Wrapping up 2022 early...

As the title states, I will be publishing my last blog post of this year. This is because I intend to spend the remainder of the Christmas break in wind down mode. Meaning, I want to take a lengthy relaxation break. With that said, I shall plan to be back working on here sometime after new year.

Not only am I signing off early, but I also want to utilise this time I've got now to briefly talk about what I want to do for next year, without disclosing too much information. There may even contain a small bit of evaluation as to how I feel about what I want to do for next year as well.

What are my plans for 2023?

Asides from doing what I already do now in terms of posting psychology content on here, I want to be looking into more deeper psychological stuff with a deeper meaning to something and distribute them on here. Moreover on that, I want to be able to use these deep psychological posts to inspire people reading by thinking how these psychological meanings are used to shape the world. To put what I'm saying in more basic terms, diving more deeper into the world of psychology.

Another thing I've been thinking about doing for next year, is to start coming out of my comfort zone by connecting with other people who share the same passion as me. These can vary from joining psychology groups on social media or on the internet. In terms of my blog, I want to connect to other bloggers, again, that share the same passion. I for one, have never really been a person who joining in with community groups, as I've personally always been a shy person when it comes to this kind of thing. However, I feel like soon would be the right enough time for me to finally push myself out there to joining online communities. Especially if it's to share my passion with other people who also share the same passion as me.

Finally, and possibly the biggest one (if I can make it work) is to get myself actively involved with mental health charities, as I am also hugely passionate about mental health. This is something which I feel rather optimistic about doing the more I think about it. 

That's pretty much everything I've got to say. I hope everyone enjoys the remainder of what's left of 2022, including Christmas & NYE, and I shall be back here again in 2023!😊

Tips for looking after your mental health at Christmas

Hi everyone, it may be the 3rd day into the Christmas week, but better late than never. The reason for saying this, is because I thought about sharing some useful insight that some people have to go through at Christmas. 

Whilst I can understand that Christmas can be some people's most favourite time of the year by enjoying time with friends/family, enjoying their festive food/drink & celebrating like mad. However, I can also understand that Christmas is not some people's favourite time of the year either. In fact, it could may well even be some people's WORST time of the year.

With all the said, I think it's important that we all spread mental health awareness in relations to what some people have to go through at Christmas, as well as managing to cope with whatever it is that they are going through. I have attached the source I was looking at, written by someone on Young Minds, which contains of the useful ways that help them to physically & mentally make it through Christmas Day.

Source link: https://www.youngminds.org.uk/young-person/blog/looking-after-your-mental-health-at-christmas/

Don't forget, my pm's are always welcome to anyone for whoever needs to talk during the festive period.💞🎄

24 months of this blog...

Having realised what today is, (as the title states) I wanted to talk about the soul purpose of the reason why I had decided to create this blog. But also, to compare what this blog is looking like now in contrast to where it all began out 2yrs ago.

*I tried to make the picture above for this blog post as artistic as possible. I had to use my phone to do it all from scratch*

When it had first started: When I had first created this blog, (12/12/2020) I thought about using it to showcase my initiative. And my initiative happens to be posting content on all things psychology. I remember when I got my blog up and running, I became so motivated to making as many publishes as possible by only wanting to do professional content.

What I mean by professional content, is that I would always post random topics consisting of psychological factors that would play a part of those topics. I even used to title all of them with the rhetorical question method, so it made the blog posts I used to do back then look professional to what you see on a entrepreneur style blog. If you was to look back on these posts I did back then, you would see I had spent at least 7 months doing these posts using the rhetorical question method for my title.

How is it going now: I would say for the very least that my motivation for publishing psychological content has taken a big knock. Not in a negative way, but more or less in a way that I need to slow down a bit. Reason being, as I had discovered that if I was to post professional psychological content on here, I would need spend a lot of productive time doing research on a particular topic in order to get all the right information. For example, see: Let's talk about #ADHD This post took me a week to complete, because I wanted to ensure I had all the right & relevant information to make this a professional factual post. I didn't want to just ramble on without any evidence.

