The Prison of Your Mind – English Presentation

The Prison of Your Mind – English Presentation by Dr. Sean Stephenson at TED.com with selected reading and illustrated vocabulary flashcards to improve your English and brush up your life

Source of image: TED.com

Listening practice

Lecturer: Sean Stephenson

Reading practice

Never call yourself names.

Calling yourself a name is reducing yourself from a human to a single element of yourself that you do not like.
Saying “I am such a failure” after getting fired from a job is inaccurate and unfair to you. Instead, make the useful comment, “I lost my job, but I can use this experience to find and keep a new job.”
Saying “I am so stupid” is also likely untrue and reductive. If you feel stupid, it’s more likely that you have a lack of knowledge about something. Instead, think, “I don’t know how to do this basic home maintenance. Perhaps I could take a class and learn to do this in the future.”

Source: https://www.wikihow.com/

Block negative thoughts

When something’s bothering you, you know that getting your mind off of it is easier said than done. In fact, research shows that when people are instructed not to think about a specific topic, it makes it even harder to get that topic out of their minds. But rehashing negative thoughts over and over in your head, also known as rumination, can be unpleasant and counterproductive—and in some cases, it can even lead to chronic depression.

“It’s like a needle in a groove,” says Guy Winch, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries. “As the groove gets deeper and deeper, the needle has a harder time getting out of the groove.” What’s more, rumination can actually make you more angry or upset than you were originally, because the issue becomes magnified in your mind.

Source: https://www.happify.com

Try to motive yourself

Who needs Tony Robbins when you can motivate yourself? Overcoming the emotional hurdle to get stuff done when you’d rather sit on the couch isn’t always easy. But unless calling in sick and waking up at noon have no consequences for you, it’s often a must.

For those of you who never procrastinate, distract yourself or drag your feet when you should be doing something important, well done so far! But for the rest of you, it’s good to have a library of motivational boosters to move along.

Despite your best efforts, passion, habits and a flow-producing environment can fail. In that case, it’s time to find whatever emotional pump-up you can use to get started.

Source: https://www.lifehack.org/

Live a healthy life

Living healthy is the most practical way to empower yourself. You must maintain excellent health physically as well as mentally. You can become the fittest version of yourself by going to workout classes. Not to mention, you must also eat organic and healthy food. As they say, you are what you eat! So you must carefully choose what goes into your body as it affects your ability to think. When you want to create the change in the world, eating food in the mode of goodness indeed helps you achieve your goals.

Source: https://thriveglobal.com/