40 Amazing Self Development Facts
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It’s a myth that creative people use more of their right brain and linear people more of their left side.
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People are far more likely to trust you if you are smiling (as long as it’s a genuine smile).
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Your environment (how much money you have, where you love, what you do etc.) has far less impact on your happiness levels than your genetics or your attitude.
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Contrary to popular belief there has never been an in-depth study of goal setting by any Ivy League school. In fact there has been very little research into goal setting.
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Something called ‘The Google Effect’ means you are more likely to forget something that you know you can easily look up.
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Regular meditators experience overall better physical as well as mental health.
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Stress is the same as fear. If you’re stressed, then you’re also fearful of something.
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Brain disease notwithstanding, your brain never loses it’s ability to learn.
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Willpower is a finite resource that depletes as the day progresses.
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The reason insurance rates drop at age 25 is because that’s when your brain has fully matured and the myelination process completed and you’re less likely to drive like a dick.
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We use all of our brain, not 10% as some erroneously claim – obviously looking to demonstrate to others that they actually do only use 10%, or maybe less.
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You are almost certainly going to be more upset at losing $100 than you would be happy to find $100.
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For some people positive thinking can be harmful and counter productive.
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Mildly to moderately depressed people tend to have a more accurate world view than happy people.
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Exercise reduces the likelihood of dementia and Alzheimer’s in later life.
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It’s possible to gain muscle mass just by visualizing working out.
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Perfectionists are more likely to suffer from depression.
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Placing a pencil between your teeth for a few minutes so that you are forcing a tiny smile can lead to a greater feeling of well-being.
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When you break your chain of thought by say, checking e-mails, it takes you around a minute to pick it up again.
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There isn’t a shred of scientific proof that the mind can overcome cancer on its own.
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Money is a very poor long-term motivator.
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You have a lot of false or inaccurate memories stored in your brain ready to get you into an argument you’re probably going to lose at the drop of a hat.
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No matter how poorly you act, you will always self justify your actions to a certain extent.
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Visualizing a perfect future can lead to it being less likely to happen.
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Very small class sizes in schools can be just as counter-productive as large class sizes.
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You cannot learn a new language by listening to tapes as you sleep.
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If you have kids, then they are modeling your behavior closely for the first 7 or 8 years (the imprint phase). If you’re anxious and angry, then they will probably grow up to be the same.
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National stereotypes involving character traits are often hopelessly inaccurate. There is no evidence to suggest that the French are more arrogant, Germans more organized and the British have stiffer upper lips.
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There is no such thing as ‘the hot hand’ in basketball. Yet even though it has been conclusively proven that a player who is on hot streak is no more likely to make his next shot than any previous shot, some coaches still don’t believe it.
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Almost every person on the planet is racist to a certain extent.
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Sadly for Wayne Dyer and his book The Power of Intention, intention isn’t very powerful at all.
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Playing Mozart to an unborn child won’t make them smarter. There is no ‘Mozart Effect’.
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You can improve your confidence levels by adopting a more confident posture.
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Blind people do not develop more acute other senses, they just learn to use them more effectively.
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Hypnosis isn’t really a special state, we all drift in and out of a trance state many times per day.
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Even though it’s easy to believe otherwise, there is no scientific proof connecting genius with insanity.
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Alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells as was once believed – Phew!
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Marketers will often offer money back guarantees because they know that a cognitive bias called ‘Post purchase rationalization’ means only a tiny percentage of people will ever return their goods.
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Ranting and raving about something that really annoys you isn’t necessarily a good thing and can increase the likelihood of more outbursts and more dissatisfaction.
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The Law of Attraction is a load of bollocks according to research done by me last week.
I know some were very loosely connected to self development, but I hope you still found them interesting.
It’s over to you now, leave me a comment with any to add or any you disagree with.
Image Courtesy of John Wright
so proud about this
Thanks!
I’m a little confused: first there is “Nothing in this post wasn’t researched or didn’t come from the latest research.”
