I am a musician. Although i don’t study music, I spend one night a week playing in a community brass band. Along with being a musician comes a lot of fear. For example, last week the girl I sit next to (I will call her R) was about to play a solo that she has in one of the pieces. She leaned in to me and said, “Trudy, I’m scared”. I asked her why she should possibly be scared and she said, “I’m scared I won’t be good enough.” She was afraid because that night was the first of a new player in the band.  This new member plays the same instrument and consequently the same music as us but she happens to be studying music at university and is obviously very accomplished on her instrument. Basically R was afraid that she wouldn’t play the solo good enough and the conductor would give the solo to the new and more accomplished player, eventhough R had played the solo well about 20 times.  This situation made me question the purpose of fear. Why is it that we fear things that can’t do us any physical harm? Does fear really do us any good?... Read More

It’s that time of year when we have all started shopping for Christmas Gifts. We rush around the shops, stressing about what we are going to buy for friends, family and work colleagues. We spend so much time at the shops that it just drives us insane so the pressies we eventually choose are just last minute rush jobs that we put hardly any thought into at all. Buying presents over christmas becomes a chore; something that we have to get done by the cut off date. Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that we should perhaps be taking a different approach to gift giving.... Read More

Holidays. We all love them, right? We spend our lives dreaming about a vacation and they are often seen as a luxury; something that we could do without in our lives (particularly during these hard financial times where our budgets become really tight, a holiday is the first thing to be sacrificed). After spending four days on an island just off the mainland of my hometown, Brisbane, i began wondering whether holidays have an affect on our psychological well being. I began thinking about the people who don’t get away from the buzz of everyday life and how their stress levels would compare to a person who detaches themselves from work and spends that crucial time with their friends and family to unwind and refresh their minds.... Read More

We all cringe at the skinny models we see parading the clothes at fashion displays. Is it because we can see the outline of their entire skeleton or is it because we are literally turned off by the lack of fat on their bodies? According to new research conducted at the University of Queensland, we cringe because we are literally turned off by seeing the skinny, size 0 models. ... Read More

I’d like to share with you an activity that was given to me last semester as part of a class activity. We were given three weeks to ‘break a social norm’. But what does this mean? Social norms are what society is governed by. Formally, they are the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. They are ’so called’ social laws that we abide by to avoid being socially punished by our peers. We adhere to social norms to avoid being different or doing something that others will think unfavourably of. So surely, it would be easy to break one within a three week period, right? WRONG!... Read More

Everyone wants to be or aspires to be the best possible person they can be.  But when we get caught up trying to be perfect in everything we do, we only get disappointed when we don’t perform as well as we had hoped.  That is why it is important to know and understand who you are, so that you don’t have unrealistic expectations of yourself.... Read More