A Decade of Blogging: the Top 10 posts on The Mouse Trap
19 may 2006 was the day I blogged for the first time; the platform was blogspot and I was unsure of what direction my blog will take and whether I will be able to make a difference and convey my thoughts and learning to a broader audience.
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A decade later, with more than a million page views, I am decently satisfied with having found a niche for myself and for creating some positive impact.
But one lament I have is that I have slowed down considerably. In the first 3 and half years, while the blog was hosted on blogspot, I wrote about 360 blog posts; in Oct 2009, I had moved to self hosted blog, ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 22, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Blog 10 Years anniversary Source Type: podcasts
To Have or to Do? To Be or to Become?
A new study has recently caught the fancy of psychology journalists and is being touted as a support for renewed materialistic attitudes.
Jeff Woloson in Thailand. The birds atop Jeff’s head and left arm are Brahminy Kites; the larger bird on his right arm is a young White-bellied Sea-eagle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is a well known finding in psychology that experiential purchases, or experiences, are better for your happiness than material purchases, or possessions.
However, the picture, as always, is more nuanced and complicated. For starters, happiness means all things to all people, and is likely to be mul...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 19, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Daniel Kahneman Martin Seligman Positive psychology well-being Source Type: podcasts
To thrive in life invest in these 8 psychological constructs
We all want to excel in life and various psychological constructs have been proposed that can help us in this mission. These range from grit(mostly used in academic domain) to PsyCap (mostly used in work domain) to the concept of deliberate practice (mostly used in niche domains).
That’s My Goal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Grit has been proposed to be made up of passion and perseverance; passion itself being made up of investment of time and effort regularly in activities that one finds important, loved and self-defining (i.e. one identifies one’s self with the passionate activity).
PsyCap is made up of Confidenc...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 15, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: motivation ABCD eight stage grit PsyCap well-being Source Type: podcasts
Links from my #Leadership/ #PosPsy blog: 15 May 2016
Many of you may know that I am a Gallup certified strengths as well as a well-being/life coach; and l do workshop facilitation in leadership development space.
As part of reaching out to people who may benefit from applying positive psychology principles to their work/ daily life, I have decided recently to blog more frequently on Flourish Mentoring, my Leadership and Positive psychology based self-improvement blog and website.
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This also means that any posts that are primarily related to positive psychology will no longer be posted on The Mouse Trap, but will find a new home on the Flourish Ment...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 15, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Flourish Mentoring Source Type: podcasts
Practicing deliberately for excellence
Malcolm Gladwell had popularized the ‘10,000 hour’ rule to expertise in his popular book ‘Outliers’. As per his formulation, anyone who puts in 10,000 hours of effort could excel in a particular field. What one required was determination and raw effort. He had based these conclusions on the work of Anders Ericsson and colleagues and now Anders Ericsson (with Robert Pool) in his new book ‘Peak’ has tried to clear the muddied waters surrounding the 10,000 hour rule.
You can read an excerpt from peak here , where Anders himself clarifies that it doesn’t necessarily take 10,000 hours t...
Source: The Mouse Trap - April 23, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: intelligence deliberate practice exprtise Source Type: podcasts
Emotions – redefined!
English: Managing emotions – Identifying feelings (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a proponent of the eight basic emotions theory of emotions where the eight basic emotions are fear, courage/interest, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise/awe and anger and love. Its apparent that they are also paired in opposites as in fear and courage/ interest are opposite emotions in one sense of the word.
Today I want to elaborate on the idea that these emotions come about in opposite pairs and differ just so slightly from each other in terms of the cognitive/motivational appraisal.
C...
Source: The Mouse Trap - January 23, 2015 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion Source Type: podcasts
Love and Work
#180541146 / gettyimages.com
Love and work are two cornerstones of adult human life. The capacity to love and work adequately was considered by Freud as important for our well-being.
Adult romantic or love relationships are grounded in childhood attachment patterns. As per the famous and well researched and validated attachment theory, childhood attachment figures and the quality of our attachment with the primary caregiver, serve as templates for future adult relationships.
