Thank you so much for your interest in The Insight, by Sheba. I hope you enjoyed this week’s blogs about “Identity and Others.”

Next week’s topic will be “Identity and Needs.”

Friday Review: Happy Reading!

1. The Image You Portray

• We limit ourselves and our potential to form great relationships when we judge people based on their appearances and on their relationships with others. We are all multifaceted individuals and should maintain relationships that serve different aspects of our personalities. Being open to receive what life has to offer by way of new relationships stems from one’s ability to choose a nonjudgmental path in life.

2. Are You Your Relationship?

• Building a strong relationship is important to your own personal identity. Foster strong, positive interpersonal connections that build you up as a person and inspire you to do the same for your romantic partner.

3. Can You Catch a Bad Mood?

• Our attitudes are contagious. When interacting with someone in a bad mood be strong in character, compassionate and engage in active listening. Those simple acts of kindness might be enough to help that person better manage concerns and help you from feeling weighed down. Sometimes listening is better than trying to help the other person solve the issue.

4. How We Trust

• We perceive trust in the same manner we give trust.  A person who has difficulty trusting others may struggle with accepting trust from others. Conversely, a trusting individual may not understand mistrust from others. Be mindful of your own misconceptions regarding self-worth and other’s perceptions of you. A person’s perception of self-worth becomes his or her reality. Approach the concept of trust in relationships with an open mind and look at each situation as a new experience.

The Insight— Image may not be everything, but it certainly does a lot to influence identity. Our identity is based largely on our relationships with others and how others see us. People can only discern who we are based on our actions and what they see in us. Therefore, it is vital that we depict an image of ourselves that is true to who we are and who we want to be. We cannot expect to please everybody with who we are, but as long as we stick to our values and morals, we will be satisfied with our own identities and will form healthy lasting relationships with those who appreciate our genuine character.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

Creating Positive Perspectives for Life

If we love, we have learned to trust implicitly.

What influences us to trust others in our relationships?

According to Sandra L. Murray, Ph.D., and her fellow researchers, the type of trust we employ affects how likely we are to trust and depend on our romantic partners or, in contrast, to maintain self-protective behaviors. Their research suggests that we use a combination of trusting styles:

1.       Impulsive Trust

• Relates to an individual’s attitude toward and perception of his or her partner when in their partner’s presence.
• Individuals high in impulsive trust are more likely to approach their partners and respond more positively to relationship concerns.

2.       Reflective Trust

• Relates to an individual’s perception of how his or her partner values him or her.
• Individuals high in reflective trust are more likely to rely on self-protective behaviors.

(Read More)

The Insight – We perceive trust in the same manner we give trust.  A person who has difficulty trusting others may struggle with accepting trust from others. Conversely, a trusting individual may not understand mistrust from others. Be mindful of your own misconceptions regarding self-worth and other’s perceptions of you. A person’s perception of self-worth becomes his or her reality. Approach the concept of trust in relationships with an open mind and look at each situation as a new experience.

Are you open to trust?

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

Creating Positive Perspectives for Life

The Scenario – Has your mood ever been affected by someone else’s?  Were you having a great day before that person started complaining about his or hers, and left you feeling down but you could not explain why?

How can one person’s mood affect another’s and how do you manage it?

According to a recent study conducted by Allan Filipowicz, Ph.D., Sigal Barsade, Ph.D., and Shimul Melwani, moods are contagious. We have the ability to influence another person’s perception of us and his or her own disposition based on our attitude. The study found that we respond differently according to other peoples’ dispositions:

1.     Steady State

• People who interacted with an individual whose mood showed little alteration (i.e. began angry and remained angry) perceived the emotional individual as one whose mood did not reflect their interaction.

 2.     Emotional Transitions

• People who interacted with an individual who underwent an emotional transition believed that the change in moods in that individual was a result of their interaction.

 3.     Interactions

• The people were less accommodating and less receptive to the individuals with steady state emotions than they were to those who exhibited an emotional transition. The emotional transitions served to diffuse some of the ill temper because those individuals were at one point happy, or eventually became happy.

(Read More)

The Insight – Our attitudes are contagious. When interacting with someone in a bad mood be strong in character, compassionate and engage in active listening. Those simple acts of kindness might be enough to help that person better manage concerns and help you from feeling weighed down. Sometimes listening is better than trying to help the other person solve the issue.

What does your attitude say about you?

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

Creating Positive Perspectives for Life

As social beings, each of us is capable and desires to form connections with others to the point that relationships even shape our individual identities.

Do our relationships reflect who we are as individuals?

Research conducted by Lisa Linardatos, Ph.D., and John E. Lydon, Ph.D., suggests that our relationships can, in fact, shape our identities. Relationship-specific identification involves:

1. Absorbing a specific relationship into one’s identity based on a deep, meaningful experience with that relationship

2. Perceiving greater satisfaction from relationships based on how strongly one associates the relationship with his or her identity

3. Forming a greater sense of commitment based on the strength of the identification an individual has with his or her relationship

(Read More)

The Insight – Building a strong relationship is important to your own personal identity. Foster strong, positive interpersonal connections that build you up as a person and inspire you to do the same for your romantic partner.

Do your relationships positively influence your identity?

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

Creating Positive Perspectives for Life

Have you ever noticed how the company you keep influences other people’s perceptions of you? Perhaps your own opinion of a person has change based on the people with whom he or she spends time.

Do our relationships influence our identity and how others perceive it?

According to research conducted by John B. Pryor, Ph.D., Glenn D. Reeder, Ph.D., and Andrew E. Monroe, Ph.D., we often judge people based on their relationships and the people with whom they associate. Stigma by association results from:

1.       Type of Stigma

• Stigmatized individuals refers to people society criticizes because they do not ‘fit in’ according to societal standards of ‘normal’ based on three categories: socially ‘unacceptable’ alterations to physical appearance, ethnic and cultural identifiers, and perceived character flaws that oppose “morality.”

2.       Strength of Relationship

• We judge those who associate with “norm defying” individuals more harshly the stronger the relationship between the two.

3.       Controllability

• These “norm defying” individuals, their friends and their families receive greater social criticism depending on the person’s ability to affect a difference or how ‘controllable’ it is perceived to be.

(Read More)

The Insight – We limit ourselves and our potential to form great relationships when we judge people based on their appearances and on their relationships with others. We are all multifaceted individuals and should maintain relationships that serve different aspects of our personalities. Being open to receive what life has to offer by way of new relationships stems from one’s ability to choose a nonjudgmental path in life.

What do you really see when you look at an individual?

By Sheba

www.bySheba.com

Creating Positive Perspectives for Life