Something else I have been using my blog for a lot in recent months is to openly talk about how I have been feeling. Since this is a blog after all, I feel it's also a good idea to talk about my feelings on here. I do follow a blogger who does this all the time. Hence, my inspiration to do the same. (I'll save that discussion for another post) With all that said, I don't just want my blog to be all about professional psychological content. I've realised that it's just as important to talk about myself as well by raising important awareness, such as #MentalHealth.

My 2nd university open event experience (10/12/2022)

I was originally going to make this post last night, but I became too occupied with watching the England V France football game. Sadly, the Lions lost, courtesy of the French. And let's also not forget Harry Kane's missed penalty.

Anyway, yesterday's experience was almost similar compared to last Saturday's experience. Although, I got to do some different things in this experience this time around. Here's my full takeaway of my 2nd open uni open day experience from start - finish...

I arrived in Portsmouth shortly after midday to begin my 2nd university open event experience. Once I got myself checked in, I immediately looked for the building within the uni campus that I needed to go to. Fortunately, I didn't have too much of a far walk to get to the Psychology building, where the course talk will be talking place. The King Henry Building to be more specific.

When I made my way into The King Henry Building, I went looking for the room I needed to be in for the course talk. Just like at Solent, there was a presentation that was talking about how psychology plays an important role in society. Or in other words, how psychology can shape the world. I was nothing but fascinated by the amount of examples that the lecturer was telling us of the examples of work placements involved.

Unlike any other university, this one in particular, has a lot of top reasons to study here statistics. It has even been ranked one of the best for specializing in Psychology!

Once we were done with the course talk in the lecture room, there was a tour guide who was keenly waiting outside to take us round the Psychology area. As it turns out, the tour guide is currently doing his 2nd year in Psychology at this university. We first went upstairs to tour round the Psychology equipment rooms. The first one had a human head sitting on a counter wearing a EEG brainwave cap. The second room we went into had an eye traking monitor inside. We also went into a room under construction process, which will become a laboratory. The rest of the rooms downstairs were just research rooms.

The last & favourable bit of the tour was going into a huge lab room downstairs, where research projects take place. What's best about them, apparently, is where students on the course get to carry out a research project on their own! I'll admit, I like the idea of carrying out a research project. (If I ever get the chance to do one...!)

The tour/open event experience concluded after that. Like before at Solent, I was satisfied with the amount of experience I had managed to takeaway.

My 1st university open event experience (3/12/2022)

OMG, I have just had one of the best experiences of my life! What I've experienced today has really opened my eyes to how psychology can go a long way into the world. It's not just my eyes that have opened up to everything I had seen today, my mind has also widely opened up to the mass amount of psychology careers there are out there.

To prevent me from rambling on anymore, I'll go straight into the story from start - finish...

 

2 weeks ago today, (19/11/2022) I booked myself to go to my 1st ever university open event. Fast forward to after a fortnight of excitement later... I had the morning pleasure of trekking down to Solent University in Southampton for what was unknowingly an eye-opening experience.

As I arrived at the building entrance, I was greeted by a member of the open event team who kindly made me feel welcome by handing me an open event programme. From that moment, I was deciding what to go and see. Whilst curiously scrolling through my programme, I saw that there was a psychology talk happening in one of the rooms on the 1st floor. Of course I chose to venture up there!

Inside one of their rooms to begin with, myself & a load of other people were warmly introduced to 2 of the psychology lectures. Both of whom, seemed experienced enough with years of being in the psychology industry. Hence, their industry knowledge was, needles to say, phenomenal! The male & female lectures hosted a quiz activity, which was to basically test everyone's knowledge of psychology. The first being to name as many famous psychologists as possible. Fortunately for me, I was able to name a few. At the same time, however, I do need to brush up my knowledge of famous psychologists a bit better if I want to expand my knowledge. The various other questions we did was based upon reading people's emotions through the look in their eyes. I couldn't remember the purpose of what the other questions were aimed at, but I had found them fascinating nonetheless. After the psychology quiz, the male lecturer was telling us something that made me view psychology from a whole different angle. It went along the lines of: "Psychology is not just about mental health". I absolutely agree with what the male lecture was saying, as psychology has an overall purpose of behaviour of anything. When I say 'anything' I am talking about animal behaviour as well.

One of the 3rd year students who was doing a psychology degree in counselling, was happily sharing her own personal experience of her time studying at the university. She was even highlighting her time studying abroad in Canada. The remainder of her talk was all about doing work placements around the university area. I think it was safe to say that the female student was enthusiastic throughout her time speaking!

