Mourning and the Ericson Study

Stages of Mourning and the 10,000 Ericson Study (April 19, 2012)

There is an unofficial process of mourning.  Though this is not psychologically validated, the acceptance seems universal.  Personally, I subscribe to this formula and I even use these stages to predict the next manifestation of behavior of an individual.  This is even useful is mourning but in facing failure as well.

The acronym to remember here is DABDA, this stands for denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Accordingly, denial is the failure of the individual to accept the truth even though such is already staring the individual in the face.  Anger here is the lashing out of the individual towards the object of his ire.  Bargaining connotes the attempt of the individual negotiate himself out of the cause of the problem.  Depression here comes after bargaining because, once the attempt at negotiation fails, and this is extreme sadness and lack of energy.  And lastly, acceptance comes to fore where the subject simply accepts the situation and tries to move on with life.

The DABDA formula is not recently validated but in the 1980’s, such was universally accepted and only because of the lack of recent and researches validating the said equation that tarnished its popularity.  But in the evolution of human knowledge, the DABDA equation needs its space and who knows, maybe someone out there is doing a research to further validate and cement the equation.

The Ericson study is really is quite simple, it states that for an accepted expertise in any endeavor or enterprise, the mind needs to invest 10,000 hours with it.  It means that if you want to become an expert guitar player, you need to invest 10,000 hours of guitar playing.  If you want to become an expert basketball player, you need to invest 10,000 hours of playing basketball.  If you want to become an expert driver, a10, 000 hours is needed to acquire the expertise.

If you really want to measure the expertise of an individual, look at the years invested by the individual in that particular endeavor or enterprise.