Christel Maritz Blog - Page 22 of 30

Seven Seconds to Success

When you first encounter someone they make a decision about you in seven seconds. Beyond a first impression which is made during the first three seconds and is relatively shallow about your appearance and attractiveness, the next four seconds is where you seal your fate. Seven seconds is all it takes to make it or break it, whether it is during a job interview, sales call, or annual performance review. A lifetime of preparation can boil down to a seven-second encounter.

Why Seven Seconds?

All of us, admittedly or not, form an opinion about a person or business within seven seconds of coming in contact with them. Those hasty judgements we make have their roots in evolution. In other words, our primitive origins drive our modern day social interactions. In fact, evolutionary psychologists go so far to suggest that we make quick decisions now because we had to act fast in early times to not end up as dinner!

Our psychological make-ups have not changed while our environment and challenges have. In prehistoric times, you would have had to make a quick judgment about an encounter with an unknown animal to avoid being a snack. Today, you make a hasty decision about a new business partner, service provider, or even romantic interest to avoid being taken advantage of, or worse, physically hurt.

According to Mark Schaller, a leading social psychologist at the University of British Columbia, during that critical first seven seconds of contact, we subconsciously decide whether a threat might be present and if we want to engage with someone. In seven seconds we sum up a new person well enough to try to figure out if we are interacting with a criminal or a sociopath that might steal from us or do us harm, or a nice person we want to do business with, buy a product from, or even date.

Tips to Prepare for Your Seven Seconds

Your life is a series of seven-second encounters where the world is judging you. All day everyday people decide if they want to do business with you, hire you, date you, or even be your friend. So, how do you best prepare for those fateful seven seconds? How do you connect with someone in seven seconds?

Jog, bike, or walk on a regular basis.
It is widely accepted that rhythmic exercise like running builds confidence, grooms effective leaders, and is associated with greater income. But, how? Exercise like walking and stair climbing are primitive. They are a central pattern generator (CPG) that once it starts it keeps going like a wheel and activates your primitive brain. While the body moves, the brain can do something else, such as listen to music or watch a television monitor.

Think of a CPG as a liberator. It allows your brain to think, reflect and plan while your body does its thing. Any simple, easy rhythmic exercise calms your mind and decreases your anxiety. In the long run, it puts you in touch with your primitive, natural, and relaxed self that people will like and trust.
Mimic the other person’s body language.
This communicates empathy. If the person you encounter is standing, then stand. If their arms are open and at their side, yours should be too. When we convey empathy we establish a connection and within seven seconds can begin to build a lasting relationship.
Quell social anxiety.
As we saw above, regular exercise like jogging can help over time, but not always in the moment. The problem with anxiety is that nervousness conveys uneasy excitement to others. It is unnerving and will immediately turn people off to you. When you are anxious, forget seven seconds; you are done in less than three!

The reason is that primitive man would have experienced anxiety to signal danger — a lurking predator for example. So when you are anxious you are signaling a nearby threat and people will associate you with danger. To appear less anxious, remember that anxiety is your brain playing tricks on you by overvaluing social encounters.

To reduce anxiety, breathe deeply and maintain open-arms and tall postures to signal to your brain that there is no threat. Next, shift your focus from you to the other person. Be empathetic. Ask yourself, what is (s)he saying? Determine how (s)he feels. By focusing on the other person, you establish rapport and are now using anxiety to your advantage during each seven-second encounter.

Seven Seconds goes by in a hurry. But it is all the time we have based on how evolution wired our brains. Prepare for your seven seconds with rhythmic exercise to put your best foot forward and then use the easy how-to tips to make every seven seconds a success!

AndreyPopov/Bigstock

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Seven Seconds to Success
Seven Seconds to Success
Disorders
When you first encounter someone they make a decision about you in seven seconds. Beyond a first impression which is made during the first three seconds and is relatively shallow about your appearance and attractiveness, the next four seconds is…

Anxiety Disorders

Occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. You might feel anxious when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, or making an important decision. But anxiety disorders involve more than temporary worry or fear. For a person with an anxiety disorder, the anxiety does not go away and can get worse over time. The feelings can interfere with daily activities such as job performance, school work, and relationships. There are several different types of anxiety disorders. Examples include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

People with generalized anxiety disorder display excessive anxiety or worry for months and face several anxiety-related symptoms.

Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms include:

Restlessness or feeling wound-up or on edge
Being easily fatigued
Difficulty concentrating or having their minds go blank
Irritability
Muscle tension
Difficulty controlling the worry
Sleep problems (difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless, unsatisfying sleep)

If you feel that you may be suffering from some form of anxiety disorder may be something you struggling with, please contact me and together we can determine the origin of your anxiety, working towards re-establishing you well being..

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

Fighting Depression at Work

“Fighting depression” does not appear on any job description.

Conducting job duties — no matter how menial or how daunting — has never been an issue for me. In one job, I faithfully took a former boss’s clothes to and from the cleaners. In another, I had the pleasure of demonstrating a business solution for those who run a global corporation. Due to past traumas that occurred during previous jobs, however, I constantly fight an inner war against depression.

The most depressing part of my past was looking forward to working at a new job and being told by new supervisors that they looked forward to working with me — only to find later that I failed to perform at my job.

