Posted July 1st, 2009 by admin
My colleague Stephanie West Allen, J.D., writes on mediation for the legal community. Her blog today had a mouth-watering post about your brain at work. http://snipurl.com/brainwrk – and her link takes you to http://yourbrainatwork.org/
It is certain that the better we understand out brains, the better we can manage them. This site is rich with useful information and hints about using your brain more effectively.
I liked the FASTR acronym. How do we improve our learning? F: focus your attention; A: Associate, try to link new information to things you have learned before. If you are learning Spanish, associate a new word with something familar, such as quince, 15, reminds one of someone named Quincy, perhaps with the number 15 on his forehead. S: Study, practice, practice, practice. Dr. K. Anders Erickson found that 10,000 hours of practice can make anyone an expert. T: Talk about it. Repeat it aloud, repeat it silently, and study with a group where you have to explain the concepts to each other. Finally, R: Reinforce it. Review and reward yourself. Go over it from time to time.
I found this a real resource. I hope you do too.
DrJ AT enjoylifebook DOT com
Posted March 14th, 2009 by admin
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
Todd Kashdan, a colleague from George Mason University, has published a study about how gratitude has different effects on men and women. It turns out that men feel a gift is more of a burden than women do. So the effect of a gift on a man is more mixed, whereas for a woman, the gift is more simple. They don’t feel obligated and as required to repay the gift. Older men are especially cautious when the gift is from another man. They know that there will be pay-back!
Other research has shown that while attending church frequently makes people happier, there is a greater effect for women than men. How could this be? Perhaps because women are better at being social. They enjoy gifts. Give a woman a gift, and she is pleased. Give a man a gift and he says, “What do you want from me?”
Take a woman to church, and she says, “Oh, the interesting people I met today!.” Take a man to church and he says, “What will this cost me?” He may be very happy to pay the price, but to many men, the concept of price is an important consideration. So while attending church and giving and receiving gifts work for raising your happiness level, if it works for you doesn’t mean it will work for others. You have to bear in mind that someone of the opposite gender may well not find getting the gift to have the same impact as it would if you received the gift.
All of this reminds me of a book by Sheldon Kopp, called “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” He taught that we must look within for meaning and understanding and not from some “Buddha” outside of us. Of course, he didn’t admit that by writing the book, he had become a kind of Buddha himself. One reader misunderstood and tried to run him down as he crossed the streets. In the ugly trial that followed, it came to light that Kopp himself had never killed a Buddha, although he had gotten into a nasty fight with a Japanese Karate instructor. His reputation suffered and he had to stay inside for fear of being killed on the road.
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” If we try to understand that phrase, commentators often say, “You must look for meaning only from within yourself.” Of course that is absurd because we are hearing this advice from someone outside of ourselves. So we are obligated to ignore that advice, but when we do that, we are actually taking the advice. But if we take the advice, we are required to ignore the advice, which means we are not taking the advice we are trying to take. And if we don’t take the advice, we are actually taking that advice. Pretty soon I get dizzy and go look for a tennis ball to throw to my dog.
So a more simple way of looking at that is that a great secret in life is to enjoy other people as they are and not as I wish them to be. I would like to hang out with old white guys, since that is what I am, but I find that when I converse and learn from people unlike me, my world gets bigger and more interesting. If I enjoy church and am happy to pay the required price, I may only feel comfortable with others who are just like me. That is a mistake. I can also enjoy people who are on a different path and learn from them what they have mastered by their pathway.
I recently was talking to a very religious woman who nevertheless had enough problems to come to see me. I asked her, “So what do we know for sure about God?” She promptly replied, “That He loves us!”
Well, I admitted that is what one is taught, but few people have any direct experience about that. More often than not, it is simply something one reads in the bible or hears in sermons. So we cannot say we know that for sure.
What we can know for sure is that God – or Mother Nature if you prefer that term – loves variety. They are so many different people, of so many shapes, sizes, colors, and dispositions, that it is clear that there is lots of room in the universe for everyone. Jesse James was a terrible person, violent, selfish, and thoughtless. Had the Civil War continued, he may have been a valuable soldier, but as a post-war civilian he was a failure. When a war comes up, and we have to fight against a desperate foe, we need the Jesse Jameses of the world. When peace returns, those folks who might fit in well during the war may not fit in so well in peace time.
