Dr. Kentaro Fujita

Again, this is all pure speculation, but I think it fits what we know about psychology.

I'm always struck that, you know, the impact that we have on our students, especially our graduate students and stuff, they're not the things I think they're going to be.

They always remember these side conversations where, you know, you acknowledge some small thing that was going on in their life.

But again, for them, it was that sort of moment of like, I'm...

bringing to reality some of the thoughts that they were having and hearing me say them or hearing me verified some of these thoughts had an incredibly uplifting event.

As you say, it can also have an incredibly crushing event.

So if I'm having insecurities and I'm sort of harping on those, acknowledging that those insecurities might have a truth to them, they could be incredibly damaging.

But I'm always amazed by how inspiring it can be, someone that you really respect

They know you have this goal and then they say like, I know you have this goal and I think you can do it.

That's what I'm talking about, the shared reality, the social validation of this belief makes it more real and thus has more power.

We know that writing thoughts down can be a very powerful thing as well for emotion regulation and motivation.

I think part of that is just the actual sharing part is the fact that now that I've written it down, I'm now looking at it as if it was not me.

So, it's not me, it's words on the page, and that brings another level of power that didn't have when they're just floating.

So, again, I think all of these strategies that you're talking about, self-talk, writing, talking to other people, I think they can all be powerful in the right way for the right person, but they may also exist on a continuum of potential potency, both good and bad.

Not that I'm aware of.

The best work that I can link to this is work that I know that's done on nostalgia.

And nostalgia traditionally is portrayed in most media as something really negative.

It's like a negative bittersweet state.

But their research in psychology suggests that nostalgia actually has a very functional process.

It serves a lot of different motivations.