According to Chi-Yue Chiu, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore:

“Distress following excessive self-praise is likely to occur when a person’s inadequacy is exposed, and because inaccurate self-assessments can prevent self-improvement.”

Researchers discovered this effect in students from both the U.S. and Hong Kong, suggesting that it may be cross-cultural. However, they found that students from Hong Kong tended to be more humble in their self evaluations overall, which was consistent with previous research supporting the trend of Asian cultures being more modest than Western cultures.

This finding shouldn’t be that shocking to readers of The Emotion Machine. I have long advocated that we take an honest and reasonable approach to how we view ourselves.

I like positive psychology and I think it offers many useful theories and practices for how we can benefit our lives. But this shouldn’t be confused with the “positive thinking movement.” The former is a scientific discipline, while the latter is a heavily commercialized and distorted industry with little scientific backing.

I’ve experienced the heartache of believing things like The Law of Attraction and The Secret first hand, and I’ve later warned about these dangerous trends in personal development – which often emphasize the importance of excessive self-praise and over-confidence, even when it is irrational and potentially very harmful.

When the self-help “guru” James Arthur Ray had participants go on a physically demanding “Spiritual Warrior” retreat that consisted of several days of fasting, and then spending hours locked in a sweat lodge, several people needed to be hospitalized after – and some even died. Ray believed that through excessive confidence and self-belief, they could overcome any physical limitations. His excessive confidence was wrong, and it had dire consequences for those who fell prey to it.

Of course, some level of self-praise and confidence is essential to our evolution. Because without any confidence, we can never be motivated to take the risks required to successfully adapt to our environment.

If a fish gets thrown into a new pond, but it is too fearful and avoiding of it’s surroundings, it will have greater difficulty finding food to survive. But if it has the confidence to explore its new territory and take calculated risks, it will often have a greater probability of discovering new means of survival, without being crippled by fear.

Self-praise is one of the biggest ways humans can build a more confident demeanor and be more motivated to take action, but it needs to be balanced.

Sports psychologists have demonstrated how athletes can use positive self-talk to improve their performance. But clearly overestimating our abilities can at times lead to some destructive outcomes.

Another study showed how overly optimistic people are susceptible to underestimating the risks that bad things will happen to them, such as getting cancer or getting into a bad car accident. This optimistic attitude can motivate people toward more reckless behaviors because they mis-attribute the risks of their actions.

Again, it’s about balance. Self-praise and confidence are good, but only when they are deserved and when they are grounded in reality. Trying to fool ourselves into thinking we are more than we are can only backfire in the end.

Both make similar use of the brain’s reward system, leading to increases in dopamine. But one big difference is that skydivers, on average, are considered healthy and functioning, while compulsive gambling is often regarded as a serious behavioral disorder.

Positive Thrill-Seeking

One implication researchers are drawing from this study is the idea of replacing harmful thrill-seeking with more “positive thrill-seeking.” According to Scandinavian psychologist Helga Myrseth:

“One of our major discoveries was that extreme scores for impulsiveness or thrill-seeking don’t have to be negative or linked to a diagnosis, such as gambling addiction. It may as well be connected to more wholesome leisure activities, such as extreme sports.

Compulsive gamblers may be able to get their kicks without risking health and ruin. Both gamblers and extreme sport athletes show a strong desire for intense stimulus. For skydivers this arises from the intensely compressed nature of the sport. For gamblers it can lead to increasing sums of money being put into play.”

Is it possible that other forms of harmful impulsivity, like drug abuse or eating disorders, could be substituted for more positive habits that still provide similar levels of excitement?

Forms of positive thrill-seeking

There are many relatively safe and healthy ways to get our dose of “thrill-seeking.” Some ideas I’ve come up with include:

• Extreme sports.
• Challenging yourself in something.
• Rollercoasters.
• An intense work out.
• Practicing safe sex.
• Trying something new.
• Watching a scary or action-packed movie.
• Listening to exciting and lively music.
• Videogames.
• Celebrating a holiday or important event.

I’m sure the list is endless, but the point is that there are alternative ways of thrill-seeking that don’t have to include harmful activities like compulsive gambling, excessive eating, or drug abuse. And maybe by engaging in these alternatives, we can actually curb our desire for these less healthy and more risk-taking habits.

Everyone needs a little excitement in their lives, but we all need different doses. Positive thrill-seeking is a great way to invigorate our lives without needing to put ourselves in danger.

Question: What are some positive thrill-seeking suggestions that I may have missed? Feel free to leave your answers in the comment section!

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According to the research, confidence motivates us to take action in the face of uncertainty. The more confident we are, the more likely we are to fight for the resources we need to survive.

The truth is life is filled with uncertainty. We never really know how the future is going to turn out. And sometimes due to this uncertainty we fear rejection or failure.

We might be deathly afraid of being rejected by at a girl at a bar. So instead of taking the risk and starting a conversation, we just hang with our friends and never approach her.

Or maybe we are afraid of starting a new career because we don’t think we will be any good at it. So instead we stick with our old job, even though we hate it and get paid half the salary.

Lack of confidence can cause us to sabotage ourselves in all sorts of ways.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think guys like Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee, and Tiger Woods got to where they are without believing in themselves? Of course not! They believed they were capable of great things, and that belief motivated them to work hard and make it happen.

In the same way confidence can directly impact your life in a positive way.

