Telling Better Happiness Stories (Ep.15)

In this episode of Happiness, A Sceptics Guide podcast (Ep.15), your hosts Dr Gary Wood and Paul Flower consider the question of how to make happiness insights stick.  This time we look at ‘storytelling’ and the way we tell our life stories, even on a day-to-day basis, help to shape how we view the world. Check out this and the other episodes of the podcast over on Podbean or stick around here to watch this handy video presentation:

Based on Gary Wood’s book ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ (published by Routledge). To read more about the book, for the UK go to: https://amzn.to/3gmgukd And for the US go to: https://amzn.to/3gmgukd

If you’d like to discuss solutiob-focused life coaching for happiness and wellbeing, please get in touch.

Happiness and Wellbeing. What’s the difference?

In this episode of Happiness, A Sceptics Guide we compare and contrast happiness and wellbeing. It unravels some of the pop psychology terminology and presents a definition of wellbeing that aligns with a definition of stress – the balance between the challenges we face and the resources we have to meet the demands.

The podcast episode is based on Gary Wood‘s book ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing‘ (published by Routledge). To read more about the book, for the UK go to: https://amzn.to/3gmgukd And for the US go to: https://amzn.to/3gmgukd

Do follow Happiness, a Sceptics Guide over on Podbean, or wherever you find your podcasts. Or, if you stay just where you are, you can check out this handy video:

Get in touch to discuss coaching for wellbeing with Gary Wood

Check out other posts on wellbeing by Dr Gary Wood:

• The Psychology of Wellbeing a Critical Introduction
• Reflections on Writing the Psychology of Wellbeing
• How Do We Define Wellbeing? And what does it mean to you?
• Is Fake News Bad for Your Health? Truth, trust and the Psychology of Wellbeing

Is Fake News Bad For Your Health? Truth, Trust and the Psychology of Wellbeing

The response to the COVID pandemic has highlighted the importance of trust and truth in healthcare generally. I begin writing The Psychology of Wellbeing just before the first cases of COVID were recorded, and completed the final edit in the middle of the first lockdown. It was not possible to avoid discussing the pandemic but I didn’t want it to dominate the book. As events unfolded, some material from the first draft was made redundant but thankfully parallels emerged between how leaders dealt with the coronavirus crisis and how we all approach ‘everyday’ healthcare. The pandemic response also helped to shine a light on how we evaluate sources of information, against a swell of fake news, conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts’. The following video distils some of the times from Chapter 2 (Questions of Trust) and Chapter 3 (Storytelling and Sense-making) of the book.

To buy the book visit Amazon UK or Amazon US.

Trannsciption of the video ‘Is Fake News Bad for Your Health? Truth, Trust and the Psychology of Wellbeing?

In this age of information overload, it gets ever harder to make sense of critical issues of the day, such as, ‘how can we improve our wellbeing?’And to combat this overwhelm, we skim read, scan for keywords and cherry-pick the evidence. And we use trust as a way to filter out the noise.Now we all have our trusty go-to sources of information and ones we reject. But it seems many of us have ‘trust issues.’

In the UK, a major opinion poll about trust found that two-thirds of people worry that new technology will make it impossible to know if what we are seeing, or hearing, is real.
I’m Gary Wood, author of The Psychology of Wellbeing which uses self-reflection & storytelling to explore the relationship between trust, truth, and wellness, and aims to answer the question ‘Is fake news bad for our health?

Early in the COVID crisis, the UK government came under pressure to publish the model used for its approach. And, Dr Richard Horton of The Lancet, argued, ‘This transparency is essential for . . . understanding, co-operation and trust.’ But a lack of trust is not surprising when some politicians openly decry expert knowledge or else denounce anything they disagree with as ‘fake news’. It’s not a good sign when even the definition of fake is fake. And in this ‘post-truth’ age, feelings trump facts. Or rather, the choice of facts to explain the world is led by emotion. So, if it feels right then it is ‘true enough’.And this view of the world has got in the way of tackling the Covid pandemic. A lack of trust has led to conspiracy theories, suspicion and confusion between nations. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization commented ‘We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an “infodemic”. Because conspiracy theories have a viral quality as believing in one makes it more likely that other theories will be accepted. And false news goes viral because people spread it.

Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) looked at how and why news spreads on Twitter. They found that false news spreads faster and reaches up to ten times more people than does the truth. And the two key drivers are novelty and emotional reaction. As false news is more often novel and surprising, it’s more likely to shared. And it’s more likely to provoke stronger emotions such as fear and disgust. By contrast, true news is met with sadness, joy, anticipation, and trust.
So, when faced with a snippet of information that both surprises you and arouses strong negative emotions, put in some cognitive distance or what we might call ‘social distancing’ for social media’.

• Don’t react to the emotion trigger.
• Think. Calm down first, and check the facts.
• And to limit the cherry-picking to support our biases, use fact check websites to get balance

But is a climate of ‘distrust’ really that bad for our health?

Being less trusting might seem like a good survival strategy, but research shows that it can harm our psychological and physical health. It’s linked to being cynical, lacking social support, and being less willing to seek medical treatment. In contrast, patients who work in partnership with health providers to share decisions and build trust are better informed. They report greater satisfaction with health care, are more likely to stick to treatment plans and so enjoy better health.

In his 2017 talk to Google, Noam Chomsky, cognitive scientist and social critic, was asked, ‘How do you think Google can and should handle the fake news problem?’ He replied, ‘By not contributing to it’. The Psychology of Wellbeing helps you to do just that. It gives you with the tools to make sense of contradictory information around wellbeing, to empower you to ask better questions.

Useful Fact-checking websites:

• FactCheck.Org
• FullFact.org
• MediaBiasFactCheck.com
• Snopes.com

To buy the The Psychology of Wellbeing visit Amazon UK or Amazon US.

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

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How do we define wellbeing? And what does it mean to you? Are you well?

One way we can bridge the gap between ‘common sense’ or everyday ideas, pop psychology and academic knowledge is to look at working (operational) definitions of key concepts – in this case, ‘wellbeing’ – to put us on the same page.

In the following short video, I discuss how we define wellbeing and how the psychological approach differs from everyday chats about wellness. And a transcript of the video follows.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Transcript of the video How do we define wellbeing? And what does it mean to you?

Some years ago, I had a comical stay at a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse. And on greeting the owner with ‘Good morning. How are you today?’ he replied, ‘Do you really care?’
And, at first, I was taken aback. But it is a valid point. In our routine chats about wellness, how DO we tell genuine interest from social ritual?

As more of us now spend more time thinking and talking about wellbeing, it’s crucial to ask what it is. Because if we can’t define it, then how can we understand it to improve it?

I’m Gary Wood, author of The Psychology of Wellbeing, which uses self-reflection and storytelling to explore what makes a ‘good life’.
It begins by looking at our everyday exchanges on wellness, to reveal a complex process at play. Each time, we tap into OUR definition of wellness and edit pre-existing scripts to tell our life stories as we go. And these accounts vary by our mood, by setting, by time, and with different people, as we choose to give the full story, the headline news or a just stock reply.

Now this vague approach might not matter in everyday chats, but in academic research, clarity is vital. Our goal is to study wellbeing in a systematic way to isolate the personal view from the general principles, if we can. So, a working definition puts us all on the same page.

At its most basic, wellbeing is just ‘feeling well’. It’s your experience of ‘health, happiness and prosperity’. And it includes your mental health, life satisfaction, meaning in life and how you cope with stress.

It is useful to think of wellbeing as a state of balance. That is, how well your personal resources meet your life challenges.
Also, at the centre, we need to define the thing that’s being well – the self. It’s that constant and predictable sense of you as a ‘separate, experiencing being’. Because in psychology, our sense of ‘who we are’ plays a crucial role in social interactions, motivation and our decisions around wellbeing.

Now as you unpack YOUR personal definition of wellness, it describes a widening circle from self to others. You might start with health, wealth, leisure, work-status, and relationships. Then extend your view to where you live, and community. And then wider still to the economy, the state of the environment, and the trust you put in governments.

