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In the New York Times August 2, 2011, Lesley Alderman’s column gives ideas about how to be seen on time by your doctor.
You can read the article itself here: http://nyti.ms/drjdrwillseeyounow
Alderman points out some ways to cut down the wait. The column is worth it. But the last comment, avoid going to the doctor unnecessarily, begs for more attention.
Let’s be clear here. Most doctor visits are unnecessary. Most tests are unnecessary. Most complaints would resolve by themselves if . . .
If what?
If you change your own habits.Two lifestyle changes will dramatically reduce your dependence on doctors.
MOVE
First, activity. Exercise every day. Exercise to the point of being out of breath, and do it for about thirty minutes. Work up to sixty minutes.
If you have never exercised, walk around your neighborhood for a few minutes every day. Lengthen that until you can comfortably walk for thirty minutes. Walk a couple of minutes longer every week.
Once you can walk for thirty minutes, walk a little faster. Keep yourself slightly out of breath, so your heart is speeding up and you are slightly sweaty. Jog for a minute here and there in your walk. Lift some weights. Exercise for thirty-to-sixty minutes a day has lots of emotional benefits, reducing both anxiety and depression as well as medication, and without the side effects of medicine.
EAT SMART
The next thing is to reform your eating habits. One simple change: NO SUGAR! Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, in the Division of Endocrinology Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at University of California San Francisco
His argument is provocative and controversial, but what harm could possibly come from trying our best to reduce the amount of added sugar in our diets?
Many studies show a clear health advantage to the Mediterranean (Greek-style) diet. That means more fish, more fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, more beans, and much less red meat. People following that diet have a greatly reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
A more strict approach is Dean Ornish’s approach. Ornish has shown clear and dramatic improvements in patients’ health with his diet. Ornish pushes a vegetarian diet, with as little meat or no meat if possible, and very low fat. President Bill Clinton has adopted this vegetarian diet after his heart attack and seems to be doing well.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/ornish-diet-what-it-is
The Paleo diet has some fans. The idea there is to eat like cave men / women, lots of vegetables and meat and no grains. Their argument is that grains are not a natural part of our diet. We should eat like our prehistoric ancestors. They fans have some studies behind their views, but it is not true to argue that we haven’t evolved to eat grains and milk products. Europeans are clearly well adapted to eating milk products, for example. It is also a very difficult diet to follow, since you are supposed to eat the kinds of foods you could have gathered from the wild 40,000 years ago. Good luck on that.
For me, the Mediterranean diet seems the best bet. It is a nice, civilized way to eat, not too difficult to follow if you are eating in restaurants, and full of pleasant tastes. Eating olive oil on bread is a wonderful taste and very satisfying. Fruits and vegetables, fish, yogurt, whole grains, seeds and beans all are chock full of micronutrients. So that is my preference.
You can pick any one of these diets and follow it and you will be eating in a way that supports good health.
How long you wait in the doctor’s office will not be an issue. You will dramatically reduce your need to ever see a doctor. Just say “no” to doctor visits. That is the elegant answer to the problem of long waits
Southern Methodist University has issued a press release on “out of the blue” panic attacks. They recruited panic attack sufferers to wear physiological monitoring devices for one day. If the panic prone patients had an attack during that time, they were to push a button.
To the surprise and gratification of the researchers, the so-called “unexpected” panic attacks were preceded by clear body changes an hour before the attack, when compared with times that had no panic component. They called these changes “physiological instability.”
The patients’ blood CO2 dropped during the hour before the panic attack, when compared with times when there was no panic. So the patient had been subtly hyperventilating during that hour, and was unaware of that change in breathing.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is generally an excellent treatment for panic attacks, but this study suggests more emphasis on teaching patients to be aware of body sensations. Mindfulness meditation, to me, would fit the bill for that.
One technique of mindfulness is to focus on the breath for twenty minutes or more. The mind focuses on the feeling of the breath flowing in and out, focusing on the physical feelings associated with breathing. Recent research has shown that this type of exercise develops the anterior insula in the brain, the part of the brain that pays attention to inner experiences and feelings. When you notice how your stomach or heart rate is changing, it is the insula that notices that for the brain.
If that part of the brain gets more developed, that suggests a better awareness of the body. Practicing a meditation like controlled breathing will develop that breath.
If you suffer from panic and you are not practicing meditation focused on breathing, you are missing an important tool for finding freedom from panic and anxiety.
