Name some ways in which psychology began to be applied to the general public and everyday problems.

If you think about it for a moment, some common examples of psychology in everyday life are when you:

• smile to portray warmth and approachability
• use body language to attract or repel advances
• appeal to people’s vanity and self-indulgence to get what you want.

Psychology is much more than a study field or a career choice for counselors and therapists. Every day, whether we realise it or not, we apply psychology to help us communicate and influence.

The above are small examples of psychology in everyday life. More generally, how can you use psychology in your day-to-day activities to improve your life situation? Here is a list of some of the most powerful ways you can deploy psychology skills in real life.

1. Visualise Your Dreams and Ambitions

If you ask almost every top-tier athlete how they manage to achieve so much success, they will probably tell you that it is all about visualisation and working hard towards a goal.

While working hard towards a certain goal may involve physical activity, it is the visualisation part of things that employs psychology. If you can picture a certain result with crisp clarity, chances are that you will probably achieve it.

2. Dare Yourself to Achieve More

High achievers always dare themselves to do more than the average person. They always take more risks (calculated) and they always pick themselves up when they fail.

Daring to do anything outside of your comfort zone is psychology at work. You need to talk yourself into doing something that has the potential for great rewards but also possibly put you in an embarrassing as well as demoralising situation should you fail. But you weigh the risks and give yourself the mental boost to push forward despite them.

3. Stay Motivated

Staying motivated to do something has to be one of the hardest psychological tricks anyone can master, especially if you are doing something about which you are not passionate.

Different methods can be used to switch into a motivated state. Most people think of the rewards, others think of the consequences and many still just think of the end result.

4. Ask for Help and Get It

Most people associate asking for help with weakness. While it is true that there are people who would rather live on handouts than try their hardest to achieve something, asking for help isn’t always a sign of weakness.

Most CEOs surround themselves with people who are much smarter than they are because they realise it is a wonderful way to propel their own ambitions. Sometimes, asking for or even hiring help is the smart move. Knowing when to do it for your own ends is psychology at work.

5. Form Your Own Opinions

If you’re aware of framing bias or the framing effect, you’re better positioned to form your own opinions in areas such as current events, politics, government policies, and so forth.

Framing bias is when a person reaches a false conclusion or makes a bad decision because they’re unduly influenced by the manner in which information is presented. They ignore important facts, instead focusing on side-issues such as the confidence of the person telling a story or the backgrounds of the people involved.

The media are all too aware of the human susceptibility to framing bias. They use framing techniques to sway opinion, push narratives, or make a story different, and more interesting, than it actually was. If you pay attention to what the media is doing, you can more easily make assessments based on facts.

6. Be and Stay Unique

We live in a world that revels in mass production. This often means that a lot of us end up looking the same. The best way to stand out and be someone you can be proud of is to acknowledge your uniqueness.

Too often, people fall lazily into the mindset of conforming. Realise that this happens and make a deliberate effort to do things your way.

If, for example, you want to discover the best career for you going forward, a personal skills audit could be the way to go. Think about what really defines you in terms of abilities and personality. From your personal examination, ideas for alternative career paths may spring up.

The truth is, anyone can benefit from doing a personal skills audit. With the self-awareness you gain, you can turn up the volume on your career.

Open Classrooms

While most people tend to focus on their weaknesses and trying to improve on those areas, you could be better served if you focus on your strengths instead.

You have to be ruthless with yourself to find out what it is that makes you…you. Once you find those traits, you have to make a conscious decision to nurture them every day. This takes a lot of mental discipline.

Using Psychology is Both Profound and Routine

We employ psychology in our day-to-day lives in many different ways. Some of these things are not monumental nor are they life changing. They could very well be part of your routine; something you don’t even notice anymore.

An example are the rules of thumb you have in the back of your mind when you go shopping. They could be simple principles like: (a) buy what you came here to get (b) stay within budget or (c) only get something if you trust the quality. If you notice yourself making bad purchases because you get carried away with sales or fashion trends for example, that’s a good time to reflect. You always have the power to make a deliberate choice to do things differently in the future.