The female lecturer was then going through Levels 4 - 6, explaining what different psychology degree modules will typically be taught. It was amazing to see how many of these degree courses have psychology alongside them. They all consisted of: Sport Psychology, Psychology & Counselling, Criminology & Psychology, Sociology & Psychology or just Psychology on its own.

Afterwards, we all went into the room next door to be shown a little fun psychological experiment. 3 people had volunteered themselves to be hooked up to this special piece of machinery, which was connected to the room computer. The computer screen was displaying these graphical lines that illustrated how calm these 3 people were, while sitting in the chair doing self-humiliating things. The 1st person had to count back from 280 in 3's. The 2nd person had to bravely sing a Christmas song in front of all of us watching. I can't remember what the 3rd person did.

All in all, the small psychology taster activities were very eye-opening, which really helped me to further widen my passion for psychology to a better level. Literally, the second I had walked out of the building, my motivation was kicked into overdrive. I was just now so keen to get myself into the psychology industry like never before!

To top everything off, I will be attending the open event at Portsmouth University the following Saturday. I expect more or less the same from today's open event at Solent, but it could be different anything. Regardless, I shall very much be looking forward to it!    

From my pictured perspective: #3

Haven't done one of these in a long while...

As it has now quickly become the 1st of December, I think it's safe to say that the weather in England has definitely plummeted to its average temperature. That being said, the wintery effects are significantly showing as well.

In the picture below, wintery fog spreads around the background like a blanket, which was the foremost reason of why I decided to take the picture and thought about showcasing it on here.

Backstory: Whilst on my way home from college, I was walking back through the grey surrounded fog in the typically freezing weather for December. As I happen to look around, I saw a perfectly good scene for me to snapshot a picture, which captures all the wintery scenery in one!

I know people reading this will just think that picture looks depressing, but I can assure you, there's more of an effective explanation than just labelling the picture depressing of how it presents itself upfront.

The way I choose to vision this wintery snapshot is to think how the English weather can have better days ahead. Yes, I'm talking even the English weather has to have its grey & gloomy days for it to be able to shine cheerfully bright & sunny again. I suppose you could say I'm highlighting weather behaviour here.

Conclusion: Wintery weather is really not as depressing as you can make it out to be. If you have a good think about it, this is the English weather's way of preparing itself for the spring season.

The 6 thinking hats

Glad to be getting back into my productive stride on my blog again! This is mainly due to the fact that I've not been too majorly occupied with other things going on in my busy life atm.

This is something which I've literally discovered a short while ago. Of course, I made sure I did enough research about it beforehand. In all fairness, all of it was relatively easy for me to understand. Hence, the reason to post it now.

 

*The attached picture of the 6 thinking hats is just one of its many ways of being defined, as it has other ways of defining it. This one happens to be my favourite*

Who is the inventor?

The inventor is psychologist Dr Edward de Bono who had invented the 6 thinking hats in 1985, and his reason for this invention was inspired by coming across structural creative thinking.

What do the 6 thinking hats mean?

The 6 thinking hats overall, are defined as a method to be able to form creative ideas. To do this, every one of the 6 hats (or people in real life) has to have a part to play in order to make planning results happen. I suppose an example of this would be 6 people in a meeting room trying to structure a working plan.

What are my views on the 6 thinking hats?

I think the 6 thinking hats initiative is a great psychological idea of getting a group of 6 people together to create one working idea, as the definitions of the 6 thinking hats will encourage those people to get into their working idea roles without having to get into a panic. With that said, I definitely agree that it's a good initiative that every team participant will get to understand their role of the 6 thinking hats beforehand by preventing panic to find one, as well as learn about one of the 6 thinking hats at the very last second.  

Research source information: https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-are-the-six-thinking-hats/

*I had actually began this post on the 17/11, but didn't get round to finishing it until today*

An introduction to Mindset Therapy + Review

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you're all beginning the week off on a positive foot. Just because I personally have, I feel like openly sharing with you all with one of the many motivations which help me to vision life as I work through every single day.

For those of you on here who are into psychology by being already familiar with Mindset Therapy on social media, you'll know what I'll be talking about as I let light my evaluations.