Then there is, “The Law of Attraction is a load of bollocks according to research done by me last week.” and then “As A Man Thinketh is possibly the greatest self development book of all time Remy and I agree with what you say. I was just having a bit of fun at the end ;)”
So was this a deadly serious, well-researched blog? or was some of it just a bit of fun? and when do you want to be taken seriously? … seems to me it can’t go both ways.
I can go which anyway I want Don, it’s my blog ;)
1-39 were deadly serious and come from scientific research, 40 was just a joke mate!
The best one I could add is: You are more willing to believe things that reinforce what you already believe (and vice versa).
Incidentally, confirmation bias applies to me on #14, so I had to stop and check myself on it. It makes sense logically, though (without having seen the research).
Yep conformation bias gets us all from time to time.
There has been a LOT of research round #14, trust me it’s true.
There is no scientific evidence that reading 40 amazing self development facts will change your life, but there’s anecdotal evidence that it’s entertaining. Thanks Tim.
Thanks you mate!
Until reading this I had incorrectly believed the alcohol myth – of course, I went and checked and you’re right!
You doubted me? ;)
This was an awesome article. I found you because of a post on Reddit and thought I’d click through. Glad I did. Laughed a few times, too! At the end you say that the law of attraction is crap (I agree), but that doesn’t mean that thought isn’t a powerful thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever read As A Man Thinketh (I wrote a review if you want to check it out), but the whole book focuses around the concept of thought and how your thinking will result in your acting, and ultimately your circumstances. If you constantly fantasize about doing bad things or lazy things, or what have you, then you’ll take the opportunity to indulge in those actions when it is present, which will impact your circumstance.
Anyway, just food for thought. Great article!
As A Man Thinketh is possibly the greatest self development book of all time Remy and I agree with what you say. I was just having a bit of fun at the end ;)
This was a fun reading (!) I have one too. Geeting out from your comfort zone will make you anxious, and hence perform better
Anxiety can improve performance up to a point.
However there is a tipping pint where anxiety can severely impede performance. It’s about getting the balance right.
This would be better if you had sources!
John, it’s a blog although I get where you’re coming from.
Any of these can be independently verified by anybody wanting to check. I used primarily 3 sources, Psychology Today, Psyblog and 50 Myths About Modern Psychology. I also used The How of Happiness, Wildmind (meditation website) and a couple of other sources.
No entry wasn’t researched, but tracking each one and then linking back would have turned a 2 hour blog post into a 10 hour one.
8. Brain disease notwithstanding, your brain never loses its* ability to learn.
Unless that is a typo your pointing out, you’ve lost me.
Tim, to state that there isn’t a shred of evidence that the mind can cure cancer is not only provably false, it also is the height of arrogance.
Do you think that because you haven’t seen such proof in your very limited experience, that you’ve seen all the medical or psychological research in the world?
Start by reading about mortality rates vs. explanatory styles. Then read up on Dr. Madelon (not “Madeline”) Visintainer’s work as well as all the hundreds of others who have repeated the research and findings over the past 40-something years, regarding the very well documented links between thoughts, brain chemistry, and immunosuppression system.
In the meantime you should remove that line item from your list as you’re doing your readers and yourself a gross disservice.
Do you want me to link to the latest research, seeing as you’re talking about arrogance?
Nothing in this post wasn’t researched or didn’t come from the latest research.
And btw I am married to somebody who has worked in oncology for 25 years and is just doing her oncology doctorate and many of our friends are oncologists, so I don’t post shit like that lightly.
Only 2 or 3 years ago it was believed that breast cancer support groups helped, now we know they rarely help, and can even be detrimental.
And notice what I actually said:
“There isn’t a shred of scientific proof that the mind can overcome cancer on its own.
Show me the proof of people who survived through belief and zero medical intervention.
Then I’ll show you a shit load of dead people who refused medical intervention because they believed they could overcome cancer through belief.
I have blogged about the power of belief many times and I believe in it. You just extracted part of the sentence and went off on one.
