Are you in charge of your destiny?

Locus of control describes the degree to which individuals perceive that outcomes result from their own behaviors, or from forces that are external to themselves. This produces a continuum with external control at one end and internal control at the other:


People who develop an internal locus of control believe that they are responsible for their own success. Those with an external locus of control believe that external forces, like luck, determine their outcomes.

Self Test:
http://psychologytoday.tests.psychtests.com/take_test.php?idRegTest=1317

Information:
http://wilderdom.com/psychology/loc/LocusOfControlWhatIs.html


Test Yourself various tests for
• Career
• Health
• IQ
• Personality
• Relationships
http://www.psychologytoday.com/tests/


Mindtools:
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_90.htm

Appreciative systems

Sir Charles Geoffrey Vickers VC (1894 - 1982) was an English lawyer, administrator, writer and pioneering systems scientist.

'I find it surprising that we have no accepted word to describe the activity of attaching meaning to communication or the code by which we do so, a code which is constantly confirmed, developed or changed by use. I have for many years referred to this mental activity as ”appreciation‘; and to the code which it uses, as its ”appreciative system‘; and to the state of that code at any time as its ”appreciative setting‘. I call it a system because, although tolerant of ambiguity and even inconsistency, it is sensitive to them and tries to reconcile them‘.

In the later years Vickers wrote and lectured on the subject of social systems analysis and the complex patterns of social organisation. His work was taken-up by researchers at the Open University in particular. Vickers is regarded as a systems practitioner rather than an academic. He introduced the concept of appreciative systems to describe human activity. He recognized that appreciation of systems requires the participation of not only the observer, but also that of the subject.

"Vickers suggests replacing the goal-setting and goal-seeking with feedback models in which personal, institutional or cultural activity consists in maintaining desired relationships and eluding undesired ones. The process is a cyclical one which operates like this: Our previous experiences have created for us certain 'standards' or 'norms', usually 'tacit' (and also, at a more general level, 'values', more general concepts of what is humanly good and bad); the standards, norms and/or values lead to readiness to notice only certain features of our situations, they determine what 'facts' are relevant; the facts noticed are evaluated against the norms, a process which leads to our taking regulatory action and modifies the norms or standards, so that future experiences will be evaluated differently".

Examples:

1. SIPP or Sincere, Incident Based, Positive and Personal

2. W3 or What worked well, What did not work well and what can we do differently?

3. SLC or Success, Learn, Change

4. 4D-Model Discover—Dream—Design—Destiny.

Geoffrey Vickers' perspectives on moral and political philosophy can be presented through three key terms:

a,Our human capacity to respond aptly to our situation;

b,The analysis of modern society in terms of institutions; and

c,The moral importance of responsibility to the maintenance of human culture and cooperation

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward.

This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen...forward and backward. This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by AARP. This video won second place.. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awestruck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant.

Take a minute and watch it. Lost Generation

Synesthesia ...

is a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. Researchers study synesthesia not only because it is inherently interesting, but also because studying it can offer insights into other questions, such as how the brain combines information from different sensory modalities, referred to as crossmodal perception and multisensory integration. Tests like this demonstrate that people do not attach sounds to visual shapes arbitrarily. Which shape would you call "Kiki" and which "Booba?" An example of this is the booba/kiki effect. In an experiment first designed by Wolfgang Köhler, people are asked to choose which of two shapes is named booba and which kiki. 95% to 98% of people choose kiki for the angular shape and booba for the rounded one. Individuals on the island of Tenerife showed a similar preference between shapes called takete and maluma. Even 2.5 year-old children (too young to read) show this effect. Researchers study synesthesia not only because it is innately interesting, but also because studying it can offer insights into other questions, such as how the brain combines information from different sensory modalities, referred to as crossmodal perception and multisensory integration. It has been suggested that the kiki/booba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary. The rounded shape may intuitively be named booba because the mouth makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound, while a more taut, angular mouth shape is needed to articulate kiki. The sound of K is also harder and more forceful than that of B. Such "synesthesia-like mappings" suggest that this effect might be the neurological basis for sound symbolism, in which sounds are non-arbitrarily mapped to objects and actions in the world. Given synesthetes' extraordinary conscious experiences, researchers hope that their study will provide better understanding of consciousness and its neural correlates, meaning what the brain mechanisms that make us conscious might be. In particular, synesthesia might be relevant to the philosophical problem of qualia (the subjective quality of conscious experience. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the redness of an evening sky), given that synesthetes experience extra qualia (e.g., a colored sound). Synesthetic art historically refers to multi-sensory experiments in the genres of visual music, music visualization, audiovisual art, abstract film, and intermedia. Synesthesia is sometimes used as a plot device or way of developing a character's inner life.

