Dr. John Townsend

Asking For Help

February 8, 2019 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Think about the last time you needed help in some situation, say something as simple as your smartphone battery dying and needing to borrow someone’s charger. Maybe it was easy to ask a friend for the charger. Or maybe you felt a bit uncomfortable in asking. Regardless, most of us hesitate, at some time or another, in requesting help and assistance from others. But the reality is humans need each other, every day and in lots of ways. We weren’t designed to be self-sufficient islands unto ourselves. Life goes better when we ask, and when others ask us. So here are a few tips to help you be a better “asker.”

Turn the tables in your mind. Think empathetically about how you feel when someone you care about asks you for advice or a cup of sugar. If you’re in a decent mood, you are most likely happy to provide that person with something. Helping is like Prozac for the mind. When we help, with a positive attitude, the famous oxytocin is released, and we feel happy, energetic and content. So the reverse is also true. When you ask others, you are creating a space for the other person to feel positive as well.

Value your life. If you are without something that’s important to you, you need to value your life enough that you will step out and ask another for help. People who don’t think much of themselves will often think, I’m high maintenance, I’m not worth it, and refrain from asking. But then they never get the assistance they need. Remember that your life and your contributions are important.

Don’t give up after one “no.” Sometimes people get discouraged after getting up the courage to ask, and then the other individual says no, like, “No, I don’t have time to help you work on your bike on Saturday.” But one “no” doesn’t tell the tale. Ask several people, it increases the odds that someone will say “yes.” One of my sons, Benny, is in commercial real estate financing. When he was first starting out, he was making 150 cold calls a day. The great majority of them said “no”, and often “hell no.” But Benny kept calling. I asked him at dinner how his day went, and he said, “Great day, I got 3 maybe’s and 147 no’s!”

Make sure you are not being truly high maintenance. It’s always good, if you’re not sure, to ask those in your life if you’re being too demanding of others time and energy. If we are going through a hard time, we may be doing it and not being aware of it. If that’s the case, then add more supportive people to the mix, so your friends don’t get burnt out during your long term difficult period. And also use what you are given. People don’t mind giving more when the other person is grateful, becomes empowered, makes good changes and improvements, etc.

Asking is good and healthy. So I’m asking you to share this blog with someone else to help them too! Take care.

Succeeding At Your New Job (Or Any Job)

February 1, 2019 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

So you’re gainfully employed! Congratulations on being part of the working world, and helping your product or service make the world a better place to live, for a reasonable return!

For many, however, the honeymoon is over. They feel they have an achievement ceiling over their heads, not enough resources, an unhealthy culture and an organization that is pointed the wrong way. This can be very unnerving and discouraging for someone who wants to perform in the greatest environment possible. Here are some tips to help:

Study and train in your area. Be the best you can be in your area. Read blogs and go to conferences. Ask people in your department to have coffee and ask them questions you need help in. You will not only make yourself more productive, but the message will get out to the culture that you are a go-getter who is giving a lot to the organization.

Connect with the team. Nothing helps you succeed better than having positive and trusting relationships with the team. They will help you achieve your goals and beyond. Don’t get stuck at your desk. Reach out to them, help them, have social time with them. No divas or isolates here!

Ask for things to do. Supervisors are always blown away by the questions “What else can I do?” They are always overwhelmed with projects and are surprised that you would actually come to ask them if you can help them. If you have the bandwidth do it every few weeks. I promise you will be noticed in a good way.

Ask for opportunities to grow and develop. Pick a conference and ask if they will pay for it. Let them know you want to grow to the next level of achievement.

Volunteer to help with the problems. See my second paragraph. Just pick one, and ask if you can get engaged to improve matters.

Success in a company, even a very flawed one, is a mixture of several interventions. Be there, work hard, ask to do more, and seek ways to improve. It will get noticed and rewarded.

Best,

John

5 Ways Mindfulness Can Improve Your Relationships

September 24, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Mindfulness is an attitude to living that helps you be more open, compassionate, and self-aware. It involves deliberately directing your attention away from autopilot and negative, judging thoughts, allowing you to be more present and connected to whatever is happening right now.

It’s not a big stretch to imagine that more mindful people might make better relationship partners. Below are five brain-based ways practicing mindfulness may help you have happier and healthier relationships.

