Friday, March 28, 2008

MindHabits - Need A Little Boost To Your Self Esteem?

I grew more and more intrigued as I listened to a Public Radio broadcast about the power of our subconscious mind. What we think and don't even realize we are thinking shapes how we see the world. My subconscious thought processes help me decide what kind of world I live in and how I think people see me. Is the world a happy or cruel place? Do people like me or am I always left out of the fun? Interesting stuff, the games our mind will play with us.

So let's play a game with it and train ourselves to think more clearly and respond quickly to positive social feedback instead of focusing on and expecting negative reactions. MindHabits is an online game you can play for free or download the full version for a small fee. In just five minutes a day you can retrain your mind to boost your self-esteem and lower your stress levels. The researchers say that this game has been shown to lower stress producing levels of cortisol in the players blood, thereby helping us feel better.

I've been playing for the past few days and I can see a difference. All you have to do is focus finding the smiling face in the crowd and click on it as quickly as you can. I've cut my time in half and I've noticed that I hardly even see the frowning faces any more. It's like they have less value to me. The first few times I played I grew frustrated because all I saw were unhappy people staring at me but that is changing. Now I think of the smiling faces as my friends and I kind of have a crush on the peaceful looking guy in the hat...big smile.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

11 comments:

Francis Scudellari said...

I gave it a try ... and it was interesting, but I think my particular brand of negativity may be game proof. The good news is I've never really been stressed about it, as I've developed a zen-like acceptance of it at this point :).

The Society of Midnight Wanderers said...

Hi Lisa
The Society of Midnight Wanderers has "finally" launched its new communal site @

http://midnightwanderersociety.blogspot.com/

I would love to extend an invite to you so you can have full rights to publish but to do so I need an email address to send the invite. If you would be so kind to either email myself (email address is in the Society profile) or Mike (if you feel more comfortable doing so) then that would be great.

Also, if you are going to keep a membership roster of the MW Society members can you kindly adjust yours to reflect my site as well?
It is: "The Supplicant" http://thesupplicant.blogspot.com

Peace and take care.
~JD

Ambient Guy said...

Nice little game. IMO building a positive outlook is about changing your learned behaviours. This is the tip of the iceburg, there is so much more one can do to improve how we see the world and interact with it. Freud talks of the 'hostile world' and how we protect ourselves from it. However Freud lived at a time of great change and danger to his culture in Europe so no wonder really.

If we took a positive view and approached everything optimistically we would make the world a better place for ourselves. Our self-esteems would be strong and healthy :o)

A game like this gives as all a break to consider how we all can do this. Thanks for sharing it.

self-esteem supprt & articles for midlife crisis

Peter said...

Hi and what a top idea. I glad my face isn't on that site. On occasions I can look unfriendly but as they say "you can't judge a book by its cover", I'm 99.9% happy inside and out' 99.9% of the time, no matter what my visible expression.

Take Care,
Peter

Bob Johnson said...

Hi Lisa, tried to download the demo, wouldn't let me, I really believe our world is what we make of it, we can be a slave to our past, if our plast is bleak and negative and we can break out of our old habits to something more positive its gotta help.

Lisa McGlaun said...

Francis,

I don't know my stress level goes way up when I'm feeling negative about my life. If yours doesn't then you are lucky.

Thanks for trying the game. The developers won some kind of gaming award in Canada. That's what brought my attention to it.

Lisa

Lisa McGlaun said...

JD,

Thanks..I'll get right on updating my list.

Peace,
Lisa

Lisa McGlaun said...

Crazy,

I liked reading about the science behind the game. It was very interesting to me to learn about how our minds work and process information.

Thanks for the input and the link.

Lisa

Lisa McGlaun said...

Peter,

I can't imagine you ever looking unfriendly..oh..but in this case I guess I definately got to judge the book without seeing much of the cover...lol. That's what the internet will do for ya.

Best Wishes,
Lisa

Lisa McGlaun said...

Bob,

Sorry that the demo didn't work for you. That's all I've used. I've toyed with the idea of buying the game so I can see the other levels but I haven't yet.

I think you are right we have to let go of our pasts and move forward and we certainly can do that without a computer game.

Best Wishes,
Lisa

Ambient Guy said...

You're welcome Lisa. Nice place you have here :-)