Author and synesthete Pat Duffy[1] describes four ways in which synesthetic characters have been used in modern fiction.

1.Synesthesia as Romantic ideal: in which the condition illustrates the Romantic ideal of transcending one's experience of the world.

2.Synesthesia as pathology: in which the trait is pathological.

3.Synesthesia as Romantic pathology: in which synesthesia is pathological but also provides an avenue to the Romantic ideal of transcending quotidian experience.

4.Synesthesia as psychological health and balance.

[1] Patricia Lynne Duffy is an instructor in the UN Language and Communications Programme. Duffy has given presentations on synesthesia at Yale University, Princeton University, the University of California, San Diego, Rockefeller University, the University of Virginia, and others. She is a co-founder of and consultant to the American Synesthesia Association. BLUE CATS and CHARTREUSE KITTENS How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds By Patricia Lynne Duffy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

and... just in case you heard otherwise from other "indigo" sources, the designated word "Indigo" has nothing to do with the color of an aura! It is the result of scientific observations by a woman who has the brain disorder called synesthesia. http://www.indigochild.com/

Little Boy Blue

Indigo kids: Does the science fly?

Which shape would you call "Kiki" and which "Booba?"

In a psychological experiment first designed by Wolfgang Köhler, people are asked to choose which of these shapes is named Booba and which is named Kiki. 95% to 98% of people choose Kiki for the angular shape and Booba for the rounded shape. It is thought that this has implications for language development, in that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary. The rounded shape may most commonly be named Booba because the mouth makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound. Similarly a more taut, angular mouth shape is needed to make the sound Kiki. The sounds of a K are harder and more forceful than those of a B, as well. Wolfgang Köhler (1887 –1967) was a German-American psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology. Köhler observed the manner in which chimpanzees solve problems, such as that of retrieving bananas when positioned out of reach. He found that they stacked wooden crates to use as makeshift ladders, in order to retrieve the food. If the bananas were placed on the ground outside of the cage, they used sticks to lengthen the reach of their arms. Köhler concluded that the chimps had not arrived at these methods through trial-and-error (which American psychologist Edward Thorndike had claimed to be the basis of all animal learning, through his law of effect), but rather that they had experienced an insight (also sometimes known as an “aha experience”), in which, having realized the answer, they then proceeded to carry it out in a way that was, in Köhler’s words, “unwaveringly purposeful.” After many observations with chimpanzees, it was concluded that these animals were capable of problem-solving and that they did not arrive at their methods through trial and error. This is one of the prominent findings from the research done on apes. Furthermore, it has been stated in the past that Köhler’s work on the mentality of apes was a turning point in the psychology of thinking. Max Wertheimer (1880 –1943) was a Czech-born psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. Max Wertheimer's unique contribution was to insist that the "Gestalt" is perceptually primary, defining the parts of which it was composed, rather than being a secondary quality that emerges from those parts, as von Ehrenfels's earlier Gestalt-Qualität had been.

Kurt Koffka (1886 - 1941) was a German psychologist. Koffka believed that most of early learning is what he referred to as, "sensorimotor learning," which is a type of learning which occurs after a consequence. For example, a child who touches a hot stove will learn not to touch it again. Koffka also believed that a lot of learning occurs by imitation, though he argued that it is not important to understand how imitation works, but rather to acknowledge that it is a natural occurrence. According to Koffka, the highest type of learning is ideational learning, which makes use of language. Koffka notes that an important time in children's development is when they understand that objects have names.