5 Ways Mindfulness Can Improve Your Relationships

Mindfulness helps us be more present and attentive. Most of us know how frustrating it can be to try to talk to a partner who is regularly checking email or texts or whose attention is always on work worries. Mindfulness changes areas of the brain associated with directing attention and focus. Therefore, it can help us notice when we are on autopilot and redirect attention to whatever our partner is saying or to what they may be feeling and needing. This can help us be more loving and present in our relationships, which builds intimacy and makes our relationships happier and more connected.

Mindfulness lowers negative emotional reactivity. Mindfulness studies show that practicing mindfulness for 8 to 10 weeks changes the brain’s emotion regulation areas. The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped part of the midbrain that hijacks the brain into “fight, flight, freeze” mode in which we start to see our partners as threats to our wellbeing or autonomy and automatically shut down emotionally or start to attack them with angry words and deeds. Mindfulness shrinks the volume of the amygdala, meaning that it has less power to hijack us into ‘threat” mode. This can help couples get out of negative cycles of destructive arguing or emotional distancing.

Mindfulness improves emotion regulation. Studies show that mindfulness practice strengthens the prefrontal cortex and improves the connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is the brain’s executive center, and it can send a message to the amygdala telling it that things are ok and it can chill and stop the “fight, flight, freeze” response. So even when we do start to lose it or walk away from our partners when they are in the middle of talking, we are able to say “Stop! This is not helpful” and thereby stop ourselves from going down a relationship rabbit hole.

Mindfulness enhances self-awareness. Mindfulness also leads to changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with our sense of self and emotion regulation. Therefore mindfulness may help us observe when we are acting out in unhealthy ways and redirect attention back to how we’d like to act and what our core values are. This can help us restrain the impulse to act destructively or manipulatively. It may help you get up and do something else when you’re tempted to break into your partner’s computer or stalk them online.

Mindfulness makes us more empathic. Mindfulness also changes the insula, a part of the brain associated with empathy and compassion. This can help us be more understanding of our partners’ perspectives and emotions and feel more compassion for them. When we approach our partners compassionately, rather than with anger and desire to control them, this can take the conversation in a positive direction. Compassion also helps us express love and warmth to our partner, which builds intimacy. Mindfulness creates an approach, rather than an avoidance mindset.

Following are two questions to ask yourself when you are considering how mindful you are being in your daily life.

What are the distractions you feel you have when socializing or connecting to those around you? Analyze if you need to draw digital boundaries to be more present.
Reflect on the last conflict and analyze if you were genuinely being mindful in your responses or interaction? If you weren’t, how will you change it next time?

Why Time Is Your Most Valuable Currency

September 17, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

If we look at the most valuable currency on this planet, our first thought often sways towards dollars, dinars, pounds, etc, or in some cases the crypto-currency called Bitcoin. Time is actually the most valuable currency – one second lost cannot be bought back.

Everyone has an equal number of hours per week to become unequal — be it local tea stall owner, shopkeeper or someone as big as Mark Zuckerburg or Elon Musk? So what is that they (Musk, Zuckerburg) do to create that big difference between their success and of others? The understand how important it is to manage their time.

Priority Management

When we talk about time management it is merely an art of priority management, so are we prioritizing the schedule or scheduling the priority? If we have our priorities scheduled, then the amount of success or achievement of goal will not be an issue, however, if we prioritize our schedule we may have a good schedule but our goals will not be achieved to the level that we may want.

Doing the Right Thing

Similarly, what is more important doing the right thing or doing things rightly? Lot of people believe that doing things rightly is the way to success, but doing the wrong things rightly will leave you high and dry on goal achievement status. So doing the right thing is far more important than anything.

Stay Productive

Time management is to make sure that you stay productive throughout the day and it should not be assumed that all the tasks will be completed within a time frame. The most important benefit that can be extracted out of it would be from the fact that you will get organized and it will improve your productivity both on the academic and professional front.

Practice Time-Management Seriously

If you may have wondered why your boss is always busy and finicky about time then the reason is simple, they are practicing time-management. Time management cannot be adopted in a day but has to be practiced over the years to get the desired outcome.

Still not sure where you are spending your time? Here are three questions to ask yourself.

What is distracting you? List the top 3 distractions you feel you can cut in your day.
How are you scheduling your priorities now? Use this week to start a new system using tips above to see if it can help.
How much time are you spending on social media? Analyze if you need to draw firmer digital boundaries.

Now I’m going to share with you nine habits that can help you manage your time better. They really work, too!