Now, we’ll all have varying degrees of control on these aspects of wellbeing – from a lot to almost none. And much of our experience is shaped or framed by various intersecting factors, such as age, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

The Psychology of Wellbeing offers a subtle nod to a self-help book and uses mindfulness in a more critical way. It invites you to reflect on what wellbeing means to you? What factors confer a wellbeing-advantage for you, the knock-on effects for others, and what impedes your wellness story? And crucially, it helps you to explore what to do with these insights.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

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The Psychology of Wellbeing – An Introduction

The Psychology of Wellbeing is the third book in my ‘Routledge triptych’. The first was The Psychology of Gender, and in the final chapter, I began to explore the idea of storytelling in psychology. And in the third book, I develop this idea and team it with the self-reflection. This gives the book a subtle nod to self-help books. It also connects it to the second book in the trio is Letters to a New Student. It’s a strong study skills book with a strong emphasis on wellbeing. And, after writing it, I developed the idea of study skills as life skills, for a workshop.

In the following short video, I introduce the main themes in The Psychology of Wellbeing and pose the questions it attempts to answer. And a transcript of the video follows.

Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA 

Transcript for The Psychology of Wellbeing introductory video:

Questions of how to ‘live the good life’ & to ‘live long and prosper’ have occupied us for thousands of years. But in recent times there’s been a massive boom in wellbeing. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, that shows no signs of slowing.

More of us now spend more time talking about wellbeing, reading about it, researching it, and writing about it. From magazines to self-help books, from workplace reports to government papers. And with so much on offer, it grows ever tougher to sift the science from the ‘snake oil’.

So how do you decide what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just hype? How do we spot the breakthroughs from the fake news? And crucially, what does wellness mean to you?

Is it financial security or good relationships? Is it having a purpose in life and setting goals? Is it being mindful or grateful? Is it all down to positive thinking or simply good luck? And fundamentally, does it really count as wellbeing if it comes at the expense of another?

I’m Gary Wood author of The Psychology of Wellbeing. It’s a short, accessible book to bridge the gaps between ‘everyday’ ideas, pop-psychology, and academic knowledge. But instead of trying to supply all the answers, the book uses self-reflection and storytelling to build critical skills to ask better questions.

Written in the middle of a pandemic, and with a few health challenges of my own, the book asks you to look at where you get your knowledge and how you know you can trust it?

Who’s got your ear? Is it scientists, academics & doctors, self-help gurus, journalists or those politicians who tell us not to listen to the experts or trust the evidence of your senses but to take their word for it? Or maybe it’s ‘friend of a friend’ who ‘knows someone who heard something’.

The book looks at definitions of wellbeing, the self and normality, the impact of inequality, the effects of stress and how trends such as mindfulness and positive psychology can shape our happiness, and our view of the world. It also offers a critical review of the self-help industry and a plan to help you choose & use self-help books to best support your wellness goals.

But most of all, The Psychology of Wellbeing helps us to understand the wellbeing stories of others and tell better wellbeing stories of our own.

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

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Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Reflections on Writing ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ – based on the preface to the book

During the first UK lockdown in the Coronavirus pandemic, I was putting the finishing touches to my book ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’. The writing process was beset with a number of health and wellness concerns of my own. I’ve discussed these in the preface to the book, and in this short promotional video. And I also ponder the relationship between readers and writers of a book. 

Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA 

Transcript of ‘Reflections on Writing the Psychology of Wellbeing’:

Sociologist William Simon writes that ‘All attempts at theorizing social life are, at the same time, works of autobiography’. And I’ve joked more than once that writing this ‘wellbeing book will be the death of me’. Because it wasn’t so very far from the truth. A major depressive episode didn’t help the writing process. Neither did another attack of sciatica and lower-back pain, a tooth broken beyond repair, and finding a lump in my armpit. And all this at the start of a pandemic.

It caused me to question if psychology had anything to say about improving wellbeing. And even if it did, was I fit and ready to write it? It certainly didn’t seem so. Also, this book is part of a bigger story – a series called ‘The Psychology of Everything’. And, I realized I’ve never stopped to ask if psychology does have something to say about everything. And yet, somehow,  here we are.

