We all experience quirks in the way our minds work. We struggle with annoying earworms, bad habits we can’t break, and communication breakdowns where people won’t open up or agree with us. The good news is that understanding a few psychological principles can help smooth out the rough patches of daily life. As a life coach, I’ve gathered ten of the most impactful psychological tricks to help make your days flow better. Try incorporating these into your routines and see the positive ripple effects!
1. Getting to the Truth
We’ve all been in situations where we sense someone is holding something back, but they won’t open up no matter how many questions we ask.
Next time this happens, try keeping unwavering eye contact and sitting in silence instead of peppering them with more queries. The discomfort of the drawn-out pause actually puts pressure on the other person to finally share what they’ve been withholding. I’ve used this technique many times with clients who initially resisted vulnerability. The awkward silence breaks through their resistance.
2. Defusing Aggression with Food
Violence and verbal attacks never solve anything. If you find yourself in the midst of an aggressive situation, try eating a snack! This may seem counterintuitive, but munching on something signals calmness and relaxation to our primal brain.
I’ll never forget the time I was mediating a conflict between two parents at their child’s soccer game. The shouting match was escalating to the point of potential physical aggression. In a moment of inspiration, I pulled an energy bar from my bag and started casually eating it. Within moments, the anger started dissipating as their brains unconsciously associated my eating with relaxation. Always keep snacks on hand for quick de-escalation!
3. The Tell-Tale Yawn
Have you ever felt someone’s eyes burning a hole in the back of your head, but when you turned around, they avoided your glance? Researchers have found a clever way to catch them in the act — start yawning!
Yawning has been shown to be contagious, triggering an automatic response in the brains of anyone watching you. So if you feel you’re being watched and then catch someone yawning in response to your initial yawn, you’ll know they were indeed the one staring.
4. Nodding Toward Agreement
As a life coach, I often need to help people get out of their comfort zones and see another perspective that could really improve their life situation. You can make someone more inclined to agree with what you’re saying by simply nodding your head as you speak those key points. Our brains associate head nodding with the truth and affirmation, so people are more likely to go along with your suggestions when you make them with a few well-timed nods. It’s a subtle psychological trick that holds a lot of persuasive power.
This approach reminds me of a client named Michael, who was stuck in an unhealthy pattern of frequent job-hopping whenever minor conflicts arose with coworkers or managers. No matter how blatantly I explained to Michael that this avoidant habit was sabotaging his career success, he refused to consider changing his ways. But once I started sprinkling in some well-timed nods as I spoke my counterpoints to his objections, his defenses slowly dropped as his brain subconsciously aligned more with my perspective. The head nodding made all the difference in getting him into an open mindset to finally address the root issues.
5. Sitting Side by Side
If you are interacting with someone who has a history of turning interactions into confrontations, position yourself to sit next to that person rather than across the table or room. Humans are hardwired to avoid aggression when personal space is encroached upon, so sitting beside someone automatically drops their combative urges.
It’s more difficult to turn and directly attack someone within your intimate zone. I use this positioning technique frequently when mediating disputes between divorcing spouses or business partners going through a fractious split. The simple adjustment of seats goes a long way toward facilitating peaceful dialogue.
6. Slipping the Load
Need to enlist someone’s help carrying an awkward load? Rather than asking them directly (which allows for objection), try handing them the item during a mid-conversation or while you’re telling them a story. Research shows we naturally grip and hold onto objects when they’re handed to us, even without consciously deciding to assist.
Just keep walking and talking as if you assume they’ll help carry the item, and their instinct will be to grab and go along. I used this sly move so many times in my moving days when hauling bins and furniture with my roommates. It worked every time without objection as soon as I placed the load into their grasp!
7. The Power of a Smile
“Smile and the world smiles with you” — that old adage contains surprising psychological truth! Smiling has been shown to create a positive feedback loop, uplifting the moods of everyone around the smiley person. Those buoyed emotions then increase others’ willingness to help, agree, and carry a more favorable impression of you.
When coaching clients who need to network for new opportunities or rebuild frayed relationships, one of my top tips is to smile abundantly. A radiant smile helps convince people’s unconscious minds to view you as a source of warmth and positive feelings. As soon as they make that association, affinity and receptiveness increase.
I always make a concerted effort to smile when meeting someone for the first time. Those opening positive signals set a rapport that then greases the wheels for insightful discussion and openness to my coaching advice throughout the session. A warm, genuine smile is one of the simplest yet most impactful tools coaches (and everyone) should have in their arsenal.
8. Writing for Catharsis
Journaling has long been recommended as a stress-relieving and therapeutic practice. The psychological benefits stem from similarities to sharing your burdens with someone else, even if your confidante, in this case, is an inanimate notebook. As you pour your anxious thoughts and stressors onto the page, the download creates a sense of catharsis that allows those mental tensions to loosen their grip.
I’ve seen journaling provide tremendous emotional unburdening for many clients dealing with grief, trauma, or periods of elevated life stress or anxiety. An overlooked bonus — that newfound mental calm and focus greatly enhances journalers’ productivity and decision-making abilities by decluttering their overtaxed conscious mind.
9.The Zeigarnik Effect Zapper
There’s nothing more maddening than having an earworm — a tune looping incessantly through your mind that you can’t dislodge, even after trying to overwrite it by playing other music. The psychological Zeigarnik effect posits that our brains tend to fixate on incomplete processes rather than seamlessly letting them go. So, how do you hack that effect and ditch an annoying earworm? Simply play the full song all the way through to the end. Once your brain processes the song’s audio completion, the loop should stop repeating.
I use this trick frequently as music is woven through so many of my daily routines and client sessions. It’s immensely satisfying the way fully hearing a song instantly deprograms my mind to move on from that mental snag. The Zeigarnik zapper is so simple yet miraculous every time those first earworm-free moments of blissful silence wash over me. Why didn’t I learn about this life hack sooner?
10. Habits and Self-Talk
Do you have a habit you’ve been struggling to break? Maybe it’s unhealthy snacking, procrastinating on physical activity, being impatient with family, or mindlessly scrolling social media for hours. Here’s a psychological mind trick to rewire those habits: Identify a self-imposed “punishment” that creates anxiety for you, like a cringe worthy social situation. Now, vividly picture how indulging your bad habit would directly lead to that feared scenario.
For example, one client’s goal was to stop overindulging in alcohol to improve his deteriorating wellness and strained relationships with his family. Through our discussions, it became clear that his ultimate anxiety was embarrassing himself and disappointing his two young children, whom he hoped to provide a strong role model for. So we drilled down by imagining the types of regretful drunken behaviors he feared his children witnessing. Picturing those heartbreaking scenes primed his psyche to instinctively recoil from drinking to excess going forward. Linking the bad habit to a scenario he dreaded instilled a Pavlovian aversion response that short-circuited his temptations.
Engaging in that form of self-talk essentially hacks your brain’s direction to believe the visualizations you feed it. This psychological power can unlock lasting habit changes. Conversely, take care to avoid directing that influential mindset toward self-defeat by envisioning negative or limiting beliefs about yourself that you then unconsciously adopt. Use this psychological mechanism wisely as a force for personal growth, always aiming for your highest vision.
I hope these ten psychological tricks provide some fresh perspectives and leverage points to enhance your days and create smoother sailing. Give them a genuine try — the impacts may pleasantly surprise you! Implementing even one or two of these mind-based techniques could turbo-boost your life satisfaction while granting newfound respect for the curious ways our psyches truly operate.