An interesting video on mindfulness breathing meditation is here.
This is not hard to learn. Buddhists seem to have the most skill in this area, and some Buddhist practitioners offer classes, or you can simply look at the many YouTube or Vimeo videos and teach yourself.
At the International Positive Psychology Association 2nd world convention, Marty Seligman, the father of positive psychology spoke on the future of flourishing. He called it, “The State of My Mind.”
Two and a half years ago, the United States Army contact Seligman about PTSD and suicide among the Army troops. They had read his materials and wanted to know what he could do for them. Since then (and, incidentally, working pro bono although he didn’t say that in his talk) he has helped create a large scale intervention, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. At this point the Army has 40,000 drill instructors that have been trained in Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. Chris Peterson created a resiliency test and 1,200,000 troops have taken that test. The test measures emotional, social, family, and spiritual domains. They will take that test every year, and when they score low in one of four resiliency domains, they will receive suggestions about raising their emotional resiliency. For example, if they indicate problems in the area of family functioning, they will be guided to a program written by John and Julie Gottman.
Here is a link to an article describing their program
What are they learning? In the near future we will be able to say with certainty how teaching flourishing helps. So far, it is clear that a low level of emotional and social connection contributes to suicide. There were 46 suicides in the Army last year, and every one of them were at the 1% level on two factors, social and emotional. Obviously when the men and women take this test every year, the ones needing intervention can be identified for early intervention. This program will give the Army some wonderful tools for early intervention, preventing problems from getting out of control.
At the same time, early data suggest that the test results predict which soldiers will be promoted earlier than usual. So the evaluation works to identify both the left-hand side of the distribution, those at risk, and the right-hand side, the super-resilient post-traumatic growth individuals.
When the Army asked Seligman about PTSD, he replied that reaction to traumatic stress is a bell-shaped curve. On the left side of the curve are people who have been seriously damaged by the stress. They are highly likely to develop chronic PTSD.
In the middle are people who are damaged but resilient. They bounce back from stress and in a year, they are functioning well.
But on the right hand tail of the distribution are the most remarkable. They went through the same stress and felt the same feelings of powerless, terror, and hopelessness. A year later they have not just bounced back. They are stronger than ever. They turn stress into growth. These are the post-traumatic growth individual. Those are the ones we want to study. They give us hope.
Can we make our whole Army more resilient? Can we shift the entire distribution to the right, so that the vulnerable soldiers are now resilient, and the resilient ones show post-traumatic growth?
To put it another way: can we ethically do anything else?
I was a soldier for six years. I did nothing of note. I trained as a medic, I survived, and I returned. I was willing to put my life on the line, but it never came to that for me. Still today I feel glad I did step up.
But how much better off would I have been with a program like Comprehensive Solider Fitness, in which I would have been taught key resiliency skills? What difference would it have made in my life to be taught gratitude? Optimism and hope? Identifying personal strengths? Acts of kindness? Savoring? Emotional connection? Assertive and constructive responding?
If my son chooses to serve, I would recommend my branch, the Army. Not for family tradition, mind you, but rather for the advantages he will receive from being trained by one of those drill instructors who will teach him resiliency skills.
The rest of us: why aren’t we demanding the same skills form a core curriculum in our schools? Why aren’t our churches teaching this? Why aren’t we offering these to all families in this great country of ours?
Today I am at the International Positive Psychology Association meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is hellishly hot outside and freezing inside. Why is it that the hotter it is outside, the colder the hotels keep their building?
Intellectually, the atmosphere is hot, hot, hot! Last night, three of the guiding minds in Positive Psychology spoke. We listened to Ed Diener, Chris Peterson, and Marty Seligman.
Ed Diener, the Obi Wan Knobi of positive psychology brought us up to date on his new research. Most people all around the world are mildly happy. A general good feeling is the default. His research shows that happy people are more likely to have children, have more children and raise them to adulthood. Happy people are more likely to create and maintain a stable two parent family.
Happy people are more fertile. They are more prosperous so they can take better care of the children. Hence, evolution selects and shapes our species for happiness.
Very unhappy or even mildly unhappy people are NOT the norm. All around the world, only a few people are chronically unhappy. Even people in painful, negative circumstances are more happy than sad. In negative situations such as war or national disaster, 57% of people enjoyed most of yesterday, and 62% smiled and laughed.
Chronic unhappiness is harmful, damaging productivity, creativity, and social connection.