Never underestimate the significance of psychology in our everyday lives. The richness of your life journey depends on using psychology to attain your higher goals.

Further reading: 8 Nice Life Benefits from Studying Psychology

Psychology is not just limited to mental disorders, counseling, and therapy sessions; it is much more than that. The role of psychology comes into play right from the moment you wake up in the morning till you sleep at night. From just communicating with others to taking life’s toughest decisions, psychology finds its applications in almost all aspects of our everyday life. Here we discuss some areas of our life where psychology plays an important role.

1. Motivation

Motivation is the most important psychological aspect that plays a crucial role in achieving our goals. While doing any task in your daily life, if you are not motivated enough, then you won’t be able to give your best. However, if you are motivated for the task, then you will put in your best efforts, and the results obtained would also be great. Different psychological tricks like self-talk, maintaining a task list, and rewarding yourself after achieving the goals are used to keep the motivational level up.

2. Health

We all know the danger of drinking, smoking, and various other drugs on our health, yet people get addicted to them, and they find it very difficult to get rid of these injurious substances. Here, psychology comes to the rescue. Many psychological studies on addiction reveal that the main cause of addiction is the stress factor. Drug-Rehabilitation centers use various psychological techniques like counseling, therapies, and mindfulness practices that relax the patient’s mind and make it easier for them to get rid of drugs. You must have heard about the famous quote ‘Laughter is the best medicine,’ psychology also says the same, whenever you feel low, just smile widely as it gives positive signals to your brain, and you actually start feeling happier.

3. Advertisements

Have you ever realized that while watching television, many advertisements appeal to you so much that you end up buying that product the very next day? Well, this is because advertisement companies use psychological tactics to lure customers. They advertise their products in such a way that directly hits your emotions, and you start thinking of buying that product. The advertising tactics that are designed considering social psychology include the concepts of consensus, scarcity principle, and mere-exposure effect. The scarcity principle involves the tricks like ‘limited time offer,’ ‘exclusive items,’ and ‘few items left.’ When you read these tags on the products, you immediately start thinking of buying that product. Consensus strategy involves highlighting the positive reviews and popular items in advertisements because customers prefer to buy well-reviewed items rather than negatively reviewed items, and they trust the products and companies based on the positive testimonials. However, some companies use cheap practices and post fake reviews to lure customers. The mere-exposure effect involves that people prefer those items more, which they encounter more, this is the reason why advertisers keep on displaying ads again and again. Many marketing agencies follow the rule of seven to lure potential buyers. So, next time when you think of buying any product by seeing these advertisements make sure you first understand the psychology behind that advertisement.

4. Sports

Psychology plays a crucial role in sports as both physical and mental health is important for the overall growth of a sportsperson. The psychological technique of ‘visualizing the goals’ is very beneficial for achieving the targets. The importance of psychological health is often raised by many world-renowned athletes and sportspersons.

5. Relationships

Psychology plays an important role in relationships. The quality of the relationships can be improved by understanding the psychology of human behavior. Various researches have shown that positive relationships are as much important for your health as eating a healthy and nutritious diet. According to some studies, those children that are raised in a healthy environment and in families having positive relationships, lead a happier life than the other children.

6. Healthy Eating

Did you know that your brain takes quite a long time to give you a signal that your stomach is full? If you have a habit of eating a plate full of food and then guilting about overeating later, then try to eat your food on a smaller plate as it will trick your brain that you have eaten the full plate, and in this way, you can save yourself from eating a larger portion of the food. If you want to develop healthy eating habits, then instead of looking at the benefits of healthy eating habits, look at the worst effects of the unhealthy eating habits on your body, here reverse psychology comes into play, and out of fear of the effect of unhealthy eating habits on your body, you can easily develop the habit of eating healthy food.