Before starting this book, I thought it was lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson who wrote, ‘a writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it’. But we can’t pinpoint where Johnson wrote that. We just find traces of others telling us he did. And this is a reminder to check our sources of information. But whoever said it, the sentiment holds true. Books are paths crossed in the autobiographies of writers and readers – even if we share just a page or a few lines, or a quote for an essay.

I’m GaryWood, and in this book, I tell you A story of the psychology of wellbeing. And within reason, I’ve tried to let my voice come through, albeit with fewer expletives. Because as you reflect and take the story forward, it’s vital for you to know where it came from. It’s shaped by my personal and professional experience, just as your story is shaped by yours.

Sociologist Stanislav Andreski contends that ‘anybody who searches for the truth about human affairs and then reveals it cannot avoid treading upon some toes .’And, if I’ve done my job right, it might burst a few bubbles, pull some rugs or even cause the odd existential shrug. But hopefully, it will empower too. It isn’t a ‘because I say so’ kind of book. I view writing as an act of rebellion. My approach to life coaching is the same. I encourage and challenge people to be themselves, or transcend themselves, despite themselves.

The book aims to answer frequently asked questions and offers you a critical framework to ask better ones. These are your paths of continuation for reading, writing, and researching wellness. You take up where I left off.

So here it is. Over to you.

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

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Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Self-Help Information Overload? Time to Stop Reading and Start Applying It?

Buying a self-help book can be a useful and low-cost way to work on our development. Of course, not all books are created equal, but I’m bound to say that. Working as a problem-page columnist for many years one of the strategies to cope with the limitation of only have 100 words to reply, was to suggest a book. So, it made sense that eventually, I wrote some self-help books. My idea is that you should approach my books like complete personal development courses, do all the exercises, apply the insights, and take action. And for many (including me), that’s the sticking point. What do we do with the knowledge once we have it? The same applies to workshops, courses, counselling, therapy, physiotherapy, and so on. Sometimes, with too much information at our fingertips, it’s difficult to know where to begin. This blog discusses how coaching can help offers a few pointers with the overall strategy of ‘start small and be consistent and persistent’.

Little by little, a little becomes a lot

In a previous post, I offered three tips to get the most out of a self-help book and the essence of this is to approach these books with a more academic, more structured approach. Taking a step back ask yourself what do you want from the book. Is it just a little reassurance and comfort that everything will be all right in the end, or do you want to take action to help out that outcome? The same applies to workshops and blocks of counselling sessions. What is the future desired outcome for these? There’s an assumption that if we talk about things and put the time in then things will eventually fall in to place. Instead what we find is that we amass a wealth of knowledge that we don’t quite know what to do with. And, I include myself in that. The secret is to pick something, a tiny action or change, carry it out consistently and review its impact. Taking action is the quickest way to change perception.

The viewing influences the doing and vice versa

In solution-focused coaching (and therapy), we work with the idea that ‘how we view the world affects what we do in the world’. So, collecting an overwhelming amount of information only leads to feelings of overwhelm. Perhaps, the best advice I ever got as a writer is that we don’t finish books, we abandon them. If that sounds a little harsh, it means that there is always another tweak, another rewrite, and another piece of information we could add. But with that approach, there would be on books just unfinished manuscripts. It helps to break the stranglehold of procrastination if we see a goal as the next chapter, instead of absolute and ultimate truth.

How coaching helps with self-help overload

The never-ending quest for information is the quest for a certainty that does not exist! Most of our decisions in life and made with incomplete information. Mostly we work with educated guesses. In coaching, you as the client bring agenda. It’s my job as the coach to shoulder some of the burdens of organizing and planning the strategy. This approach includes making use of your knowledge, resources, strengths, and skills. My job, as the coach, is to ask questions that keep you accountable to your goals. We put our heads together and come out with solutions and steps forward. Often, the steps are quite small, but the effects can be quite profound. A small step is often all it needs to break the stranglehold of procrastination and get things moving forward. Coaching helps to get you out of the ‘spin-cycle’ of thinking-for-thinking-sake. Clients often come to me thinking they have gone round in circles, and that they have wasted time on books, workshops and therapeutic interventions. The truth is that coaching works with whatever. It’s all groundwork, and we’ll start first with whatever resonates with you the most. And, we work with the basic principle that it only takes a small step to tame the whirlwind. Once you’ve set your goals, coaching will help and support you to channel your efforts into reaching them.

