How can I act with courage in this moment?

If they are feeling lousy, that will color their view of such things negatively. Also, the more thought people put into such judgments, the more their moods color them (Forgas, 1995). The reason is that the more thinking a person does, the more his mood infuses his evaluations of the various aspects of the person or event he is evaluating. Mood also affects how motivated people are to think extensively about people and events around them. Because positive moods signal that things are okay, individuals feeling good rely on more heuristic or automatic forms of processing when making judgments about people, events, and issues (Bless et al. Forgas, 1998; Mackie & Worth, 1989). In other words, they rely more on the experiential system of cognition that we introduced at the beginning of this article. Allow yourself some slack. You're doing okay. Really, you are. You are exactly where you're supposed to be right now Self-compassion entails realizing you are exactly where you're supposed to be. It's accepting reality rather than denying it. Sure, you have the potential to achieve extraordinary things, but you have to do so by starting from where you are right now. Therefore, instead of believing you should be somewhere else, accept you are where you are right now, and learn to enjoy the process that will lead you to where you want to be. Otherwise, you will miss the beauty of the journey. How to become self-compassionate Her idea was simple: rather than wait until the adult years to get the positive role modeling we all need, why not provide it to children at a much earlier age. Reflecting her highest value of love, Lorraine started Future Possibilities, a nonprofit organization that provides coaching and after-school programs for children.

There are more than 300 coaches who work with children one-on-one to help them develop the confidence and self-respect they need to enter adulthood with a solid character in place. Over the last eight years, more than 250 companies have joined with Future Possibilities to provide character education programs and life skills to children throughout the United States and Canada. As of this writing, her organization is now expanding its reach worldwide. You can learn more about Future Possibilities by visiting www. While Lorraine's project is going global, Kevin's is focused on his hometown. He's found a simple way to share his value of beauty with others. Kevin loves to garden and each year he grows hundreds of tulips in his yard. During the blooming season, Kevin visits his garden every afternoon, cuts fresh tulips and offers them as gifts to those who pass by his home. For instance, people in good moods are more likely to rely on stereotypes when judging people (Bodenhausen et al. On the other hand, negative moods tell the person that something is wrong. Therefore, they lead the person to think more carefully to figure out what is bothering her. Studies show, in fact, that participants experiencing a negative mood focus on relevant details before making a judgment rather than settling on a quick-and-dirty judgment (Bless et al. Forgas et al. Gasper & Clore, 2002). As a demonstration of this idea, Herbert Bless and his colleagues (Bless et al. In a supposedly unrelated study, participants listened to an essay that argued for an increase in student fees at the university. For half of the sample, the arguments in the essay were rather weak. But for the other half, the arguments in the essay were quite strong and included logical claims built on solid evidence. Self-compassion is a skill that requires practice. The more you practice being self-compassionate, the easier it will become.

Every time you feel like criticizing yourself, consider it a wonderful opportunity to practice self-compassion. In her article, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristin Neff identifies three key components of self-compassion: We are all human beings experiencing life on earth with all that entails. Other people have experienced, are experiencing or will experience pain similar to us. We aren't alone or disconnected from others. Focusing on these three components can help us all become more self-compassionate. Let's have a brief look at each component in turn. Have you ever been angry with yourself to the point of insulting yourself? Once cut, he spreads them out on top of the hedges that surround the perimeter of his yard and invites people to take as many as they'd like. These tulips are his way of adding beauty to the lives of others. Alan Clements has found a creative way to express his value of freedom. In the early seventies, Alan gave up a full scholarship to study law at the University of Virginia and enrolled in the first American Buddhist University in Boulder, Colorado. He went on to spend almost ten years in Burma studying meditation and eventually became a Buddhist monk. Forced to leave his spiritual family behind by the military dictatorship, what began as a personal search for freedom turned into a campaign for justice. Alan set out to bring Burma's nonviolent struggle for freedom to the attention of others by publishing several articles including The Voice of Hope with Aung San Suu Kyi--Burma's Nobel Laureate and elected leader for their democracy movement. Since then, his support of Burma has blossomed into an international campaign for human rights. Alan has found a new way to share his message of freedom and hope with the world--a one-man show called Spiritually Incorrect. Filled with personal stories and his perspective on life, his improvisational performance is a call to action. Because most college students are likely to be opposed to a fee increase, the default, or heuristic, response is to pay little attention to how good the arguments are and maintain one's negative attitude toward the proposal. However, if you are processing the information in the essay carefully, paying attention to details, then strong arguments for the proposal could sway your opinion.

Results showed that the students who were in a happy mood processed the essay more heuristically. Their attitude toward a tuition increase was negative, even when the arguments for the increase were strong. In contrast, participants who were in a negative mood really thought carefully about the essay, so they were persuaded by the strong arguments to believe that the fee increase would be a good idea. Our intuition might lead us to think that if a friend is in a bad mood, it is not a good time to try to change her opinion on some issue. However, according to this line of research, if your arguments are strong, it is actually the best time to do so! The Next Step Toward Understanding Social Understanding In this article, we have focused primarily on how we process and are affected by information as it unfolds--how we seek knowledge, how we organize the knowledge we have, how that knowledge can be activated by features of the situations we encounter, and how motivation affects the processing of information. But social understanding involves more than merely processing incoming information. I certainly have. While this may seem like a natural thing for many people, it doesn't have to be this way. Being kind to yourself means talking to yourself as you would talk to your best friend or spouse--that is, with respect and sincere care. Perhaps you believe that doing so would make you a narcissist or would lead you to become overly complacent. These are common fears we often suffer. However, this is not the case. Being gentle with yourself is a sign of self-respect and an expression of your desire to be happy. With over 7. You're not the only one to face the challenge. Therefore, you should learn to recognize that we are all connected through our shared experience of human suffering. He challenges his audiences to bring more compassion and love to the world. You can learn more about his work by visiting: www.

Whether you decide to run for political office, implement a recycling program in your community, visit a nursing home and read to the elderly, or start a foundation, your contribution is important. Get started on your project today! SUPPORT THE SUCCESS OF OTHERS There is another way that you can serve the greater good of humanity with the skills you've learned: support the success of others. Now that you've become aware of how important it is to express your power and protect your dreams, doing the same for others is an important next step. For example, you might gently challenge loved ones to stop hiding their power or inspire a family member to pursue an important dream. You might even play the Face Your Fear game with a friend who needs to build his or her courage muscles. Here are some other things you can do: Our cognitive system is highly attuned to rely on memories, infer causation, form impressions of people, and imagine alternative possible outcomes to make sense of people and events. In article 4 we will turn to these central aspects of understanding the social world. SECTION REVIEW Returning to the Why: Motivational Factors in Social Cognition and Behavior Motivation plays a role in shaping which schemas are activated as well as when and how those schemas affect behavior and judgment. Primed ideas can influence thinking and behavior when they are compatible with the person's preexisting motivation. The three psychological motives introduced in the first part of this article--to be accurate, to be certain, and to validate existing beliefs and attitudes--are constantly at work, sometimes subconsciously, influencing which schemas come to mind and how powerfully they influence thinking and behavior. Mood affects how motivated we are to expend effort on processing information. CONNECT ONLINE: Don't stop now! Check out our videos and additional resources located at: www. You can't change something unless you're aware of it. In the same way, you can't alleviate the emotional pain you're experiencing unless you acknowledge it.