Yes! Well said. And to the one who cried “arrogance,” this is such an easy and cowardly thing to do. I used to have a neighbor who would tell me to “get over myself” whenever I made any declarations about anything. I hated it. “I feel good about my Math test today!” “Oh get over yourself. Just wait and see what you get.” Eventually this confidence, or willingness to proclaim how fantastic a book was, my acceptance to a decent university, or my pride in paying off my debts was automatically labelled as “arrogance.” What. The fuck. Ever. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you, or has the balls to put this together and put it out there for Internet strangers to easily judge could be called a lot of things, but arrogant probably isn’t one of them. Nothing here says “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Nothing posted above is over the top or un-Googleable.
If you’re a meditator and see the benefits, then you know how brainwave patterns suggest “peace” and “tranquility,” but no one suggests you can’t get kicked in the face, mid-“ommmmm” (ॐ) and have the whole experience destroyed. The world exists from within and from without, just as OP suggested. If you’re a Bible-thumping know-it-all Christian and the power of prayer is all you believe in, then you probably have sat in prayer circles and watched moods lift and prayers eventually be “answered,” but it never happened in the ethereal void of the universe. Someone got the fuck up and worked to get that mortgage, make that baseball team, or find that perfect gift they were believing for.
“Judgmental,” “presumptive” and “asshattery” however, suggest personalities that find fault where there is none. And while I don’t think we have any instances of arrogance on this page, I’m not surprised when the occasional judgementally presumptive asshat pokes his head in.
LOL- thanks for that Mike!
Wow! What a stuff!
My favourite is 37 :o) :
Athough it is comforting and I’ve just (after reading this) started to make some plans of extensive use of such blessed substance, I remind myself that it still will damage my liver. Of course in case of extensive use :)
But the real gem is
It can be summed up as “It is wrong to be perfect”. As I remember one of the essays of Leszek Kolakowski, a polish philosopher, he claimed that, to some extent, hypocrisy is good. You are not perfect if you are a hypocrite. That’s a bless, because perfection means the dictatorship of reason. Nothing can be changed, because everything is perfect. It’s rigid, inhuman, and fragile attitude.
Being hypocrite, to some extend, means we tolerate two (or more) contradictory thoughts or values or convictions. The key is in the word “tolerate”. So we can accept something that is in conflict of our reason, What’s more we declare that way, we are (which is true) more than a concept, a set of thoughts, a bunch of reasonable and perfectly fitting ideas, that create that perfect being – us.
Imperfection is not a aberration of what “should be” or an error in our pursuit if perfection. Imperfection is our genuine feature, showing that we are living beings, not a dead set of rules.
But we can. We can be perfect, just not in a common sense of that word. We can be perfect in pursuing love, life, beauty. Like a flower. Flower is perfect, but not because it has some dimensions and shape that can be thought. It is perfect because it is expression of beauty. So the same way we can be perfect. Not as being meeting some close set of requirements and established rules, but as an expression of friendship, reliability, pursuit of beauty, and, most of all, of love.
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Wow. I must record that comment as a note on my blog :)
There was an artist once and I can’t remember who it was now, who deliberately put a flaw into every one of his paintings because he didn’t believe in perfection – or something like that anyway!
Hi Tim,
Imperfection – in art – is actually a Japanese tradition ariisng out of a Buddhist concept, and the Japanese term is “Wabi-sabi”. I came across it many years ago, when I learnt that when a Japanese would offer a bunch of roses, he would tear a petal , to ensure it was imperfect. Here is the Wikipedia definition:
Wabi-sabi (侘寂?) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”.[1] It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin?), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō?), the other two being suffering (苦 ku?) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (空 kū?).
I think there is a high probability that’s where I know it from and I have a false memory! ;)
These are fantastic tips, especially as we move into the new year :-). I love your point on stress being the same as fear, and agree that these two go hand-in-hand. I also enjoy your thought on hypnosis, but would also like to add that the many distractions throughout our day like gadgets, technology, over-filled schedules, ect. can disrupt the natural process. Mary Reynolds Thompson writes about taking a break and getting to experience nature as an antidote to the world of high-tech, high-stress and hyper-rationality in her book, Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness. It invites us to reclaim our wild souls and our place in the great community of rivers, forests, peaks, and pastures. http://maryreynoldsthompson.com
Agree with pretty much all of that. Nature can be an incredibly calming influence.