Maybe we need a lot of different people because we never know what we will need next. Different persons help us solve different problems. So naturally, a group of people where they is lots of variability will solve a wider range of problems. That group will survive and thrive.
What do we know? One: Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else. You help others by being yourself, not by trying to be like someone else.
Two. Reach out to people different than you and see how you discover new things about yourself by being around other people. If you meet the Buddha on the road, have a nice chat with him.
Until next time, Enjoy Life!
Lynn J.
drj@enjoylifebook.com
Posted February 17th, 2009 by admin
WE KNOW A FEW THINGS about happiness. First, it can be changed, reliably and persistently. Second, the ways people try to increase happiness (buying Stuff, having more than the neighbors, and seeking pleasure or excitement) are all dead ends. Third, happy people are healthier and more productive than unhappy people. They live longer, take better care of themselves, and are sick much less often.
In The Innovator’s Prescription website (http://innovatorsprescription.com/), the authors have posted a supplement to chapter six, called “The Growth of Integrated Corporate Employee Health.” They review innovative approaches to improving employee health at Perdue Farms, Toyota, Performance Food and others.
As I look at these programs, they indirectly address happiness. By encouraging exercise and other positive behaviors, they are likely to see happiness rise in their employees. But why not address that directly, by informing the employees of proven methods?
Dr. Marty Seligman and his associates have been studying what will work in raising happiness. One of the most robust approaches to raising happiness is the “Blessings Diary” or the “Gratitude Journal.” A participant jots down at the end of the day three to five things that happened that day that creates a sense of gratitude. Simply doing that will permanently raise happiness over at least a one year period.
A second method is the “Gratitude Visit.” In this exercise, a participant writes a letter of appreciation to someone whom he/she has never adequately thanked. The letter should be three hundred words or more, and should be laminated. The participant then takes the letter to the recipient and reads it out loud, leaving it. This exercise raised happiness for the next four weeks.
A third method is “Expressing Strengths.” The participant takes the Values In Action survey at www.authentichappiness.org and identifies his/her five top strengths. The assignment is to express these strengths in new, creative, or unique ways.
In a small pilot study, combining these three interventions had a more satisfying and robust effect on seriously depressed patients than either treatment as usual (cognitive therapy) or treatment plus medication. Since Seligman has already shown that these interventions can be delivered via a website, this is certainly a disruption of the typical treatment for depression. I suggest that it should also be extended not just to clinically depressed patients but also a wider range of individuals. If employees practice Positive Psychology exercises, will they become more productive, take less sick days, and so forth?
My colleagues and I are currently developing a systems-based approach to improving emotional resiliency which includes Positive Psychology interventions, diet, exercise, social connection, and sleep skills. So far it appears to be effectively treating both clinically depressed patients and people who are not depressed but who want to improve their personal health. It disrupts the usual treatment approach because it is done in a classroom and conceivably could be done through a web site. If you are involved in a similar effort, I want to collaborate. Send me an email to DrJ AT enjoylifebook DOT com. I am told I should not post an actual email address on a blog because there are programs harvesting those, so you have to translate that into an actual email address.
In the mean time, let me challenge each reader to try these three interventions out. Estimate your current habitual happiness level on a 0 – 10 scale, with zero meaning absolute misery and ten is the happiest one could imagine being. Begin with the gratitude diary, then a visit, and then identify your personal strengths and exercise them. Track your happiness rating week-by-week. I predict you will see a very nice rise.
Lynn Johnson
Posted February 12th, 2009 by admin
I wrote this for another website and thought some of you who read this blog would enjoy it.
How do we cheer ourselves when our spirits are low? Traditionally, cognitive therapists have tried to change the content of thinking. Clients are taught to challenge over-generalization and exclusion patterns that are thought to cause unhappiness. Now we get a new and refreshing view. Emily Pronin and Elana Jacobs of Princton University have shown that they can influence mood simply by speeding up the rate of thinking <http://tinyurl.com/c9dmbh>.
This is breakthrough. Can we change what we simply by changing the speed that we think or act? Pronin’s answer is clearly “yes.” Does it matter what the content is? Not as much as you would suspect, says Pronin. She asked people to read material either faster or slower than usual. Those who read faster felt energized and excited; those who read slowly felt lethargic and slowed.
