Ejercicio: La increíble cura natural para la depresión al alcance de todos​
https://www.fitnessparatodos.net/ejercicio-la-increible-cura-natural-para-la-depresion-al-alcance-de-todos/?__s=8uk7xrywzpmygta3vxzh
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En inglés, a la depresión la llaman "el perro negro". Es una metáfora que describe bastante bien lo que se siente estar en depresión.


Yo lo he vivido varias veces a lo largo de mi vida, y como tú estás leyendo esto intuyo que tú también. Quizás incluso estás en depresión en este mismo momento.
Hay varios niveles de depresión y, aunque las causas puedan ser diferentes, todos experimentamos más o menos los mismos síntomas: una negatividad que no nos abandona, pensamientos negativos o tristes sobre un pasado traumático y estresante que nos atacan sin avisar en cualquier momento y de forma recurrente. Una tristeza permanente que te penetra el corazón y que no sabes cómo sacarte. Una falta de ánimos para básicamente cualquier cosa, desde salir de la cama hasta hacer actividades que en otro momento nos habría encantado hacer.
La vida es triste, oscura y aterrorizante cuando estamos en depresión.
Como un gran perro negro.
Lo bueno es que hay salida  Y hoy quiero hablarte de una que es gratuita, 100% natural, al alcance de absolutamente todo el mundo, y tan efectiva como cualquier medicamento: el ejercicio.
Apenas 1 Hora SemanalSí, semanal. Es todo lo que necesitas para que esta cura natural funcione para ti. Y te servirá:

• Independientemente del tipo de ejercicio que hagas (sea intenso o suave).
• Independientemente de tu edad (seas joven o mayor).
• Independientemente de tu género (seas hombre o mujer).

Es lo que se concluyó en el estudio científico más largo y extenso acerca del ejercicio y la depresión. Fue publicado en Octubre de 2017 e incluyó 33.908 adultos noruegos a quienes se les monitoreó el nivel de ejercicio y los síntomas de depresión y ansiedad a lo largo de 11 años1.
El equipo de investigación internacional encontró que un 12% de los casos de depresión se habrían podido prevenir si estas personas hubiesen hecho apenas una hora de actividad física a la semana.
La vida es triste, oscura y aterrorizante cuando estamos en #depresión. Pero hay una cura natural al alcance de todos! #salud #bienestaremocionalCLIC PARA TUITEARLas personas que dijeron ser completamente sedentarias fueron 44% más propensas a desarrollar depresiónque las que hacían de 1 a 2 horas semanales de actividad física, independientemente del tipo de actividad o de la intensidad con que lo hicieran.
“
Hemos sabido por un tiempo que el ejercicio tiene un rol en el tratamiento de los síntomas de depresión, pero es la primera vez que hemos podido cuantificar el potencial preventivo de la actividad física en términos de reducir niveles futuros de depresión.
Prof. Samuel Harvey
Meditación + Ejercicio = Menos DepresiónOtro estudio2 ha dado un paso más allá y ha combinado los efectos del ejercicio con los de otra actividad que se conoce ayuda con la depresión: la meditación.
Empezaban con 30 minutos de meditación de atención enfocada (o mindfulness, de la que ye te hemos hablado aquí) y seguían con 30 minutos de ejercicio aeróbico. Y resultó que el efecto combinado de ambas actividades potenciaba mucho más los resultados preventivos y curativos de las dos actividades por separado.
De hecho, encontraron que esta combinación de mente y cuerpo, hecha apenas dos veces a la semana a lo largo de 8 semanas, redujo en 40% los síntomas de depresión.
Meditación + Ejercicio = 40% Menos Depresión #saludmentalCLIC PARA TUITEARLas personas que participaron en este estudio (22 estudiantes con depresión, y 30 mentalmente sanos) reportaron menos síntomas depresivos y dijeron que no pasaron tanto tiempo preocupándose por situaciones negativas que ocurren en sus vidas. El estudio también incluyó un grupo de madres jóvenes sin hogar que estaban acogidas en un refugio y que tenían síntomas depresivos severos y niveles elevados de ansiedad al inicio del estudio. Pero al final de las 8 semanas ellas también reportaron que su depresión y ansiedad se habían suavizado, se sentían más motivadas, y eran más capaces de enfocarse más positivamente en sus vidas.
La idea de este estudio era ayudar a las personas a adquirir nuevas habilidades, para que pudieran recuperarse de eventos estresantes en su vida.
Al aprender a enfocar su atención y enseguida hacer ejercicio, las personas con depresión pueden adquirir nuevas habilidades cognitivas que les pueden ayudar a procesar la información y reducir los pensamientos recurrentes con recuerdos perturbadores del pasado o la ansiedad acerca del futuro.
¿Qué Hacer si No Tienes los Ánimos?Una de las características de la depresión es no tener ganas de hacer absolutamente nada. Nada te emociona, nada te atrae, nada te ilusiona, nada parece producirte placer. Y en esas condiciones parece imposible animarse a comenzar a hacer ejercicio - por muy prometedor que sea el resultado.
Lo entiendo y sé por experiencia propia que es así. Pero hay una solución: busca ayuda.
En un estudio que acaba de salir3 (Noviembre de 2017) se le preguntó a 295 pacientes en tratamiento en una clínica de salud mental si querían ser más activos físicamente y si el ejercicio les ayudaba a mejorar su humor y su ansiedad. También les preguntaron si querían que su terapeuta les ayudara a estar más activos.
85% de los pacientes dijo que querían ejercitarse más, y más del 80% indicó que el ejercicio les ayudaba con el estado de ánimo y la ansiedad la mayor parte del tiempo. Casi la mitad de los pacientes mostró interés en recibir consejos acerca de la actividad física de parte de su psicólogo o psiquiatra.


