Thursday 11 July 2013

How to Deal with the Emotional Crisis in a Calm and Cool Way?

If people were to choose a planet, where they prefer to live on, they will have two choices. The one planet will be orbiting around facts, details, systems, and laws – “real things”. The second one will be orbiting around abstract dimenions, feelings, and creative ideas- the “intangible things”. If the planets were to exist- there would be never ending devastating crises. Not because one planet is better, than another one, but because people from different planets will display and absorb the emotional response to situations differently. The name for the crisis would be The Emotional Crisis.

So how to deal with the crisis in a calm and cool way?

By Olena Denysyuk
The failure to understand the dimensions of feelings has its own price: loss of friends, husbands, good deals, goodwill – frankly speaking almost everything that involves human interaction. The consequent outcome of this failure might eventually further accelerate the misperception or misjudgment of human behavior/nature/incentives on the longer run. The effect is even worse, when we choose to stay hooked on being right (a topic for separate post) or see things from a limited/subjective standpoint  to the point that it actually turns into emotional stupidity – you would form your own delusional perception of reality.

In general, I think, feelings and emotions are a challenging subject to discuss, as it is more subjective, than anything. Sometimes ourselves and not only surrounding people fail to understand our emotional states. 
Our brain catches the “tangible and intangible information”, selects only the necessary information, process and analyses it, and consequently send signals to react. Due to different personalities, experiences, genes, brain anatomy, status quo, as well as social and family status, the same information will result in different outcomes at different times, as well as the same information will result different actions in different people. So there is no black or white, right or wrong, bad or good in people’s behavior- there are millions of dimensions on how our brain will catch, select, process and analyze this information. Besides, we are all different in our emotional intelligence and experiences; therefore we have different capacities to grasp the emotional side of the game. So her it comes: conflicts, stress, anxiety and emotional distress.



Monday 1 July 2013

WHAT DOES CREATE TRENDS?:About the book by Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference "

Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference "


Sometimes small things can make big differences. All you have to do is find the hidden buttons to these small things, which actually have the power to act big. Let’s look at the case of epidemics, let’s find the hidden mechanisms that originate and sustain the trends and social epidemics.






By Olena Denysyuk
 I have often been asking myself, why do we love to follow trends, that, at first glance, we might not like? But which, we might like it later?
 
In this regard, I chose to read the book  by Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference ", a book  about what makes ideas infectious, what messages can spread the ideas, and how to start and sustain social epidemics and trends. It didn’t answer exactly my question.  
 
 
And when I read the book, I was thinking of giving it only 2 stars on Goodreads. But by reaching the end, anyway, it earned one extra star.   
With all respect to journalism, I was initially a little disappointed that a book about trends/epidemics (sociology, in broader terms) was written by a journalist. I might have been spoiled by the most intelligent book by Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", as it was written by an expert. He managed to deliver his study of psychology and sociology not only reliably, but also amusingly. 
 
It's not that there is something wrong with Gladwell’s ideas and hypothesis, but I presume I am a bit critical towards his choice of arguments and research material-some of it seems weak to me, and he even sharpened some of it to fit into his own ideas. So I wonder why the book was so recommended by so many clever people.
 
 It's not that ORIGINAL, NEITHEIR ACADEMICALLY nor SCIENTIFICALLY. Here, the book had lost one star.
 
But soon after, I realized, it is rather good entertaining book - within the fields of marketing, but not human behavior or economics, as I originally thought it would be. And the book is even a bit thought-provoking and brain-teasing, I admit. The lost star found its way back!