Living Well and Staying Well

They report that women consider more factors than men when screening jobs; There is a surprising silver lining to this research, however: it carries hidden benefits for women and their employers. In follow-up work, Groysberg identifies this scrutiny as one of the key variables explaining why women transition more successfully to new companies than men. Women know better what they are getting themselves into. The researchers analyzed the performance of more than a thousand star analysts working for almost eighty different investment banks over a nine-year period. It's about understanding the way that these thoughts affect our daily choices, both the deliberate ones and the not-so-deliberate ones. It's about the science (and art) of psychoanalysis, which you can thank Sigmund Freud for. Psychoanalysis is derived from the Greek words psykhe which means soul, and analysis, which means investigate. You might say it involves a sort of soul-peering. There are several schools of thought with psychoanalysis, from Freud to Jung. This article isn't about getting into all that detail. You want to learn to read people, and that's what we shall focus on. How Psychologists Analyze You So, your buddy Siobhan is a clinical psychologist. You've always wondered if you need to have your guard up around her. When all this information has to be collected at the time of death it is often too time-consuming and compromise solutions result which are often disappointing and quite costly to the family. Do you feel that the American ritual of viewing the deceased and elaborate funerals, etc, is destructive? I think people should express their own wishes in regard to funerals. Unfortunately there are many social pressures which often require much too elaborate and expensive funerals and are really unnecessary. We have to understand that funerals are meant to gratify the needs of the family and the relatives and not the deceased.

My personal belief is that the viewing of the body is only necessary if the family has not been prepared for the death of their relative, as in the case of a sudden unexpected death. In this circumstance it is important that the family can view the body before the funeral in order to face the reality of the beloved one's death. Otherwise, if there has been a prolonged illness, I regard the viewing of the body an unnecessary ritual. I also believe personally in very simple funerals with a closed casket and brief meeting with the family and relatives which gives them an opportunity to talk together about the deceased, to share memories and a meal together. I think that the elaborate expensive display of an open casket with all the makeup in the slumber room enforces the belief that the person is only asleep and in my personal opinion would only help to prolong the stage of denial. Analysts were labeled stars if they were ranked as one of the best in the industry by Institutional Investor magazine. The team was interested in better understanding whether the analysts' skills were portable when they switched companies. It turns out most analysts lost their stardom when they changed employers unless they moved to a better firm or brought their whole team along--with the exception of female analysts. Not only had the women studied a potential new employer more carefully before joining, they had also built their expertise differently than their male colleagues. The top-performing female analysts had built their franchises on portable, external relationships with clients and the companies they covered, rather than on relationships within their firms. Or as one female star analyst put it: For a woman in any business, it's easier to focus outward, where you can define and deliver the services required to succeed, than to navigate the internal affiliations and power structure within a male-dominant firm. People choose organizations based on their preferences and their beliefs about whether or not they could thrive in a given organization. Messages shape those beliefs. Consider the messages sent when Lieutenant General David Morrison stated in a video posted on the Australian army's official YouTube channel that he was committed to inclusion. If that does not suit you, then get out, Morrison flatly declared. Finally - and courageously - at a party with friends, you ask her, Hey Siobhan! Are you always analyzing me? Well, if she was honest, she'd tell you that yes, she is analyzing you. However, she isn't. Let's get into this ultra-confusing answer I've given you.

The job of a clinical psychologist is to pay attention to behaviors, mannerisms of speech, and irregular actions. Let's say that Siobhan sees someone acting weirdly, saying some really out-there things, then she will definitely take interest and analyze the heck out of them. It's not because she's trying to be a creep, but because she's been trained to analyze behavior. So, even if she wasn't actively analyzing you at that moment, she's analyzing you now, because you've brought her attention to you. She might be wondering how many martinis you've pounded back, whether you're under the influence of something else, or you're simply experiencing an episode of mania. What do you think about funerals? Do you believe they prolong agony or result in acceptance? I believe a simple ritual is necessary to publicly and openly face the reality of the death; But the elaborate unnecessary ritual with all its commercial aspects not only prolongs the agony of the family, but adds further expensive costs to the already horrendous expenses that the family often has had to endure during a long illness. My family and I are funeral directors. We are generally close to those we serve, and especially with children we try to take extra time to talk and listen. What counseling advice would you have for us? Funeral directors have often misused the family's feelings of guilt and unfinished business in order to commercialize their products and to have greater profits in their business. This part of the funeral business I intensely dislike. There are funeral directors who are not exclusively commercially oriented and who truly care for the families of the people they serve. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters. Acting in response to a 2013 investigation into sexual abuse, Morrison sent a strong message. In 2014, Morrison joined the Australian delegation to the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in London. Speaking again with admirable bluntness, he said that armies that assign more value to men than to women and tolerate sexual violence do nothing to distinguish the soldier from the brute. Will these messages attract and retain soldiers valuing equality and inclusion?