Posiblemente tú opines lo mismo. Quizás aunque no te animas por tu propia cuenta a empezar a hacer alguna actividad física, o esa combinación de meditación más ejercicio que vimos que es tan efectiva, quizás sí lo harías si tuvieras alguien que te apoye, que te diga lo que hacer, y que te compañe.
Y eso (te aseguro) lo tienes perfectamente al alcance de tu mano. Solo necesitas pedirlo 
Ya el hecho de que estés leyendo este post es una prueba de que tienes la disposición. Y ahora que sabes que la actividad física es la cura que estás necesitando, no hay más razón para quedarte con tu perro negro y seguir sintiéndote fatal y perdiéndote de las cosas bonita que la vida puede ofrecerte (por muy dura que haya sido contigo hasta ahora).
Te lo digo yo que ya salí más de una vez de la depresión, y que puedo garantizarte que el ejercicio fue parte importante de mi tratamiento - sobre todo cuando me lo recetó directamente mi psiquiatra la primera vez.
No hay razón para seguir sintiéndote fatal y perdiéndote de las cosas bonita que la vida puede ofrecerte #fueradepresionCLIC PARA TUITEAREl tratamiento más común para la depresión son los medicamentos psicotrópicos, que modifican la química cerebral y regulan las emociones y los patrones de pensamiento, a la par de la psicoterapia u otros tipos de terapia conversacional que puede funcionar pero que se lleva un tiempo considerable y un compromiso fuerte de parte del paciente.
El ejercicio logra este resultado de forma natural, sin agentes externos, sin efectos secundarios negativos, y sin gastos de ningún tipo. Porque cualquier actividad física cuenta: desde salir a pasear (muuuy recomendado por el contacto con la naturaleza) hasta hacer algunos minutos de bici estática o una sesión corta de ejercicios con el peso corporal.
Esto es lo que Puedes Hacer AhoraSi no estás haciendo absolutamente nada de actividad física, comienza ya. No importa de qué tipo. Busca algo que te guste, con una hora a la semana es suficiente para comenzar a ver mejoras muy notables en como te sientes, y hacer que esos pensamientos negativos e insoportables que te ataquen pierdan fuerza y se vayan desvaneciendo. Recuperarás rápidamente una visión más optimista del día a día, y te volverá el alma al cuerpo.
Para maximizar esos resultados, combina la actividad física con un rato de meditación, o simples respiraciones profundas, antes de comenzar el ejercicio. Ya sabes que este entrenamiento de "mente y cuerpo" te dará incluso más resultados en tu bienestar emocional.
Por último, recuerda que no tienes que hacer todo esto por tu cuenta. Si necesitas ayuda para comenzar, pídela.
Si tus síntomas son muy permanentes o difíciles de manejar, al punto que sientes que ya te están impidiendo llevar una vida normal, es indispensable que visites a un especialista. Ya sea un psicólogo o un psiquiatra. Y si ya lo has intentado antes y no te fue bien, prueba con otro. Es como hacerte un amigo: el hecho de que no "conectes" con una persona no significa que no conectarás con nadie. Simplemente sigue buscando hasta que encuentres alguien con quien te sientas a gusto y con libertad de conversar.
Recopilamos los mayores secretos de los expertos para lograr un peso óptimo, mejorar tu salud, disparar tu motivación, y encontrarle el verdadero placer a tu vidaApúntate ahora y recibe nuestros mensajes gratis cada semana:
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Referencias:

1. Samuel B. Harvey, Simon Øverland, Stephani L. Hatch, Simon Wessely, Arnstein Mykletun, Matthew Hotopf. Exercise and the Prevention of Depression: Results of the HUNT Cohort Study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 2017; appi.ajp.2017.1 DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.16111223
2. B L Alderman, R L Olson, C J Brush, T J Shors. MAP training: combining meditation and aerobic exercise reduces depression and rumination while enhancing synchronized brain activity. Translational Psychiatry, 2016; 6 (2): e726 DOI: 10.1038/tp.2015.225
3. Carol A. Janney, Kathryn Fant Brzoznowski, Caroline R. Richardson, Richard R. Dopp, Michelle L. Segar, Dara Ganoczy, Ann J. Mooney, Lauren Emerson, Marcia Valenstein. Moving Towards Wellness: Physical activity practices, perspectives, and preferences of users of outpatient mental health service. General Hospital Psychiatry, 2017; 49: 63 DOI: 10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2017.07.004

(by Guy Winch)

You put a bandage on a cut or take antibiotics to treat an infection, right? No questions asked. In fact, questions would be asked if you didn’t apply first aid when necessary. So why isn’t the same true of our mental health? We are expected to just “get over” psychological wounds — when as anyone who’s ever ruminated over rejection or agonized over a failure knows only too well, emotional injuries can be just as crippling as physical ones. We need to learn how to practice emotional first aid. Here are 7 ways to do so:

