Some Points to Ponder

By Andrew Scott
Clinical Psychologist
Alpha Psychology & the Resilience Centre

One great benefits of the internet is so many entertaining ways to procrastinate! I talked about procrastination in my last blog post so I’ll leave that topic alone today. Instead I decided if we are going to procrastinate (and we all do a bit of that!) we may as well procrastinate doing something that will help us better understand ourselves or teach us how to better our selves in some way. So here are a few TED talks that I find particularly insightful, inspiring and thought-provoking.

http://new.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend
STRESS!!! How much does it seem to come up these days? Work can be stressful, school can be stressful, and people can be stressful, so we run and hide from it or try and beat it back as much as we can. Let me tell you that fighting against stress is one of the most stressful things you can do. If you ever feel stressed (and that’s all of us), then this video will be worth a watch.

http://new.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days
Here is a short video with a great challenge for anyone who is looking to get out of a rut or who feels stuck. I doubly recommend this video to anyone who is feeling depressed. Even a small 30-day challenge will have a positive effect on your sense of achievement and motivation, and have a positive flow-on effect for your mood.

http://new.ted.com/talks/andy_puddicombe_all_it_takes_is_10_mindful_minutes
“Mindfulness” is a practice which has a growing presence in psychology in recent years. It looks at our mind’s predilection to wander, to worry about the future, to ruminate about the past, and to generally sit in ‘daydream mode’. The problem with this is that our wandering mind distracts us from enjoying the present, and tends to get a bit lost in worries and so forth. This video is a great introduction to the principles of being mindful, or you could say, being present.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html
Alain de Botton investigates some of our assumptions we hold around work and success to better understand why that little voice in the back of our head likes to call us a failure!

http://new.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce
I had to include this video because I cannot help but be mesmerized by Malcom Gladwell’s talk on choice and happiness which goes into surprising detail about the spaghetti sauce industry. The end truth is we are not adept at verbalizing what it is that actually makes us happy, usually because we don’t know! We are not necessarily the best judges of what will lead to happiness. Instead, think of pursuing those things in life which we value, those things that so often are bigger than ourselves.

I hope that you enjoyed some of my personal favourite TED talks.