I think I began following Mindset Therapy for 2 & something years now, and during that time, reading its posts has really fully opened my eyes to what I am reading. Of course, after reading each of its inspiring posts, my eyes were sending messages to my brain saying: "Wow! This is so true the more hard I think about it" This is where I begin to relate to it in real life. Well, personally my life anyway.

*These are just a handful of many various examples that I see them post on a daily basis*  

*Apologies for the disorganised pictures; this site won't let me arrange them the way I want them*

Also throughout my duration of following Mindset Therapy, I saw the realisation that all they have the intention of doing is to make people be more open-minded in life by using what they read to relate to how they vision the real life. As a fully open-minded person myself, I may not agree with every single thing I've been shown on Mindset Therapy, but that doesn't make me think less of less of it. 

In my opinion, I think what Mindset Therapy are doing on social media is really positive, as it helps encourage more people to get into psychology by looking into things with a deeper meaning. More to that, the more deeper meaning posts they create, the more it helps people into psychology gain a stronger mindset.

To any aspiring psychologist out there, I highly recommend you follow Mindset Therapy for all their inspirational content, and I guarantee you, your mindset will feel stronger after a few months just by diving deep into lots of deep & powerful thinking.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Since my mindset is now in a good enough place to be working back on here again, I thought about posting some more professional content on here by talking about something which I have learned at college last year. (The title says it all)

Who is the creator?

Abraham Maslow is an American Psychologist whom is famously known for his self-created theory of Hierarchy of Needs. 

What does the Hierarchy of Needs theory mean and why?

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a triangle which consists of 5 individual needs. The bottom being the most essential to the top being optional. It is formatted in the way that is is because the needs at the bottom half of the triangle have to be met before any of the other needs.

*The above picture shows the Hierarchy of Needs triangle containing its 5 needs*

Physiological needs: 

As what is mentioned beneath, these are the most essential needs that have to be met before all the other ones above on the triangle. This is because these are the needs which will keep you alive and breathing by managing to provide basic survival needs.

Safety needs: 

Along with the topmost set of needs, safety needs are the second range of needs which centres around prioritising things that help to maintain your safety. It is important to be able to prioritise your safety, so it keeps yourself secure when out & about doing stuff in the world. All of these mentioned factors play a vital role in preventing yourself from insecure harm.

Love & belonging: 

By the time you've met the satisfactory level of both the most vital bottom needs on the triangle, your mind can start to adapt to working on what your love & belonging is. Of course, family being the most obvious, but you could also utilise this need to think about who else you wish to fit into your relationship circle to help you feel connected with other people. 

Esteem:

Now that you've come up this far on the triangle by working on building up the most essential needs, your mind can start to concentrate on building up a reflection of how you want yourself to be. The purpose of esteem being second top is that it gives you the chance to identify your own strengths & weakness, as well as making room by using them to unlock success.

Self-actualisation:

At the summit of the triangle is where you have met every satisfaction of the 5 needs, so you can go out and be the best person you could possibly be by putting the accomplished needs to perfect use for when you get to use them in the world. Don't forget to also put this need to its best use for when you believe you could achieve absolutely anything as humanly possible. 

Conclusion:

If we are talking about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in terms of psychology here, it would be defined as prioritising the most essential needs around you to help you survive day in day out to being able to go forth and achieve the best in yourself. In a way, we could otherwise say that you must always start from the beginning to work your way upwards to getting to the top of somewhere, whatever it may be with where you are going in life. There is no skipping this whole process, as it HAS to be done by taking small steps at a time.

For anyone who is interested to learn more about what I've been discussing, click on this link: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html 

"Into each life, some rain must fall"

As the quote states in the title of this post, I want to evaluate with you all what is the meaning of this quote is and why. This is especially because there may be people out there going through a rough patch right now. And just so it happens... I am one of those people. Hence my other main reason for this post.

What I am about to share with you all is very personal as to how I've been feeling for the past 2 months. My outcome for doing so is to encourage other people to shed some light about their feelings, as well as what they've been going through to make them feel that way in a bid to not feel alone. I know people intend to feel the need to not disclose their feelings at all to make them feel better, but inevitably, they will eventually just eat you alive by making you suffering in silence. (FTR, something I'm still in the process of  learning myself)

Not only will evaluating this quotation as to how I've been feeling help my reflect on myself, but I can use it to make me feel positively optimistic about what will be awaiting my future at the end of a temporarily pitch black tunnel.

