Psychological Tricks to Make Your Life Easier
Psychological tricks are like cheat codes for life.
The human brain has been studied since the 17th century BC, yet most of us are unclear on how we can leverage this powerful tool. Luckily, science has done all the work in identifying 4 psychological tricks to make our lives easier. Psychological tricks are like cheat codes for life — they help us navigate life with less resistance and allow us to understand the behaviour of people and how to deal with them effectively.
Let’s dive in!
1.) Stay calm when someone raises their voice
Let’s be honest: we’ve all raised our voices at some point in our lives. However, yelling is not healthy for any relationship, nor is it a great way to yield any healthy or productive results.
When someone is yelling,
- They’re displaying emotional rule over you.
- Their goal is to gain an upper hand in the situation.
- Yelling is their means of gaining control over you.
- In other words, it’s a form of intimidation.
And most of the time, yelling yields people the results they intend, but only in the short-term. The long-term results are horrible.
Ultimately, the one yelling is trying to bully the other person into the results they want.
Mark Twain said it best: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
There are two critical pieces that we need to understand when facing someone who is yelling:
- We need to understand the reason behind the yelling.
- We need to be thoughtful about how we react to the yelling.
The right approach can help to diffuse them, rather than escalating the situation.
So now the question is, how do we react to this? How do we ensure we aren’t escalating things?
- Make sure we aren’t mirroring the behavior. Learn the art of remaining calm. If we react, they will react to our reaction, and things will only continue to escalate.
- Take a step back. Pausing allows us to assess and figure out whether it is worth waiting out the yeller or removing ourselves from the situation.
- Do not agree. Agreeing only encourages the behavior.
- Let the person know that you will not accept being yelled at, regardless of the situation or problem. Remain calm.
- Take a break. This helps collect ourselves and pull in our thoughts before they get too far from us. This also allows our adrenaline to settle.
Not only does this help to work through our thoughts, but it also shows the other person that we don’t tolerate or condone emotional abuse and ultimately highlights their behavior.
Yelling causes damage to both parties — don’t allow anyone to continue to damage you or your relationship by tolerating yelling.
2.) Write down your thoughts when you feel stressed or anxious
This is also known as “expressive writing”, which is a specific kind of therapy where we write down our deepest thoughts.
It can be a wonderful way of engaging with our bottled-up emotions, which, in turn, releases stress and boosts our mental health.
A great example of expressive writing can be found in “The Diary Of Anne Frank”. Anne wrote it over two years while her family was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands.
This writing gives us a moment of pause, a moment to think before we write. Sometimes pausing can be challenging in a world where things move so fast around us.
This writing provides us with a distance between us and our emotions. Just a few degrees of separation can be extremely beneficial to our mental health.
This distance provides us with an opportunity to consider the emotion rather than acting on it immediately.
It also allows us to express ourselves safely without feeling the repercussions or consequences.
In other words: because we are the creator and the audience when we write, we do not need to suffer the consequences of the audience, because we are that audience.
So how can we engage in expressive writing?
- Write without punctuation.
- This is also known as automatic writing.
- Write without stopping, without worrying about sentence structure.
- Just simply write.
- After you’ve finished this writing, you can truly engage in it.
- You can analyse what it is that you wrote and what it means.
- This helps to identify what is bothering you at your core.
- Write in the voice of the older you, or the younger you.
This helps to tap into the mind that needs some sort of outlet — the part of us that potentially was unhealed or carries a lot of anxiety.
This allows us to engage with those versions of ourselves in a conversation.
This writing not only allows us to process all of this information and emotions, but it also allows us to clear our minds when returning to deep work or creative work.
It helps to free the mind and clear buildup in our minds.
3.) The right posture can boost confidence
We’ve all been guilty of this at some point: hunched over buried in our phones and computers, or hunched over while engaging with someone we work with, an employee, out on a date, during a sales pitch.
There’s some interesting data around our posture boosting our confidence in our thoughts.
- Researchers found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.
- On the flip side, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their qualifications.
Many of us have been told since we were young: “Sitting up straight gives a good impression”.
Interestingly enough, posture can also influence how we think about ourselves. When we end up sitting up straight, we convince ourselves by the posture we’re in.
- This study was not something earth-shattering; back in the 14th Century, this was believed to be a factor in improved thought quality.
- It wasn’t until recent years that this was proved to be true through science.
The right poster has a huge domino effect.
In a positive manner, when we slouch, we’re actually compressing the space for our lungs, reducing their capacity up to 30%. This means less oxygen to our brain.
In other words, not only does our posture increase our confidence, but it also increases our brain function.
On top of this, it helps us to think more clearly because we feel calmer and more confident.
When we stand or sit up taller and we pull our shoulders back and outward, our brain receives a signal that it’s the confident, powerful us in charge of our thinking. In turn, we make more confident choices.
This is what’s known as a ‘power pose’.
- These poses demonstrate confidence, even if we’re not actually feeling confident.
- These power poses increase the levels of testosterone in our brain.
- Because testosterone is associated with self-confidence, having good posture can create hormones in the brain that make us feel more self-assured.
The powerful takeaway here is this: sitting up straight is something we can train ourselves to do and it has huge psychological benefits.
4.) Make people feel needed when you ask for help
If you’ve listened to any great speeches with acknowledgements, read any book, or watched any movie, you’ll notice the acknowledgements are always a healthy portion of those things.
This is because no one achieves greatness alone.
As humans, we depend on each other to learn and grow. Research has shown that helping others actually makes us feel good.
So if this is the case, why is it so difficult for some people to ask for help?
For most people, even thinking of asking for help can chew away at their confidence. It makes us start to question our abilities, and sometimes it even paralyzes us with anxiety.
The fact is that none of us can go through the journey of life alone. No one achieves greatness alone.
Learning how to ask for — and almost more importantly accepting — help is perhaps one of the greatest skills we can develop.
So how can we ask for help and actually get the help we need?
- Be concise and specific.
This all comes down to clear communication.
We tend to over-explain, which only overwhelms and confuses the person we are looking for the help from.
Simply describe what the task is, why it matters, and how the person you’re asking can contribute.
The key here is being as specific as possible, as the other person needs to know exactly what it is they will need to do, and they can also accurately judge how much time and energy the task will take.
- Do not apologize.
We all need help at different points in our lives. No one jumps out of their seat in excitement to help those who apologize for asking.
Apologizing makes it seem as if we’re doing something wrong by asking. Don’t be ashamed of asking for help.
And a little bonus here: stay away from those openers:
“I hate to ask…”
“It’s just a small thing…”
This only suggests that the other individual’s assistance is trivial and takes the joy and sense of accomplishment out of helping.
- Make it personal.
Don’t ask for help via email or text. Here’s why: Research has shown that face-to-face requests are 34 times more successful.
We can make these requests more personalised by explaining why the person’s skills or expertise makes them uniquely suited to the task we’re facing.
- Share your results.
Show the person that helped you how their help impacted your results.
People like feeling needed and that their advice creates an impact.
We need to take the time to show the people who help us why their support not only matters to us but how it makes a larger impact on our lives.
Conclusion
There you have it — 4 psychological tricks to make your life easier. I hope the examples and definitions in this guide help you wield the power not just to simplify your life, but to transform challenges into opportunities and find an enduring ease that propels you toward a future of boundless possibilities.
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