So there you have it:

• Approach self-help books in a more formal, structured way with a view to applying what you’ve read
• Work with a coach to channel your knowledge, skills and strengths to take you towards your goals.
• There’s no such thing as a step too small in the right direction. Just make a start and be persistent and consistent, and review the impact of the actions as you go.

Further reading

The blog posts mentioned in this post are:

• 3 Top Tips: How to Get the Most from a Self Help Book
• What Does “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to meet it.” Mean?
• What is Solution-Focused coaching?
• Why You Shouldn’t Ask ‘Why?’ And What Open Questions You Should Use Instead
• Self-help books by Gary Wood

About Gary Wood

Gary is a Chartered Psychologist, Solution-Focused Life Coach and author, based in Birmingham and Edinburgh UK. He helps clients achieve their goals, working face-to-face, on the telephone and via Skype.

Get in touch for a free consultation with Gary Wood, by telephone or Skype, to discuss your goals:

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When that brick wall is a mental block – how coaching can help you to grasp the goals you reach for

Often our goals are in sight but seem out of reach. It might feel that you take one step towards your goals, and they seem to take a step back. I get many queries from potential clients saying just that. They talk of brick walls and mental blocks and self-sabotage. Sometimes there’s a post-mortem of what they should’ve done. In this blog post, I challenge that goals being ‘out of reach’ is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s how things should be. It’s how coaching works. 

Accepting Things the Way They Are

A few years ago, I took a course in pranayama (breathing yoga) as part of the research for a book. One phrase, from the course, stuck with me: the present moment is inevitable.  As a personal and professional development coach, my first job is to challenge clients to consider that things are as they should be and that this moment is a starting point. The alternative is to indulge in ‘why’ questions, which are abstract, philosophical questions. You can a different answer every time you ask why? And every time, they cause you to look back. Instead, in coaching, I ask lots of concrete ‘how’ questions. They will take you forward. In coaching, the first step is to accept that whatever you’ve done up until now has got you here. It’s just that you now need a different plan to take you further. And that’s what we’ll work on, together.

Our goals ARE out of reach –  at the moment

As the Robert Browing line goes ‘One’s reach should exceed one’s grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ It’s the purpose of coaching to reduce or eliminate the gap between reach and grasp. Goals are supposed to stretch us. The secret is not to set them so far out of reach that we lose hope and motivation. Conversely, if we make them too easy, we’ll tire easily, become bored and give up. Coaching aims to tread that fine line between resolution and resignation. So, if the goal is very grand, we simply break it down into a series of milestone goals that stretch you. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is just to take some action, any action, in the direction of the goal. It doesn’t matter how small that step is. I’ve pretty out the Tanzanian proverb ‘Little by Little, a little becomes a lot‘. The quickest way to change perceptions and attitudes is to take action. By the time you’ve reached the first milestone, your perspective will have changed, and you’ll be better equipped to tackle the next one.

Brick Walls and Mental Blocks

Some people talk of ‘mental blocks’ as if they are physical barriers. They aren’t. Coaching is about working with you to remove attitudes that get in the way of moving forward. It involves challenging negative thoughts and self-talk and looking at alternative metaphors, scripts and ways of describing situations. But it’s also about taking stock of skills and strengths to create a method of working and an action plan that’s tailor-made for you. In coaching, it helps to ‘suspend your disbelief’ and enter into it with an attitude of positive anticipation. Instead of asking will it work’, ask ‘how will it work?’ It’s also about trying things out like personal experiments – testing the water to assess the impact of a small step forward. Ultimately, with any attitude, it’s important to ask ‘How is this taking you forward?’ If it’s not, what attitudes will? Then, try them out and see how they work for you.

Up for a challenge?

In coaching, the aim is to help you to reach your goals or get as close to them as is practically possible. I’m Gary Wood. I’ve been coaching students since the mid-90s and private clients since the early-noughties. My coaching training and practices are grounded in evidence-based psychology. My specialism is attitude change – the cornerstone of coaching. I’ve written five books on various aspects of psychology, the most recent is Letters to a New Student on study skills, but has a lot to say about life skills. And as I coach, I love a challenge.