Since this is the case, when we look at positive psychology interventions, they have to result in large differences, not small ones. The small improvements are likely just normal variations.
Money doesn’t make the difference you’d think. It does make a difference. Generally the more well-to-do countries are happier. Diener showed a striking exception, comparing South Korea and Costa Rica. While the median income in Costa Rica is only $12,800, the median income in South Korea is $46,500. So you’d think South Korea is the happier place, right?
Not so fast, dollar-breath. Life satisfaction is much higher in Costa Rica. In Korea, people do not feel in control of their lives, and in Costa Rica, they do. In Costa Rica, there is a much higher level of helpfulness. People are likely to help strangers in need. In Korea, help is limited to those whom you know, and is more limited at that. People feel alone and vulnerable.
In Costa Rica, people are more likely to say, “I learned something new today.” They are able to pursue mastery. That is not the case in South Korea.
South Koreans are much more worried about how others see them. They feel driven to demonstrate they are successful. So materialism is high. The opposite conditions are in Costa Rica.
As a result, the suicide rate in Korea is the highest in any of the prosperous countries in the world. Competition between people is low in Costa Rica and high in South Korea, so if you think you are losing, you have very little hope. Things are unlikely to get better, and your life is a failure. Suicide seems the only option.
We track national prosperity, our gross national product. We track per capita income. But is this really what life consists of? I think not. When we measure the wrong things, we pursue the wrong goals.
Now I do agree we should track unemployment. Jack Welch, the man who transformed General Electric, has said all government decisions should be focused through one lens, that is, “Does this decision support productivity and prosperity in the country?” There is some value in that. There is no question that most political decisions are not focused through that lens. Given our chronic high unemployment, given the misery of chronic unemployment, I would welcome a refocusing of our national priorities.
Yet isn’t that all too short-sighted? Shouldn’t we also measure how well political decisions impact personal autonomy, mastery and personal growth, connection and social support? Countries where trust is high are happy countries. What decisions impact national trust, the feeling that if I were to lose my wallet, it would be returned intact? What decisions support community connection? What decisions support healthy families? These are hard questions, but worthy ones. Ed Diener is in the forefront of discussions of how to accurately measure national flourishing. I was inspired by Ed.’s talk. I was grateful I was there.
“This life is a test.
It is only a test.
If this had been an actual life, you would have been given further instructions about where to go and what to do.”
In the early 1980s, this notice went from fax machine to fax machine. If it is anything but a semi-clever joke (playing off the 1970s notices we’d occasionally hear on the radio), we might ask, “What is life testing?”
In the movie, Moonstruck, Rose (Olympia Dukakis) asks “Why do men cheat?’ It is likely that Mrs. Anthony Weiner is asking the same question. In John Patrick Shanley’s brilliant script, characters suggest it is because men fear death, and late in the movie, Rose confronts her philandering husband with the fact that he will die, whether he cheats or not.
There are some other reasons why men cheat. We cannot know why Weiner is faithless and why he lied so glibly. Arnold Schwarzenegger mindlessly cheated and betrayed his faithful wife. The unfaithful politician is a cliche. Why do they do it? While we cannot know for sure, we can review factors.
When men are in a position of power and dominance, their testosterone rises. Men who are subordinate don’t have as high levels, and their cortisol instead rises. It is as if Mother Nature is telling the dominant men that they should have sex with many partners and spread their seed widely. When men have been in the habit of giving in to impulses, when they have not schooled their feelings to be subservient to moral principles, that rise in testosterone drives them. Misunderstanding their own inner experience, they convince themselves that their rise in sexual energy means they are justified in giving in to impulses. Women seem less prone to such misuse of power.
At the same time, the power has a significant impact on relationships. Powerful men (and women) don’t get told “no.” In the bible, we read that in many counselors there is safety (Proverbs 11:14). Power without a countervailing force is dangerous.When he was President, John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby to be the “devil’s advocate,” to take the opposite position to whatever course of action the rest of the cabinet espoused. So without a devil’s advocate, without counselors with which powerful men discuss their options, there is a tendency for power to create a narcissistic world view. It becomes all about them. No one tells them “no.”
For that matter, is it true that power corrupts? Perhaps not. We can certainly find exceptions, men holding great power who don’t seem to be corrupted. There is no evidence that either of our greatest two presidents, Lincoln and Washington, misused their power. Famously, Washington voluntarily gave up power twice. Once when he was general and retired his sword to return to Mount Vernon. That walking away from power prompted his antagonist, King George III, to say he was “the greatest character of the age.” King George couldn’t fathom voluntarily relinquishing power.