Attachment theory posits that there are at-least three different kinds of attachment patterns- secure attachment (when parental care-giving is consis...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 15, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: development emotion Freud Love Parenting Sigmund Freud Source Type: podcasts
Many Paths, Many Ends
Aum symbol in red (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Human beings are driven by many different goals throughout their life and though the goals of one individual would be different from other, the major goals of life can be classified as striving towards finding happiness, success, integrity and meaning in life. I have blogged elsewhere about how the latest research in positive psychology is explicating these four different legitimate aims via which one may lead a good or flourishing life. Also, a rider is in place here- its not as if one needs to, or is indeed, driven by one major goal to the exclusion of others, but a normal huma...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 22, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Sandeep Gautam Tags: happiness Artha Bhakti Bhakti Yoga cognition Hinduism Jnana Yoga Karma Yoga Moksha Source Type: podcasts
emotions and personality: take 6
Cover of Personality Disorders in Modern Life
Today I learned that Theodore Millon died. I started reading ” personality disorders in modern life” as a tribute to him, but the monkey mind that mine is, ended up writing this post instead.
To recall, Theodore Millon’s model talked about four fundamental evolutionary problems faced by all humans: 1) existence 2) adaptation 3) replication and 4) abstraction. There were also two polar ways of approaching each fundamental problem; that of pleasure-pain; activity-passivity; self-other and I added to it the fourth polarity of broad-narrow. Anyway ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - February 1, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Sandeep Gautam Tags: personality ABCD Daryl Bem emotions Millon Nature versus nurture passion vs prudence Theodore Millon Trait theory Source Type: podcasts
Doing more by doing less!
Hepburn (band) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I first heard of the book title ” Why Quitters Win: Decide to be excellent“, to say the least, I was very much intrigued. Was Nick trying to say something like stop doing something mid-way if you know that it is going to fail- and ignore the sunk costs…or was it about quitting when faced with unreasonable odds- rather than doubling your efforts and commitment. I believe in sticking with the choices you make, till you have given it your last shot, and so was slightly apprehensive.
However, what Nick Tasler means, is not about starting many things sequential...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 11, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: decision-making Quit Starbucks Source Type: podcasts
An infographic on schizophrenia
In continuation of the theme of May as Mental Health month, passing along an infographic received in email. Hope it helps in raising awareness.
Source: BestMedicalDegrees.com
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 16, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: schizophrenia Source Type: podcasts
Book review: A Lethal Inheritance
Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today, i.e. 15th may 2013 is being celebrated as a mental health blog day by APA and in the spirit of the day I am posting a review of ‘A Lethal Inheritance’ by Victoria Costello. It is a book chronicling how ‘ a mother uncovers the science behind three generations of mental illness‘ and is an apt topic for the day highlighting the importance of public education and discourse about the topic of mental health. this blog pots and book review is a homage to all the people who silently suffer from mental illness, most of the time undiagnosed, o...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 16, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review #mhblogday environment genes Health Mental disorder Mental health Suicide Source Type: podcasts
Business Sutra: the marriage of management and mythology!
Tathastu (Photo credit: .::RMT::.)
Regular readers of The Mouse Trap will know that I have an abiding interest in all things mythological; also by profession I am a middle manager. Top this with the fact that I am a fan of Devdutt Patanaik and have written a couple of posts before about his work, and you will not find it strange that I could not pass a chance to review his latest book, Business Sutra, which successfully entangles mythical narratives and interpretation with sound business and management principles and practices.
The book appears voluminous, with more than 400 pages, but is easy to read and l...
Source: The Mouse Trap - April 29, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review Culture of India Devta Hindu mythology Svaha Tathastu Source Type: podcasts
Epic Love Stories: a book review
taking oath, on abdicating his right to the throne, in order to get the fisher girl married to his father . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Although this blog is mainly about psychology, I have interests in mythology and have earlier reviewed Devdutt Pattanaik‘s ’7 secrets of Shiva’, under the Blogadda’s book review program. So when an opportunity to review Epic Love Stories by Ashok Banker came under the same program, I could not resist myself. While Devdutt Pattanaik reinterprets myths in modern light and draws explicit analogies , Ashok Banker sticks to a retelling of the myth in its original spirit- a...
Source: The Mouse Trap - February 26, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review Amba Ashok Banker Bhishma Brahmin Devdutt Pattanaik Dharma India Varna Source Type: podcasts