So, get in touch for a chat. 

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Learning Skills as Life Skills (and vice versa)

It’s tempting to view formal education as learning and then everything else that happens afterwards as your ‘real-life’. However, it’s a false dichotomy. We continue to learn throughout our lives, whether or not we want to. Recognizing this can help us to see the connection between learning skills and life skills. How we approach learning informs how we approach life and vice versa.

I was invited to speak at a learning and training event and submitted the title ‘Learning Skills as Life Skills’. The idea is based on my book Letters to a New Student ( Read a sample: UK / USA ). In this post, I offer four main factors that provide a blueprint for lifelong learning. It’s a slight reworking of the book’s structure.

Four Factors for Lifelong Learning: Attitudes, Wellbeing, Cognition, and Management.

The four factors of attitudes, wellbeing, cognition and management interact with each other. A change in one affects the others.

Based on Letters to a New Student ( Read a sample: UK / USA )

Attitudes

Attitudes are the cornerstone of how we make sense of the world. In coaching, I use the principle ‘the viewing influences the doing, and vice versa’.  It’s a key principle in confidence-building.  How we view the world shapes what we do in the world. As coaching is action-led, it’s the doing that builds the confidence. For more on this, see Unlock Your Confidence.

A concept in psychology often relegated to a ‘stress-busting’ technique more accurately offers a philosophy for coping with life. Psychological hardiness is made up of three attitudes – the three Cs. These are control, challenge and commitment.  In short, emphasize what you can control, reframe problems as challenges (or goals) and commit to connecting with other people, and show a curiosity about the world.

Having to study when we’d prefer to be doing something else can lead to feelings of resentment. This attitude makes it more challenging to process and retain information. Learning is inevitable. It’ll happen whether or not we set our own goals. When facing a deadline, often, I’d much prefer to be doing something else. But I remind myself that it’s an opportunity to achieve a personal-first or a personal-best. With students, I ask them to consider how formal learning is a luxury. It’s similar for life-tasks, such as ironing or washing dishes or paperwork. They seem to take longer with feelings of resentment. The secret is to find an attitude that changes the emotional tone. Hence my Zen-Ironing. It’s a nice metaphor for smoothing out the wrinkles of life. Ok, so that might be stretching it. But it works.

Wellbeing

When faced with a demanding goal there’s often a temptation to put wellbeing on hold. The illusion is that if we don’t bother about wellbeing, the time saved can be used on the task. We can then catch-up on wellbeing when the task is over. However, this is stress-based, survival thinking. If we treat self-care as a foundation rather than an add-on, it can have a beneficial effect on mood and cognition. Investing in your wellbeing supports learning (and life). Sleep, diet, exercise, hydration, and relaxation exercises all interact. Together they will aid peak performance so that you make the most of your time add. Neglecting wellbeing means you’ll gain a bit of extra time to use inefficiently. 

Cognition

Often we stumble on to study techniques that work for us. These might be time-consuming, boring and inefficient, but because we have had some degree of success with them, we are reluctant to give them up. However, rather than leading with personalization, it’s crucial to learn basic principles of human psychology, and then put your twist on it. That way, you work with psychology rather than fight it – working smarter, not harder. The three simplest things to implement are:

1. Work in shorter blocks to give your brain time to digest the information.
2. Vary your learning techniques to keep it interesting. Boredom is a choice.
3. To process the material at a deeper level, ask and answer questions rather than rely on rote learning

For more information see Letters to a New Student ( Read a sample: UK / USA ).

Management

Some might find it difficult to ask for help, when studying, or in life. It’s not a weakness or an admission of failure; it’s resource management. Most people like to help, so why deny the opportunity? And, you will get the chance to ‘pay it forward’. Knowing when to ask for help and who to ask are essential learning skills and life skills. Begin by making a list of your go-to people. 

Whether it’s life or learning, time management is essential – plan to do whatever you need to do, and do it. It’s also crucial to plan in the downtime, and most importantly, your wellbeing. What’s not so obvious is managing moods and motivation. It’s not just about aside the time; it’s adopting supportive attitudes and using techniques to get in the mood. And, sometimes that means just getting on with it. Who says we always have to be ‘in the mood’. Do it, and let the mood catch-up!  After a period of writers’ block, I learned that a ten-minute walk first thing in the morning sets me up for the day. I also know that the worst thing for my productivity is switching on the television in the morning for the news. For me, first thing in the morning, no news is good news. 

