Karen Warner, is Chief Executive and Managing Partner of Tangible Group, which offers consulting and coaching services to Fortune 1000 companies to improve performance and leadership. She shared a popular activity she leads in her workshops, and true to her generous spirit, she is sharing it with us at Positive Prescription.
The idea is to carve out five minutes of peace at the beginning of each day, giving one minute to each activity listed below. Each one begins with a question and is followed by an action step. Do it every morning.
1. Time: 0:01
Question: Am I grouchy or cheery?
Action: Adjust your starting point.
2. Time: 0:02
Question: Who or what do I take for granted?
Action: Actively appreciate.
3. Time: 0:03
Question: How will I get some exercise?
Action: Go outside and play.
4. Time: 0:04
Question: What three goals can I accomplish today?
Action: Anticipate great outcomes.
5. Time: 0:05
Question: Who needs my help today?
Action: Reach out right away.
Following these five steps, you can create the day, the life, and the world you want for yourself and those you spend your time with.
Her company is called Tangible, but this gift is immeasurable.
Even suicidal psychiatric patients were found to benefit from doing this exercise and reported more optimism and less hopelessness afterward.
When I was in boarding school, the headmaster would announce a surprise holiday once a semester. The entire school would be sitting in Chapel, ready for a regular day of class, and he would ask us to turn to a certain page in the Prayer Book and read a prayer about the importance of play. We all knew what that prayer meant—classes were cancelled and we were free to do as we pleased. It was the best feeling in the world. We attended class six days a week so a day off was beyond precious. The best part was that we had done all our homework the night before. The day belonged to us.
Those days were like gold. Every minute counted. I spent time with friends; I read books or listened to music, and I wrote at least one letter to my parents, grandmother or sister. It was a day well spent. Looking back I know why—it was filled with meaning, engagement and connection.
As an adult, it is challenging to build those ingredients into each day but it is possible. Now, go ahead and make your day.
Most doctors have a great deal of affection for their patients but, truth be told, this is not always the case. “Admitted or not, the fact remains that a few patients kindle aversion, fear, despair, or even downright malice in their doctors,” Dr. James Groves wrote in a seminal 1978 paper entitled “Taking Care of the Hateful Patient” published in the New England Journal of Medicine.He went on to further explore the uncomfortable reality that doctors sometimes harbor negative feelings towards patients.
Dr. Gross was not referring to the occasional personality clash—he was talking about patients who are, quite frankly, difficult to deal with. They are the ones most physicians see in the schedule and dread. Gross divided these challenging patients into four groups:
1. Dependent Clingers
Dependent Clingers have a relentless need for attention and reassurance. No matter how much time and energy a doctor gives them, it is never enough. They exhaust the doctor with endless phone calls and questions — which have usually been covered already. These patients have no boundaries and try to reach the doctor at any time day or night and disregard on-call protocals. “Whatever their medical problems, what is common to them as a group is their… bottomless need.”
2. Entitled Demanders
Entitled Demanders are like Dependent Clingers in terms of their neediness but are more overtly and obnoxiously demanding. They become hostile when they do not get what they want. Intimidation and devaluation are their go-to strategies. Typical behaviors include threatening legal action, damaging the doctor’s reputation and withholding payment if the doctor isn’t complying with their stipulations.
3. Manipulative Help-Rejecters
Manipulative Help-Rejecters are the patients who feel that nothing and nobody can help them. As Gross observes: “Appearing almost smugly satisfied, they return again and again to the office or clinic to report that, once again, the regimen did not work. Their pessimism and tenacious nay-saying appear to increase in direct proportion to the physician’s efforts and enthusiasm.”
4. Self-destructive Deniers
Self-destructive deniers seem to revel in self-destruction. “They appear to find their main pleasure in furiously defeating the physician’s attempts to preserve their lives,” writes Gross. They have given up hope and don’t seem to care about the havoc their behavior wreaks on themselves and those around them.
Dependent Clingers, Entitled Demanders, Manipulative Help-Rejecters and Self-Destructive Deniers elicit intense negative feeling in doctors—loathing, aversion, avoidance, anger, anxiety, inadequacy, fear, indifference, and even malice—that cannot be wished away or ignored. Instead of wasting precious energy trying to suppress uncomfortable feelings or allowing hostile emotions to impact quality of care, Gross argues that doctors should pay attention to their feelings and learn from them.
“The physician’s negative reactions constitute important clinical data that should facilitate better understanding.” In other words, it can provide valuable information and helpful clues about what makes a patient tick from which a doctor can gain insight about the patient’s underlying needs and motivations.
For example, a feeling of aversion towards a clingy patient is a sign it is time to set firm boundaries. A doctor’s feeling of helplessness and inadequacy towards a help-rejecting patient might be a sign of the patient’s intense fear of abandonment. As Gross concludes, “What the behaviors of such patients teach over time is that it is not how one feels about them that is most important in their care. It is how one behaves toward them.”
The four types mentioned above are probably negative emotions, that can be thought of as data points for everyone, not just doctors. When you reframe feelings like anger, disappointment, and frustration, as information and not something to be acted upon or swept under the rug, you defang their power.
Have you ever found yourself attracted to someone who initially didn’t float your boat?
A recent study at the University of Texas explores the science underlying a change of heart and how perceptions of attractiveness change over time. Students were asked to rate the romantic appeal of their opposite-sex classmates. At the start of the semester the students pretty much agreed on who in their class was most desirable. When they were asked again three months later, after a semester in a small classroom setting, their judgments varied widely on who was hot and who was not.
As the students got to know each other, perceptions of “hotness” shifted. According to researchers, this gradual change in feeling occurs often.
Here is a snapshot of some of the results of one survey where 33 percent of the men and 43 percent of the women said they had fallen in love with someone they initially did not find attractive. Main explanations for this change of heart included:
“Great conversations”
“Common interests”
“Came to appreciate his/her sense of humor”
Indeed, looks aren’t everything. Audrey Hepburn said it best:
“Make-up can only make you look pretty on the outside but it doesn’t help if you’re ugly on the inside. Unless you eat the make-up.”
The next time you need a boost of creativity, whether embarking on a creative project or struggling to solve a problem big or small, try staring at something green. A granny smith, some trees, anything.
That’s what scientists in Germany had test subjects do. Two groups stared at green and white triangles respectively, then completed creativity tasks. The green group was rated as more clever, inventive and better able to solve problems than the white.
Historically, the color green has been associated with life, nature, fertility, growth and hope, so perhaps it’s no surprise that green, in some sense, inspires us. Whether the power of color is based in some innate hardwiring in our brains, or a cultural phenomenon, the reality is that color affects us.