But for every Washington, for every Lincoln who doesn’t misuse power, we see numerous examples of despots, tyrants, and kleptocrats. Lord Acton seems mostly right. Power does corrupt. In the Arab countries today we see the rise of great disgust at such corrupt men. Unfortunately, history teaches us that more often than not, the cure is worse than the disease. Occasionally we see an American revolution, but more often we see French revolutions where things go rapidly very very wrong. Women do not seem less likely to misuse power for narcissistic reasons, or less likely to be seduced by status. Because sex means something very different to women than to men, they may be less likely to cheat, but just as likely to become tyrannical and even sadistic.
It may be more true, as someone said, that power doesn’t corrupt so much as it attracts corruptible people. The paradox is that anyone who wants to be powerful is likely unworthy of power. Again, if your world view is that you are entitled to give in to whatever temptation attracts your attention, then you might be more driven to acquire power.
Moral education has been mostly abandoned in our secular post-modern world The idea of trying to inculcate morality into young children seems both quaint and tainted. For much of the twentieth century, sociologists tried to demonstrate that bad behavior was not the result of moral choice but rather because of social conditions. Poverty, it was argued, caused crime.
That view seems to have spent itself, and there is a return to the question of personal moral agency. Why did the 9-11 attackers, filled with murderous rage, destroy themselves and others? They were well educated young men coming from prosperous backgrounds. Clearly the question revolves about moral influences. Why was the World War II generation called “the greatest?” Was it perhaps because the teaching of morality and personal accountability was accepted and required? Should we resurrect the notion of moral education?
Can we really afford not to?
Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Contact: DrJ@EnjoyLifeBook.com
Dr. Johnson is a psychologist with 35 years of experience as a therapist, author of five books, numerous articles, and a well-known but low power speaker and workshop leader. You may reprint this article with proper attribution: http://enjoylifebook.com/why-does-anthony-weiner-do-it/
Two items:
1. Recently Ben Dean had a fascinating interview with Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, motivation expert. My take-away: If we have lifestyle improvements that genuinely and lastingly raise happiness, how can we help people adopt them? How can we motivate ourselves to learn more, eat more wisely, exercise more? It is about motivation, and Halvorson’s tools seem like a beautiful fit. Ben is offering a class with Halvorson that sounds mouth-watering. Ben has the recording of the interview. Here is the interview:
http://www.mentorcoach.com/halvorson/
Some of you may be so impressed by the interview that you will want to take the class. Here is a link to that class:
2. Not enough good stuff to watch? My wife hated the movie Thor. I thought it was fairly entertaining, but really more like cotton candy. No real nutrition. I mean, what accounts for Loki’s unstable and arbitrary behavior? It’s all about formulaic movie scripting. So go if you want to waste some time. I have something better. Here is one of those wonderful RSA animations, this one on what really motivates us to work smarter-harder, and it fits well with strengths, purpose and meaning, and other PP issues. What really make us work harder and smarter? Is it money? Status? Or are there other motives that are somehow both more effective and more noble?
http://tinyurl.com/24vl8ty
And just to prove there are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count and those who can’t:
3. We all want to make the world a better place, as John Lennon famously said. When we use government force to make that change, it is quite tricky to avoid unintended consequences. However, education and persuasion are positive ways to improve social justice. So the Youtube animation is a great example of that, and one I am going to share with my newsletter group, and one I hope others will share. The material itself is well known and widely ignored in organizational behavior, the hygiene and motivators material. It deserves wider dissemination, as it likely accounts for the disastrous performance of banking and investing, as aided by unintended consequences of official government policy. In banking everything has become about getting bigger and bigger bonuses, and because no one ever stops this madness and says, “Isn’t there more than simply making money?” then the madness continues. If we can educate high school students about the real components of happiness, including autonomy, mastery, and purpose/vision, we can help those students become higher functioning persons. Check this out:
Are today’s students working for autonomy, mastery, and purpose? I don’t think so, and I worry that perhaps No Child Left Behind might actually make the problem worse. Positive psychology has some stunningly effective interventions in schools. We should be using them.
As the Indian Little Bear said in the movie, The Indian in the Cupboard — “You should not do magic you do not understand.” I think I am starting to understand education and now if I can understand motivation (Halvorson) and influence (Cialdini) and Positive Psychology, I could really do something useful. I think you can too.