 

During my last couple of posts, I've purposely used them to raise awareness on Mental Health. In some of these posts, I think I can recall saying that I hadn't had the time to be making posts much more often than I used too, as my focus was too prioritized on other things going on in my life which had prevented me from working on my blog. I know at first was being private as to why. However, now that I'm posting this under its title, I feel like this is the right time to disclose everything.

Here's the truthful reason behind it all...

Since the beginning of September, I began my final year at college. Towards the end of that month, I temporarily had to pull out of work in order for me to focus on my coursework. Also throughout that same month, I was getting back into swimming by getting my local leisure centre membership back. However, it had only lasted throughout September alone, as I then realized that my finance was going downhill which wasn't hugely down to paying £37 a month for my membership. Although I was crazy to even think I was able to pay that amount of money in the first place. Especially with my financial instability going on.

My finance first became unstable at the start of September, where I was due payment at one of the last places I was working at. Unfortunately, due to certain circumstances, (which I'm not allowed to go into detail about) I wasn't able to receive my full work payment. I say full, as that payment consists of a couple of previous jobs I did over the summer. To make those matters worse, I've been having to use the remainder of the money I've got for my travel to & from college. I do get money for my travel to college, but I only get it once per month. And if that wasn't enough, I had even paid £85 for 2 GCSE resits. Between juggling them & my coursework, my mind simply found it too hard to work on both at the same time.

As of now, I've gotten most of my resits over and done with. However, it has caused me to fall behind with some of my coursework revision due to me putting my focus upfront on my resists.

My life at home hasn't exactly been a luxury ether. I cannot afford to do much for myself right now due to my constant finance worry. Every time, I stay at home, my mind lives in a constant state of being angry about everything. Whenever I'm doing something away from home, I suddenly feel happy as if nothing has ever happened. 

Needless to say, my Mental Health has really been through it with all of the mentioned above that has happened. My anxiety has made me feel worried by continuously thinking about what the inevitable will be if any of these problems do not get better. Recently, it has gotten to a point where I feel so negative about everything that is happening in my life right now. So much, that don't give 2 slices of bread of where I'll end up in life.

This is where this quotation comes into play...

The more I think about the meaning of this quotation: "Into each life, some rain must fall" the more I make myself aware that there will be better times ahead. If we're talking psychologically here, every mindset has to experience sadness for it to become stronger. Otherwise, if it stayed happy all of the time, it would not know how to cope with being sad, let alone change it for the better.

To conclude off this long post, it is important to remain positively optimistic during a rough patch, like mine by doing what you enjoy doing in the meantime. I suppose it would be appropriate for me to compare what I'm currently going through now to how I had managed to cope during 3 of the COVID lockdowns.

There is always a way in life, stick with it.

How spending time in nature can help with Mental Health

I was originally going to make a post to raise awareness for #WorldMentalHealthDay. But since it's now past the date, I'll use this post to talk about something (in this post) that I've come across recently to help raise not only late awareness for Mental Health, but to give you a personal insight about one of my favourite ways to manage it.

As I was out on a local walk this Sunday gone, I was just taking in my surroundings when the idea hit me to capture a picture of what I was seeing. I thought I could use this picture I took to discuss all the beneficial things about spending time in nature in my blog. Even if it's only for as short as 10mins.

It has been proven in the Mental Health & Psychology industry that spending time in nature can have a positive impact on your Mental Health.

Why? When you're out walking in a natural environment, your mind will become fascinated to take in all its naturistic things. Examples given: Leaves, rivers or even squirrels. Especially now we're currently in autumn, it has so much trend to give to just a natural environment itself that it lights up the scenery with different colours. This makes you appreciate how lucky you are that you will always have a nature spot not far from you, so you can take a long or short time out from whatever is stressing you to a calming nature spot to detoxicate.

Although the same could be said for the other seasons as well, but I just think in my opinion that autumn deliveries the best nature content.

The picture I took above shows how just spending momentarily time in nature can have a positive impact on my Mental Health. Purposely taken in wide view, so it captures all my surroundings facing frontwards.