1. Pay attention to emotional pain — recognize it when it happens and work to treat it before it feels all-encompassing.
   The body evolved the sensation of physical pain to alert us that something is wrong and we need to address it. The same is true for emotional pain. If a rejection, failure or bad mood is not getting better, it means you’ve sustained a psychological wound and you need to treat it. For example, loneliness can be devastatingly damaging to your psychological and physical health, so when you or your friend or loved one is feeling socially or emotionally isolated, you need to take action.
2. Redirect your gut reaction when you fail.
   The nature of psychological wounds makes it easy for one to lead to another. Failure can often drive you to focus on what you can’t do instead of focusing on what you can. That can then make you less likely to perform at your best, which will make you even more focused on your shortcomings, and on the cycle goes. To stop this sort of emotional spiral, learn to ignore the post-failure “gut” reaction of feeling helpless and demoralized, and make a list of factors that you can control were you to try again. For instance, think about preparation and planning, and how you might improve each of them. This kind of exercise will reduce feelings of helplessness and improve your chances of future success.
3. Monitor and protect your self-esteem. When you feel like putting yourself down, take a moment to be compassionate to yourself.
   Self-esteem is like an emotional immune system that buffers you from emotional pain and strengthens your emotional resilience. As such, it is very important to monitor it and avoid putting yourself down, particularly when you are already hurting. One way to “heal” damaged self-esteem is to practice self-compassion. When you’re feeling critical of yourself, do the following exercise: imagine a dear friend is feeling bad about him or herself for similar reasons and write an email expressing compassion and support. Then read the email. Those are the messages you should be giving yourself.
4. When negative thoughts are taking over, disrupt them with positive distraction.
   When you replay distressing events in your mind without seeking new insight or trying to solve a problem, you’re just brooding, and that, especially when it becomes habitual, can lead to deeper psychological pain. The best way to disrupt unhealthy rumination is to distract yourself by engaging in a task that requires concentration (for example, do a Sudoku, complete a crossword, try to recall the names of the kids in your fifth grade class). Studies show that even two minutes of distraction will reduce the urge to focus on the negative unhealthily.
5. Find meaning in loss.
   Loss is a part of life, but it can scar us and keep us from moving forward if we don’t treat the emotional wounds it creates. If sufficient time has passed and you’re still struggling to move forward after a loss, you need to introduce a new way of thinking about it. Specifically, the most important thing you can do to ease your pain and recover is to find meaning in the loss and derive purpose from it. It might be hard, but think of what you might have gained from the loss (for instance, “I lost my spouse but I’ve become much closer to my kids”). Consider how you might gain or help others gain a new appreciation for life, or imagine the changes you could make that will help you live a life more aligned with your values and purpose.
6. Don’t let excessive guilt linger.
   Guilt can be useful. In small doses, it alerts you to take action to mend a problem in your relationship with another person. But excessive guilt is toxic, in that it wastes your emotional and intellectual energies, distracts you from other tasks, and prevents you from enjoying life. One of the best ways to resolve lingering guilt is to offer an effective apology. Yes, you might have tried apologizing previously, but apologies are more complex than we tend to realize. The crucial ingredient that every effective apology requires — and most standard apologies lack — is an “empathy statement.” In other words, your apology should focus less on explaining why you did what you did and more on how your actions (or inactions) impacted the other person. It is much easier to forgive someone when you feel they truly understand. By apologizing (even if for a second time), the other person is much more likely to convey authentic forgiveness and help your guilt dissolve.
7. Learn what treatments for emotional wounds work for you.
   Pay attention to yourself and learn how you, personally, deal with common emotional wounds. For instance, do you shrug them off, get really upset but recover quickly, get upset and recover slowly, squelch your feelings, or …? Use this analysis to help yourself understand which emotional first aid treatments work best for you in various situations (just as you would identify which of the many pain relievers on the shelves works best for you). The same goes for building emotional resilience. Try out various techniques and figure out which are easiest for you to implement and which tend to be most effective for you. But mostly, get into the habit of taking note of your psychological health on a regular basis — and especially after a stressful, difficult, or emotionally painful situation.

Yes, practicing emotional hygiene takes a little time and effort, but it will seriously elevate your entire quality of life. I promise.
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(by Guy Winch)

Loneliness is a subjective feeling. You may be surrounded by other people, friends, family, workmates — yet still feel emotionally or socially disconnected from those around you. Other people are not guaranteed to shield us against the raw emotional pain that loneliness inflicts.
But raw emotional pain is only the beginning of the damage loneliness can cause. It has a huge impact on our physical health as well. Loneliness activates our physical and psychological stress responses and suppresses the function of our immune systems. This puts us at increased risk for developing all kinds of illness and diseases, including cardiovascular disease. Shockingly, the long-term risk chronic loneliness poses to our health and longevity is so severe, it actually increases risk of an early death by 26%.


"Emerging from loneliness is far more challenging than we realize"


There are many paths to loneliness. Some enter loneliness gradually. A friend moves away, another has a child, a third works a seventy-hour work week, and before we know it our social circle, the one we had relied upon for years, ceases to exist. Others enter loneliness more suddenly, when they leave for college or the military, lose a partner to death or divorce, start a new job, or move to a new town or country. And for some, chronic illness, disability or other limiting conditions have made loneliness a lifelong companion.
Unfortunately, emerging from loneliness is far more challenging than we realize, as the psychological wounds it inflicts create a trap from which it is difficult to break free. Loneliness distorts our perceptions, making us believe the people around us care much less than they actually do, and it makes us view our existing relationships more negatively, such that we see them as less meaningful and important than we would if we were not lonely.
These distorted perceptions have a huge ripple effect, creating self-fulfilling prophecies that ensnare many. Feeling emotionally raw and convinced of our own undesirability and of the diminished caring of others, we hesitate to reach out even as we are likely to respond to overtures from others with hesitance, resentment, skepticism or desperation, effectively pushing away the very people who could alleviate our condition.


"Distorted perceptions have a huge ripple effect, creating self-fulfilling prophecies that ensnare many"

As a result, many lonely people withdraw and isolate themselves to avoid risking further rejection or disappointment. And when they do venture into the world, their hesitance and doubts are likely to create the very reaction they fear. They will force themselves to attend a party but feel so convinced others won’t talk to them, they spend the entire evening parked by the hummus and vegetable dip with a scowl on their face, and indeed, no one dares approach — which for them only verifies their fundamental undesirability.
Breaking free of loneliness and healing our psychological wounds is possible, but it involves a decision — a decision to override the gut instinct telling you to stay away and to play it safe by isolating yourself. Instead, you must do three things that require both courage and a leap of faith:


Take actionAccept that loneliness is impacting your perceptions and understand that people are likely to respond more positively than you expect. If you feel socially disconnected, go through your phone and email address books, and your social media contacts, and make a list of people you haven’t seen or spoken to for a while. If you feel emotionally disconnected, make a list of five people you’ve been close to in the past. Reach out to them and suggest getting together and catching up. Yes, it will feel scary to do so, and yes, you will worry about it being awkward or uncomfortable. That is why it is also important to:


Give the benefit of the doubtIt is fair to assume that someone who enjoyed your company in the past would likely enjoy spending time with you in the present as well. Yes, maybe they’ve been out of touch, maybe they never called after promising to see you soon, but you must accept that the reason they’ve been out of touch or the reason you haven’t been close lately might have nothing to do with you. In all likelihood, it is their busy lives, their competing priorities, stresses or opportunities that led to the “disconnect” between you. In many cases, there might not even be a disconnect — in other words, the reluctance you assume on their part might not even exist. So reach out to the people on your list but remember to:

Approach with positivityYes, you fear rejection and yes, you’re not in the best frame of mind, but this is one situation where it might be important to fake it. When contacting the people on your list, try to put yourself into a positive mindset. One safe way to do that is by using text or email so you can use emoticons to create the smiley face you might have a hard time manufacturing on your own face. Review your messages before you send them to make sure they sound appealing. Avoid accusations (“You haven’t called me in months!”) or statements of disconnect (“I know it must be weird to hear from me…”). Express positive sentiment (“Was thinking about you!” or “Miss you!”), an invitation (“Let’s grab coffee,” or “I’d love to get dinner and a catch-up,”) and be specific in terms of time frame (“How’s next week looking?” or What’s a good day this month?”).
Loneliness is extremely painful, but once you recognize the perceptual distortions it causes and the psychological trap it creates, you will be able to marshal your courage, take that leap of faith, and plan your escape. Freedom will be sweet once you do.

(by Guy Winch)

Everyone hates to fail, but for some people, failing presents such a significant psychological threat their motivation toavoid failure exceeds their motivation tosucceed. This fear of failure causes them to unconsciously sabotage their chances of success, in a variety of ways.
Failing can elicit feelings such as disappointment, anger, frustration, sadness, regret, and confusion that, while unpleasant, are usually not sufficient to trigger a full-blown fear of failure. Indeed, the term is somewhat of a misnomer because it is not failure per se that underlies the behavior of people who have it. Rather, a fear of failure is essentially a fear of shame. People who have a fear of failure are motivated to avoid failing not because they cannot manage the basic emotions of disappointment, anger, and frustration that accompany such experiences but because failing also makes them feel deep shame.
Shame is a psychologically toxic emotion because instead of feeling bad about our actions (guilt) or our efforts (regret), shame makes us feel bad who we are. Shame gets to the core of our egos, our identities, our self-esteem, and our feelings of emotional well-being. The damaging nature of shame makes it urgent for those who have a fear of failure to avoid the psychological threats associated with failing by finding unconscious ways to mitigate the implications of a potential failure—for example, by buying unnecessary new clothes for a job interview instead of reading up on the company—which allows them to use the excuse, “I just didn’t have time to fully prepare."


10 Signs You Might Have a Fear of Failure

The following are not official diagnostics—but if you feel that these criteria are very characteristic of you (very being an important distinguishing marker, since as we all feel these things to some extent), you might want to examine the issue further, either by doing more reading about it or talking to a mental health professional.
1. Failing makes you worry about what other people think about you.
2. Failing makes you worry about your ability to pursue the future you desire.
3. Failing makes you worry that people will lose interest in you.
4. Failing makes you worry about how smart or capable you are.
5. Failing makes you worry about disappointing people whose opinion you value.
6. You tend to tell people beforehand that you don’t expect to succeed in order to lower their expectations.
7. Once you fail at something, you have trouble imagining what you could have done differently to succeed.
8. You often get last-minute headaches, stomach aches, or other physical symptoms that prevent you from completing your preparation.
9. You often get distracted by tasks that prevent you from completing your preparation which, in hindsight, were not as urgent as they seemed at the time.
10. You tend to procrastinate and "run out of time" to complete you preparation adequately. (See procrastination expert Dr. Timothy Pychyl’s article about fear of failure here.)


What to Do When You Have a Fear of Failure


The primary problem with addressing a fear of failure is that it tends to operate on an unconscious level. For example, you might feel it’s essential to finish writing out your Christmas cards because you promised to send them off by the end of the weekend—even though you’re also about to take your final exams.
But there are two important things you can do to conquer the maladaptive ways a fear of failure can influence your behavior:

1. Own the fear. It is important to accept that failure makes you feel both fear and shame, and to find trusted others with whom you can discuss these feelings. Bringing these feelings to the surface can help prevent you from expressing them through unconscious efforts to sabotage yourself, and getting reassurance and empathy from trusted others can bolster your feelings of self-worth while minimizing the threat of disappointing them.

2. Focus on aspects in your control. Identify aspects of the task or preparation that are in your control and focus on those. Brainstorm ways to reframe aspects of the task that seem out of your control such that you regain control of them. For example, If you’ve failed to find work because you just don’t know " the right people," set the goal of expanding your network by going through your address book, Facebook and social media contacts, and reaching out to everyone you know who might help—even if they are not in your field, they might know someone who is.

Why self-esteem programs need to be individualized
(by Guy Winch)

Everyone wants to have higher self-esteem and an endless array of books, articles, programs, and products promise to deliver it to us. We typically invest significant amounts of effort, time and money in purchasing these products, and while some of them end up collecting dust on a shelf, we take many of them seriously; we listen to the full set of subliminal tapes, we attend the weekend workshop, or we diligently recite the positive affirmation of the day.
Of course, once we complete the program, we’re eager to assess whether our self-esteem has improved. We reflect back on how we felt about ourselves before we started, and conclude that we certainly feel better about ourselves now. After all we used to be riddled with negative self-talk, self-doubt and self-loathing, we used to have a chronic lack ofconfidence, we used to be shy and apprehensive, and now, we feel…much less so.  
But then we go back to our lives.
And the moment we encounter stress, rejection, failure, or any kind of situation that challenges our self-esteem our old fears, doubts, and insecurities come flooding back, and we realize our self-esteem hadn’t improved as much as we thought it had after all.
Why does this happen? Why do we initially believe these self-esteem programs worked for us when in fact, they did not? Is it wishful thinking on our part? Are we merely deluding ourselves?
Is it even possible to improve our self-esteem when it is chronically low?