If you’d like to get nifty stuff like this in your inbox, sign up for the newsletter on the home page.
A new study suggests that getting along with co-worker will
prolong your life!
People who have a good peer support system at work may live longer than people who don’t have such a support system, according research published by the American Psychological Association.
This effect of peer social support on the risk of mortality was most pronounced among those between the ages of 38 and 43. Yet similar support from workers’ supervisors had no effect on mortality, the researchers found.
In addition, men who felt like they had control and decision authority at work also experienced this “protective effect,” according to the study, published in the May issue of the APA journal Health Psychology. However, control and decision authority increased the risk of mortality among women in the sample.
“[P]eer social support, which could represent how well a participant is socially integrated in his or her employment context, is a potent predictor of the risk of all causes of mortality,” the researchers wrote. “An additional (unexpected) finding … is that the effect of control on mortality risk was positive for the men but negative for the women.”
Lynn’s comments: You can improve the way you get along at work with some
simple changes in your behavior.
1. Smile more: At least in the United States, smiling is something that reduces
distance. You will feel closer to people you smile at, and they’ll feel closer to you.
2. Use your strengths. If you have not already, go to www.authentichappiness.org
and take the Values in Action test. Print out your top five strengths, and then select
one of those strengths and try to use it more in your daily work. People who will
apply their strengths at work are happier. And happy people are easier to get along
with.
3. Look for co-workers’ strengths and comment on them. “You seem to have a real
talent at such-and-such.”
4. Be generous in your praise.
5. Blame bad outcomes on circumstances. Strange as it may seem, when we shift
blame away from people, they try harder.
Lynn J
“Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-Up of Healthy Employees,” Arie Shirom, PhD; Sharon Toker, PhD; Yasmin Akkaly, MA; Orit Jacobson, PhD, MA, RN; and Ran Balicer, PhD, MD; Tel Aviv University, Health Psychology, Vol. 30, No. 3.
I kind of hate to bring this up because it makes me sound
like an anti-medication nut, which I am not. If people need
medication to fight off depression, they need it. I do think
we are too ready to put people on medication when lifestyle
interventions (eating, activity, connection) might do more for them.
Where was I? Oh, yes, more bad news. First, with “treatment
resistant depression” by which today’s psychiatrists mean a
depression that doesn’t resolve with medication along, the
standard approach is to try different medications or try combining
two or more medications. The worst example of this is combining
an antidepressant with a low dose major tranquilizer. The reason
this is bad is that the low dose tranquilizer has a number of very bad
side effects. Before that, many psychiatrists will try two different
antidepressants, mixing them together presumably to potentiate the effects.
Now this new research comes along:
http://bit.ly/ls0tcY
Taking a combination of two antidepressants does NOT speed
recovery from depression. This common practice turns out to not
have any real benefit.
Here is a quote from the press release:
“Clinicians should not rush to prescribe combinations of antidepressant
medications as first-line treatment for patients with major depressive
disorder,” said Dr. Madhukar H. Trivedi, professor of psychiatry and chief
of the division of mood disorders at UT Southwestern and principal
investigator of the study, which is available online today and is scheduled
for publication in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“The clinical implications are very clear – the extra cost and burden of two
medications is not worthwhile as a first treatment step,” he said.
- - - - -
Well, well, well. Once again, medication does not live up to its
advertising. Not much of a surprise to me, since I am not impressed
with the power of these medications.
What if you are depressed and desperate to get some relief from that
terrible disease? Try some of the robust and valuable lifestyle changes.
If you aren’t active every day, go for a walk, at least thirty minutes, every day.
If you eat junk food or fast food, switch to a Mediterranean diet and stick with it.
Never eat red meat unless it is pastured, grass fed.
http://www.bar10beef.com/
Don’t each chicken unless it is pastured chicken.
Don’t eat eggs unless they are high in Omega 3 PUFAs.
In other words, treat yourself like you are worth better food.
Connect with old friends, spend more time talking to people, and show more
appreciation to the people around you.
(I don’t care if you want to or feel up to visiting friends. Do it and then
we will talk.)
You do that and I think you’ll see that depression falling very nicely.
“Gratitude,” said the great Roman writer Cicero, “is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” As I work here at my computer, I am patiently waiting for Tech Support to solve a modem problem. They left me on hold, and I began to feel frustrated, talking to myself about the lack of competence, the technical support comes back on the line to tell me, “This isn’t our problem and we will not help you.” How do we deal with the pain and suffering that life inevitably inflicts on us?