In another study, Pronin asked students to jot down thoughts about how to earn tuition during the summer. One group was asked to write down as many ideas as they could. The second group was asked to write down the very best ideas. With speedy writing, the first group found their moods lifting significantly. The second group were writing much more slowly, and their mood was lower, energy lower, and satisfaction lower. Did the fast thinkers have better ideas? Not necessarily. It was simply the speed.
I have encouraged clients who are discouraged or depressed to move more quickly and speak more quickly. They say their mood is raised.
I often bicycle to work. If I am starting up in the spring after not biking for months, it takes me about 45 minutes to get to work. If I ride two or three times a week, I get stronger, and start to ride the route more quickly.
So I do make progress. But this is especially the case if I do some interval training on at least one ride a week. Interval training means that for one block, I ride quite a bit faster than I am comfortable. I really push. I would suppose I am at about 80% of my maximum. Then I ride normally and recover from the effort. Then I repeat the one-block interval. Doing this six or eight times in a 45 minute ride will result in my average speed coming up rather nicely. Perhaps that is a good analogy for this mood elevation exercise. We act as if, and soon, we feel natural at that higher level of energy. It feels more and more normal.
Another personal example, if you would permit me. Once a month I do some teaching. The format is a full day workshop, so I have to present a good deal of material. I am well prepared, but carrying a class the whole day can be tiring. I strategy I have adopted is that I purposely speak just a bit faster than usual. To my delight, I find that my energy level is higher, and I am able to think of more jokes. They just seem to spring to mind.
Since I believe strongly that occasional jokes help people to retain the material better, the way my mind is able to access jokes that I haven’t thought of for a long time is very satisfying to me. After seeing the “speed up = more optimistic and happy” research, I realized what was going on. I had stumbled onto the same principle. A choice to speak and move more quickly reliably makes the teaching day go much better for me. If you have a similar challenge, it may help you too.
LJ
Posted January 7th, 2009 by admin
Well, all right, the title is a bit provocative. But it got your attention, didn’t it?
On a positive psychology chat group, I found the following post:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Edward (last name deleted) wrote:
Friends,
I teach a course on character development at a mid-level security
facility for men in the Indiana Department of Corrections.
In considering the VIA strengths survey for use in that context, and
reading it against the methodology outline in Character Strengths and
Virtues (Peterson & Seligman), I have asked myself whether or not the
strengths and virtues proposed there reflect the values of more elite,
leisured classes in the cultures studied.
By the time of their release, most of the men in my classes will be
quite poor, will be facing serious handicaps in the job market, and,
because of the erosion of family ties and the risks associated with old
friendships, will have to take up the task of creating new drug- and
crime-free relationships.
These are not issues addressed in the positive psychology literature
with which I am familiar.
I suspect your discussions have considered such difficulties before and
I would benefit greatly from learning more about your findings as well
as from your suggestions for further relevant reading in this field.
Edward
(My answer)
Edward, my gratitude for your service. Your work is a gift to the men.
Just a couple of thoughts, nothing particularly penetrating:
1. The antidote to the problems you mention, poverty, joblessness, and family alienation can be helping each person identify his own gifts and talents. What does each bring to the world that, were he to share it, would lift and elevate others? The reason we have gifts is to benefit the community. Thus, the VIA might be looked at as a call to serve, a call from the heart of each one to embrace the “yes” in that very heart, while living in a “no way” world. Based on my own year of volunteering in a prison, this might be a shift in their lifestyle.
2. Exceptional times analysis may help. Once individual strengths are identified, ask them to share with the group a time when they expressed that strength and how it helped. Perhaps they could be divided into dyads in which they interview each other about “them at their best.” Then they report to the group about the person they interviewed, so there is a sense of another person praising you. Then ask them to meet in groups and identify possible future pathways if they continue to express those strengths — even more — and how that would help.
Similarly, each man might report on who would notice if, after release (or perhaps before) they embraced a strengths-based life. How would noticing that change the family, associates, friends, employers, and so on.
Now ask them, given each person’s unique constellation of strengths, how they plan to address poverty, joblessness and a tought job market, and family hard feelings and alienation. Operating from strengths, how does that change the way they react?
Best wishes,
Lynn
–
Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Brief Therapy Center
166 East 5900 South, Ste. B-108
SLC, UT 84107
Want to enjoy life more? Check out my new book at http://enjoylifebook.com/
Just a follow-up to my post to Edward.