We Get What We Expected to Get

​When it comes to self-esteem programs, what determines whether we feel they were effective is primarily one thing—our expectations. To illustrate this principle, researchers gave people commercially produced subliminal tapes designed to improve either self-esteem or memory. Participants completed memory and self-esteem tests before and after listening to the tapes for 5 weeks. Subjects who listened to self-esteem tapes indicated their self-esteem had definitely improved and subjects who believed they listened to memory tapes were equally convinced their memories had improved. However, results showed no change whatsoever on the subjects’ scores. Neither their memory nor their self-esteem had improved a lick.
We tend to believe self-esteem and self-improvement programs work because we’re prone to unconsciously distorting our recollection of how we felt before we started. We tend to remember ourselves as being much more insecure or much less confident than we actually were (or having a much worse memory), and therefore conclude that our self-esteem has improved. But then, once we're confronted with experiences such as rejection or failure (that challenge our self-esteem), we quickly realize we’re no better off than we were.


Did You Fail to Build Self-Esteem or Did the Self-Esteem Product Fail You?

The most consistent finding we have in the self-esteem literature is that the vast majority of programs and products marketed to boost self-esteem simply don’t work. However, the news is not all bad because some of the products do. Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated that it is possible to enhance our self-esteem and there are numerous books and products that utilize these findings to create effective programs for doing so. However, positive affirmations products, subliminal tapes, and many of the ‘workshops’ are not among them.
In order to build our self-esteem we have to do two things: 1. Minimize the self-critical and self-punitive self-talk that so many of us have in our heads. 2. Identify valuable aspects of our characters and personalities—personal qualities within ourselves that we already possess—and affirm them. In other words, self-esteem programs can only work if they are individualized for us, and therefore, individualized by us.
Cookie cutter mass market products that are good for everyone are in essence, good for no one because they cannot address our uniqueness as individuals. For example, one person might need to learn how to value their creativity and artistic talents, while another, their business acumen and mind for numbers. One person might need to learn to appreciate their supportive and loving nature, and another, their independence.
Building self-esteem is a form of cognitive retraining. It requires discipline and effort. First we have to cut out the damaging impact of negative self-talk. Second, effective self-esteem products implement an individualized approach by requiring the user to complete writing assignments and essays in which they self-reflect upon their qualities and experiences, and express why they value them, or write about how they can see themselves and their experiences in a more compassionate light.
The next time you acquire a product to boost your self-esteem investigate the principles it is based upon, and make sure your efforts and money aren't wasted.

(by Guy Winch)

Psychologists have proposed a new model of personal empowerment which states that true empowerment cannot come from merely feeling empowered but must involve real world evidence of our ability to have an impact on our relationships and social surroundings.
Popular culture often misrepresents the concept of personal empowerment by placing emphasis on attaining a subjective emotion in which one feels empowered. However, empowerment by its very definition requires increasing our actual influence within our social sphere, whether we do so within our intimate relationships our larger social context, as citizens or as consumers.
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A model that emphasizes having a real world impact
Lauren Cattaneo & Aliya Chapman of George Mason University proposed a model of personal empowerment that describes an interactive process, which emphasizes the real world actions we take and the impact these actions have on our social relations. Feeling empowered is great but it can only contribute to increases in actual personal empowerment if we then apply these feelings in the real world and get results.
For example, reading a self-help book might make us feel empowered to improve our relationship with our spouse, but unless we are able to initiate a productive dialogue with them and unless that dialogue leads to actual improvements in the relationship, we are no more empowered than we were when we started.


How to increase our personal empowerment

Cattaneo & Chapman define personal empowerment as  "...a process in which a person who lacks power sets a personally meaningful goal oriented toward increasing power, takes action toward that goal, and observes and reflects on the impact of this action, drawing on his or her evolving self-efficacy, knowledge, and competence related to the goal." 
A crucial aspect of this new model is the dynamic feedback between our efforts and the results they yield. Successes and failures along the way can impact the process of empowerment in both positive and negative ways. Taking action is not sufficient in and of itself. Rather, doing so will only contribute to our sense of empowerment if our actions have the intended impact and we meet with success. Failures can hamper feelings of empowerment and set us back.
One of the most important takeaways from this new model is that identifying goals that promise a higher likelihood of success can be vitally important to any empowerment process. In addition, being able to acquire the necessary skills to attain these goals can make a huge difference in how quickly and successfully the empowerment process proceeds. One of the easiest and most accessible ways we can apply these lessons and gain empowerment is by pursuing a meaningful complaint.


Why complaints are the perfect tools for achieving personal empowerment

We all encounter complaints on a regular basis, yet far more often than not we fail to pursue them effectively. Instead, we typically complain about them for the sole purpose of venting our frustrations. For example, we feel so helpless and hopeless about resolving our consumer complaints that a staggering 95% of consumer dissatisfactions go unresolved because we fail to complain effectively about them. The same holds true for complaints in our personal lives. When we are frustrated or hurt by a friend or loved one, we discuss our complaint with a large number of other friends and loved ones and rarely with the original person.  
We are convinced that bringing up our complaints with the people responsible, whether they are friends and loved ones, or companies and businesses, will be more trouble than it's worth, will not lead to a satisfying resolution and that it might actually make the situation worse. However, by pursuing a complaint successfully we can demonstrate our influence in our relationships and/or our social context and feel more capable, competent and empowered.


The 6 steps to personal empowerment

Cattaneo & Chapman lay out 6 steps in the process of attaining personal empowerment. Let's illustrate these steps by applying them to the pursuit of a consumer complaint.


1. Identify a power oriented goal: The idea is to increase our level of influence at any level of social interaction, either with another person, a group or a system. When pursuing a consumer complaint we in essence are doing battle with a business, a company or a corporation. Winning the battle by attaining the result we want is a significant demonstration of our social influence. When we address a complaint to a friend or loved one and resolve it successfully, we are having an impact on a relationship that is both meaningful and highly significant to our lives.

