Google+ Positive Psychologist: December 2012

Leader

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Happy new year 2013!



Thank you Lord!

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Thursday, December 27, 2012

What to do when confused?


I have a very effective technique to stay focused and keep going. Tune in to something you love and sleep :) 

Here is a quote from the Holy Bible... 

 

Deuteronomy 5:27

Go near and listen to all that the LORD our God says


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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas!




Luke 1: 35

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God.





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Monday, December 24, 2012

Monday blues: Stay thirsty!



Stay thirsty!





Matthew 5.6.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."












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Saturday, December 22, 2012

Communication!





What did the Mayans miss or what did we miss?

I have one take away from here. Keep the communication simple and don't read too much into the lines :)


Consumer Psyche







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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Gangnam Style explained

I fell in love with the infographic model to communicate quite sometime back.

Here is what I found online today. Viki, the global TV site powered by fans, today released an infographic that reveals how K-pop star Psy’s juggernaut music video ‘Gangnam Style’ took over the world. The infographic ranks the top 20 countries where the video has been most viewed and includes a month-by-month look at how viewership spread globally. The video has been translated into 24 languages helping it transcend geographic and language barriers.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Monday Blues: Bad Hair is good attitude!






Gray hair is God's graffiti.
 Bill Cosby





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Saturday, December 15, 2012

Fishing!



Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. 
Herbert Hoover

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Birds!

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody. 
 Eubie Blake



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Dog!





“The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.” ― Johnny Depp

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Consumer prices rising!

All prices of the end consumers are rising in India. This includes basic things like sugar, gas, water, milk, fuel, vegetables and pulses have gone up!

Unni Krishnan & Tushar Dhara write in...

The consumer-price index climbed 9.9 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 9.75 percent advance reported earlier for October, the Statistics Office said in a statement in New Delhi today.

India’s consumer inflation is the fastest among 17 economies in the Asia-Pacific region tracked by Bloomberg. Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao held interest rates in October, and said last week that while price gains remain high, he expects they will ease in the January-March quarter.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government last week won parliamentary endorsement for its decision to allow foreign direct investment in supermarkets, a move it says can help lower food costs. The central bank meets next week to determine policy.

Vegetable prices climbed 14.74 percent last month from a year earlier, today’s statement showed, while sugar rose 17 percent and pulses gained 14.19 percent.

Pic is from here.

Business apps set to overtake consumer-centric market


Tejaswini writes: With the increasing use of smartphones and mobile internet in India, the market for enterprise-based apps is set to explode in the coming years, said an industry body official.

“Business apps or enterprise-based mobile apps market in terms of sale value will grow tremendously in India. It will outclass the market for consumer apps such as Whats-app and Google Maps,” said Gaurav Chopra, associate vice-president, Inte-rnet and Mobile Associ-ation of India (IAMAI).

According to global research firm Gartner, the application development software market in India is expected to grow 22.6 per cent to reach over $227 million in 2012, led by increasing adoption of software delivery through cloud-computing platform. “In the near future, every business enterprise will need a mobile app, given that the usage of smartphones and mobile internet is growing rapidly,” Mr Chopra told this correspondent.

Even Gartner study stated that 90 per cent of large enterprises and government agencies will use some aspect of cloud computing by 2015.

Currently, India is home to 9,000 app development companies.

“Emerging mobile applications, and devices are transforming the app development space rapidly, and are one of the top three CIO priorities at the enterprise level,” the study said.

According to a survey by leading consultancy Research2Guidance, India is slated to become one of the biggest players in the global app market by 2016, overtaking leading smartphone app markets such as the US, and five Western European Union countries. On the other hand, the penetration of smartphones in India stands at nine per cent of 913.5 million users, growing at an annual rate of 50 per cent.

Given that there is a massive potential for app development in the country, even the market for local apps is set to boom in the next two-three years.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Science Behind Gifting

To be a really successful giver of gifts, a person usually needs to get inside the head of the intended recipient. Unfortunately, psychological studies reveal that givers and receivers have a hard time understanding each other's mind-sets, which can make for a tricky holiday experience.

Should you spend more on a gift? Should you be ashamed of regifting? Psychological studies reveal the tricky experience of giving the right holiday gifts. Leslie Yazel discusses on Lunch Break.

Take regifting. That Crock-Pot your well-meaning aunt gave you last year that you are shamefully contemplating wrapping up for your dear neighbor this year? Research shows you can go right ahead and regift it, shame intact. Your aunt probably won't mind.
More About Gratitude

Showing Appreciation at the Office? No, Thanks

Thank You; No, Thank You --- Grateful People Are Happier, Healthier

Many people shy away from regifting, or hide the fact they are doing it, out of fear the original giver of the item could be offended. Don't worry, says a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science. The person who first gave the item is less likely to be offended than the regifter expects.

Some gift givers spend time and energy trying to find just the right gift. But thoughtful gifts don't necessarily lead to greater appreciation, according to a study published in November in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The benefit of a thoughtful gift actually accrues mainly to the giver, who derives a feeling of closeness to the other person, the study found.