To identify your owns strengths, go to www.authentichappiness.org and register. There is no cost and you gain access to many valuable personality tests. Take the VIA survey (Values in Action) and it will print out your top five strengths. These become your unique signature strengths.
Now increase your expression of your strengths. Look for ways that you can practice them in a new way, a new setting. Look for a unique approach to them. And, as I say in my email to Edward, look for how your strengths bless the lives of others.
There is a chapter in my book on strengths. Take a look at it for an in-depth analysis.
Lynn
Posted December 6th, 2008 by admin
All my life I found stories of my family fascinating. When I was young, my paternal grandparents lived across the street. I am not sure I would recommend that, since it would be tough on anyone to live across from their in-laws. My mother handled it well, though, and I used to go across the street and talk to my grandmother as she worked in her kitchen. I would get four sugar cookies and a tumbler of milk, and I would sit at the table, my feet not even reaching the floor, and talk to her and eat my cookies and milk.
My maternal grandparents were farmers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and one summer my mother took us to visit. Grandfather make me a large terrarium out of an old refrigerator box. On the farm he ran into lizards, horned toads (a particularly charming type of lizard), turtles, all of which he would bring home. I would put them in the terrarium and feed them daily.
Grandpa relished being a Texan and loved to tell “tall tales.” He would entertain my sisters and me with his stories, while Grandma would say, “Oh, Gerald, don’t tell that story. It never happened.”
Recently I was invited to write an essay on family stories. When it appears in the book, I will let you know, but here it is. I hope you enjoy it. I also hope . . . that it stimulates you to try something similar.
Thoughts about my grandfather and his life filled my mind in the fall of 1984. He was in good health, and after my grandmother died, he remarried a lovely woman. He seemed content with his life, and I was curious.
I asked Grandpa if I could interview him about his life, and set up my tape recorder. His first answer worried me. “Well,” he said, “I really don’t recall much about my life.” Then he described his first day at first grade, the boys he met and became friends with, his impressions of his first grade teacher and I knew this interview would be a treasure.
For the next hour and a half he told me of the life of a young boy growing up on a western farm. He described how excited he was to go to a boarding school for eighth grade, a chance for real higher education, and how interested he was in algebra and discovering answers to unknowns.
He froze his hands during a bitter cold snap just before Christmas, and the school thought he should go back to his family farm for the Christmas break to recover. When he got home, as he rode his horse into town, the whole town was there to meet him. His father had just died, and that was the end of his schooling.
He thought his life was rather unimportant, but I found it full of triumph and tragedy, and full of life. When I got home from the interview, I found my father had picked a couple of bushels of apricots from our trees, and together we started bottling them. I turned on the tape I had just made, and we listened. Toward the end of the tape, dad wiped his hands dry and walked over to the phone. Dialing my uncle, he said, “Sheldon, you ought to come down and listen to this tape Lynn just made of dad. There are things on here I have never heard before.”
Years later my wife and family were going on vacation, and I put the tape in. My children groaned, saying they didn’t want to listen. I asked them to give it a bit of time. Grandpa had been simple and direct in his story, telling his life in an understated but moving way. The children were listening in rapt silence. When we came to Grandpa freezing his hands doing the chores he had to do to pay for the boarding school, the children were in awe. The death of his father and the end of his school touched them. Eyes were moist. After the tape, the car was silent for many miles, as my sons and my daughter reflected on their Great-grandfather’s life.
In the Bible, we read that the prophet Elijah will come to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. We are told that if this were to not happen, the world would be cursed. Could that curse be that we don’t know who we are because we don’t know where we have come from? Could the curse be that we lack courage and determination because we don’t know our family tradition of grit? My children’s thoughtful, almost reverent reaction said their hearts were turned to their Great-grandfather who lived a life of strength and dedication, a life worthy of their reverence.
I brag that none of my children has needed psychotherapy or medication, that they are recognized in the neighborhood as being fun, positive people who have made significant lives for themselves. They know who they are, perhaps partly because in our family there is a tradition of telling family stories, their great-grandfather’s story of catching the deer in the snow drift, their grandfather’s service as a bombardier on a B-17 in World War II, and stories from my life, my army service, my life in Hawaii, my backpacking tour of Europe. We are not individuals unless we are connected. There are no private affairs. We are human because we are part of the human family, because of our relationships. We know who we are through the family stories we share.
