Flourish - Live an Inspired Life for #Success

If you were to reflect on the best moments of your life, chances are they involved other people. We feel good sharing our experiences with others, and our desire for high quality relationships may be connected to a deep-seated psychological impulse: the need to belong. Aristotle commented that humans are fundamentally social in nature. Modern society is full of evidence that Aristotle was right. F...

If you have ever tried hard to change yourself, you may have taken aim at your social reputation, targeting your central traits or your social roles. Maybe you woke up one day and decided that you must become a more optimistic and emotionally upbeat person. Taking into consideration the reflected appraisals of others, you realized that even your friends seem to avoid you because you bring them dow...

Find our who you are by exploring yourself.  Did you know you can program yourself as your own personal data base?   Reach Peak Experience by exercising your own mind....just like you do with your body.   Emerge yourself and be in the present moment. Join us as we explore human nature and the behaviours that lead to self-actualization through A.H. Maslow.  These episodes are devoted to those behav...

Supreme inspiration comes from a state of immersing yourself in your work.  In what you really love to do.  This is your calling, your purpose and the spark is already within you.   As you immerse yourself, you will reach a state of flow, as if time is standing still and your creative mind takes over.  You feel calm and immense joy at the same time.   Instant gratification will seem minor compared...

You are an individual, full of beliefs, identities, and more that help make you unique. You don’t want to be labeled just by your gender or race or religion. But as complex as we perceive ourselves to be, we often define others merely by their most distinct social group.  Even in one’s own family, everyone wants to be seen for who they are, not as “just another typical X.” But still, people put ot...

Groups usually exist for a reason. In groups, we solve problems, create products, create standards, communicate knowledge, have fun, perform arts, create institutions, and even ensure our safety from attacks by other groups. But do groups always outperform individuals? Groups have instrumental, practical value, but also emotional, psychological value. In groups we find others who appreciate and va...

Do you think you have inherited who you are?  There are some attitudes we adopt from our parents initially, that much is true, but not everything.  In today's episode we explore attitudes and how you can change yours to make your own decisions versus staying the course of what your parents believe and even what advertising does to persuade you into thinking you need more, more, more.   Strong atti...

Be as good as you can be by asking yourself, 'is it worth it?'  You bet it is!  Take the steps toward self actualization and you will be guaranteed a better life by becoming who you want to be. Reach Peak Experience by making up your own mind and ignoring outside influences.  Emerge yourself and look within to develop your own mindset. Join us as we explore human nature and the behaviours that lea...

We need to be Social - It Influences Our Mental and Physical Health In comparison with those who do not feel that they have a network of others they can rely on, people who feel that they have adequate social support report being happier and have also been found to have fewer psychological problems, including eating disorders and mental illness. People with social support are less depressed overal...

Dare to listen to yourself. Dare, at each moment in life, to speak your truth. Take the steps toward self actualization and you will be guaranteed a better life.  Reach Peak Experience by making up your own mind and ignoring outside influences.  Emerge yourself and look within to develop your own mindset. Join us as we explore human nature and the behaviours that lead to self-actualization through...

Personality tests or Personal Orientation Profiles when job seeking have been around for a long time.  Learn a little bit about how these tests work and what you may be asked. No single method of assessing personality is perfect or infallible; each of the major methods has both strengths and limitations. By using a diversity of approaches, researchers can overcome the limitations of any single met...

There are multiple ways to evaluate personality stability. The existing evidence suggests that personality attributes are relatively enduring attributes that show predictable average-level changes across the lifespan. Personality stability is produced by a complicated interplay between individuals and their social settings. Many personality attributes are linked to life experiences in a mutually r...

 Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time. Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where they stand on a set of basi...

In the past century, a number of psychotherapeutic orientations have gained popularity for treating mental illnesses. This module outlines some of the best-known therapeutic approaches and explains the history, techniques, advantages, and disadvantages associated with each. The most effective modern approach is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). We also discuss psychoanalytic therapy, person-cent...

Modern approaches to the assessment of psychopathy, consisting of rating instruments and self-report scales, reflect the foregoing historic conceptions to differing degrees. It is evident that all individuals have a personality, as indicated by their characteristic way of thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating to others. For some people, these traits result in a considerable degree of distress...

It is evident that all individuals have a personality, as indicated by their characteristic way of thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating to others. For some people, these traits result in a considerable degree of distress and/or impairment, constituting a personality disorder.  A considerable body of research has accumulated to help understand the etiology, pathology, and/or treatment for some...

Schizophrenia and the other psychotic disorders are some of the most impairing forms of psychopathology, frequently associated with a profound negative effect on the individual’s educational, occupational, and social function. Sadly, these disorders often manifest right at time of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, just as young people should be evolving into independent young adults. T...

Everyone feels down or euphoric from time to time, but this is different from having a mood disorder such as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. Mood disorders are extended periods of depressed, euphoric, or irritable moods that in combination with other symptoms cause the person significant distress and interfere with his or her daily life, often resulting in social and occupational di...

Anxiety is a natural part of life and, at normal levels, helps us to function at our best. However, for people with anxiety disorders, anxiety is overwhelming and hard to control. Anxiety disorders develop out of a blend of biological (genetic) and psychological factors that, when combined with stress, may lead to the development of ailments. Primary anxiety-related diagnoses include generalized a...

References to mental illness can be found throughout history. The evolution of mental illness, however, has not been linear or progressive but rather cyclical. Whether a behavior is considered normal or abnormal depends on the context surrounding the behavior and thus changes as a function of a particular time and culture. In the past, uncommon behavior or behavior that deviated from the sociocult...

Most people are fairly happy, but many of them also wish they could be a bit more satisfied and enjoy life more. Prescriptions about how to achieve more happiness are often oversimplified because happiness has different components and prescriptions need to be aimed at where each individual needs improvement—one size does not fit all. A person might be strong in one area and deficient in other area...

Our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors play an important role in our health. Not only do they influence our day-to-day health practices, but they can also influence how our body functions. This module provides an overview of health psychology, which is a field devoted to understanding the connections between psychology and health. Discussed here are examples of topics a health psychologist might st...

A little flash-back with this episode.  This episode is included as a reminder on how to navigate this course and get the support you need as a student.  I am linking the original episode that reviews the information in more detail: https://youtu.be/8WpNIH8zizo  A little positive reinforcement!  Live an Inspired Life! #QueensU #Psychology #LearnOnLine Find out more about Flourish at the links belo...

In humans, emotions and their associated neural systems have additional layers of complexity and flexibility. Compared to animals, humans experience a vast variety of nuanced and sometimes conflicting emotions. Humans also respond to these emotions in complex ways, such that conscious goals, values, and other cognitions influence behavior in addition to emotional responses. Research in affective n...

How we feel adds much of the flavor to life’s highest—and lowest—moments. Can you think of an important moment in your life that didn’t involve strong feelings? In fact, it might be hard to recall any times when you had no feeling at all. Given how saturated human life is with feelings, and given how profoundly feelings affect us, it is not surprising that much theorizing and research has been dev...