I ran on to an account of a colleague carrying small stones to remind him of three things he feels grateful for. As I sit at the desk, I notice a bag of small stones, apparently a souvenir from when my children were small. I paw through the bag and select three small stones of my own.
“I have a good job in a time of need and want,” I say as I finger the first stone.
“My children are happy and productive and positive members of the community,” I mention as I roll the second stone around in my hand.
“This is a comfortable home in a warm, positive neighborhood,” I think, as I examine the third stone.
“I am lucky there is such a thing as technical support,” I whisper.
“It is lucky I have another way to solve this problem,” I realize.
“I have good friends who enjoy doing things with us,” I reflect.
Gilbert Chesterton once said that gratitude has produced the most purely joyful moments known to man. I feel peaceful and calm. This problem will be settled, sooner or later. We will be back on line, something I didn’t know anything about for about half of my life. I survived quite well, I am sure I will master this problem. Problems and failure are opportunities to grow and develop.
Robert Emmons has found over and over that gratitude may be one of the key components to true, long lasting happiness. I was beset with problems and a friend told me, “Cheer up, Lynn, things could be worse.” So I did. I cheered up.
Sure enough, things got worse.
Trials and problems, how could we do without them? What blessings in disguise they are.
Walk along a small stream, and look for three small, smooth stones. Carry them for a while. See how you feel.
Marty Seligman’s new book has just come out, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. I haven’t read it yet, but I do know it is built around the concept of PERMA. He argues in the book, I understand, that Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement are the components of flourishing.
Marty used to view the components as three: Meaning (how I help others in the world), Engagement (how well I can express my own talents and gifts in my life), and pleasure. He argued that the first two are huge components of true, authentic happiness, and the third is frankly a fairly weak component. In other words, pleasure plays a part, but not as much as college students and Hugh Hefner think.
Now Marty has expanded his view to five components, not three. How are we to arrive at the best fit for well being? I have been reading Carol Ryff’s work on six components: self-acceptance (I am at peace with myself, and feel good about who I am), environmental mastery (I feel capable and competent in my daily activities), positive relationships (I have a broad range of friends and am very intimate with some), purpose (I make a difference in the world, I am pleased with how I am contributing), personal growth (I am growing and learning), and autonomy (I am able to operate freely in the world and am able to make and carry out plans and projects). I can see some overlap with PERMA. Since I don’t have Marty’s new book yet, I don’t yet understand how he arrived at these five. Ryff based her six on factor analysis, and I am told Marty arrived at his five through rational examination of the evidence and experiences of positive research. So I decided I would discuss the two models, and then when you read Marty’s book, you’ll have some way of thinking more broadly about his factors.
Positive emotion seems to be the result of Ryff’s six components. It could also be similar to self-acceptance. As I accept myself, I feel positive emotion? That seems a likely notion.
Seligman’s Engagement seems like a combination of Purpose and Personal Growth to me. The common idea has to do with strengths. Imagine people are born with certain talents or strengths, and when they find a life where they can express those strengths, they are functioning at a higher level. So there is a common factor.
Relationship and Ryff’s Positive Relationships seem similar. Meaning might be similar to Purpose. Achievement seems a welcome emphasis on goal setting and achievement. It might relate to both personal growth and autonomy. Here there seems to be some overlap.
Marty’s notion about Meaning is much like Ryff’s Purpose, of course.
Finally, Achievement in Marty’s system overlaps with Personal Growth, I suppose. So there is some commonality. I like Ryff’s system for another reason. She has a test available that probes these six areas, and you can get a copy of it by emailing her.
(See: http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppquestionnaires.htm for a long list of useful tools for measurement. Bear in mind, measurement eliminates argument, and if you can’t measure it, you don’t know if it really exists.)
A colleague commented about the rat and self-aware mastery. The rat doesn’t say, “If I keep this up, I’ll get good at it.” So he was doubtful about the drive for mastery. But humans do have that self-aware mastery quality, and part of it is comparing ourselves with other people, hence bridge games, races, and grades. In the late 1960s the University of Utah medical school gave up grades and went to pass-fail, based on research that grades didn’t actually predict later competence as physicians. The students wanted them back, though, because they needed to know where they stood.
You may want to get a copy of Seligman’s new book. I know I am eager to get my own copy.
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