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In this video. I'm going to tell you about an interesting mind

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 technique to reduce.

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Stress and Anxiety and improve performance

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This technique is called self-affirmation. It's

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 based on the idea that we all have an

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an internal image of ourselves of

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 our identity of ourselves as a

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 person and we don't like that perception

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 of ourselves being threatened by a stressful

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 event or something bad happening to us.

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And so

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in order to get over that blow to

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 our vision of ourselves, we use self-affirmation which

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 reinforces

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our self-belief and are

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View of ourselves as a person gosh, that

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 sounded very abstract. So I'll make it much more.

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Tangible Now by telling you

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 about the results of some research.

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projects

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Which have shown that?

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self-affirmation exercise

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Can achieve all sorts

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 of good results, for example, they can

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 decrease stress increase well-being improve

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 academic performance and make

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 people more open to behavior change.

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So how do you engage in self-affirmation? Well,

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 it's actually a relatively simple process.

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What you do is you brainstorm, maybe between 6 and

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 10.

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Core values parts of your life that

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 are important to you. It might

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 be things like friends and family or politics or

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the ability to be spontaneous or your sense

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 of humor or

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volunteering giving back to the community teaching

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passing on knowledge to Future Generations. I don't

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 know brainstorm 10 values

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 that are important to you. And then what

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 you need to do is pick the number one.

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The one that you feel to be the most important in that

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 moment when you're doing the exercise.

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And spend a few minutes, maybe five or 10 minutes writing about

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 why that value is important to you and

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 how that value is reflected

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 in you and in your life.

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And you can do that by asking yourself relatively simple prompt questions

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 things like think of a time in the past when

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 you've had fun with friends and family. Let's say

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 a friends and family was your number one.

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Or think of a time in the future when you could give

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 back to the community and how that

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 will make you feel and benefit people's lives.

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That's it. It's a pretty simple exercise. You

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 don't have to do it. Every time

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 that you are facing a stressful situation. Some

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 of the research was done on people who

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 went through that exercise once and then

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 had an exam six weeks later or something and

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 the self-affirmation exercise was found

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 to have really beneficial results. So

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 a simple thing that you can try it won't take you more than

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 10 minutes.