And finally, there’s the driver of all peak performance – goal-setting. It shouldn’t get to the point that we feel ‘bludgeoned’ by goal-setting. Goals are a means to an end. They provide the structure and the momentum to keep moving forward. They should stretch you but not overwhelm you. There are many posts on this blog about goal-setting – check them out.

Meaning: The Meta-Principle

The over-arching principle in learning and life is to make it meaningful to you. Use the four basic principles of attitudes, wellbeing, cognition and management, and adapt to your circumstances, strengths and values. 

Summary

So those are the basics of using ‘learning skills as life skills’, and vice versa. To find out more, read the book or drop me a line to find out about academic coaching or life coaching. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the main points:

• Frame your experiences with positive mental attitudes.
• Take care of yourself – Exploit the mind-body connection.
• Work with cognitive psychology rather than against it.
• Be proactive – Manage time, moods and motivation.
• Finally, make it meaningful to you.

About Dr Gary Wood

Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered Psychologist, solution-focused life coach, and broadcaster specializing in applied social psychology. He is on the British Psychological Society’s ‘media-friendly psychologists’ list and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Gary has taught psychology in several UK universities and is widely quoted in the media. As a consultant, he works on health and social policy research projects and reports, for government bodies, broadcasting ‘watchdogs’, NHS Trusts, charities, and media companies.

Books by Gary Wood

• Letters to a New Student (Read a sample or buy: UK /  USA ).
• Don’t Wait For Your Ship to Come In. . . Swim Out to Meet It (See UK / USA)
• Unlock Your Confidence (See UK / USA)

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Why You Shouldn’t Ask ‘Why?’ And What Open Questions You Should Use Instead

We are told that to open up conversations we should use open questions – ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘why’. The question is, do ‘why’ questions belong in the same category and are they as useful as the others? Are ‘why’ questions really open questions?  ‘Why’ questions are a favourite of parents, teachers and managers but are they effective in delivering the desired results? Do they really help us to find out why? Often people splutter out, in a panic, the first thing that comes to mind. Rarely, if ever, is that information insightful or useful. In his post, I argue (as the title implies) that from a coaching perspective, why-questions won’t take us forward to consider solutions. Here’s why.

Why ‘why’ feels instinctual

All children go through the ‘why phase’. Talking with my three and half year old niece and trying to explain something recently, every level of explanation was met with ‘why?’ We might argue that the question ‘why?’ is hardwired into our psyche. It becomes almost instinctual to ask ‘why’ when we want more information or to discover the motives behind actions. In reality, asking ‘why’ is a habit. It’s easy. That’s why young children use it. They may not have acquired the language to paraphrase. What they mean is ‘I don’t understand, please explain’. With our more sophisticated grasp of language, we don’t need to rely on ‘why’.

We are not always logical so don’t know ‘why’

Read a sample of Unlock your Confidence. See UK or USA.

Managers often use ‘why’ as a coded way to say ‘explain yourself’. It is often ‘finger-pointingly’, accusative and a thinly-veiled put-down. It usually means ‘that was a dumb thing to do’. The ‘why’ question assumes that human beings are totally logical –  like the Vulcans in Star Trek. The problem is, we are not. We often hold competing values and attitudes about ourselves, the world and other people. Sometimes we just do stuff without thinking it through. Sometimes we don’t know why. So when things haven’t gone to plan, just barking ‘why did you do that?’ to someone isn’t likely to yield much useful information. It’s not enlightening it’s disempowering.

When I was writing Unlock Your Confidence I carefully worded the prompt questions so that I didn’t ask ‘why’. This mirrors the same approach I use in coaching. A couple of the editors didn’t ask why. They just changed the questions to the snappier ‘why’. To the editors, my questions might have seemed odd or indirect. They were supposed to be. I don’t want people to be transported back to a ‘naughty-schoolchild’ mindset’. Instead, coaching aims to empower people to think about things in different, more productive ways. I want to shake up perceptions and assumptions. ‘Why’ questions won’t do that. They just lock us into the problem whereas instead of focusing on solutions. So if we accept that people don’t always know why, let’s find a way of focusing on what they do know. To do this let’s analyze the keywords for open questions.

