Ask CHH

Full House at Bishan NLB (14 April 2012) – Participants writing their Feedbacks

Power up your mind! Think Clearly!

Can’t find your apartment keys? Can’t remember your ATM -Pin? Can’t decide what to do in a challenging situation? When it comes to “thinking matters” boosting your memory and sharpen your thinking skills can be helpful to prevent memory loss or dementia.

Think clearly  and effectively in our daily living – this is what we call COGNITIVE EFFICACY.

It means being able to understand, analyse, plan, remember, and respond successfully to different situations. This includes adopting a step-by-step approach to challenges and in weighing the pros and cons of various courses of actions before making decisions. With good cognitive efficacy, we are able to make rational decisions and deal with life’s challenges effectively. We will also be able to achieve our goals.

This workshop makes people aware that there are many ways of looking at things as there are people. To function effectively you  need to be able to understand the way in which you interprets the world (and your life). Thus you have to become aware about what you think, what you see, how you interpret everyday events, people etc. In other words you need to understand your cognition or thoughts!

In this workshop Dr von Auer teaches you ‘how your thoughts tick’, ‘how to make the right decisions’, ‘how to improve your memory and boost your thinking capability and how to metally stimulate yourself’.

Here are some comments from participants:

“Dr Wolff is well versed in this area. He has presented this talk in a simple, easily understandable manner.He added humour to make the talk interesting”

“Thinking, Feeling, Behavior are the 3 key elements for mental wellbeing, Good workshop”

MIND JOURNEY

Mind Journey is a mental well-being programme for adults. Organised by the Health Promotion Board, the programme aims to provide individuals with know how and skills to optimise their well-being. Through a series of 4 workshops, participants will learn about mental well-being through role playing, videos, and humorous interactive activities. (For more info, visit: www.hpb.gov.sg/mentalhealth)

Getting started with ‘Goal setting’

Participants from Bukit Panjang CC

Dr von Auer, Singapore’s well-known motival speaker and Mind Counselor welcomed the participants to their ‘Weight Losing Journey’ also called ‘Lose to Win (LTW) Programme’. This HPB programme consists of 4 training sessions i.e. (1) Getting started: Goal Setting, (2) Self Esteem matters, (3) Emotion Matter, (4) Creative problem Solving and nutritional components as well as physical exercise element.

The 4 sessions are components of mental well-being and participants became in a very humorous way aware that only with good mental wellbeing one can achieve weight loss. Mastering or improving  these 4 components will help participants to achieve their goals for example weight loss or improving their blood pressure.

The participants were very motivated to achieve their weight loss targets and promised to remind themselves of their motivations, their reasons why they “do it now”. Many of the participants discovered the importance of setting effective goals. Initially many said, they want to lose weight but they didn’t specify how much weight, in what time and how they are going to do it.. They learned that the acronym ‘SMART’ is the answer for them to set effective goals.  SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable,Attainable, Realistic and Timely. 

As a homework they were requested  a) to spend some time setting themselves some programme goals, e.g.: what do you want to achieve at the end of the programme (lose 3 inches waistline, have an improved heart rate,  brisk walk 5 k without getting exhausted etc.)? What behavior do I want to change? They further were asked b) to monitor their physical, emotional and behavioral progress.

Albert Einstein is quoted as having said:

“If I had an hour to save the world
I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem
and one minute finding solutions”

Regrettably many people are running around spending sixty minutes finding solutions to irrelevant problems (that don’t matter).” They often are stuck in one problem and do not know how to step out of it (Which is another problem). Yes, every day we all are confronted with problems and thus our success rate of solving the issue is  depending on our mindset with which we approach the problem. Of course, we need a positive mindset and confidence to master the problem. Many people approach the problem with a negative mindset [e.g.: “My boss will say no to my request”, “I will not be able to solve this issue with my parents” ] – consequently they will not be able to creatively solve any problems.

Therefore, if we want things to be different we need to do things differently, think of things in different ways! We also call this attitude: “Think out of the box”, which requires to shift our outlook from what is always or usually done to what could be done!

In this fun filled workshop participants learnt the importance of understanding and defining the ‘real” problem to get “unstuck”. They easily have comprehended the importance of generating options when trying to solve the problem  (e.g: Do I do my excercise in the early morning, at lunch time or after working hours to maintain my healthy weight?). After that they were evaluating all their options in order to decide on a “best” solution (which is not always a perfect solution). Finally participants decided to implement a solution and promised to  revisit their decision from time to time  how it went.

Feedback:

“Another enjoyable and fruitful ‘Mental Wellbeing’ session with Dr Auer. Thanks for sharing the ‘Creative Problem solving’ with us”.

Another Feedback (10.04.2012):

“Hallo Dr Wolff. This is A…. here who attended LTW mental health class on tuesday at HPB. Thank you for your enlightenment on issues regarding self-esteem and identifying the root of problems. I really brought back with me a new fountain of knowledge after your class. Just to let you know you have made a difference in my life. Thank you =)”