9 Habits To Help You Manage Time

Take a note of things on paper or digitally to help you cruise through the day.
Assign toughest task at the beginning of the day so that biggest hurdles can be overcome.
Prioritize tasks – the most important tasks need to be finished at the earliest.
Learn to say NO to people or tasks will increase at hand and existing tasks may fail to see closure.
Stick to your break timings as they may take up your productive time period.
Don’t waste your time on social media and respond to messages if they are very important.
Learn to delegate tasks as you alone cannot do everything.
Most importantly, keep a clock on your desk to track your time on tasks.
Break tasks into shorter goals so that every goal achieved keeps you motivated during the day.

How to Deal with Self Criticism

September 14, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Most of us are a bit hard on ourselves. We have an internal judge who is pretty harsh with us when we fail or screw up. S/he says such supportive things, such as:

“There you go again…”

“You’ll never get it right!”

“You’ve let yourself and everyone down.”

“You are such a loser!”

“You haven’t changed at all.”

This sort of negative self-talk doesn’t drive you to jump out of bed and take on the world, does it? It’s more likely to keep you in bed watching Netflix all day!

We do, however, need a monitor, or judge, in our heads to help us make good choices. This monitor is called a conscience. Just like Pinocchio’s friend Jiminy Cricket warned him from going the wrong way, we need that help as well. People without a developed conscience often end up in prison, where they belong.

So what can you do about your self judge who beats you up a bit too much? Here are some tips to help.

First, know what a healthy judge is supposed to sound like. You need a model of what healthy is so that you can improve what you have. A healthy judge has two aspects: it is (1) warm and (2) accurate.

Warmth relates to a kind tone instead of a harsh or condemning tone. Notice how the two next statements are very different in their tone: the first tone is discouraging, and the second is motivating. Which sounds more like your judge right now?

Discouraging Judge: “Unbelievable! You lost the account because you didn’t understand the client the right way. You are just not meant for this job.”

Motivating Judge: “You lost the account. It’s a significant setback and you are discouraged. But you have resources, smarts, and good people to help you learn from this and recalibrate.”

Accurate has to do with the truthfulness of the judge’s perspective. A healthy judge should cheer you when you succeed and prompt you to change when you fail.

Unhealthy judges will tend to prompt us when we’ve done nothing wrong (a false positive-like making you feel you broke the speed limit when you didn’t). They will also not prompt us when they need to (false negative-like saying nothing when you cheat on your income tax return).

These inaccurate conscience judges don’t do you any good! Only an accurate one does the job right.

Now, let’s talk about how to start improving that judge if it’s not accurate or warm. On a daily basis for one week, record on your smartphone how many times you heard your judge’s self-talk, and what it said. Is it positive and supportive or negative and demotivational? Once you start paying attention, you should begin to see improvement in this area because what we take an active interest in improves!

I have another recommendation for you as well. Twice a week for a month, have a conversation with a safe person in your life and tell them about the times you beat yourself up.

Don’t let him/her dismiss what you did if you really screwed up – that is denial (and not helpful). Instead, allow your safe person say, “Yes, you were pretty inappropriate in that conversation. I’m OK with you, and I’ll help you brainstorm what to do next.” You can watch my video on safe people here for more information.

Over time, these practices will help you have a useful and helpful tool in your mind to move away from negative self-criticism. A healthy judge will keep us out of trouble and help us learn from our mistakes.

Persecuted Christians Are Telling Their Story, Here’s an Easy Way to Listen and Respond

September 13, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Did you know 1 in 12 Christians around the world face severe persecution for their faith? We don’t always hear about these acts of harassment and violence because restrictive governments or militants often prevent their stories from being publicly told.

Open Doors is trying to change this.

This non-profit was founded by Brother Andrew, a man best known for courageously putting his life on the line to smuggle Bibles behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

In addition to providing Bibles, leadership training, trauma counseling, legal advocacy, emergency aid and other support in more than 60 countries, Open Doors also collects research about persecuted Christians to ensure the world is aware of their plight. Each year, they release the World Watch List – a comprehensive report that draws attention to the top 50 countries in the world where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

And now, Open Doors is inviting you to hear and respond to these stories as well.

Today, Open Doors USA is releasing Pray for the Persecuted, a free app that will connect American Christians with persecuted believers around the world. App users will receive a notification about a prayer need from a persecuted Christian living out their faith in the world’s most difficult regions 3-5 times per week.

You’ll have the option to click “I prayed” to let persecuted Christians know you are standing with them in prayer, as well as the option to share the prayer request via social media to help share their stories.

Go here to download and try it now.