Using mental imagery of what we want our future to look and feel like is also powerful in supporting goal setting. Oyserman, Bybee, and Terry (2006) found that asking participants to use mental imagery to envision their best possible future self-enhanced their motivation to identify the goals needed to create their vision in real life.
FULL Dream Skin WindowBlinds Master Skin
Step One: Begin by asking each participant to practice a simple visualization exercise. Ask them to focus on one goal they would like to achieve and build a visual idea in their mind of what achieving that goal will look and feel like for them. Focus on the mental images that come to mind, and any feelings they anticipate on success.
Artists and designers of the Victorian era, such as influential English painter and art critic, John Ruskin, pushed back against what they saw as the dehumanizing experience of industrial cities. They argued for objects and buildings that reflected the hand of the craftsman and drew from nature for inspiration. In the design of the Science Museum at Oxford, Ruskin is said to have told the masons to use the surrounding countryside for inspiration, and the results can be seen in the inclusion of hand-carved flowers and plants adorning the museum (3. Kellert & Finnegan, 2011 ).
Humans have been decorating living spaces with representations of nature since time immemorial, and architects have long created spaces using elements inspired by trees, bones, wings and seashells. Many classic building ornaments are derived from natural forms, and countless fabric patterns are based on leaves, flowers, and animal skins. Contemporary architecture and design have introduced more organic building forms with softer edges or even biomimetic qualities.
The Presence of Water pattern has evolved from research on visual preference for and positive emotional responses to environments containing water elements (Windhager, 2011; Barton & Pretty, 2010; White, Smith, Humphryes et al., 2010; Karmanov & Hamel, 2008; Biederman & Vessel, 2006;Heerwagen & Orians, 1993; Ruso & Atzwanger, 2003; Ulrich, 1983); reduced stress, increased feelings of tranquility, lower heart rate and blood pressure, and recovered skin conductance from exposure to water features (Alvarsson, Wiens, & Nilsson, 2010; Pheasant, Fisher, Watts et al., 2010; Biederman & Vessel, 2006); improved concentration and memory restoration induced by complex, naturally fluctuating visual stimuli (Alvarsson et al., 2010; Biederman & Vessel, 2006); and enhanced perception and psychological and physiological responsiveness when multiple senses are stimulated simultaneously (Alvarsson et al., 2010; Hunter et al., 2010).
The noisy gaiety of the young men, my school comrades, whom I had met at the lectures, at the restaurants, in the cafés, was not to my liking either. The coarseness of their pleasures hurt me, and the women, with their eyes colored with bister, their overpainted lips, their cynicism and shameless speech and behavior did not tempt me at all. One evening, however, when my nerves were all wrought up, and I was driven by a sudden rutting of the flesh, I went into a house of ill-fame and left it burning with shame, despising myself, remorseful and with the sensation of filth on my skin. What! Was it from this slimy and loathsome act that men were born! From this time on I looked at women more frequently, but my look was no longer chaste, and fixed upon them as upon some impure images, it was searching for sex and stripping them under the folds of their clothes. I came to know their secret vices, which rendered me still more dejected, restless and out of sorts.
A kind of crapulous torpor settled down upon me. I used to stay in bed several days at a stretch, sunk in the brutishness of obscene dreams, awakened now and then by sudden nightmares, by painful attacks of heartache which caused my skin to perspire. In my room, behind drawn curtains, I was thus living like a corpse which was conscious of its death and which from the depth of its grave in the frightful night could hear the stamping of many feet and the rumble of the city about it. Sometimes, tearing myself loose from this dejection, I went out. But what was I going to do? Where could I go? I was indifferent to everything, and I had not a single desire or curiosity. With fixed gaze, with heavy drooping head and listless, I used to walk straight ahead, without purpose, and I would end by flinging myself on a bench in the Luxembourg, senilely shrunk into myself, lying motionless for many hours, without seeing anything, without hearing anything, without asking myself why there were children about me, why there were birds singing, why young couples passed.... Naturally I was not working and did not think of anything....
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