People are more appreciative when they receive a gift they have explicitly requested, according to a similar study published last year in a separate publication called the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Sharon Love once received a book that was clearly regifted: It was inscribed to the giver. She gave it back to him the following year. Ms. Love, who heads a marketing agency in New York, is herself a regifter when a gift is appropriate for another person.

"It turns out it's not the thought that counts, it's the gift that counts," says Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago who co-authored the November study.

Another study found spending more money on a gift doesn't necessarily translate into greater appreciation. That might come as a surprise to many gift givers, who often assume that a more expensive gift conveys a higher level of thoughtfulness, according to the research, published in 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"Everyone has been a giver and receiver often in the past," says Francis Flynn, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, who has done research in the field of gift giving. Despite knowing what these roles feel like, people often fail, for instance, to draw on the experience of being a recipient when they are shopping for a gift to give, he says.

Regifting, once a social taboo, is gradually gaining in acceptance. According to a nationwide consumer-spending survey by American Express, 58% of people believe it is OK sometimes to regift an item. That figure rises for the holiday season, when 79% of respondents said they believe regifting is socially acceptable. The survey, which polled about 2,000 people last year, found that nearly one-quarter of consumers said they regifted at least one item the previous holiday season.

Regifting can lead to awkward moments. Humera Sayeed, a graduate student at Loyola University Chicago, received a brown leather Marc Jacobs purse from her aunt last year. The 26-year-old says she appreciated the high-quality purse but it wasn't exactly her taste.

"I thought, 'You know, I know someone else would like it more than I would.' So I gave it to one of my friends for her birthday," Ms. Sayeed says. About six months later, the friend came over to Ms. Sayeed's aunt's house, purse in hand, and the aunt exclaimed, "You know, Humera has a purse just like that!"

"I said, 'You know Auntie, I loved it so much that I got her the same one,' " Ms. Sayeed fibbed. "I had a moment to probably come clean about it and I just decided it would be better not to, which I guess is why people feel sneaky about regifting."

In the study of regifting, researchers conducted five separate experiments involving nearly 500 people in both real and imagined scenarios. The reason people weren't overly bothered when their gifts were later regifted was because they generally believed the recipient was free to decide what to do with an item. On the other hand, regifters were fearful of offending because they believed the original giver should retain some say in how the gifts were used.

The different points of view held true regardless of whether the gift givers and receivers were friends. The relative desirability of the gift also didn't affect the findings. When the researchers introduced the concept of a national holiday for regifting into the experiments, participants were more likely to give away their gifts.

There are efforts to promote regifting. Money Management International, a nonprofit that helps people facing financial difficulties, has run a Regiftable.com website for more than five years and declared the third Thursday in December to be National Regifting Day, to coincide with many holiday office parties. At least one state, Colorado, has officially sanctioned an annual regifting day.

"Regifting isn't a bad thing, it's not quite as offensive as people might think it is," says Gabrielle Adams, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the London Business School and a co-author of the recent study in Psychological Science.

Sharon Love, who heads a retail marketing agency, says she frequently regifts an item if she feels it is appropriate for another person. But she says she tries to be upfront about it.

Ms. Love, who lives in New York City, says she once received an entertainment and etiquette book that was clearly regifted: The book contained an inscription made out to the giver. "It did kind of make me mad, so I just kind of regifted it the following year back to him," she says. Ms. Love says she received a thank-you card in return.

The adage "It's the thought that counts" was largely debunked by the recent study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which concluded that gift givers are better off choosing gifts that receivers actually desire rather than spending a lot of time and energy shopping for what they perceive to be a thoughtful gift. The study found thoughtfulness doesn't increase a recipient's appreciation if the gift is a desirable one. In fact, thoughtfulness only seemed to count when a friend gives a gift that is disliked.

"The secret to being a good gift giver…is to give them what they want," says Dr. Epley, from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Epley says that after his wife gave birth to their second child, he spent a lot of time dreaming up what he thought was the perfect Christmas gift for her: a behind-the-scenes day as a trainer at the Chicago aquarium. "She loves marine animals, I thought this would be the best thing for her," he says.

Instead, he says, "She hated the gift. The idea of squeezing into a Neoprene wetsuit a month after giving birth and holding a stinky fish over a penguin or a dolphin was the last thing she wanted to do." She returned the gift.

Now, Dr. Epley says he asks his wife to tell him what she wants before the holiday season. She presented him with a list last week.

Write to Sumathi Reddy at sumathi.reddy@wsj.com

Monday, December 3, 2012

Monday blues: You are special!

To beat the Monday Blues remember that you are special!

You can be an inspiration, a change agent, a motivation to others in whatever little way you can. You need not be a superstar to do that, you needn't be a leader to do that. You can be a small plus in the whole world of negatives but that little charge makes a hell of a difference.


Adapt