Time will tell. And while actions have followed his words, we all know that talk can be cheap. When and how messages affect behavior is a large field of inquiry in itself, but experimental evidence is rare. One example, however, is encouraging. Robert Jensen and Emily Oster took advantage of the fact that cable television became available at different times in different parts of India, allowing them to trace whether attitudes and behaviors went along with exposure to the new information cable programming provided. Now, here's why she says she isn't trying to read you. She could do a cold read if she wanted to, but from a professional standpoint, the only way to get a grasp on what you're thinking and feeling is to ask you questions. Often, people seek the help of a clinical psychologist when they're facing some challenge in their relationships, at work, or when things are just not going the way they feel they should. Naturally, the professional psychologist won't just do a cold read. They will ask you questions before they diagnose whatever it is you're troubled by (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and so on). Even then, the diagnosis is only the start. It gives Siobhan a context for the challenges you're facing and gives her a clue of the treatments you'll need. However, it does little for letting her know the reason you're experiencing these issues or how she can give you a designer treatment for your case. The psychologist must go even deeper. They'll have some analyzing to do, often covering these aspects: I find it very sad that we have to have such elaborate and expensive funerals which serve no purpose except, perhaps, to alleviate some guilt feelings on the part of the family. I think if funeral directors would listen to the needs of the families, also the financial needs and requests for simplicity, they could help tremendously and they would have a much better reputation. Also, funeral homes should be open for visits by young people, church groups, and high school children--to help them consider death as a part of life. Family and Staff Deal with Their Own Feelings Do families of terminally ill patients also go through the stages of dying as the patient does, but not necessarily when the patient does?

Family members and staff usually limp behind in the stages. You have talked about the families of patients who are dying and helping them accept their loss, but what of those families and individuals who have not reached the stages of acceptance before the death of a loved one? They will have to go through all the stages after death has occurred. How do you handle death in your own family--a parent, for example--since you are so emotionally involved? Is it possible to be of help? They found that the introduction of cable television was associated with improvements in women's status in rural areas, including female school enrollment, decreases in fertility, as well as reported increases in autonomy and decreases in the acceptability of beating women and son preference. The information conveyed via cable television, often through somewhat surprising means, such as soap operas, exposed rural viewers to gender attitudes and ways of life, including within the household, more prevalent in urban areas. And it changed behavior. Sorting mechanisms are powerful and often overlooked. Those charged with attracting the largest, most talented pool of applicants should make sure they scrutinize the messages, overt and biased, conveyed in their advertisements, websites, or other communications. The wording used, the incentive schemes employed, the work hours required, or even the number of others applying may unintentionally attract some but not others. And while talk definitely can be cheap, sometimes people do listen. They care about what people they look up to have to say, including the heroes and heroines of soap operas, who may even become role models--a topic we will turn to in article 10. Designing Gender Equality--Attract the Right People Purge gendered language from job advertisements and other company communications. Origins: They could discuss what growing up was like for you so they can see where the start of your issues lies. They'll want to know about any genetic disorders, what your childhood and family were like, anything of significance that happened to you as a kid, and things of that nature. Accelerants: These are the changes you might have recently experienced that has caused these problems to surface or made them even worse than usual. Mechanisms: These cause your issues to happen. The mechanism is literally that: A machine, built from your origins, fueled by your accelerants so that when turned on, they instantly cause these problems of yours to go from zero to ninety in half a millisecond.