For my first major job after graduating from college, I was hired by a state government. When first hired, I was told how impressive my work was. Not only did I feel an incredibly huge sense of job security, but this was the time when I met the woman who would someday become my wife.

Less than a year later, though, my supervisor fired me in front of my new wife. During this event, my supervisor recited my mistakes. She mentioned that I not only performed poorly but I lacked confidence, as well. The sad thing is that she previously documented that my work ethic made me a reliable employee, even though I had trouble performing. Not only that, the women who ran this department were actually using government property to exchange male pornography, discuss sexual enhancement devices, and use e-mail referencing the television program “Gilligan’s Island.”

I’m always thinking, “Umm, I’m the one who was fired?” I will never recover from being fired in front of my wife. I think about this every day at work, even 17 years later.

After failing as a state employee, I settled into the role of a business software engineer. I had a hard time holding a job, however, due to mistakes that I had made and outright lies told about me to my supervisors by customers. Understanding business is hard enough. But configuring software for business comes with stress, self-doubt, and much embarrassment.

Instead of implementing software for multiple companies, I now work for one company. I have a supervisor who tells me that I need to work on my self-perception. In fact, he tells me that I’m too hard on myself.
This sounds wonderful. But the seeds of depression that were planted by previous supervisors have created a responsibility that I’m bound to perform every day, battling thoughts of depressing episodes from my past.

I wish that I could explain what keeps me going. In fact, I have even had to force myself to stop pondering the question, “What was the point of working so hard in college?”

Decades from now, when I’m making arrangements for my final resting place, I will ensure that my headstone displays the following epitaph: “At least he tried!” As disturbing as that sounds, at least it’s an honorable and impressive evaluation of my job performance.

stokkete/Bigstock

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Fighting Depression at Work
Fighting Depression at Work
Disorders
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5 Sure Signs It’s time to see a psychologist

Psychologists know a secret that the research has shown — and one that I’ll share here with you. The sooner you seek out treatment, the faster you’ll feel better. It may sound obvious, but far too often people let their problems overwhelm them before getting help.

So here are 5 sure signs that it may be time to see a therapist.

1. It causes significant distress in your life.

Nearly every diagnosis listed in the DSM-5, the mental health diagnostic manual, has a requirement that a problem cause significant problems in your everyday life functioning, whether it be at work, at home, at school, or some place else. Maybe your concentration is shot, or your enthusiasm and drive for getting things done is simply not there any more. Maybe you avoid any interaction with your classmates or coworkers. Or maybe you’re just feeling plain overwhelmed.

If your anxiety, depression, mania, or whatever is causing you to function poorly in one of these environments, for weeks on end, that’s a sure sign it’s time to seek out help.

2. Nothing you’ve done seems to have helped.

Few people feel anxious for weeks on end and do nothing to try and help calm their anxiety. Few people suffer from the symptoms of depression without having tried to reverse the lethargy, sadness, or hopelessness feelings.

Sometimes our own coping skills fail us. They simply stop working, or become far less effective than they were in the past. If you’ve tried a half dozen different things already — talk to a friend, exercise more, seek out support online, read up on various self-help techniques online — and nothing has made much of a difference, that may be a sign it’s time to talk to a therapist.

3. Your friends (or family) are tired of listening to you.

Friends and family members are usually pretty great. They are there for us when times are good, and they are there for us when times are bad. If you need to bend someone’s ear about the feelings or thoughts you’re having, a friend is often close at hand.

But sometimes a friend can also feel overwhelmed by your problems. They start to pull away from seeing you. They don’t answer your texts or don’t take your call. They stop returning emails, or spend days before you hear a reply (with no explanation).

These may be signs that you’ve overwhelmed your own social support system. It’s time to reach out and talk to someone who’s job it is is to listen, and offer tools and techniques to improve your life.

We risk adding another disorder to our existing problems in an effort to self-medicate.

4. You start overusing or abusing something (or someone) to try and help alleviate your symptoms.

When the going gets tough, many people turn to their trusted mood-altering substance of choice — such as alcohol, cigarettes, or some drug. There’s nothing wrong with that¹ when done in moderation.

But when we’re feeling overwhelmed, sometimes we look to one of those helpers and start over-using it. We risk adding another disorder to our existing problems in an effort to self-medicate.

And it’s not just drugs that people will abuse to help alleviate their symptoms. Spending all of your free time online, engaging in non-stop pornography or gambling, or constantly checking your Facebook updates may all be efforts to block out your other problems.

Worse is when we turn our angst or anger toward another person in our lives, such as a loved one. Some people lash out or make their loved one’s life miserable as a way of trying to feel better about themselves.

5. People have noticed and said something to you.

This one is obvious — but sometimes we simply ignore the most obvious signs in our lives. Maybe it was a friend who pulled you aside one day and said, “Hey, is everything okay? I notice you seem to be really struggling lately… maybe you should talk to someone?” Or a partner who’s said, “Look, you need help. You haven’t been yourself in weeks. Nothing I do seems to help, and in fact, we just seem to be getting worse.”

Even coworkers and classmates may have noticed and made a small attempt to let you know they think you may need someone to talk to.

If you feel you need someone to talk to, you can email me at cmaritz@webmail.co.za