Posted November 15th, 2008 by admin
I had read a while back about some studies suggesting that if we smile, we feel happier. One study found that if you ask undergraduate students (the backbone of psychology research!) to put a pencil between their teeth and then keep the lips from touching, they feel happier. When the mouth goes into that position, it is a smile.
I had a hard time believing that. So I tested it. I put the pencil between my teeth and pulled my lips back into a grotesque grin. I am glad I didn’t have to see myself.
Then I turned on a show – Friends - that I have never found funny. I have actually never watched a full episode, since I think the writing is totally predictable and the jokes are lame. Sorry if you like it, but I just don’t. To my surprise, I found that I was actually enjoying the humor. What a surprise.
Nat King Cole sang,
Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, youll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
Youll see the sun come shining through for you
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
Thats the time you must keep on trying
Smile, whats the use of crying?
Youll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile
(Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons and music by Charlie Chaplin)
In a workshop in the Seattle area, a student recounted how he got interested in psychology. Coming out of the Army and not being sure quite what to do, he enrolled in a small community college. During a psychology class, he what challenged to “act as if” and smile more. The “as if” challenge is difficult since we don’t feel the same way we are acting. We act as if we already felt the feeling of happiness, for example.
He determined to try it. He walked around campus with a broad smile. It was uncomfortable, he felt phony. But he stuck with it. Within a couple of months, he said, everyone on campus seemed to know his name, as as he walked between classes, he heard, “Hey, Rod.” “Hi, Rod.” “What’s new, Rod.”
He is now a successful psychologist.
Try it? Maybe not every day, but pick one day in the coming week and smile much more than you usually do. What happens?
Posted October 23rd, 2008 by admin
Dr. Jeff Schwartz is a research psychiatrist at ULCA who has shown the power of the mind to train the brain. His book, The Mind and the Brain shows all the evidence that paying attention literally changes the brain itself. In other words, what the mind decides to pay attention to shapes how the brain functions and how it grows.
So what? This blog is basically about our ability to recover from depression, anxiety, resentment and anger, our ability to improve our relationships. How do we do that? Attention! What we focus on becomes powerful in our lives. Dr. Schwartz has been working with one of the most serious anxiety disorders, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Changing how OCD sufferers pay attention to their symptoms can change the actual brain structure within eleven weeks.
Research into heridity and personality comes up with the notion that about half of our personality is from our genes. Happiness seems to be the same. Probably abut 50% of our happiness is inherited. The rest is something we can influence. Today I was talking to a client and I wondered if she had been noticing times when she was more even and patient with her husband. She smiled and replied with several examples, times when she might have reacted aggressively but this past week she responded with calm and peace. That is good news. Now we looked deeper. What effect does it have on her to notice that she did that? The traditional answer is that it changes her image of herself. She thinks of herself as more patient. When we change our self-image, we change our behavior. That directly changes our level of happiness.
But a deeper answer is that it also shapes the brain. Specifically, the amygdalas, the brain’s “panic switches” are less reactive. The frontal lobes, the brain’s high-speed analysis and creativity centers, are strengthened. Attention changes the brain. Peace, joy and happiness are like muscles, and the more we work them, the stronger they become.
(Now if you wonder about the question mark at the top of the page, that is about the question of whether your brain is your mind. Schwartz – and I – believe the brain is where the mind lives, but that the mind can exist outside of the physical brain. A powerful notion, in my view, but one that irritates scientists who are strict materialists.)
Schwartz’s recent interview: http://www.iscid.org/jeffrey-schwartz-chat.php is worth reading.
Lynn
Posted October 15th, 2008 by admin
One of my favorite places on the web is www.ted.com.
Here I watch videos of some of the most interesting people on the planet. I am watching Marty Seligman right now, speaking on positive psychology and why that is such a significant departure from “psychology as usual.” Watch his talk at www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html and see if you agree with me that he is a very interesting person.
What you may not know is that Seligman is a self-described grouch, a person who has always lived his life under a perpetual cloud of unhappiness. Yet today, he has raised his happiness level, and it shows. He practices what he preaches. I am glad. Cool examples are inspiring.