2. Knowledge:  To attain our goal we need an understanding of the system involved, the power dynamics we might encounter, the resources we will require and a plan of action. My book The Squeaky Wheel(link is external) has all the information one needs to pursue complaints effectively both with loved ones and as consumers. It lays out clear guidleines for complaining effectively to spouses, friends, and teenagers. It specifies what to know when calling customer service hotlines, how to manage our emotions in such situations and how to construct effective complaints that will elicit best efforts from the service representative. It also discusses how to escalate complaints to company executives.

3. Self-efficacy: To take action we must first believe we can accomplish our goal. Acquiring the knowledge and skill set necessary to pursue our complaints and having a variety of effective complaining tools at our disposal can make all the difference in the world to our confidence and feelings of self-efficacy.

4. Competence: The better our skills the greater our competence. Putting our newly acquired complaining skill set into action will quickly give us information about where we are strongest and which skills or competencies need work. Pursuing complaints with loved ones requires delicacy and the right techniques, both of which can be improved through practice. Complaining to companies and business can take persistence and here too, the more efforts we make, the more we learn, the higher our level of competence becomes.

5. Action: The process of empowerment is a dynamic one where we act, reflect, assess, and act again. When complaining to a loved one, we should try out our skill set by addressing small and less meaningful complaints first (for example, a complaint about an incomplete house chore, or a specific episode of lateness). We might have an exchange with a customer service representative that does not resolve our problem but gives us important information we can use when speaking to a supervisor later on or when escalating a complaint to company executives.

6. Impact: Personal empowerment can be hard earned and in a sense, it should be if we wish to change how we feel deep within. Not all our efforts will yield results right away. The process of empowerment is just that, a process and not an overnight metamorphosis. The more meaningful our social influence, the more empowered we will feel.
The process of empowerment is not a linear drive toward stronger internal feelings of efficacy, but rather a dynamic process in which we acquire knowledge, take action, assess our impact and refine our efforts. It is best to build slowly by pursuing simpler complaints before tackling more meaningful dissatisfactions. Each small complaint we resolve along the way will create another building block upon which we can build a stable and lasting sense of personal empowerment, self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Feeling more confident, competent and empowered might be only a complaint away.

(by Guy Winch)

People usually wish they had higher self-esteem because they want to feel more confident and assured. But having higher self-esteem can do much more for us than simply boost our confidence. A variety of studies have begun to demonstrate that self-esteem can endow us with a layer of emotional resiliencewhen we encounter common psychological injuries such as rejection and failure, as well as insulate us fromstress and anxiety. The picture these studies are painting implies that in many ways our self-esteem functions very much like an emotional immune system.

Self-Esteem as an Emotional Immune System

​Although experts are still debating what self-esteem actually is (defining such constructs is always tricky in psychology research), we do know quite a bit about what it does. In terms of its general behavior, our self-esteem fluctuates from day to day and sometimes, from hour to hour—much as our physical immune system does. When we’re having a ‘good self-esteem day’, we not only feel different about ourselves but we respond differently to stresses from our environment.
Specifically, having low self-esteem renders us more vulnerable to many of the psychological injuries we sustain in daily life. For example, brain scans have shown that people with low self-esteem experience rejection as more painful than people with high self-esteem do and they withdraw further from others as a result
People with low self-esteem are also more vulnerable to failure, in that they experience greater drops in motivation and show less persistence after failing than those with higher self-esteem. Having low self-esteem also makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and stress. People with low self-esteem release more cortisol into their bloodstream when they experience stress and it stays there for longer periods, than people with higher self-esteem.
In other words, when our self-esteem is low, our emotional immune systems function less effectively in a variety of ways, making it harder for us to deal with common psychological assaults when we encounter them.
But does improving our self-esteem necessarily boost our emotional immune systems?
The answer is—yes! Researchers have found that boosting our self-esteem can indeed strengthen our emotional immune systems. Self-esteem interventions might not be able to catapult someone with low self-esteem into the high self-esteem range, but certain science-based approaches to boosting self-esteem have been shown to have an impact on our emotional immune systems.
For example, one study examined people’s anticipation to receiving a mild electrical shock. Half the people received an intervention to boost their self-esteem and half did not. Those whose self-esteem was boosted displayed significantly less anxiety than the control group. Other studies demonstrated that interventions to boost people’s self-esteem helped them manage failure, rejection and especially stress more adaptively (such interventions had the added benefit of helping prevent drops in will-power and self-control).

How to Boost Self-Esteem and Enhance Your Emotional Immune System

The problem with most self-esteem programs is that they are not individualized. Indeed, the approaches that have been proven effective in boosting self-esteem, come primarily in the form of writing exercises because writing allows us to make the self-esteem exercise both specific and individualized:
1. Self-compassion exercises. Self-compassion exercises are ones that force us to substitute our automatic self-critical perspectives with ones that are more compassionate and ‘self-esteem friendly’. Since we often judge those we care about less harshly than we do ourselves, such exercises use a ‘what-if-it-happened-to-someone-you-care-about’ perspective to access more self-forgiving and self-compassionate points of view.
2. Self-affirmation exercises. Self-affirmation exercises are those that affirm real aspects of ourselves we find valuable (as opposed to positive-affirmation exercises that affirm idealized versions of how we wish we could be). The exercises are ways of thinking about individual traits we have or characteristics that are specific to relationships, the workplace, or other contexts.
3. Personal empowerment exercises. Personal empowerment is not something we merely feel but something we can demonstrate in our lives. In other words, such exercises provide proof that we are not powerless and that we have can an impact
 

(By Guy Winch Ph.D.)
 
Rejections are the cuts and scrapes of daily life-they're that common. Rejections come in all shapes and sizes but they are a regular part of life. We get turned down by potential dates, turned down by potential employers, snubbed by our friends, our spouses rebuff our sexual advances, our neighbors give us the cold shoulder, our families disapprove of our lifestyles, and our social networks ignore our posts and tweets.
 
Before you begin to apply emotional first aid to your injuries, you need to have a clear understanding of the psychological wounds rejection inflicts-and there are 4 of them:
 
The Psychological Wounds Rejection Inflicts
 
1. Significant emotional pain. Rejection hurts so much it impairs cognitive abilities. Being asked to recall a recent rejection experience and relive the experience was enough for people to score significantly lower on subsequent IQ tests, tests of short-term memory, and tests of decision making. Indeed, when you are reeling from a painful rejection, thinking clearly is not that easy.
 