‘Who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’

If we examine the other ‘W’ words ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, there’s a common theme. They all relate to something concrete. When constructing experiments we declare the concrete ingredients before describing the ‘how’. We define the apparatus before detailing the method. It’s the same with a recipe. Ingredients before the step-by-step procedure. Okay, you may protest that when you are pressed for time ‘why’ is just damn quicker. The problem is, that ‘why’ never got your caked baked. That’s mainly down to ‘how’. Even if we do manage to get an answer to ‘why’ question, this may inaccurately frame (or bias) subsequent insights from the other open questions. Sometimes the manager won’t even use the ‘why’ information. It’s just left hanging there without resolution. Instead, the manager or teacher will just tell staff what do to right next time, rather than ask them. ‘Why’ questions can really close down learning because they take us backwards. They are past-oriented questions. ‘Why’ tends to be more abstract and ambiguous. It taps into motivations, attitudes and values. ‘Why’ is philosophical. So, when we are pressed for time, do we really want a philosophical discussion? Why would you want to do that?

Can we never use ‘Why’?

My research supervisor early in my career challenged me about my fondness for exclamation marks. I thought it made me sound engaging, dynamic and passionate. He said it was like laughing at my own jokes. ‘Why’ like exclamation marks should be used sparingly – the equivalent of ‘to really make a point’. In coaching, I rarely use it and if I do, I use it more as a device to get a reality check to be able to shift to a different way of thinking about an issue. In any one coaching session with a client, we spend 20% of the time describing the problem and 80% of the time focusing on solutions. To this end, ‘why’ isn’t very useful at all.

What to use instead of ‘why’

In solution-focused skills training instead of ‘why,’ we use ‘how come?’. It’s rather casual and some might argue that it’s a bit ambiguous or clumsy. However, it appeals to the other person’s insights in a non-threatening way. So if someone is considering making a life-change, asking ‘why’ is often a way of communicating disbelief, implying that it’s the wrong decision. However, people become more invested in declensions if they are allowed to think them through and own them. They may come to realize that the time is not right to make a change. However, it will be their decision. They won’t always be wondering ‘what if?’ So instead of ‘why’ you might ask:

• ‘What is it that attracts you to this option at this time?’
• ‘How did you arrive at this decision?’
• ‘Where might you get further information?’
• ‘Who else might you ask?’
• ‘What tells you that now is a good time to make this change?’
• ‘What other options have you explored?’

All of these questions open out the issue in a way that ‘why’ never will. ‘Why’ may reduce people to the appearance of blithering idiots who don’t appear to know their proverbial arses from their elbows. By substituting ‘why’ with the other open questions, you help draw out a person’s inner resources. ‘Why’ may be quick, but the other open questions, especially ‘how’ promote concrete action. ‘Why’ may often trigger a stress response which puts us into a state of survival (the classic ‘fight or flight’ response) where we are only able to access a limited range of cognitive responses, namely those related to survival. ‘How come?’ is a more relaxed approach which is more likely to enable us to evoke a broader range of cognitive and emotional responses on which we can build.

So that is why you should use ‘why’ sparingly and opt for a broadening range of open questions to tap into a richer source of practical information that helps people learn and move forward.

Finally, as if really need to emphasize the point, here’s a scene in the cult 60s TV series The Prisoner (with Patrick McGoohan) where he challenges the Orwellian super-computer. The protagonist inputs his question and you can see the results here. 

To discuss coaching and how to ask better questions, get in touch using the form below.

Updated: 18 October 2019.

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About the author

Dr Gary Wood is a social psychologist and life coach. He is the author of Unlock Your Confidence which is based on his confidence-building workshops. Gary is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh where he runs his own training and coaching practice and research consultancy. He also offers coaching worldwide through Skype. To get in touch with Gary to see how his solution focused (life) coaching approach would benefit you or your organization, use the form below:

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