Dr. John A. KingIndigenous Australian. 100% Human. Neo-Noir Novelist. Poet. Speaker. Performance coach. More than a Survivor. Terrible Golfer, Awkward Dancer🕺

Principal of 7 - a fundamental key to #dealwithit - living well with PTSD

4 Apr 2018 · 1 min

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In this segment, Dr. John A. King explains how his personal recovery from PTSD was aided by the "7 plus or minus 2" principle originally described by Miller in the early 1950s. The principle states that the mind can focus on roughly seven items, with a variance of two. King argues that a negative focus reduces this capacity to about five items, whereas a positive outlook expands it to nine items. By adopting a positive mindset—a theme he expands upon in his book Deal With It—individuals can nearly double their problem‑solving capacity, providing scientifically backed tools for improving life and managing PTSD symptoms.

Chapters

One of the key things in my personal recovery was discovering a principle of 7 plus or minus 2. It was first conveyed to us by Miller back in the early '50s. His principle is very simple, is that the, the mind has the capacity to focus on 7 plus or minus 2 things. Now, if you're focusing just on the negative, then your mind can only— has the capacity to hold 7 minus 2 things, 5 things. But if you're positive in your outlook on life, then your mind has the capacity to hold 7 plus 2 things, a total of 9. So just by changing the way you think about things, and I talk about this a lot in Deal With It, by changing your mindset, you actually give yourself nearly double the capacity to problem solve. So keeping your mind on positive things and thinking about positive outcomes is scientifically proven to be able to give you better tools to change and make a better life.