However — sometimes due to years and years of being down on ourselves, it’s hard to find confidence. So here are some tips to help build more of it in your life:

• Reflect on your strengths.
• View obstacles as learning experiences.
• Find a supportive social circle.
• Repeat positive affirmations about yourself.
• Exercise and stay healthy.

Most of these are commonsense. But if you actually practice them, you will see more confidence in your life.

I’ve been studying psychology for 5 years now. Throughout those years I’ve discovered that there is nothing more important to our success than what we think about ourselves.

This is because confidence can be like a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we have positive beliefs, that causes us to act in ways that bring us the results we want.

Evolutionarily, this is probably why confidence became a desirable trait.

Want to learn Conversation Confidence?

Social confidence expert Eduard Ezeanu recently released a 4.5 hour audio guide on how to be a more confident speaker. It also comes with a digital guide and other free bonuses. I highly recommend you check it out if this is an area in your life where you are struggling.

Before I knew anything, I actually had no idea that our minds could be reprogrammed and modified to better serve our needs.

Instead, I used to just believe: “this is the brain I have, and this is the brain I will always have.” It was a passive thing – something I had no control over. It just was.

But the more I learned about personal development, the more I learned our mind is actually very flexible and very capable of changing itself.

In fact, our mind is always changing. Every new experience we have, and every new thing we learn, changes the neural pathways and structures in our brain. Today, scientists call it “neuroplasticity.”

The key to personal development is to actively change the structure of our brains by conditioning and reprogramming our mind in new ways. And we can actually achieve this using a variety of different strategies. Here are some things you can start working on right away:

Change your perspective. Try having more solution-oriented thinking instead of problem-oriented thinking. When you think only about the stuff that sucks in your life, it’ll often make you feel worse. But when you start feeling capable of finding solutions and overcoming obstacles, you condition your mind to find the answers you need.

Modify your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves inside our heads – that’s what thinking is. The problem is some of us talk negatively about ourselves, while others talk positively about themselves. The more you tell yourself something, the more likely you are to believe it and act on that belief. So the more you feed yourself healthy and motivating thoughts, the more those thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes can have a positive effect on your life.

Take risks. Sometimes the best way to learn something is to step outside of our heads and experience it. You might be used to getting a cheeseburger at every restaurant you go, but until you take a risk and try something new you’ll never know what else life might have to offer. Will you fail and make mistakes sometimes? Sure, but it’s a part of the growing process.

Use your imagination as practice. Studies show that imagining yourself taking a course of action is a really good way to motivate yourself to take that action in the future. So by practicing visualization techniques on a regular basis we can actually reprogram our thoughts and behaviors. One great example of this is professional athletes mentally rehearsing before a game or match.

Stop victimizing yourself. One of the most common traps our culture teaches us is that we are helpless victims of circumstance. In other words, we have no control over our destiny; instead, reality rears its ugly head and we get whatever we get. As a result, we become programmed to shift blame to external factors and never seek responsibility for our lives.

Stay present with your goals. By taking small and gradual steps on a daily basis, we can end up covering a lot of ground in the long-run. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the only real power you have is in the present moment. Only in the “now” can you think, decide, act, and make changes to your life. Don’t dwell on the past or wait for the future – start making progress today.

By applying these things in my own life, I have improved myself dramatically over the years. I now have a different perspective about life, I think and talk to myself differently, I take smart risks more often, I visualize my future more clearly, I take responsibility for the direction of my life, and I stay focused on what matters the most to me in each and every moment.

And in return – I’m happier because of it.

Social Dynamix covers all the bases for how to reprogram your mind more effectively, but it also makes a crucial point about achieving happiness for yourself:

“The only person that your happiness is dependent upon is you. You have to start being happy from within, and not look toward externals things or people to make you happy. Even when you’re in a relationship you want to be a whole person instead of this ‘you complete me’ thing. External things may make you happy for a little while, but it often doesn’t last. People and things can be taken away from you in a moment – but if you are happy from within then that is a very hard thing to take away.”

You have to remember that your happiness can only be achieved by you and you alone. No one else can take control of your mind and make you happy.

Program yourself for happiness.

Everyone from Buddha to modern day positive psychologist like Dan Gilbert understand that we synthesize our happiness by reprogramming how we think about ourselves and our world. As the William James quote adequately puts it, “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” If you understand this simple fact, then you are halfway down the path to personal development. The other half is now taking action and making it all happen.

Social Dynamix

Before I mentioned Social Dynamix. It’s a personal development product I just recently got a copy of and I’ve been really impressed with the breadth and depth of information in it.

So far, I’ve only watched the first module – “Mind Jack” – which is three 20 minute videos explaining how your thoughts, perception, and attitude affect your life (a lot of the stuff I’ve been talking about in this article). The 2 other main modules are “The Shyness and Social Anxiety Annihilator” and “Social Re-Boot.”

I’ll definitely be sharing more about these in the future once I watch them. You can stay updated by joining my newsletter.

The product also comes with a slew of other related bonuses that I would like to write about at some point (about a dozen other PDFs, audio files, videos, etc.) If you want you can head over to the page and check it out.

Buyer Awareness: If you happen to buy it, I will get paid a % of the commission for referring you. But please remember that I don’t work for the company (so please don’t send me e-mails for customer support – but you can send me an e-mail if you want to talk about the content in more depth) and I only recommend it because I have tried it out myself and found it to be valuable.

Questions.

• What do you do to help reprogram your mind to be healthier and more positive?
• What were some old thought patterns and beliefs you needed to change in the past?

Please answer these in the comment section below!