2. Rejection destabilizes our 'Need to Belong'. We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group (or tribe). When you get rejected, this need becomes destabilized and the disconnection you feel only adds to your emotional pain.
 
3. Rejection increases anger and aggression. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the U.S. issued a report that stated rejection was a greater risk for adolescent violence than drugs, poverty, or gang membership. School shootings, violence against women, and fired postal workers going...postal, are examples of the strong link between rejection and aggression. Becoming angry after a rejection might be natural but it is still your responsibility to be aware of the anger and to prevent yourself from directing it at other people-especially those that had nothing to do with your rejection.
 
4. Rejections send us on a mission to seek and destroy our self-esteem. It is common to respond to romantic rejections by searching for your faults, bemoaning your inadequacies, kicking yourself when they're already down, and smacking your self-esteem into a pulp. You might respond to rejections from an employer by focusing on all the skill-sets you lack or wish you had, or criticizing yourself for not having enough connections or a better work history. And you might respond to rejections from your friends by questioning whether you're interesting enough, fun enough, or cool enough for them. Of course, doing any of these things will only make you feel worse.
 
How to Treat the Psychological Wounds Rejection Inflicts
 
Following you will find a few tips to treat the wounds of rejection. The general rule for applying emotional first aid to psychological wounds is to try all the treatments and see which of them works best for you and your circumstances. Some of them take some time to complete and some of them take some practice-but all of them require you to make a decision that you will take action to heal your emotional wound.
 
Now that's you've decided to treat your wounds rather than ignore them, or drown them in alcohol or food, or withdraw to your room and stare at the ceiling-let's get to it:
 
The first thing you have to do when you're experiencing a painful rejection is to stop the emotional 'bleeding'. Here's how:
 
Develop a Zero Tolerance Attitude for Self-Criticism:
 
Although it is natural to become self-critical after you get rejected, doing so will only deepens your psychological wound and makes it hurt more. It is very tempting to want to examine all your faults, your shortcomings, and your inadequacies, to call yourself names and to go through everything you've done 'wrong', to ignore all the good and focus on the bad. However, kicking yourself when you're already down achieves no purpose whatsoever.
 
It's Not You, It's Them:
 
The truth is that when dates don't work out, when employers don't hire you, when acquaintances don't want to become friends, it's almost always a matter of chemistry or match. In other words, it's because you weren't a good 'fit'. You just didn't have the skill set the employer wanted, or the right experience, or someone on the inside pulling strings for you. And if someone didn't want to date you it was probably because you didn't have the hair color they prefer, or the temperament, or the height, or the extracurricular interests, or the religion or political views, or like the same movies, and the list goes on.
 
In other words, it wasn't your fault-it just wasn't the right match. In addition, you might have been so focused on whether you are right for them (the person or the company, or the friend) that you spend too little time exploring whether they were right for you. If the fit and the chemistry didn't work for them, in the long term, it wouldn't have worked for you either.
 
Revive Your Self-Worth:
 
Now that you've stopped the bleeding, you have to start to heal.
 
We've already established that your mood and your self-esteem took a hit-you have to revive them. One of the best ways to do this is to use self-affirmations. Not positive affirmations, but self-affirmations. Here's how:
 
Make a list of 5 attributes you have that are specific to the situation. For example if you were rejected by a dating partner-list qualities you have that you value and that you believe are important in relationships such as being loyal, caring, supportive, or considerate. If you were rejected by an employer, list qualities such as being responsible, reliable, punctual, or having a strong work ethic. Again, only list qualities you know you have and you yourself value.
 
Now, write a brief essay (a paragraph or two) about why the quality matters and how you would express it in the relevant situation (a relationship, friendship, or at work).
 
Feel free to write about other qualities as well, one essay is the minimum but write as many as you like.
 
Replenish Feelings of Social Connection:
 
Since rejections destabilizes your need to belong, it's important to remind yourself of your connections to others, that you are loved and valued, and that your 'core group' accepts you and appreciates you.
 
Reach out to people who care about you, who make you feel good about being you when you speak to them, or to members of your family who accept you unconditionally. Bring up good times you've had together in the past, trips with close friends, holidays with your family, or visits you recall fondly.
 

(de http://consejosdelconejo.com/2016/02/17/15-cosas-que-necesitas-abandonar-para-ser-feliz/)

¿Cuántos de nosotros estamos felices hoy? Tú que estás leyendo este texto, ¿te sientes feliz?. Si la respuesta es no, tal vez seas uno entre la gran mayoría que ignora una de las verdades más aterradoras que existen sobre la felicidad: el 95% del tiempo, ella te abandona porque tú así lo quieres. Sí, la felicidad es una cuestión de casi pura perspectiva.
Entender eso en la teoría es fácil, pero en la práctica, es algo para “gente grande”. Y cuando digo grande, me refiero a grande de espíritu. Si no tienes una idea propia de cómo construir tu felicidad, aquí hay una pequeña lista genérica en la medida de lo posible, en vista de la subjetividad inherente al tema. Cualquier parecido con la base de la filosofía budista, no es mera coincidencia.


1. Renuncia a tu necesidad de tener siempre la razón.
Somos tantos los que no podemos soportar la idea de estar equivocados, queremos tener siempre la razón, aún a riesgo de poner fin a una gran relación o causar una gran cantidad de estrés y dolor, a nosotros y a los demás. No vale la pena. Cada vez que sientas la “urgente” necesidad de saltar en una pelea sobre quién tiene razón y quién está equivocado, pregúntate: ¿Prefiero estar en lo cierto, o prefiero ser amable?. ¿Qué diferencia habrá? ¿Es tu ego realmente tan grande?.

