of isolating themselves from others, leaving them with the feeling that they don't really fit in or belong anywhere.

GOLD:  Gold is the color of success, achievement and triumph. Associated with abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance, the color psychology of gold implies affluence, material wealth and extravagance.

SILVER: Silver has a feminine energy. It is soothing, calming and purifying, emotional, sensitive and mysterious. They are gracious, gentle, non-aggressive with strong values and morals. They are imaginative and creative, particularly in expressing themselves with written world.

HOW TO NOT LET YOUR THOUGHTS OVERPOWER YOU

Have you ever noted that one depression causing thought or cognition begins with “I’ll never......” So when you fail in some exam.... or your third or fourth relationship doesn't work out, you say “I’ll never pass this exam or I’ll never have a good relationship”. Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive therapy, would ask you to find evidence for your notions and encourage you to see that even a series of failure doesn't make you a failure.

Thinking alone doesn’t trouble, it’s the feeling associated with it which is troublesome. Ellis in his rational emotive behaviour therapy says people create problem by turning their preferences into needs. We prefer to have ...a good income, a good relationship, being attractive and thereby create beliefs of... I must have a good income, I can’t stay without a loving fulfilling relationship etc. What we do is, we jump from I like to I must. We have a rigid belief that “I need and must have the things I really want”. These ideas are what Ellis called irrational beliefs. They are absolute, rigid and demanding. These beliefs are irrational because they cannot be empirically or logically verified.

Where do these irrational beliefs come from? We are born with tendencies towards rational and irrational thinking. We have a tendency to give meaning and inferences to everything around us. We pay attention to negative information more readily than positive information. Along with the “must” thinking, self evaluation is another major cause of our distress.

Ellis Rational Emotive Therapy utilizes techniques from a wide range of approaches. However, its central technique is disputing. Disputing is logical challenging of irrational beliefs. You should attack your beliefs, find evidence for and against them. Try replacing them with more rational beliefs and ideas.

Moreover, sometimes these irrational beliefs affect our behaviour too. The effect of our cognition on our behaviour and how to tackle the same is represented by Ellis’s ABCDE model where “A” is the Activating or triggering event. “B” refers to our irrational Belief about the event at “A.” That belief then leads to “C,” the emotional and behavioral Consequences. “D” stands for Dispute or arguments against irrational beliefs. “E” stands for new Effective or rational emotions and behaviors that result from more reasonable thinking about the original event. This is an effective method to challenge ones irrational thoughts and beliefs.

Situations, events, feelings are not good or bad, it’s our perception and inferences which make them so. As I mentioned before, nothing good comes easy, you’ll have to make an obvious effort to achieve it. There is no absolute reality. Its not possible to achieve everything we want. We try, we fail, we try again ... this is how life goes. We all are fallible human beings. Ask yourself the Socratic question “So what?” So what, If your boss was rude to you? So what, if you failed in your exam? So what, if your friends think you are fat? It cannot change who you really are. Strive for excellence not perfection. Start valuing yourself. You are far more resilient than you think you are!!!!

HOW TO NOT LET OTHERS MAKE YOU FEEL BAD

There are times when others behave in a certain way that leave us feeling miserable. These emotions make you feel bad about yourself and others and take away your confidence.

Anger, jealousy and sadness are common natural emotions that we feel. These are completely natural emotional states and sometimes even serve a positive purpose like one that calls for a positive action, having rational expectations or considering pros and cons etc. It is rather how we respond to our emotions that lead to good or bad.

Our emotions and feelings in a way direct us and motivate us to process significant events in our life. They seem completely out of our control especially once they are triggered. Negative emotions are like viruses, they contaminate our normal “happy” thought processing and conditioning our mind to function on detrimental feelings and dominating our lives.

Situations like lack of money, a bad relationship, a rude boss, a hateful mother etc. are faced by most of us and its completely ok to feel bad about these situations. But this not how things go, our thoughts are constantly helping us to interpret the world around us, describing what’s happening, and trying to make sense of it by helping us interpret events, sights, sounds, smells, feelings. Without even realising it, we are interpreting and giving our own meanings to everything happening around us. We might decide that something is pleasant or nasty, good or bad, dangerous or safe. Here is when people create their own misery. We start interpreting the situation and end up feeling miserable about ourself.

We start from ....X ignored my hello... who does he think he is ... he always does this to me...everybody does this to me... everybody hates me..... I m so bad .... I hate myself .... why do I even exist and so on.

This is how we create a vicious chain of negative thoughts about oneself and others. When asked people they say it’s quite common for people to think this way and even completely out of their control and if their “others” were a little more considerate about their feelings or their behaviour could be fixed somehow, they’ll be happy.

But sadly we cannot control others, we might influence them to some extent but never control. The only person we can control is ourselves. As it is said nobody can make you feel bad without your consent, yes it is true...but it takes efforts to do so. Nothing good comes easy.

Our emotions are attached to our thoughts e.g. if you pick pink pencil colour you are bound to write pink and if you want to write blue you will have to change your pencil. This simple logic applies with us too. To feel good about a situation you’ll have to replace negative thought with a positive thought. First of all you’ll need to get hold of your immediate thought and feeling that is evoked by a triggering situation, now replace that thought with an alternate more positive thought and you’ll be left feeling better about a situation immediately.

This is a therapy which psychologists use with their clients, which I am going to write in my next blog i.e. detailed ways to control your emotions.