59 Seconds Paper

Bryce Chong

HEI101

Annie Almekinder

10-13-14

            Is it possible to change one’s life in under a minute? Is it conceivable that within a minute one could be on their way to walking a different path in life? In the book 59 Seconds, the author addresses the issues concerning “self help” books and revolutionizes the methods used to help people. Four chapters in particular seemed to be specifically designed to help college students. Those chapters were Creativity, Stress, Motivation, and Decision Making. Each chapter has brought new insight on how each can be achieved or overcome. This paper will discuss the new ideas given from the book and how I plan on using them in my life from now on.

            Creativity has never really been an issue for me. With that being said there were a couple of ideas in this chapter that stuck my interest. The first idea is that working alone on a problem is often times better than working in a group. The author backs this claim by giving examples of experiments done on groups of people presented with a problem to solve, some were in groups and others were alone. At the end of the day those who worked alone preformed better and gave more unique solutions than those who worked in groups. That was just an interesting topic, the real idea that could change my life would be letting my unconscious mind put in some thought on situations. I can do this by addressing a problem but then immediately work on something else that distracts my mind. Then later come back to the problem and by that time my unconscious mind will have worked on it and came up with a solution. This method is exactly what I plan on doing in my life to change it and hopefully become more creativity in doing so.

            The next chapter dealt with stress and unlike creativity, I can actually struggle with stress from time to time. The most intriguing idea on how to deal with stress was the placebo effect. The placebo effect is when one’s mind truly believes in one thing and therefore the body starts to mimic the behaviors associated with such beliefs. The example the author gives is an experiment where people were told they were drinking alcohol when really they weren't. Nonetheless the people still experienced the symptoms of being drunk because their mind truly believed they were. This can be applied to my life when I’m in stressful situations by simple stopping what I’m doing and truly believing that everything is going to be okay or that I will be able to overcome a certain obstacle. By doing so hopefully the placebo effect will take hold and soon find myself doing better than before.

            Before doing a project such as writing a paper, I struggle in finding the motivation to begin. An idea the book gives on improving motivation is the doublethink process which means one should adopt a third-person perspective and view yourself doing productive things and eventually you will. In the book, the author tells about students who spend time going through the process of studying will perform higher on their exams. I will apply this idea of doublethink to my life by not imagining the end results so much as I imagine the process of getting to the end. This will help me not only get started on a project but also help me every step of the way.

            Finally, the last chapter and perhaps the most helpful to me was about decision making. Throughout my life I have always found myself regretting certain decisions I made. These regrets seem to always revolve around purchasing something. The idea that made most sense to me as to how to make the right decisions involved, yet again, the unconscious mind. Just like in creativity, if the unconscious mind is given time to analyze a situation, not only will it come to a unique solution but also one that generally leads to less regret in the future. The book gives an example of people who had to choose from four different posters and those who let their unconscious mind make the choice had no regrets in their decision as compared to others who did all the thinking consciously. I plan on making this an everyday behavior in my life when it comes to making decisions because as stated before I haven’t always made the right decisions in the past.

            Is it possible to change one’s life in under minute? A good read through of this book and one would argue that it is. I have confidence that the four chapters discussed in this paper will help change my life for the better and also help me get through college a lot easier.