2. Renuncia a tu necesidad de controlarlo todo.Renuncia a tu necesidad de controlar todo lo que te sucede a ti y a tu alrededor – las situaciones, eventos, personas, etc. Si son tus seres queridos, compañeros de trabajo, o simplemente extraños que te encuentras en la calle, simplemente permíteles ser ellos. Deja que todo y todos sean tal y como son y verás cuánto mejor te harán sentir. Dejando ir permites que todo se haga. El mundo es ganado por aquellos que se relajan. Pero tienes que intentarlo y volver a intentarlo. El mundo está más allá del hecho de ganar.

3. Deja de culpar.Renuncia a tu necesidad de culpar a los demás por lo que tienes o no tienes, por lo que se sientes o no sientes. Deja de darles poder sobre ti a los demás y empieza a tomar responsabilidad de TU vida.

4. Deja de autodestruirte y a hablar mal de ti mismo.¿Cuántas personas se lastiman a sí mismas a causa de su mentalidad negativa, contaminada y autodestructiva? No creas todo lo que tu mente te está diciendo – en especial si es negativo y contraproducente. Eres mucho mejor que eso.

5. Renuncia a tus creencias limitadoras.Acerca de lo que puedes o no puedes hacer, sobre lo que es posible o imposible. A partir de ahora, ya no te permitas que tus creencias limitadoras te mantengan atrapado en el lugar equivocado. ¡Extiende tus alas y vuela!. Una creencia no es una idea en poder de la mente, es una idea que tiene la mente.

6. Deja de quejarte.Renuncia a tu constante necesidad de quejarte de las muchas, muchas cosas, muchas personas, situaciones, acontecimientos que te hacen infeliz, triste y deprimido. Nadie puede hacerte infeliz, ninguna situación puede hacerte sentir triste o miserable a menos que se lo permitas. No es la situación que provoca esos sentimientos en ti, pero cómo tú eliges sentirlo. Nunca subestimes el poder del pensamiento positivo.

7. Olvídate de la crítica.Renuncia a tu necesidad de criticar las cosas, eventos o personas que son diferentes a ti. Todos somos diferentes, pero todos somos lo mismo. Todos queremos ser felices, queremos amar y ser amados y todos queremos ser comprendidos. Todos queremos algo, y algo que es deseado por todos nosotros.

8. Renuncia a tu necesidad de impresionar a los demás.Deja de intentar tan intensamente ser algo que simplemente no eres, con tal de parecer otro que no eres tú. No funciona. En el momento en que dejas de intentarlo, que dejas caer tus máscaras, que aceptas y abrazas a tu verdadero yo, encontrarás las personas que se sentirán atraídas por ti, y además, sin esfuerzo.

9. Renuncia a tu resistencia al cambio.El cambio es bueno. El cambio te ayudará a pasar de A a B. El cambio te ayudará a realizar mejoras en tu vida y también en las vidas de quienes te rodean. Sigue tu felicidad, abraza el cambio, no te resistas.

10. Abandona las etiquetas.Deja de etiquetar las cosas, personas o eventos que sientes como extraño o diferente y tratar de abrir tu mente poco a poco. Tu mente sólo funciona cuando está abierta. La forma más elevada de la ignorancia es cuando rechazas algo de lo que no sabes nada.

11. Renunciar a tus miedos.El miedo es sólo una ilusión, no existe, tú lo creaste. Todo está en tu mente. Corrije tu interior y el exterior se arreglará solo.

12. Olvídate de tus excusas.Empaquétalas y despídelas. Ya no las necesitas. Muchas veces nos limitamos a causa de las muchas excusas que utilizamos. En lugar de crecer y trabajar en la mejora de nosotros mismos y de nuestras vidas, nos quedamos atascados, nos mentimos a nosotros mismos, utilizando todo tipo de excusas, excusas que el 99,9% de las veces ni siquiera son reales.

13. Abandona el pasado.Lo sé, lo sé. Es difícil. Sobre todo cuando el pasado se ve mucho mejor que el presente y el futuro parece tan aterrador, pero hay que tener en cuenta el hecho de que el momento presente es todo lo que tienes y todo lo que siempre tendrás. El pasado que ahora anhelas – el pasado que ahora estás soñando – fue ignorado por ti cuando era tu presente. Deja de engañarte a ti mismo. Está presente en todo lo que haces y disfruta de la vida. Después de todo, la vida es un viaje, no un destino (el famoso “caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar”, de Antonio Machado). Ten una visión clara para el futuro, prepárate, pero siempre esté presente en el ahora.

14. Abandona el apego.Este es un concepto que, para muchos de nosotros, es tan difícil de comprender, pero no es algo imposible. Consigues mejorar con en el tiempo y la práctica. En el momento que te desprendes de todas las cosas, (y eso no significa que renuncies a su amor por ellas, porque el amor y el apego no tienen nada que ver una con otra, el apego proviene de un lugar de miedo, mientras que el amor… bueno, el amor real es una especie pura, y donde hay amor no puede haber miedo, y por eso, el apego y el amor no pueden coexistir) que llegarás a ser tan pacífico, tan tolerante, tan amable y sereno que te sorprenderás. Se llega a un lugar donde serás capaz de entender todas las cosas sin siquiera intentarlo. Un estado más allá de las palabras.

15. Renuncia a vivir tu vida según las expectativas de los demás.Demasiadas personas viven una vida que no es suya. Viven sus vidas de acuerdo a lo que otros piensan que es mejor para ellos; a lo que sus padres piensan que es mejor para ellos, a lo que sus amigos, sus enemigos y sus profesores, su gobierno y los medios de comunicación definen que es mejor para ellos. Ignoran su voz interior. Están tan ocupados con agradar a todo el mundo, intentando estar a la altura de las expectativas de otras personas, que pierden el control sobre sus vidas. Se olvidan de lo que les hace felices, lo que quieren, lo que necesitan… Y, finalmente, se olvidan de sí mismos.

​Tienes una vida, la que tienes ahora mismo, hay que vivirla, sé dueño de ella, y sobre todo, no dejes que las opiniones de los demás te distraigan de tu camino.