7. Leadership Skills

Whether you are a manager in a company or volunteering a local group, you must have had felt the importance of leadership skills. Few people are born with these leadership qualities, but that does not mean that others can not become good leaders. Leaderships skills can be sharpened with the help of some simple yet useful tips backed by various psychological researches. Using various steps like allowing your group members to raise their opinions, talking about the best possible solutions with them, and appreciating or rewarding your team members for their good work can help you become a good leader. Many psychological studies have proven the fact that a good leader always shows empathy to his/her team members and understands their emotions, which builds a strong trust of the team members in their leader.

8. Politics

Psychology impacts our political ideologies. Politicians all across the globe use various psychological tactics in their rallies and high-voltages speeches to lure the voters to cast their votes in the favour of a particular political party.

9. Decision Making & Problem-Solving

From deciding about what to eat in the breakfast to what career you want to pursue, you make plenty of decisions in your everyday life. Making decisions required cognitive skills. Cognitive psychology is a special branch of psychology that deals with various mental processes like learning, creativity, memory retention, attention, reasoning, and decision making. By applying the information provided by cognitive psychology, we can improve our ability to make better and wiser decisions. While making any decision, you should not think only from your own perspective, instead, from a wider perspective by considering the positive, negative, and emotional aspects of the situation, and it is always better to make a list of pros and cons of the decisions to be taken.

10. Communication

Verbal communication is not the only way that you use while talking to others, your non-verbal actions are also an important aspect of your communication skills. While communicating with others, the gestures and body language of the other person helps us understand the conversation better. You can make any conversation more engaging by maintaining good eye contact, listening to others carefully, and noticing the nonverbal actions of others. The combination of verbal and non-verbal communication skills can make you an excellent speaker. There are various studies that suggest how the body language of a person affects our subconscious mind.

11. Emotional Quotient (EQ)

The famous psychologist Daniel Goleman mentioned in his The New York Times bestselling book “Emotional Intelligence” that –

The EQ may actually be more important than the IQ.”

In a famous study, it was revealed that people with high EQ tend to be more happier and satisfied with their life as compared to people with high IQ (Intelligence Quotient). EQ or Emotional intelligence means, how well you understand your own emotions, and those of people around you? People with high EQ have the ability to perceive things as they actually are, without adding their own assumptions. To improve your EQ, you should deeply understand your emotions and reactions, you can start journal writing because that will give you mental clarity and a better understanding of your emotions.

12. Personal-Growth

Psychology is the best self-growth tool as it helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses, and you get to know your true personality traits. It can also help you improve your personality as various psychological studies have proven the fact that if you visualize, think, and act like the person you want to become in the future, then your brain starts believing that fact, and eventually, you end up being the best version of yourself.

13. Finance Management

You can increase your savings by following simple psychological strategies, which include avoiding procrastination and starting saving now rather than later, keeping a check on your spendings, and imagining your richer self in the future, and appreciating yourself for each saving. You should be consciously aware of the fact that what is it that you actually need, rather than spending money on things you think you want. Don’t let advertisers brainwash you to buy the things that they think you need.

14. Workplace

The implication of psychology at the workplace is very beneficial. Knowledge of psychology helps companies design more customer-friendly products and also building a better workplace. Industrial and organizational psychology is a special branch that deals with the psychological aspects of the industries. Nowadays, many organizations appoint organizational psychologists in their companies; organizational psychologists focus on the well-being of the employees, and on improving productivity at the workplace. Psychological training helps the managers become empathetic toward the employees and motivate them to give their best. Most people these days proudly claim that they are multitaskers, while in reality, the researches prove that performing many tasks at a time drastically impacts your productivity. You work better if you focus on one task at a time as it decreases the distractions, and you give your full attention to that particular task.

15. Academics

Most children complain a lot about the exam systems in schools, but do you know that according to a study, repeated tests and exams help you in improving your memory. It was observed that the students that were repeatedly tested had better retention than those who had studied only and were not tested repeatedly. So, whenever you think of learning something new, you better do the self-tests repeatedly until it sticks to your memory. Learning is an important task for every student. Psychological techniques like repeating what you just learned, paying full attention while learning, studying in a peaceful environment, and playing soft music while reading, makes it easier for the student to learn. We can sharpen our learning skills by teaching others as it enhances our retaining power for a particular concept.